Article marketing has been around for a long time, and even if you may not have considered it before now, it is still well worth trying your hand at. Article marketing has proven itself to be a very effective tool for driving visitors to your website. However, there are some common mistakes that make article marketing less effective than businesses would like. Train yourself to avoid these five mistakes, and you will be on your way to effective article marketing.
Over-promoting Yourself
While the reason for your article is to attract customers, you are not selling to customers. An article filled with sales pitches is not an interesting article. Not only that, many sites like Ezine will reject an article that is overly saturated with self-promotion. Instead, write an article relevant to your line of business. You will attract customers with your helpful article and you can place your contact information in the resource box at the end of the article.
Making Too Many Mistakes
Misspellings and grammatical mistakes can turn off many potential customers. Mistakes can make your article confusing and your readers may not even understand your point. Also, an article with a lot of mistakes appears unprofessional. In order to maintain the integrity of your articles, clear out the mistakes.
Writing a Headline that Does Not Attract Attention
The headline of your article will determine whether or not it will be read. Make sure that your headline is a good indication of what is in store for your readers. It should stand out from other article headlines and draw attention to itself.
Writing on Too Broad of a Topic
Specific topics are always more interesting and effective. Broad topics take too long to explain, and most web surfers only want to read a short explanation between 350 and 500 words. Try to narrow your topic to a specific area of your business. For instance, instead of writing about brochures in general, write about how to design brochure or marketing ideas for brochures. The more narrow your topic, the more attention your article will get.
Ignoring Publishing Site Guidelines
Be sure to read up on the rules before you begin your writing. Article submission directories ask for certain guidelines to be adhered to. Some aspects that these sites request have to do with the number of words and number of links, along with the quality of your topic. You will have a great deal more success if you remember to check out the rules and follow them.
One final tip: keep in mind that readers want to read intelligently written articles. If writing is not your gig, hire a part time writer to keep up your article marketing, and you will save yourself a lot of time and money in the long run.
Image Credit: Svenwerk
38 comments
Hi Anna,
Very good post. I working more or less after your list, but I put most energy on this two points;
Write an article day one, reread it day two, publish it day three.
Spend a lot of time on the Title, booth to get it interesting and catching also perfect for SEO.
Your smart to take your time to optimize it the best possible way. Not many people think of SEO when writing but if you have the right keyword density it can help tremendously.
Good article Anna. I do think a writer is better to focus their article and not write on to borad of a topic. That provides more value to the reader. Also your tip is very good. Not everyone wants or needs to write. Hiring a writer is a very good option.
-Jeff Schuman
Yes, just because you are not a good writer, it does not mean that you cannot take advantage of article marketing. It is easy enough to hire a freelance writer through sites like elance. They can help you create quality content that is well written and at a reasonable price.
I agree. There is no excuse for putting out rubbish articles. Why would anyone use articles that are of a low quality? I do use other people’s articles for my newsletters and I’ m obviously only ever going to pick up well written articles with some excellent content in them.
I always fail at the first tip. If I write over a certain amount of words I tend to start to basically over-pimping the product and it comes over as rather pathetic.
Great article. I’ve made many of the mistakes listed in your article in the past. You’ve written a very helpful post – cheers.
I think this is really very handy post regarding article marketing that which mistakes should be avoided. Mistakes like mispellings, improper grammer, broad insight regarding article and the most important ignorance of submitting guideline are not allowed. If you avoid these mistakes then your article can be attractive to the visitors and you can gain good amount of traffic.
I use many articles from other people for my newsletters and it never ceases to amaze me how much rubbish some people put out there. Most articles that people submit are very badly written, they don’t have anything of interest in them which means that I’m never going to publish them.
I hope some of these people read your post!
A great article Anna,
For me it is hard finding a narrow topic. You said 350-500 words, Most of the times me I got on writing so much that it becomes to lengthy to read I think I must certainly work on this habit of mine
Yeah, I have the same problem. I end up writing way too much and then spend ages chopping bits out of each article!
I don’t think it’s always necessary to slim down an article to 500 words or less. A longer article can stand out among other shorter articles, resulting in more republishing. Depending on your niche, it might be a good idea to experiment with some longer, more informative articles. The better the article, the better the marketing results.
Good tips about article marketing. Headline is important factor of article marketing. Write sub-topic and short paragraphs of article.
I think you fifth point is a biggie, especially over at eznine articles. If every t is not crossed, and every i is not dotted, then the article gets returned for resubmission.
Yes, but it’s great that they are strict. Too much rubbish gets submitted to the directories so it’s best if they do take more care over the quality of the articles that they allow to be published.
Article marketing can be a great thing but if you make too many mistakes it can be a bad thing. Having a poorly written article will make the reader not read it and could give you a bad reputation.
Another thing to avoid is writing boring, generic articles. Article marketing has been used so much in the last several years that there is an immense amount of content already out there. So if your article isn’t as good as others, it won’t get republished. To get the most out of article marketing, you have to write quality articles that many sites will want to republish.
One thing to also avoid is copying content from other’s work. I’ve seen many times duplicate content on article websites, and the original author of the article not being too happy about it.
Till then,
Jean
Jean, that’s happened to my so many times and it really makes me angry. I also hate it when people take my articles, paste them on their site and remove the bio box! Very very bad.
You could not be on point. I see a lot of spamy articles showing up lately. They are good to drive traffic and inform but your right about not making them like sales pitches. I did have to hire someone to write articles because I am not that good at it. Sometimes you got know what your strengths are and if your lacking look for help.
Good tips, the heading of your article can also determine if it will be accepted, one of my sites is an article submission site and I can tell you that I receive so many bad articles that I just delete the first wave solely based on the title. Here is one title from todays submissions ” Get a Supply of Fresh Water 24×7 with Berkey” now obviously they are selling water, they will not be approved so they wasted their time and mine.
I think marketing an article is difficult because you have to find a good mix of elements like: an attractive toping, a good headline and you have to be short and concise.
I am in search of internet site from which i I can publish an anti-marketing article.Can anyone please help me.
That’s an odd request! You need to do some marketing to market your anti-marketing article!
Why not just submit it to the article directories?
Article marketing can be said that it is tedious job, but if write it with rich keyword and tune in SEO on off page, you will get rank high enough.Another way is also using article submitter to get your site indexed quickly by Google and getting rich backlinks.
But remember, it’s good practice to change your article for each article directory, otherwise they don’t work so well. We I always advise people to use article submitters with caution.
Article marketing is difficult and also requires lots of efforts and time. But it pays in the end. I agree that excessive overselling is not good for site as well as article.
If you want to establish a foundation on article marketing, for me you need a knowledge from SEO
As always thanks for the great article Kristi. I always learn something from you! I really appreciate your link to the “Link Builders Toolkit” and the “try this RSS submission compilation”. I hadn’t found either of them yet.
The only mistakes in article writing is if you do it by yourselves, its ok if you have 1 or 2 sites, but if you got hundreds of blogs, it would be better using PLR, freelance, or paraphrasing.If google these days will get hectic, but once it’s indexed, all you have to do is maintain that curve.cheers
I see a lot of spamy articles showing up lately. They are good to drive traffic and inform but your right about not making them like sales pitches. I did have to hire someone to write articles because I am not that good at it.
always learn something from you! I really appreciate your link to the “Link Builders Toolkit” and the “try this RSS submission compilation”. I hadn’t found either of them yet.
do think a writer is better to focus their article and not write on to borad of a topic. That provides more value to the reader. Also your tip is very good. Not everyone wants or needs to write.
Hi,
These all are good Tips. I am glad that I following all of them.
This is a very good article that explains it all quite nicely, I came here looking for info on the comluv thinghy and will head over there now to join them via your link, good luck and well done.
I don’t know if this tips still work after those new Algo, however I’m going to try this way
It only makes sense that if you’re going to spend time adding content to someone else’s website site, you’d take the time to research keywords that work and focus on something that brings results!
Its very important for an article to have a catchy title because at first glance a catchy title is sure to get clicked by readers. Article marketing is still practiced so such posts will certainly benefit the readers