Promote ANYTHING Online

For a long time, article marketing has been a staple of online promotions for all kinds of Internet marketing. Whether products digital or physical, services or even non-profit ventures, articles have enjoyed a long and successful track record for those who use them.  They swear by them and sing their praises.

You learn the basics of article marketing, register with a bunch of article directories and start writing and posting.

And writing and posting. And writing and posting…

The sticking point for most of us is WRITING. We don’t think we can and even if we think we can, what on earth do we write about so often?

If that doesn’t get you, there’s the posting. You can post to hundreds of article directories, good and bad. There’s more coming all the time too. Which ones are the good ones? Do you have to post to so many for it to be worthwhile?

Here’s 7 reasons most people believe article marketing is boring:

1. Articles must be long.

The minimum length of an article is 300 words. Talk to someone for a minute or two and you’ll probably use that many words anyway. You just read 25 in these two sentences, although most article directories define a “word” as four characters.

Another example: the word count for this blog post is already over 200 words.

It’ll be more than 300 words before I’m finished. Not so bad after all, huh?

2. Articles must be well planned.

An article needs some structure, sure, but it doesn’t need to follow a strict ouline like the kind you learned in high school English. I get chills just thinking about that…

Jeff Herring, The Article Guy, says if you can write a 7 item grocery list, for instance, you can write a good article. 3 and 5 item lists are effective article formats too.

He also says that with list articles, you now have the original article and an article you can write for each list item. So a 7 item article = 8 articles.

Getting a lot easier already, isn’t it?

3. Articles must contain a certain number of properly placed keywords.

Google, who indexes article postings so people can find them, has mellowed over the years about keywords in articles. As long as your chosen keywords (the words you want people to type in the search box to find your article) are included in the article’s title and first or second sentence of the first paragaraph, you’re good to go. Too many more than that is asking for trouble. One more in the body of the text is a safe bet,

4. Articles must be highly informative.

Write an article like a textbook, and you’ll have created an article that no one will read. People are looking for quick, useful tidbits of information that answer their particular question. Anything more than that just wastes their time and spurs them to click away and go elsewhere. Short and sweet can’t be beat!

5. Articles must be grammatically perfect.

This point comes back to the textbook point in #4. Your reader wants a friendly voice that understands, not Ms. Poindexter your third grade teacher with the iron fist. Talk to your reader more like a pal on the phone – although without any…ummm…COLORful expressions – and they’ll want to read more from you. Throw in an occasional double negative for good measure. You know you want to. Yeah, right!!

6. Articles must be posted in as many directories as possible for best results.

Good luck with that one! As I mentioned earlier, there’s more article directories than you can count and more on the way. Picking a handful with top results for your niche are not only the best way to go, but the best way to keep your sanity and have a life.

Some top article directories include:

EzineArticles.com Considered the gold standard. Nuff said on that.

GoArticles.com

IdeaMarketers.com

ArticleCity.com

Not all article directories serve all niches. Search Google with “(your niche) = article directories” to find those who want and welcome your niche articles.

7. Articles must only be words.

Boy oh boy, ain’t that so NOT the truth. More on that in “I Am An Article #2″ !                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                      

Today’s Change: I wanted to add the Promote ANYTHING Online ecourse image on the right sidebar. This IS the Promote ANYTHING Online blog, after all.

Here’s how I did it:

I clicked on Appearance, then Editor. I scrolled down on the right side menu to Sidebar.php. After opening it, I looked for this line of code:

<div id=”sidebar”>

I put an image code, like this:

<a href=’http://www.mysite.com/myproduct/salespage’ target=’_blank’><img src=’http://www.mysite.com/images/ecoursesmall.gif’ /></a>

juuuust above that one little line of code.

More thanks to Traci Knoppe of GenesisBlogging.com!