Article Marketing and Your Info Product

I woke up early this morning to do some research on article marketing. Like all my projects, I plan my research using a set of aims and objectives. This saves time and stops me wandering off at a tangent as I surf the net for information.

My research starting point this morning was the various article directories I use to submit my own articles. Article directories house a wealth of information on every subject imaginable so it was only natural to start my research here.

Although the articles posted on free directories are fairly limited in scope and sometimes quality, they do, nonetheless, contain references to other sources of information. It is these references that prove the most valuable when it comes to building knowledge around a chosen subject. However, that is not what I want to write about today.

Most of the articles I read on article marketing this morning were absolutely appalling. Yes, they contained reference material, but the articles themselves were so poorly written I had to ask the question: why were they ever published in the first place?

One article in particular, promoting the services of ‘a web content writer’, was so poorly written that I had to stop reading it before I threw up over my laptop. (Barfing at four in the morning is something that family would not have appreciated.)

I am certainly no purest when it comes to writing and I do make mistakes, as we all do. However, proof reading and a good spell checker eliminates a majority of errors in my work. If only the author of the article in question had used the same tools, they might have received more work from content hungry webmasters. And this is the point I want to make.

A majority of info product writers spend an inordinate amount of time and energy producing a first class product only to throw all their hard work down the drain with a poorly planned, written and executed article marketing campaign. Why?

As info product creators, we owe it to ourselves and our product to produce an article marketing campaign that builds credibility around the material or services we want others to buy. You don’t have to be a writing expert to produce a good article marketing campaign. You just need to apply a little thought and effort to the process of planning and producing articles that people will want to read. Here are some useful tips for producing a good article marketing campaign.

1. Plan your campaign. The five ‘P’s apply here. PRIOR PLANNING PREVENTS POOR PERFORMANCE.

2. Research your subject before you begin writing. Your articles should be written from a foundation of knowledge. Don’t write garbage. Always remember that you are trying to build credibility for yourself and your info product.

3. Produce articles that are fresh and unique. Don’t rewrite PLR articles or use article generating software. It’s your voice the audience wants to hear, not the nonsensical sound of a word mincing machine.

4. Quality is better than quantity. Some article marketers suggest writing 50 to 100 articles at the beginning of each campaign. This is nonsense. Think about it for a moment. If you write 50 articles at 500 words each, then you will need to write 25,000 words for each campaign. That’s the equivalent of a novella, and probably more than the total number of words it took you to produce your info product. It is better to write 10 to 15 really good quality articles in the initial stages of your campaign. Then simply add to that number as your campaign gathers momentum.

5. Don’t submit the same article to multiple directories. Most search engines employ filters to sift out duplicate content. You will simply be wasting your time submitting the same article to multiple directories.

6. Don’t use article submission software to submit your articles. Submit them manually, selecting only the top ten directories in your chosen niche.

7. Proof read your articles before submitting them to an article directory. A poorly written article will destroy the image of your info product and call into question your credibility as an authority in your chosen niche.

8. Monitor the progress of each article. Check to see how many people have viewed your article. Readers sometimes leave comments. Read them. Reader comments will provide you with valuable insight into how your article marketing campaign is going.

Article marketing takes time, patience and effort. Planned, written and implemented correctly, your article marketing campaign will generate genuine interest in your info product and build your credibility as an authority in your chosen niche.

Strategies for improving article writing

I came across an article from a publisher earlier today. It was primarily a critique of article writers who fail to follow the fundamentals of good writing. Below are some of the publisher’s criticisms.

· Article lacks an overall basic structure

· Article requires pace and rhythm.

· Article meanders and fails to get to the point

· Too much use of the one-sentence paragraph.

· Sentences are too long.

· Poor punctuation

· Bad spelling

I have to agree with the publisher. The Internet is awash with poorly written articles, which makes life difficult for webmasters who must sift through reams of dross to find quality content for their sites. But it doesn’t need to be like this. All the above errors can easily be remedied by the simple application of a ‘best practice’ approach to the art of writing.

As writers, we should ensure that the quality of our written material matches the expectations of our readership. This can be achieved by applying a few basic strategies to improve our writing skills.

Structure:

1. Write a thesis statement about the topic of your article. This will give your article direction.

2. Mindmap or brainstorm content for your article. Exclude anything that is not relevant to your thesis statement.

3. Write the article summary first. This will give your writing focus.

Rhythm and Pace:

1. Divide your article into an introduction, development and a summary.

2. The introduction, which should be no more than one paragraph, is where you tell your reader what the article is about.

3. The development is where you put across your ideas on the topic you are writing about. For written pieces of 500 words or less, use no more than four paragraphs.

4. Summary. The article summary should be no more than two paragraphs in length and included the salient points covered in the development section of your article.

5. Paragraphing – paragraphs should contain three to six sentences of varying length. Avoid over long sentences as they can confuse your readers.

Proofread/edit your article:

1. Proofread your article, checking for grammar, spelling, and typos

2. Edit your article – be ruthless. Remove anything that doesn’t work towards your thesis statement or article summary. This should prevent your material from going off point and leading your reader up to the garden path.

Grammar and Punctuation:

1. The English language contains only four types of sentences. They are The statement, exclamation, question and the directive. You should, therefore, punctuate accordingly. Capital letter at the beginning of the sentence, then a period (.) or exclamation (!) or a question mark (?) to complete the sentence.

2. There are only four sentence structures that you can use in the English language. They are: the ‘Core Sentence’, which contains a subject and a verb; the ‘Basic Sentence’, which contains a subject, a verb and an object; the ‘Compound Sentence’, which contains two ‘Basic Sentences’ of equal status joined together by ‘and’, ‘or’, or ‘but’; and finally there is the ‘Complex Sentence’, which is made up of dependent and non dependent clauses. Any other structure is not a sentence. It is a fragment. Avoid using fragmented structures where possible.

When it comes to writing, none of us is perfect, and we all make mistakes. However, by applying a few well thought out strategies to our writing process, such as those written above, we can reduce the number of errors we make and improve our overall writing skills.

For those of you looking to improve your punctuation skills, I can recommend: ‘The Penguin Guide to Punctuation’ by R.L. Trask. Larry Trask, who sadly passed away in 2004, was one of my former professors at the University of Sussex. He was a great teacher and role model for those of us who had the privilege and good fortune to study under his tutelage.