Get started with article marketing

Writing articles is a popular source of free "lifetime" advertising, although more and more people are now starting to realise this fact and the search engines have started to clamp down on articles marketing. Is article marketing a thing of the past?  It can certainly lead to great exposure and recognition, so we recommend that if you have an important message to say - then writing an article is worthwhile.  If you just post articles for the sake of the search engines rankings it probably won't be worthwhile.  The main issue is whether you have valuable content.

So how do you get started in article marketing? What do you write about? What do you actually do with your articles once you’ve written them? 

Getting started in article marketing

Do you have a passion? Are you particularly well-versed in a certain topic? Are you willing to invest time in doing research? Either one of these are all you really need, but if you’ve got all 3, then you’re definitely on the right track.  If you don't have any of these qualities then you probably shouldn't be in business!

So grab a cup of tea or coffee, open up notepad/WordPad or even grab a pen and paper. Write down a 5-6 line bio about yourself and/or the product/program you’re promoting, this is known as your "Resource Box", and should be at the bottom of each and every article you write. The "Resource Box" is THE only place you should promote ANYTHING at all in the article.

Next you need to focus on a topic. Start jotting down thoughts, and don’t worry about how mixed up they may seem to be at first, just keep going. If you can’t think of many things at first, save your work, and look it over another day, more ideas will pop into your head.

Once you feel you have enough, start moving things around until they really begin to make sense to you. Keep going until you’re happy with what you’ve got. Remember, articles don’t need to be mega-long, so long as they are helpful and informative. Write as you would speak, and make it personal, as if you are talking to a good friend. Let your personality shine through.

Anything you are passionate about, or are well-versed on is a great start. You’re not passionate about anything? Not an "expert" in any subject at all? Well do some research. Start by thinking about what YOU would like to read about, what kind of information would YOU find helpful? Thought about it? Go to www.google.com and type it in, see what comes up, start looking into the various things you find. You could even ask friends and colleagues what THEY would be interested in reading articles about.

What, still can’t come up with anything? It gets like that sometimes, so relax, take a deep breath, and start visiting forums/message boards. What questions are being asked? What do people need help with? Hang out in chat rooms, ask the same questions there, get as much feedback as you can, then start working from there. Eventually, you’ll find you’ve managed to write a GREAT article, in plain English, offering helpful/useful information.

Let a couple of your closest, most honest friends read through your articles for you. Don’t get offended if they make suggestions, some of them might even be good ones.  

Then there's all the article directories, and there are TONS of them. It's hard work submitting manually to them all, but then at least you know for definite that they WERE actually submitted. Don’t worry, Mile High Media have an SEO service that can submit articles to article directories for you.

Use these ideas and resources to promote yourself with, and even though it’s scary at first, it DOES get better with practice. Always add your "Resource Box" and copyright information with EVERY article and EVERY submission, it’s free advertising for you, and if your articles are good enough, they will be used over and over again creating a lot of traffic for your website, and increasing your authority on the subject.

If you decide that you absolutely, positively don’t want to write your own articles, you can pay somebody else to write them and put your name to them. Mile High Media can help you find ghost-writers and freelance writers online.