How To Write Articles to Drive Sales and Traffic
If you are into the Internet And Affiliate Marketing Scene long enough, you will know from many Gurus that you definitely need to use Article Marketing to help drive sales and traffic to whatever you are promoting…
I heard of that as well… but before I start to write my first few articles… i was thinking.. and I kept thinking… then I came to this conclusion… “oh how the heck do I start writing?”
First solution:
There are a few good courses/e-books/even seminars/software/Ghost Writers that will help you to start writing your first article Do consider that an investment is needed before there are any results seen.
Second solution:
The lazy man method. Using Private Label Rights. What this mean is that you get rights to articles that are already written. You can do whatever you want with it. Change a few words in it, and that piece is originally yours!
The negative side, is definitely, the investment needed to get the Rights, and how good you are with your language to format your articles. Also, these rights are available easily, what you can get, many others can get it as well. Outcome = you can get penalize by the Search Engines for not being Original. (tough being an online marketer eh??)
The Last Crucial Method:
Learn from many of those who have written articles. Jimmy D. Brown and Marlon Sanders for instance, have written many good and worth-the-learn articles and they are flooded out there in the ezine directories waiting for you. There are also many other Gurus out there. Investment is free but time and effort is very needed! That’s what I did!
As you are reading this, I want to tell you that you can save a bit of the investment (time, money and effort) because, as a form of giving back to the community, I want to share with you a generalized format that Gurus use to write their articles…
Read on…
What you can do before writing your article:
1. Choose a Topic
Your main goal is to write on a topic where you can solve someone’s problem (using your products or services if possible) or simply to educate your reader. To be precise, what specific questions are people asking or what specific problems are they experiencing. A few good sources for people with problems and questions - Yahoo! Answers or Forums
2. Keyword Research
A good site to do your keyword research can be found at Free Keywords Suggestion Tool. These keywords will help to tag your articles to the search engine and also help others to find them. The Suggestion tool will help you to find alternate keywords.
Two points to know is that there should be relevant keywords in the first 90 characters, and in the first and last paragraphs.
3. Article Title
Think of the biggest benefit that your readers will get while reading your article and if possible, try to summarize this benefit in three words.
4. Writing Style
Write with style and write in an informal style, like how you would explain your topic to a friend. Don’t worry much about correcting mistakes or how it sounds. This may just interrupt the flow of thoughts you want to write about. You can always correct them later. Guru Joe Vitale, in his Hypnotic Writing: How to Seduce and Persuade Customers with Only Your Words
5. Start on the Body of the Article.
- Write the introduction. Remember, a basic article starts with telling your readers what you are going to tell them, You can do this by leaving a question, or giving the readers a teaser. Do this, in two or three short sentences.
- Validation: Why should anyone care to read your article? So tell them what value they’ll get from reading your article.
- Preparation: What do your readers need to know to understand the meat of your article?
- The Meat: Illustrate one step at a time, describe exactly how your readers can reproduce your results.
- Application: In more details than Pointer#2 (Validation) - Explain the practical application, including examples if possible.
- Review: State, in two or three short sentences what you had taught/shared with them.
- Call to Action: Explicitly invite your readers to try your advice/products/services for themselves.
- Bibliography/Notes: If you have any references, or whatever stuff you have used to derive your content, or places where readers can get more info, give them the links. If they’re books, provide complete info, and maybe even a link to Barnes&Noble or Amazon. Make it easy for your folks to follow up on your great idea.
- Resource box: Have a short, credibility-building bio with a link to your site at the end. For instance, “Visit www.Affilicore.com, for a wealth of informative articles, resources and reviews on everything you’ll ever need to know about the Best Internet and Affiliate Products.”
3. Take a break
Take a break after writing your article. This is to prepare you for the follow-up on your written article (with your blood and sweat, yes, finally!)
4. Check your article
For spelling errors, grammars and vocabulary. Do check through your sentence structure as well. If possible, go straight to the point by shorten your word limits or replace with better choice of words. Think that you are being paid thousands for shortening your article.
5. Format your article
This is the last part where you prepare all the paragraphs for your article. Remember, your readers do not like to read one whole big chunk of information. By default, a paragraph should be of 3-4 sentences.
Hope you enjoy this information!
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