There are several critical components to article marketing. Here is a general outline of what they are and what they should contain:
Title: This is the title of your article. This is very important as it is the first thing that people look at when they consider reading the article. If at all possible, this is good place to put some of your keywords in here. You want the title to be catchy to encourage your ideal client to read it.
Category: This is the category you article falls under. It should be pertinent to the topic of thee article and typically most of your articles will fall under only a few different categories.
Summary: This is a brief summary of your article. This should only be a couple of sentences. Try not to reuse sentences from your article. Instead provide a brief synopsis of the article’s content. It should sum up the article.
Body: This of course is the body of the article. It should not contain links if at all possible, especially self promoting links. Check the article for spelling and grammar. Nothing can ruin your credibility faster than spelling and grammar mistakes in your article, no matter how great the content is.
Resource or Bio Box: This is your bio that states who you are, what your company does and who your target market is. This is a very important part. Once people have read your article, if they are interested in the author, they are going to check out your bio. They may want to learn more about you and what your company offers.
Keywords: This is the SEO of your article. The keywords must be pertinent to your article, but you also want them to be related to you and what you offer for services. So choose them wisely.
Here are some of the suggested sites you can post to:
Ezinearticles.com
Selfgrowth.com
Goarticles.com
Articlesbase.com
Ideamarketers.com
Always try to pick topics that speak to your target market. This establishes you as a wealth of information to your potential clients. This can create what I referred to before as the know, like, trust factor. When potential clients are looking for a service provider they want to look at what that company knows. This is demonstrated through their social networking posts, blog posts and articles that they have written. Of course there is much more they can look at, but this is certainly a great start. It can help with your SEO, if done correctly.
There are nefarious ways of utilizing this form of marketing, but this is certainly not the type I am talking about. This is a very poor way of trying to manipulate the search engines and I absolutely don’t recommend that. This would be such things as purposefully putting in several links back to your website, re-purposing the same content and just replacing the first and last paragraph, and using automated programs for submitting articles. Hard work from what I have listed above will provide quality and ethical results for your business.
Kimberly Grass is Founder and President of K Grass Business Consulting. She has over a decade of extensive experience working in the real estate, accounting and marketing field, specifically assisting small businesses. She has always had an entrepreneurial spirit and wanted to use the skills she acquired to help other business owners. She enjoys helping business owners to expand and improve. Her attention to detail and organizational skills enables her to provide the highest quality service possible for her clients. She excels at helping entrepreneurs to maximize their business potential.
She has a Masters Degree in Business Administration from Plymouth State University. She has an in depth knowledge of marketing research and implementation. Kimberly also has worked in local government. She is Ethics Check Certified, a Certified Real Estate Support Specialist through the International Virtual Assistants Association, as well as a Certified QuickBooks User.
Kimberly has been an active volunteer for the International Virtual Assistants Association for the past four years including working as the Associate Editor for the IVAACast, Director of Certifications and currently as the Director of Research and Development. Kimberly is also a member of the New England Virtual Assistants Association. She has also been a Habitat for Humanity volunteer since 2004. Her positive, energetic personality comes out in all that she does for her clients.