Article Marketing Offers Free Cyberspace Exposure for Your Brand, Book or Business

Have you heard the expression “article marketing” but not known for sure what is meant?

Basically, article marketing is writing informative articles on a specific info niche and placing these articles around the Internet for other people to use for free (without contacting you) on their blogs and in their newsletters, ezines, etc.

What?  

Yes, you write informative articles for free and then people throughout cyberspace can use your articles for free as long as your author bio box (also known as the resource box) is used at the end of the article.

The reason that article marketing can be so powerful is because it helps build trust in your expertise as well as appreciation that you willing share valuable information for free.

Let’s look at how this marketing technique works:

You want, for example, to be known as the person who is an expert in training Dalmatians.  And you have a Web site from which you sell a series of ebooks on different aspects of training Dalmatians.

Why should anyone trust that you know what you’re talking about?  

Now imagine that you’ve written several short articles on tips for training Dalmatians.  You haven’t given away everything you know, but you have shared some valuable information.  And you submitted these articles to online article directories such as ezinearticles.com and as guest posts on blogs focused on dogs and dog training.

Your author bio includes a link to your Web site as well as presenting your dog-training credentials.  

Now when the editor of a dog training ezine picks up an article of yours from, let’s say, ezinearticles.com and then publishes your article in his/her ezine, you and your business have just been exposed to a target market you may never have otherwise reached.  And you’ve been presented as an expert in this field!  

Of course, as with probably everything else on the Web, there are strategies that can make your article marketing more effective.  Such strategies include keyword-rich headlines and first paragraphs as well as writing numerous articles.

If you’re wondering how you can ever find time to do yet one more marketing activity, you need to realize that article marketing actually builds on other marketing activities.  For example, you may have content on your Web site that can be revised into one or more articles.  Or you may have written a speech that can be revised into articles.

Many people talk about "re-purposing" when they talk about article marketing.  These people might make a podcast and get a transcript of that podcast.  Then they'll break up that transcript into several articles.  They may publish these articles first as blog posts, then submit these articles to the online directories.

The most important elements of good article marketing are using your own original content and providing value to your target markets.  When people thank you for sharing valuable content, you'll know you've done a good job with article marketing.