When the term "submission" was mentioned among the Internet Marketing groups in the past, the first thing that came to mind is the old practice of submitting urls to the search engines in order to get indexed. Perhaps the second thing is when we all used to submit our classified ads to those huge FFA sites. But now days, all the talk is about submitting articles to the article directories. Unfortunately, many people who are now submitting articles fail to realize that it's quite a different type of submission process than back in the "old days."
Now we have keywords and key phrases to contend with and page rank and back link popularity as well. And even the objectives are different than simply getting someone else to see what you've submitted.
Today, we have the issue of branding and portraying oneself as an expert in one's field. Plus the information people go looking on the Internet for seems to be on a much more sophisticated level than before.
Yes, marketing goes far beyond the simple submission of urls, classifieds, and banners. People want to know that the information they get is real, and that it comes from someone who knows what they're talking about.
Here's some tips on how to achieve a successful article marketing career that'll keep you up with the times, and assure yourself that people will read and believe what you have to say . . .
1. The Times They Are a Changing'
Marketing has changed and you need to change with it. You can't just throw your information out on the web and expect it to be picked up. Article marketing is vastly different than merely submitting a URL to the search engines.
Now your information has to be informative, well written, authoritatively convincing, and most of all targeted.
So you have to know what you're talking about, say it in a way that people will respect as knowledgeable, and put it where people who might find it interesting can locate it.
This takes research in both your topic and in finding just the right place to lay it out in. For the most part, the first, research, is your hurdle to jump over. However, most article directories make targeting easy by providing lots of categories to place your article into.
These categories are your first line of keyword placement. If a person wants to know about sports, they'll go to an article directory and look in the sports categories. So it only makes sense to make sure your article about sports make it there for them to see.
Putting a sports article in a health or cooking category would spell certain doom for any chance that sport enthusiasts would find it.
It's really sad to see articles that were obviously well researched landing in irrelevant categories on the article directories. A true waste of precious time!
Do yourself a favor and take the extra few seconds, when submitting your article, to put it in the most relevant category you can find. If a good category isn't present on a certain directory, you'd be better off to skip your submission and write to the directory owner to request the category be added, than to submit just anywhere on the site.
Wipe out the old thinking that all you need to do is get your submissions out there. Target, target, target for the best results.
2. Be the Teacher
this brings us back to research. A teacher is respected when they can dole out information that their students didn't already know. A teacher is also respected when that information is doled out coherently and in an understandable fashion.
So to be respected as a teacher, or as we like to call it in the marketing world, an expert in your field, you need to make a point and make sense when you make it.
Pick a topic that you know something about and learn something else about it that you didn't already know. Chances are, unless you're brand new to the business, if you learn something new, it'll be new to most of your readers too.
Draw a map from point A to point B so your readers can clearly see how you're building up the knowledge in a logical and complimentary process.
Be accurate in your statements. Don't make stuff up, because it'll come back to haunt you. If you come up with a brand new approach or idea for something, treat it like any scientific hypothesis. Test it out before you launch the concept on others. Make sure it'll work for you first, or you'll be laughed right out of business.
And finally, make sure you don't turn people off by your spelling or misuse of the vernacular. Most people will be instantly turned away if your grammar is off. Spell check, have a friend read your article first before submitting, spell check again, read it out loud, and most importantly, spell check.
3. Make Your Mark
there are many novelist who are well known for a particular style of writing. Take Ann Rice for example, who's Vampire Chronicles defined the new age of horror. Her name is synonymous with her genre!
But did you know she also writes romance novels? Most people don't because she uses a pseudonym when she ventures beyond the Vampire Lestat and his cohorts.
The point here is that, as Ann Rice, she's branded as a horror novelist and, in order to maintain that branding, she uses another name for her other styles of writing.
To be an expert in your field, you too need to brand yourself so that your name becomes synonymous with what you write about. To do that, you need to stay within a particular field and only that field.
If you want to write about other things, then use a pseudonym like Ann Rice and so many other writers do.
The more you write about a specific topic, the more people will see you as an expert on that topic. The wider range of topics you write about, the less knowledgeable you'll appear to be in any one of them.
4. Make Each Article Count
to summarize, take your article writing and submitting seriously. You wouldn't write a resume haphazardly or send it to employers, who had nothing to do with your line of work, would you? Use your keywords and especially your category choices wisely.
When you write, teach, when you teach, know the subject you're teaching. And before everyone else, teach yourself what to teach about.
Stay within your realm of expertise and the world will regard you as an expert
