What Separates Great Article Marketing From The Rest?
Posted by Elseline Ververk on Wed, Jun 22, 2011
Great article marketing is all about getting people to come check you out, whether it’s your blog, your webpage, online business or product. But what does it really involve? SEO optimization, strong content, linking in to the online community, and the list can go on about how to get yourself ‘out there’. But perhaps the first thing to answer is the who question…
Who is your target audience?
After all, great article marketing is all about people. And no, it’s not a given that your average consumer will be using Stumble Upon, Twitter, Facebook, or be any sort of avid blogger. The online world is big, and indeed, the largest network in the world is: the Internet. But, the reality is the average consumer only taps in to a fraction of that online world.
Take larger businesses, for example. They can often be the least likely to link in to social media as a marketing or connecting tool. Instead, they might only pay attention to professional trade sites, trade magazines (e-zines), larger media, or higher caliber content like white papers. The moral of the story: take time to read up on how your target audience is using the internet, and the new places you then might have to go to market yourself.
NOW, let’s talk briefly about the how.
Fresh Content.
Fresh content, regularly posted, is by and far the fundamental stepping stone of great article marketing. After all, if you don’t have anything to market, there is really no point to all the other steps. It’s all about how to use content to market your product online. Don't make your articles sound like infomercials, and instead try to maintain creative, passionate output.
SEO optimization.
SEO optimization is code for getting your article to appear at the top of a search results page. Now, as we well know, in the end what gets you at the top is popularity: the more traffic you get, the higher you rank. But you can get a ways up by making your articles search friendly, thereby generating more hits to your site.
So say your article is all about ‘article marketing’. Those two words, ‘article marketing’ become your primary keywords. You want them to appear as close as possible the front of your article title, and you want them naturally repeated and embedded in relevant content phrases throughout your article. Don’t overload! That never looks pretty nor does it help.
Keywords are what the search engine will pick up on, and if your article grabs the reader’s interest, they will click on yours. Also, use links to other similar content. This helps the search engine to know that you are sufficiently connected, in other words, popular. Link to other blogs, sites, etc., but also link to relevant interior pages on your site, thereby keeping your audience. Even putting a link in your article bio is a great way to be a bit more subtle while still getting people to come back for more.
Get connected.
This means catering to those within your niche, but simultaneously working to expand your circle of ‘friends’, i.e. businesses that could actually use what you have to offer or have some other connection to your field. This is done in a variety of ways: Guest blog, post content on major content discovery tools like Stumble Upon, post content on trade sites, comment on other blogs or sites, tweet with them, get on syndicates, post links of other ‘favorite sites’ and so on.
It is the art of networking, where the rule of thumb -especially in this quagmire called the online world- is “you won’t get what you don’t give”. And really, it is a thing of beauty, because as you get others more traffic to their sites, so they in turn will bring traffic to yours, thereby doubling your audience.
Also, make your site user-friendly. Make it easy to navigate, aesthetically 
pleasing, but also importantly: get to the point. If you’ve got an e-newsletter users can subscribe to, put a button out for that. If you’re on Facebook, Twitter, Stumble Upon etc., create icon links for people to connect with you there. It is important to stay relevant.
In the end, great article marketing is a two-way street: you want to use adequate inbound marketing strategies, where people get on your site and find it user-friendly and interesting. But you also absolutely must use outbound marketing strategies, by connecting with others and putting yourself out there.