Articulate: Article Marketing

Online marketing forms the foundation of both Search Engine Marketing and Search Engine Optimization. And while online marketing is only one sliver of an online presence – it should be noted that there are other forms of online marketing that can be quite effective at raising your profile and increasing your reputation. One such undiscovered gem is the practice of article writing which can be seen as article marketing. 

Whether you do it yourself or press into service a colleague or an available expert, it doesn’t matter, what does matter is that you produce relevant material that will leave the reader with a sense of gratitude and associate your name and brand with valuable information. Let’s look at it this way – your organization specializes in XYZ, and while there are a number of well-established firms offering XYZ services, you want to rise above the rest because you’ve been doing XYZ since the beginning of time and you’re tired of being lost in the pack. If you were to start pecking away at the keyboard and pour out your years of service to XYZ you might be surprised at the volume of valuable information that will flow out of your nervous fingers. 

But wait – I know what you are going to say – I have all this valuable information that I’ve spent a lifetime acquiring and you want me to post it to the Web so my competitors can take it for nothing? Yes – and here’s why. Your competitors may take some information, let them have it, but to the vast majority of online users, you will be associating your name, your company’s name, and your brand with the definitive body of knowledge on XYZ. Remember, a body of knowledge that has relevance to the wider community is one very powerful method of building trust with customers, and writing articles is one method that anyone can do to help build this body of knowledge. Even if you only post the material to your own website, if the material is sound, others will link to it and thereby drive targeted traffic to your site. 

There are several benefits to article marketing. Firstly, you build business credibility by growing your reputation as an expert in your field. Your voice, and therefore your brand, become associated with reliable material that users find usable, and like I mentioned earlier, you get inbound links that increase your reliance to search engines which ultimately nets you get better search engine positions.

If you wish to have your site optimized, the SEO firm should be able to provide you with a report of your article activity. You will be amazed at how far one collection of words can travel. For a good overview of article marketing, visit the good folks at Wikipedia.