Writing and distributing articles is an extremely effective way of generating leads and building your business. Article marketing is a term that means that you write articles on topics that your target market is interested in and submit them online to search engines.

When people search for advice or information online regarding your topic, a link to your article will pop up. If you are already writing articles for your ezine, you can easily leverage your work by submitting your articles online.

Here’s how it works:

Write an article on a topic your target market commonly has questions about. Submit your article online through an article submission resource such as SubmitYOURArticle.com

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Writing valuable content-rich articles for your target market and submitting them to article directories and other publishers is one of the best ways to market your business, become known as an expert in your field, and add subscribers to your list.

For example, if you regularly write an article for your ezine, you can get a lot more mileage out of it if you submit it to article directories and other online publishing services. And making every piece you write work more than once for you is one way to work smarter and not harder. That’s called leverage.

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Congratulations to Marnie Pehrson, creator of IdeaMarketers.com, for ten wonderful years serving article writers! You can read more about the IdeaMarketers history on Marnie’s blog. Drop by and offer Marnie your congratulations!

IdeaMarketers is one of the biggest, and one of my favorite, article posting sites, providing great visibility for authors and their articles online. Marnie is also one of my favorite people online — knowledgeable, generous, and with six kids and a dozen online businesses, she’s an inspiration!

IdeaMarketers.com also has a special Expert program that offers additional features including events posting, several topic-specific blogs, monthly training and mastermind calls. For more information, visit the IdeaMarketers Expert Program description page.

I was asked a question recently about re-using your articles…

Are you using the articles you write in your ezine and posting the article on your blog? It’s been recommended to do this, but I’m a little torn.

My response to this - a resounding ‘Absolutely!’. This is exactly what I do; in fact I use my article whenever and wherever I can as many times as I need to. Just so that my subscribers don’t feel cheated, the very first time I publish a brand-new article is to my ezine list, so they get to read it first! Thereafter it goes on my blog, I link to it from my website, I submit it to various article directories etc. etc.

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Packaging your knowledge, skills and methods and giving it away for free is a wonderful way to market your business. So how do you give it away effectively and profitably?

1. Use multiple channels and formats. For instance, give away information on your blog, in articles posted on other sites, in free giveaway ebooks, in audio teleclasses and excerpts.
2. Get something in return when possible. Encourage blog visitors to sign up for blog updates via email. Put a subscription box to your newsletter on every page of your website (particularly where you post your newsletters, etc.) For bigger “chunks” of information like ebooks and audios, require that they sign up for your newsletter to get these freebies. In ebooks, make a link to your website prominent at the bottom of each page.

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One of the best ways to generate more income is to stop selling your expertise by the hour. Your expertise — knowledge, skills, methods — are your most valuable assets. By taking your expertise and packaging it in various forms, you can sell your expertise 24/7/365.

So if your knowledge, skills and methods are your most valuable assets, why in the world would I suggest that you give it away as a marketing strategy?? Read the rest of this post »

Are you working too hard in your business? If you’re an entrepreneur, you probably are, especially if you’re in the early stages of your business building. And you’re not alone.

Here’s an example from my own client files:

I was recently working with a client who was a real go-getter, very serious about being in business for herself, and marketing only to a more affluent clientele. She wanted to increase her reach into that market online. And she was considering adding article marketing to her mix.

At this stage in her business, she was already doing quite well. She was close to making 6 figures and charging 5 times as much as her counterparts – and getting it easily. But she wasn’t satisfied. She really wanted to break the $100k mark before the third anniversary of her business, which was coming up in just a few months.

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Marnie Pehrson of IdeaMarketers.com published a great audio Q&A series addressing common article marketing questions: how to get started, where article marketing fits in your overall marketing strategy, using articles to increase traffic and find prospective customers, and more. Listen to the audio series here

Boring is one thing you can’t afford to be when it comes to marketing your business. With more than 3000+ marketing messages pummeling consumers on a daily basis, you need to be more, and do more, if you want to be heard above the racket.Your marketing message is how you communicate with the public; it needs to be appealing and memorable. In order to do that, consider the concept of the meme. A meme is a thought, idea or belief that replicates over time. What that means in terms of your marketing is creating a marketing message that is strong, bold,
and exciting so that it stays with the customer and becomes a part of their thinking. A good example of this is Nike’s “Just Do It”. This phrase is used in a lot of different contexts outside of talking about Nike’s products. People get what it means because it has permeated our culture. Below are some ways that you can avoid being boring by adding extra marketing appeal to your message. Read the rest of this post »

Several years ago, when I was working for an agency, I was fired from an account. What that means is the client didn’t want me writing for him anymore.

Another writer, a friend of mine, got the account and life went on.

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