Everyone is an expert at something and article marketing provides a platform to share your expertise. Whatever product or service you provide in your business is your area of expertise. Writing articles about what you are an expert at and distributing those articles online through various article submission directories is a valuable marketing strategy called Article Marketing.

How will writing and submitting articles help your business?

Here’s how it works. You will:

Gain more exposure – When you write an article and submit it to various article directories it will be posted online for anyone to read. Surfers find your articles when they type related keywords into search engines to find what they’re looking for.

Generate more traffic to your site – You will create a ‘resource box’ that is included at the end of each article you submit. The resource box is a short bio about you, the author, with a link to your website. When someone reads your article and wants to find out more about you, they will click thru the article resource box at the end of your article & will be taken to your website.

Build trust – When you provide value to the reader by sharing information on your expertise through your articles, you gain their confidence in you, your products and services.

Grow your list – Make sure you have a ‘call to action’ in your resource box and a sign up form on your site to capture names and email addresses of those who visit. Offer a free report or a subscription to a newsletter that visitors can sign up for.

Boost business – When you build your market reach, name recognition and credibility, an increase in business is sure to follow.

Remember, no sales pitches. The article marketing directories are looking for content-rich articles of about 400-750 words. The only place you can promote yourself is within the resource box.

But what do you write about?

Consider:

• What is your area of expertise? What are you known for?
• Is there something that keeps coming up over & over again with several clients? Check your emails. What questions is your market asking you?
• Do you already write a newsletter? Repurpose your newsletter articles.

If there’s already many articles about your topic circulating out there, don’t worry, you will put a different spin on things as you write from your own experiences and in your own unique way.

Think you’re not a writer? Just write in your own voice, in a conversational style as if you were speaking one on one with someone. People like that.

Now that you’ve written an article, how do you go about circulating this article online?

Here are some simple steps to get you started:

1. Google the term ‘article submission directories’ to come up with various lists of the top sites you can submit your content to (start with 2 or 3 on up to 10).

2. Sign up for your free accounts and review their guidelines. I recommend starting with EzineArticles

3. Create your author resource box, about 50 words stating who you are, what you do, benefits you provide, call to action i.e. sign up for my free report.

4. It is best to convert all your articles to plain text with no formatting. To do this, copy from Word & paste into Notepad to remove any formatting. It makes submitting quick and easy.

5. Submit your articles making sure to track where you have submitted to, what you have submitted and when.

Repeat. Write and submit your articles regularly as an ongoing part of your marketing strategy. An ideal campaign would be to submit new articles weekly or bi-weekly. Articles are a great cost-effective way to market your business and gain expert status in your niche. What can you write about today?