This article will explain in layman’s terms exactly what article marketing is. To put it in to its most simple terms, article marketing is an easy to implement strategy of using material, comprising of anywhere from 350 – 700 words or more written about your area of expertise, industry or range of products or services.

In fact in terms of subject matter, articles can be literally written about anything relevant to you and your business.

You Might Think It Is Too Complicated

And before you start thinking that you do not have any time during your busy day to sit down, think about what you want to have written in these articles, and then either do them yourself or have them written, think again.

I say this because you more than likely have good, relevant information and material stored everywhere in your office. Perhaps you have previously had an article written about your company and its products or services for a trade publication or a local newspaper.

Equally you may have been featured in a local magazine or even on local radio, and been able to highlight your business and its features and benefits. Failing all of that, you will certainly have plenty of material available in the filing cabinets of your office, or on your works computers, that can be used in order to help promote your business’ products or services.

Use This To Your Advantage

So what article marketing can do is to harness the power of the internet, where news and information can be transmitted virtually instantly. This is therefore worth utilising in order to help your business, and means that its impact is somewhat different to its ‘offline’ cousin – traditional printed articles in newspapers and magazines, because it can hit the headlines a lot quicker. One thing that the internet can give you is speed.

I suppose the one similarity between online and offline printed articles is that they need to be worth reading. There needs to be some interest for your reader, whether its in educating them about what your company does, or running them through a trouble shooting exercise, or answering their top ten questions about issues that they encounter.

So they need to be relevant, interesting and written so that they can be understood. It generally helps to try and minimise jargon and to explain any acronyms that you use. Do not assume that everyone will know what you’re talking about.

What Do You Do Next?

So once you have gotten some articles written to be used to increase the online visibility of your business, what do you do with them?

Well, unlike printed articles, instead of submitting your article to a traditional offline publication, it can be submitted to the many article directories that exist on the World Wide Web.

Each article directory site is similar to a huge, online library of articles. The articles that these directories house cover practically every subject and topic known to man, and therefore if you’re thinking that this type of strategy doesn’t apply to your business, you really should think again.

It benefits all businesses.

Increase Your Company’s Visibility

The principal benefit for you and your business is that the majority of the main article directories are well respected by the search engines (Google, Yahoo and Bing). This very fact enables you to leverage your business on the back of their authority, and this can improve your chances of your article (and therefore your business) being seen by a targeted prospect.

One way of looking at this is that it is like being able to post a notice of your business or its products and services on ten (or as many as you’d like to use) of the best and most viewed notice boards in cities around the country, or indeed the world, as anyone globally will have the ability to view your article online.

This is one of the biggest advantages of using this particular strategy. You are in effect, scattering your company’s name across a variety of quality locations, a little bit like sewing seeds. And in doing so, you are increasing the chances of your company’s name being found online.

There is a lot more to article marketing too, as it has what I call a ‘double-edged sword’ effect that can benefit your business substantially. This is something that I will talk about in Part Two of this article.

Author Bio: Simon Thurston is an expert business consultant and marketing consultant, and author of “The Death Of Traditional Marketing”. You can find out more about him by visiting his blog today at simonpaulthurston.com.

Category: Marketing
Keywords: article marketing,ezine articles,offline marketing,b2b marketing,offline gold,simon thurston