There’s a lot more to Article Marketing than you might have read.

Most Internet Marketing websites focus on how easy it is to write articles in a few minutes, and while this can be positive, it can unfortunately also encourage a proliferation of badly written or hard-selling articles, written simply because we’re told that’s what Internet Marketers should do!

This article will focus on a few important key points that must be considered when creating any article or blog post:

• Don’t choose Article Marketing as one of your Internet Marketing methods, unless you know you’re able to write well, and are happy communicating in this medium!

There are too many grammatically incorrect, badly structured articles posted, which have been written without much thought for what the article will communicate about the writer. You are a professional, and therefore anything you post on the Internet – whether it’s on your website or Social Media profiles, or on external Forums, Article Submission websites, or Directories – should reflect you and your professionalism as a marketer.

If you don’t like writing or can’t write well, choose another Internet Marketing tool, such as Video Marketing or Social Media.

• Only start writing any Article or Blog Post when you have defined the intended audience, that is, the Niche Market.

Once you know who exactly it is you’re writing for, it will be easier to communicate specifically to those people, in the words they understand, and addressing the problems they typically have that you are offering to fix.

With articles to be published on Article Submission Websites, you can define any Niche you’re comfortable talking to, because it will usually be read by a wider Internet audience. It goes without saying that therefore, if it’s an article for your blog, it needs to be aimed at the same Niche Market your blog has been created for.

• Remember that articles are a form of marketing, and although some people write for altruistic reasons, most Article Marketing is done because it’s an opportunity for you to make sales.

You need to have a purpose in mind before you write your article. Decide what it is that you’re promoting and why, then write with this in mind. Don’t be pushy though, as this turns your readers off. Writing with a ‘helpful information’ approach is probably the best strategy.

Do include a ‘call to action’ at the end of your article, directing your readers to do something next, such as click on a link, or check out a related product.

• Always do keyword research for anything substantial you publish on the Internet, because this means it is more likely to be found in the Search Engines organically.

Writing an article takes effort. Do increase its chances of being found by Internet surfers, by doing keyword research on the main topic and phrases in your article, and edit your final article by including some variations of these keyword phrases.

Don’t forget to also include the main keyword phrases as article tags or keywords when submitting your article, or as post tags on your blog, to help the Search Engines ‘label’ your content.

• Check, edit, and recheck your work, before publishing it.

You’re a professional, and although sometimes little errors do creep in, your spelling and grammar should be correct, and your paragraph order and overall structure should make sense to the reader.

If you’re not all that familiar with certain spelling or grammar rules, check them quickly before publishing to ensure you’re on the right track. Commit to improving your knowledge of grammar, spelling and writing structure, because this will make you a better and more efficient writer.

• When publishing your articles, choose Article Submission websites carefully.

Most accept articles for free, but often they have quite a few rules and restrictions for layout and links, and usually each article must be approved before being allowed to go live on their site (especially for Article Directories).

Here is a list of various types of article submission websites, hubs and directories, ranked by Google Page Rank (the closer to 10 the better) and Alexa Traffic Rank (the smaller the number, the better) – with thanks to vretoolbar.com.

• Do announce your published work so that others will know it’s there and read it.

Use all the tools you have to communicate that you have written something for others to read – tell them via Social Media and emails, publish various versions of your article or blog post on Article Submission and Hub/Discussion Group websites, and share your content in various forms (such as creating a video of the main points of the article) with friends, family, business associates and relevant clients.

Do bear in mind though, that your article was aimed at a specific Niche Market, so be careful to not bombard people who won’t appreciate it or who are simply not in your target market.

• Finally, I’m going to talk about Article Spinning - or the art of creating various slightly different versions of the same article, thus enabling you to publish “different and unique” articles across various websites, from only one article.

You can do Article Spinning manually, and although this will in all likelihood achieve better results, it will obviously take more time. To do this, you simply need to change the title slightly, and change various headings and words within the main body of text of your article. For example, change “keywords” to “key phrases” or “keyword phrases”; or change around the order of sentences, so “You can do Article Spinning manually” could become “Article Spinning can be done manually” in another version.

Or you can use Article Spinning software to do the task of spinning for you. You simply paste your original article into the software, and you will get a huge number of versions of the same article. However all versions will usually need to be checked before submitting them online, because computers lack fine tuned knowledge of language and may substitute an incorrect word or simply a word which doesn’t really fit. This will of course reflect badly on you, because ultimately you are the author of the article.

Two things with Article Spinning software – if you’re going to go this route, research all the software available, and pay for good software (don’t be tempted with free software). But if you’re not good at writing articles in the first place, or can’t bear sitting down to write often, then don’t bother with Article Spinning software either – because clearly Article Marketing is not your thing!

In summary, Article Marketing is a free marketing tool, because usually the only cost is your time. If you can, it’s great to take advantage of this, but it needs to be done properly. After all, you are in the business of communicating if you’re a marketer, so articles and any other content you produce must be professional. Article Spinning software can help to create lots of different versions of each article to increase publication options, but do check these versions before publishing, because it’s your name that will come into disrepute, not the software’s! And don’t forget that the point of Article Marketing is to make money from it, so remember this when setting out to write an article – you must have a purpose and a call to action.

What to do now?

Find out more about Article Marketing on this blog, and get your free copy of Brett Ingram’s ebook “Awesome Article Marketing” here.

Talk to us about getting Article Marketing training, or us writing your articles for you!

If you’re serious about making money from your content, read Robert Bly’s book “How to Write & Sell Simple Information for Fun and Profit: Your Guide to Writing and Publishing Books, E-Books, Articles, Special Reports, Audio Programs, DVDs, and Other How-To Content” and learn how to create almost any kind of content to sell: