Blogs and Article Marketing Can Work Together To Market Your Site!

Guest Post: By Steve Shaw

Have you been trying to decide whether to use a blog or article marketing to market your website, thinking that you can’t possibly have time to do both?

Are you already doing article marketing along with a blog, and finding it exhausting to keep writing so much content?

If so, I have good news for you!

Both article marketing and blogs are great ways to build traffic to a website and display your expertise. They are marketing tools that work in different ways, and if you coordinate things they can play very nicely off of each other.

BOUNCING ARTICLES OFF OF BLOG CONTENT

Think of your blog posts as outlines for articles. After your posts are published on your blog, go back and use each post as a guideline for an article. Sometimes the topics you cover in blog posts can even be morphed into a several articles.

To make this work, your blog posts should be educational–they should teach your readers something. Ideally they will be fully developed, rather than being the type of blog posts that are ‘quick updates’.

Some guidelines for converting a blog post into an article:

• Do not copy the blog post verbatim–the blog post should be the outline for the article and not the article itself. It’s best if the content on your own site is totally unique.
• The topic should be timeless.
• Your blog post must be ‘article worthy’–there needs to be enough meat in the post to warrant being turned into an article.
• How-to posts, list posts, and any sort of blog post that teaches something is a good candidate for an article.
• Limit links in the article body–with a free reprint article a bit of discipline with the linking can help your article be more attractive to publishers.
• Polish your article–if you make a spelling or grammar error in a blog post it’s not that big a deal because you can make the correction at any time. Articles, on the other hand, will be circulating all over the internet. If you happen to submit an article with errors, it will be reprinted with those errors–so be careful!

USE ARTICLE MARKETING TO BUILD YOUR BLOG’S AUTHORITY

How else can blogs and article marketing work together?

When you’re submitting your articles, provide a link to your blog in your resource box. Even if your blog is not your main site, it is still beneficial to market your blog.

The strength of blogs as marketing tools is that they are Google-friendly. Google likes the fresh content that blogs offer, so it can be easier for a blog to rank highly than it is for a traditional website.

So, the idea is to use your blog to leverage your static website. You market your blog, build its authority, and then link to your main website from the blog. Traffic then flows through your blog and to your website. Links from the blog to the website also bolster your main website’s rankings.

If you have a blog you know it’s not enough to just start posting–you need to do something to get the links and traffic coming into it.

Article marketing serves this purpose well–link to your blog from your resource box. You can use your articles to build links to both your main website and your blog.

BLOGS AND ARTICLE MARKETING WORK WELL TOGETHER

If you have a blog it’s very easy to start submitting articles on a regular basis without that much more effort.

And if you already have both a blog and are doing article submissions, you can maximize the content that you’re creating by bouncing your articles off of your blog content.

Using a blog and article submissions together is a great way to save time, and on top of that you can reap the rewards of having two marketing tools working to drive traffic to your site!

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Magnify the impact of your articles by submitting to more publishers. You’ll also build more backlinks and get more traffic going to your blog and your website. Steve Shaw created the web’s first ever 100% automated article submitter, SubmitYOURArticle.com, which distributes your articles to hundreds of targeted publishers with the click of a button. For more information go to=> http://www.SubmitYOURArticle.com

Blogs and Article Marketing Can Work Together To Market Your Site!

Get More Click Throughs To Your Website: 7 Best Resource Box Lures

Guest Post: By Steve Shaw

You’ve just written an eloquent, intelligent, and enlightening article. Your title is great, your topic is timeless, and the quality is top notch.

But wait a second–you’re not done yet. You need to create a resource box that will get the reader from your article on over to your website.

Article marketing is not just about the article–having a compelling resource box is crucial to your success!

Remember, you shouldn’t be talking about your own website or business in the article body, but you can (and should!) talk about your business and website in the resource box. Along with your name, brief bio info, and your website URL, you need to give the reader a reason to hop from your article on over to your website.

When you give the reader a great reason to click the link in your resource box leading to your website, you will generate more traffic to your site, which is what you’re after, right?

Use one of these top 7 resource box lures, and you’ll maximize your click throughs:

1) A free e-book

Your free e-book should be on the topic of your website (as all your articles should be), so any reader who likes one of your articles would be interested in a book with additional info.

In your resource box, be sure to say that the e-book is free, as anything free is very attractive to readers! If the e-book is of a longer length (let’s say 50 pages or so), you might want to put that bit of info in your resource box as well, as it lets the reader know that it’s a significant amount of info (and that would be more of a lure).

Your e-book doesn’t have to be of epic length though–even a book that is only 10 pages long and jam packed with helpful information would be valuable to a reader.

2) A newsletter

If you have a newsletter, you already have a wonderful reason for readers to click through to your website from your resource box. Instead of saying “For more info, visit my website”, it would be more effective to say, “Sign up for a free newsletter offering weekly tips on this topic” and then give your website URL.

3) An e-course

An e-course is basically a series of emails that teaches the reader something. It’s different than a newsletter because usually e-courses are of limited duration and are very specific in what they teach.

They’re effective because people love to learn, especially for free!

In your resource box you could say, “Claim your free 10 part e-course on [some specific aspect of your niche]” and then give your website URL.

4) In depth content

Most articles are limited in length to about 1500 words or less, so it’s hard to get super in depth in your article content.

Since you’re an expert in the topic of your website, why not create a page on your website that offers a continuation of the information you condensed in your article?

5) A great product or service

This is an easy one–if you’ve got a unique, stellar, stand out type of service or product, you have a build in reason for folks to click through to your site. Be sure that you explain in your resource box what your product is and what the benefits are. This approach works best if what you’re selling really is unique and there aren’t a whole bunch of other folks with the same type of product or service.

6) A discount

People LOVE feeling like they’re saving money and getting a good deal (the only thing people love more is getting stuff for free!). If you have a product based site, you might want to come up with some sort of offer that will allow your readers to get a discount on a purchase.

7) A blog

To be an effective resource box lure, the blog must be well-tended, offering fresh and useful information on the topic of your website. It depends on your niche, but I think a blog offering mostly ‘how to’ posts is most attractive to readers. A blog not only gives readers a reason to click through to your website from your article, but it also gives them a reason to continue visiting your site–you’re offering a steady stream of useful content, which is quite an incentive!

Now you’ve got 7 ideas for resource box lures that will give readers a reason to hop from your article over to your website. For each resource box, you only need one “lure”, but you can switch things up and try different reasons to click through for different articles.

Experiment and see which lure works the best for you!

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Steve Shaw – Want to drive even more traffic to your website with article marketing? You can save time and increase your exposure by using an article submission service like SubmitYOURArticle.com – distribute your articles to hundreds of targeted publishers in an instant. For more information go to=> http://www.SubmitYOURArticle.com

Get More Click Throughs To Your Website: 7 Best Resource Box Lures