A Template for Article Marketing
Article marketing takes a lot of time for any successful e-commerce small business owner. If you author most of your marketing and web site articles, there are a several fairly simple things that you can do to make the process more effective, efficient and less painful. After all you want to get the most out of your writing efforts. Here are four of my favorites:
First, set priorities the articles from your list of things to do. If there are some keywords that can generate more traffic with just a little work, get to work on those. Don’t swing for the fences on every article (if you’ll forgive the baseball cliche). You need to work on more key words and phrases than only those that are most competitive.
Second, take time to build a model, a template, for each of the article repositories to which you submit. For example, make sure that your template for a given article directory meets its criteria for the number of words allowed in the title, the author’s resource box, etc. Indicate on that model the names of the categories and sub-categories that you use most frequently at that particular directory. Each article directory seems to have different requirements, and it will often call its categories by different names. Make the effort just one time in building the template, and it will save you a great deal of time on each subsequent article.
Third, establish a time and an environment for your writing. I turn off the television, the phone ringer and anything else that might distract me from my authoring efforts. Choose the same time every day or every week and stick to that schedule. For example, my time is in the morning immediately after my first cup of coffee. I write every day, because I have discovered that I am most efficient when I write just two hours at a time rather than, for example, writing twice a week for five hours each time. Your rhythm might be different. Set up what works for you, but the key is to stick to that schedule.
Finally, don’t be in a rush to get your new article submitted. The time you have set aside is for writing, not for submitting. I let my writing rest for at least a day. When I come back to it, I’ll proof-read and edit my manuscript. Only then will I submit to my chosen directory. I use the submission time as a break from demanding tasks at other times during the day. I usually wait until I have more than one article to submit to a directory, because it is more efficient to make multiple submissions to the same directory while I am logged in than to go back several times a week or several times a month.
Article marketing is an essential ingredient in any Internet business’s marketing plan. It doesn’t have to be an ordeal, if you just approach it with the right attitude, at the right time for you and with an efficient sequence.
Or you can always hire a freelancer to write it!
The author is a busy Internet marketer who is writing something a great deal of the time. He frequently writes about e-commerce for the small business.
