Writing Articles For Promotion

"Content is King." This has become the maxim for website marketing in the new millennium. So far as we can tell, the best way to a search engine's heart is through writing articles that have been optimized with keywords.

There are many facets to pulling off a successful article advertising campaign, of course. You need to find a writer, keywords, article publishing sites and affiliates to partner up with. It's no surprise, then, that many business professionals choose an established web marketing company to help them connect the dots.

First, we'll talk about how the writing of articles can help your business. Ultimately, you want published articles to bring potential buyers to your site. The only way visitors can find your site (unless they're specifically searching your name) is by typing a term into the search engine and checking the links on the first page of results.

Statistics show if you're not in the top results, you can forget about people ever finding you. A group of people called Search Engine Optimization experts spend their days analyzing what sort of terms people are typing into the search engines. They can even run diagnostic tests on your page that tell them where people are coming from to reach your site, what search terms delivered traffic, what search terms delivered sales, how long people stayed on your site, what pages sent people fleeing and where people went next. This research can greatly help your overall internet marketing campaigns.

Before you hire a professional copywriter who specializes in writing articles, you'll need to meet with an SEO expert and determine what keywords are most valuable for your industry. In the past, just one or two general words related to your business or service would suffice. Today, longer phrases are preferable, as are location-sensitive terms.

In the olden days, you might have run a search and landed on a page that was fraught with spelling errors, full of nonsensical keyword repetitions or a page that just contained link after link. Today, the search algorithms are much more complex and an article marketing expert will tell you that it takes well-written copy with a certain keyword density to really attract search engine attention.

Another benefit of writing articles consistently is that each one creates another impression for web users. If a person sees your name once, he might soon forget it. If he sees it twice, he might remember it for a day or so, and then lose it from his mind. If he sees your name three, four, five times -- his curiosity and attention may be piqued.

Perhaps he'll check out your site, read through some of your blogs and begin to form an opinion on you. He may have the immediate impression that you must be popular to come up so many times. Over time, article marketing not only attracts visitors to your site, but buyers too. You may even find newspaper reporters contacting you because they figure you are an "expert" in your field, since your articles come up so often.

Business To Business Article Marketing

Business buyers are different than traditional consumers. The business buyer from a government organization, corporation, resale facility or institution doesn't want to hear your cute slogans or watch babies and puppy dogs paraded across the TV screen in a cheap attempt to win your loyalty. He doesn't want oversimplified hype or blatant calls to action without concrete reasons why he should act. The business buyer expects more research, more relevant news, more examples of product application and more descriptions of the features.

If your prices are higher than the competition, he wants to know why you offer more value than the next guy. He anticipates a series of copy designed at winning him over, such as brochures, newsletters, pamphlets, emails, ads, presentations, mailers and article submissions. Mark Toner, advertising manager for Amano, a manufacturer of computerized time-clocks, explains: "In high-tech direct mail, the key is to educate the prospect." This can be done through business to business article marketing.

Social networking has emerged as a valuable tool for brand building. Many of the most successful brands use business to business article marketing published on sites like Facebook and Myspace to enhance their image and separate themselves from the competition. According to a 2009 survey conducted by Razorfish, an internet marketing firm, "brands with an online presence were overwhelmingly likely to have had a measurable influence on whether consumers or businesses purchased products from them."

Most people decided to "follow" or "friend" the business and make a purchase to gain access to exclusive discounts or other promotional offers. Moreover, "Nearly two-thirds of respondents told Razorfish that their first purchase from a brand had been as a direct result of their experience with the brand in an online environment," the survey stated. Therefore, article promotion should center on announcing these special offers.

Another important reason to add business to business article marketing to your overall strategy is the undeniable truth that search marketing is still generating the bulk of business-to-business leads. The 6th Annual B2B Marketing Benchmark Report 2009-2010 (conducted by Marketing Sherpa) sums it up by saying, "During the most difficult economic times that the search marketing industries has seen in its decade-long life, search marketers are more relevant than ever. The Web itself is getting 'smarter.' Web 1.0 was mostly static with publishers communicating to consumers. Web 2.0 is two-way, with consumers talking back to publishers. Web 3.0 uses information from the consumer to tailor the experience to individuals."

A true article marketing expert understands current trends and knows just how to use programs that analyze online article submissions to see what keywords bring traffic to a website, as well as what keywords bring business owners who are most ready to buy, what messages are bringing in the most targeted traffic, what messages are scaring people off and where are they going and what are they looking for once they leave the site without buying.

A great business-to-business campaign begins with a well-designed website. Within moments, a business owner should be able to find the "About Us" page, the "Contact" page, the pricing/package page and links to additional information if need be. (This is where content article marketing comes in!)

In addition to having business to business article marketing appear right on your homepage, you can also submit articles to third party publishing sites and affiliate networks to reach a broader audience. These articles will be optimized for search engine friendliness, so anyone looking for something via Google has the opportunity to be redirected to your homepage.

The best part about article promotion is that you can test the waters with several different messages, keywords or angles and then track the results using analytic software to see which campaigns are producing the most sales. A SEO/article marketing professional should be able to do all of this for you.