It’s a time-tested strategy that continues to work just as well today as it worked years ago online – article marketing is a terrific way to build traffic and authority to your online business short-term and longer-term. Sounds simple, but do you know how to write an article that gets attention, attracts interest and most important, results in your reader taking a desired action?
We have written over 1,000 different articles in multiple niche markets – now that sounds a little crazy…
In fact, to some of you that may sound more painful than enduring another Paris Hilton interview — but rest assured, there is an incredibly productive article writing "maniac" inside of you just waiting to get out.
Ok, so it’s still going to be a "teeny" tiny bit painful, but certainly do-able if you have 15-minutes each week.
Your step-by-step instructions on how to write an article that blows the roof off of your competition and builds a stampede of traffic to your websites…
Step 1. Find A Compelling Topic. First rule, your topic must be top-of mind (or link to something that is top-of mind) for those in your market AND relevant. Here’s an example, each day there are hundreds of searches on Walt Disney and Bill Gates (even more when he was still the head honcho over at Microsoft) – so I knew that people in my market were looking for success tips from the most successful entrepreneurs…my article title became "Business Marketing Strategies From Bill Gates, Sam Walton, and Walt Disney".
I almost hate to admit it, but I wrote this article back in 2003, and it still brings in hundreds of unique visitors each week and still generates affiliate sales for the package I was marketing in the article PLUS, I get a large conversion rate of signups for my own newsletter.
Remember, back then I was still learning how to write an article that consistently achieved great results. Now, after 1000+ articles I have a great base to discover exactly which ones work and which ones don’t
Where will you find compelling topics to write about? – discussion forums, article directories, Yahoo news (or any other news portal including any local portals for your area), magazine titles, your own subscribers and more…
Step 2. Start your article off with a bang – make a bold statement about the challenge you will overcome and then tell them that you are about to address it for them. Going back to the article I mention above – you’ll notice that the first paragraph opens with
"What could you possibly learn from geeky Bill gates, thrifty Sam Walton or "Mouse" man Walt Disney?
Gets you thinking right?
A major part of how to write an article that gets results is understanding how to pick topics and draw your readers in emotionally to what you have to tell them.
Step 3. Write as if you talk – Be Conversational. If you have to, record yourself talking through the problem and solution you will write about. Then go back and write it down – it will only take you a few minutes extra and often the content comes out much more powerful and interesting.
Some techniques that will help you write conversationally…try these:
- Write in short, choppy sentences
- Ask questions and then answer them just as we do in conversation
- Use transition words such as "Of Course…" "Anyway…" "And Another Thing…" "Not To Mention This…" "Come on…" "Get This…"
- Use sub-headings to break up your story
Step 4. Keyword Context. Somewhere between your article idea and the final draft, perform some keyword research to discover a few hidden "gem" keyword phrases that fit the context of your article and use them a few times through your article. Ideally, focus on less competitive keyword phrases where you have less than 50,000 exact matches turn up in Google.
Step 5. Submit to a few high quality article sites and publishers. I’ve done quite allot of testing lately and discovered that submitting your article to a gazillion article directories is pretty much a waste of time. You can hit a few top quality directories such as Ezine Articles, Go Articles, some of the Yahoo Article groups and get the same impressive results with much less time.
Another important tip – seek out top publishers in your niche market and submit your articles directly to those publishers – just one or two of these each month can mean BIG traffic and sales boosts to your business.
Step 6. Linking To Your Article. You won’t typically find this technique in any how to write an article tutorial – I like to create a few links back into my article by mentioning something about it on my blog and then again on social networking sites such as Myspace or Facebook where I have profiles setup. This gives the article some added backlinks and helps move along it’s authority.
Once you have your successful article written, there are many ways we discuss using those articles to drive traffic to your own authority and information product marketing sites – the latest techniques and findings are always included in our InfoMarketer’s Zone private members site where we take you through more examples of articles we’ve written in 4 major niche markets achieving incredible results.
Jeff
