Oct 10 2008
Article Marketing: Networking and Creating a Buzz for Your Business
Let’s Talk Freelancing!
Yesterday, I talked about article marketing briefly and said I would discuss it more today. Article marketing is an inexpensive way to generate a buzz about your business and help you increase your PageRank in Google at the same time, while also branding you or your business as a sort of expert in your field.
Here’s how article directories go: you write a short article that is packed with some information your potential clients might find useful that shows you know what you’re talking about in your niche market and that other websites or ezines/newsletters might want to pick up as a feature article or filler content for their site or mailing.
With that article, your name (byline), and an author’s bio is attached, and that bio will have relevant links to your website. Your article gets indexed in Google, and the links are live, and so there’s a bump to PageRank incoming links, and people can click to come to your site. Then, as people pick up your article and it is distributed across the internet or put on other websites and blogs, with your author bio on it, those get indexed too, with your live links, and people again can come to your site and it helps increase PageRank.
If you do this right, you also can write in such a way that people who read it know you know what you’re talking about… it’s a more personal way of showing your potential clients that you know your stuff.
If you’re an editor, like me, you can do what I do: grammar hints and tips, information about how to improve writing, book reviews, etc.
If you’re an administrative freelancer, write about what you do and your field of admin work, or without being ’salesy’, write about why potential clients should outsource their services to freelancers like you. If you’re in the tech field, write some brief how-to things that let potential clients know how to do something simple, and then in the bio section, tell them if they need more help with more advanced things, visit your site.
Of course, if you sell products, you can write information, reviews, uses for your products; tout their benefits, give inside information, and then of course, links to get to your site where you sell the product. (though this blog is really for freelancers, not product sellers)
My favorite article directory is EzineArticles. I have found them to have the best traffic and the best exposure for pick up and reprint on other sites. I highly recommend them. You can see my articles over there by clicking here.
I know some of you who are writers are going to balk at the fact that you’re putting articles up for free, when I say on my other blog about freelance WRITING that you should never give you writing away for free. This is true that I say this, but understand two things 1) THIS blog isn’t about freelance writing but rather about freelancing in general, and that means not everyone who freelances is going to be a writer and 2) I never said not to give writing away for free, but rather, not to give it away without some type of value attached to it. Linkbacks and word-of-mouth advertising and marketing is worth actual money if you’re trying to drive traffic to your site to get customers and to your blogs and other pages that are monetized.
Freelance writers can write articles about why it’s important to hire writers to do web copy, why it’s important to foster a good relationship with writers, why professional writers are better than doing your own writing, what ghostwriting is and how it can benefit the client, etc.
Other freelancers pick their niche and write about benefits of using their services, inside tips and tricks about what they do, etc.
Article directories are an awesome way to help your site get noticed, drive traffic and brand you as a knowledgeable ‘expert’ in your field.
Happy Freelancing!
Love and stuff,
Michy
