Top 5 Article Marketing Tips For Beginners
Posted by Tim George on Fri, Mar 11, 2011
If you are just beginning as an article writer you have no doubt 
found numerous web sites that offer various article marketing tips. While most of these are useful, the odds are, most probably made a lot of assumptions about what you already know about writing articles to provide content.
And, many such lists of tips focus on the technical side of content writing while failing to address what causes your articles to get noticed in the first place. SEO, keywords, etc… are all important but seldom are what first catches the attention of those checking out your submissions.
Too many beginners fail to have a consistent starting point for writing an article. While everyone has to start somewhere, the grind of being nothing more than an article writing machine often ends a promising new profession before it ever gets off the ground. Here are five article marketing tips that will help you take off and keep climbing as an article writer.
Tip #1: Get Organized
Of course you need to organize the business side of writing but just as important is organizing your writing itself. Sometime the hardest part of writing an article is getting started. Regardless of how long you have been writing, there will always be those times when you can just seem to get going. One of the best article marketing tips any new writer can hear is, have a plan!
• Brainstorm – Nothing will help you with this more than already having a system for filing ideas long before writing the article. You can do it the old fashioned way but a free note-taking system like Evernote is best. Evernote works great and can be accessed even when you computer is down. As long as you access the web somewhere, your database of article ideas will be with you as well. With your article topic before you, spend a few minutes jotting down idea for the article.
• Outline – Getting a list in mind is half the battle. Think “5 tips for …” or “10 steps to …” Don’t try to start out with an introduction first. Get the outline of ideas and then write an intro and conclusion to match.
• Write a Draft – Take a tip from most fiction writers at this point. With the outline mapped out-- just write. Write quickly and don’t stop and try to proof everything. Flow of thought is as important in writing a good article as in writing a novel.
Tip #2: Write a Compelling Headline
Writers are often so focused on ensuring that needed keywords are in their title, they lose sight of whether the title is clickable. Always keep in mind that people who see your article come up in a search engine will be greeted by the title first. One of the most important article marketing tips you will ever encounter is to make the headline compelling. Your headline must capture people’s interest and insist that they read your article.
Tip #3: Focus on the Information
Readers are interested in one thing: “what’s in it for them?” They don’t read an article primarily for a sales pitch or so they can find their way to your web site. While that's always the aim of any article, it must rest in the background rather than overwhelm the reader. People want articles that provide information they can profit from. They want to learn something. If you write in such a way they get what they came for when they clicked on your title they are much more likely to also listen to the sales pitch embedded there.
Tip #4: Don’t Sacrifice Quality for Quantity
The Internet is loaded with useful information. It's also a great repository for junk! Articles that grab high search engine rankings but are either unreadable or unreliable will quickly lose tracking. Quality content needs to be your primary concern because, as time passes, consistently well written articles ultimately gain the greatest long-term following.
Tip #5: Take the Time to Promote that Article
Article marketing tips often forget to point out that you are your greatest promoter. Build a Tweet following to let others know where to look for your articles. Create a Facebook Business page and share links to your latest. Link out to your own articles from a blog or at LinkedIn. In others words, keep that article alive every way you can. You worked hard to give it quality; now work to make it multiply.