 "Your Online PR and Free Content Source" Submit Your Articles, Press Releases, and Books/Ebooks, Get Free Content |
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"Your Online PR and Free Content Source" Submit Your Articles, Press Releases, and Books/Ebooks, Get Free Content |
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Chapter 5: Marketing Strategies
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This
chapter will talk about effective marketing strategies you can use. Most of
these cost very little. Marketing doesn’t have to be expensive. Sometimes it
can even be free.
Ezines
and solo advertising are a good place to start. Start with your own newsletter
or ezine. If you don’t have subscribers, use a service like http://www.worldwidelists.com
to build a subscriber base fast and rather economically. Or you can go to places
like http://www.ezineadauction.com
and bid on advertising. Just be careful and ask for a sample of any newsletter
before you place an ad in it. Some are so chocked-full of advertisements that
they aren’t worth the time or money.
Using
Articles as a Marketing Tool
Articles are a great way to establish
yourself as an expert in your field and get free promotion on other people’s
Web site. If you write something that another ezine owner or webmaster wants to
use on their site, they’ll generally include a brief bio for you and a link to
your Web site. By doing this, you build link popularity and traffic to your web
site while establishing yourself as an expert. Once you’ve written your
article, be sure to post it to various article repositories. The most popular
out there is www.IdeaMarketers.com
. IdeaMarketers is a writer-publisher matching service where writers can post
their articles for free to gain exposure to 1,000+ online and offline
publishers. It's a great way to establish yourself as an expert in your field by
writing about your area of expertise and getting free publicity back to your Web
site.
If you're a writer who normally gets published for pay, use IdeaMarketers as a
way to show samples of your work that you do not intend to resell. Many writers
who started out for free have used IdeaMarketers as a springboard for being
picked up as freelance writers, syndicated columnists, and book authors.
One of the perks IdeaMarketers gives
writers is promotion of their books. So if you have a book that you've written
that is on Amazon, IdeaMarketers promotes it on the site for free and suggests
that visiting webmasters and publishers do the same.
In summary, writers generally use
IdeaMarketers for the following reasons:
·
Use correct grammar and spelling.
Use a program like Microsoft Word or some other program with a grammar and spell
checker to check your article before uploading it to any article database.
Remember that words like your and you're, then and than, their and there are not
always caught by spell checkers. So make sure you read over your article
carefully before submitting it. If you have a friend with a good eye for
spelling and grammar, have them read it first.
·
Write factually and document.
Although there is a time and a place for editorial and opinion and online
publishers use many articles of this kind, there is a good market for factual
articles. Consider writing articles that do not use the words "I" or
"me" in them.
·
Do your homework.
Use books, online newspapers and magazines to find supportive research to back
up your theories or ideas. Quote from these properly by including either a link
to the full article or a footnote at the bottom of your article.
·
Use quotes. Interview people
who know about the topic on which you are writing. Get permission to quote them
in your article and give them proper credit for the quote. Read articles in
magazines and notice how often magazine articles quote experts to support the
information being delivered.
·
Read and study writing styles.
For whatever topics you write about, read print magazines that cover those
topics and get a feel for the type of writing style professional writers use.
Watch their techniques, their use of quotations, etc, and learn to integrate
these tools into your writing style.
·
Don't use all CAPS.
Using all capital letters in your title or within the body of your article is
seen as unprofessional and will deter publishers who use our automated system
from selecting your article.
·
Be consistent.
Use consistent formatting and headline styles throughout your article.
·
Be conscious of word count.
Most people using sites like IdeaMarketers to find articles are looking for Web
content. Keep your articles short. 500-1,000 words is optimal. A feature article
can be as long as 1,500 words, but do not extend beyond that.
·
Keep your bio or “About the
Author” information brief. Limit it to 4-6 lines in length and mention any
URL's you'd like the article to link to when it is used. By giving publishers a
perfect ''About the Author'' bio, you'll increase the chances of them using your
article. I’ve heard some publishers complain that the author's bio in many
cases is actually longer than the article! Another
note about your bio, write
it in third person. Third person bios are more professional and more
likely to be used.
The point is, make it easy for people to
use your articles. Don't make them have to spell check, correct your grammar, or
edit your biographical information. Give them factual, accurate information in a
friendly format, and your chances of being published will increase dramatically.
You spend a lot of time crafting a
well-written article. You put your knowledge, experience and best effort into it
so that you can place it on article directories and submit it to web sites and
ezines. But even the most well-written article could miss out on the chance of
being used or read. Do you want to know why? Because the title is a dud!
Without an attention-grabbing title, all
your work could be in vain. Think about that! Fifty to sixty characters can make
or break the success of your article.
Let’s take a look at a few “heavy
hitter” articles on IdeaMarketers to get some ideas about what types of titles
work and which ones don’t. I looked at articles that were submitted in 60 days
period and pulled ones that had at least 150 hits or more. Below I’ve selected
a few top hitters that received no special promotion by IdeaMarketers’ staff,
yet pulled a good clip of hits.
Using these articles as a
guide, the following are three rules to catchy title development.
So next time you sit down to write an
article, give as much thought and consideration to your title as you did for the
article itself. It can make or break your success.
Again,
we’ve touched on viral marketing methods earlier as a way to create products
that are viral in nature. But I’d like to re-emphasize it here in this chapter
on marketing. One example is a free
ebook that you write and then let other people give away on their sites as a
bonus for when they purchase something or subscribe to a newsletter. Of course,
inside this ebook will be links to your site and products and services and even
your affiliate links.
You
can also offer brand-able ebooks where the person promoting the ebook for you
can place their affiliate links to your products and services within it.
An autoresponder
is an email that goes out automatically when someone subscribers to your
newsletter or fills out a form on your site. Particularly useful, are
autoresponder series where the subscriber automatically receives a series of
emails from you. Basically, you load in a series of emails into the
autoresponder system and then whenever someone subscribes to it, they get each
email in the system spread out over a period of time. You can use these for
tutorials, informational emails, courses, or just to periodically touch base
with people to make sure they are happy with your product or service.
It
generally takes on average of seven contacts to turn a prospect into a customer.
You can automate this entire process so that no one falls through the cracks by
using an autoresponder. One system I like for doing this is http://www.smartautoresponder.com
. It’s effective and economical.
With
all the use of technology out there today, very few people expect to hear from a
live person when they visit a Web site. Imagine what a follow-up phone call
after a purchase would do for a customer! You’d be tying a real live person
into the transaction – letting them know that a human being cares about them
and whether they are satisfied with your product or service.
You
can use follow-up phone calls when people request information or you can use
them after the purchase. Don’t be afraid to pick up the phone. Unlimited long
distance plans are out there and can save you a lot of money on your long
distance bill. But don’t let them go to waste! Use that unlimited long
distance plan to stay in contact with your prospects and customers. It could
make the difference in a one-time customer and a life-long one who knows you and
respects you as a person.
Continue
on to the Conclusion
Back to the Table of Contents
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