SmallBusinessNewz

Is online article marketing a good way to get customers or leads, and grow your small business?

I get this question a lot from folks who read my articles on sites like Biznik  and EzineArticles. Often the question is followed by a comment like, "I’ve posted a couple articles, but
have yet to generate any income from them".

My response is, "Yes, absolutely! Online article marketing can be a terrific way to promote your small business and drive traffic to your Website."

I can say this because article marketing works great for my business. But whether or not it’s going to work for you depends on a few things.

The type and quality of the content in your articles.

How many articles you put out there.

Where you put them.

And.

What your expectations are.

You see, I didn’t start doing online article submissions thinking "I’ll post a couple articles and hot prospects will start banging down my door." That’s unrealistic.Especially if you sell a higher-priced product or service. Because a couple articles are rarely going to provide enough info to do the entire sales job for you.

When I started posting my articles online my goals were to:

1) Increase my visibility on the Web

2) Create more links back to my site to improve my search engine rankings

3) Drive more people to my site who already like my style and the information I provide, so that ideally they’ll sign up for my free report and become a part of my community.

Mission accomplished on all fronts.

Posting articles online has definitely driven more, targeted traffic to my site and helped me build my list right from the start. However, I didn’t get any calls from prospects until I had more than 25 articles out on the Web.

Though I submit my articles to about 20 different sites, by far the most fertile ground for getting live leads has been Biznik.com. Just in the last few weeks I’ve had calls from 2 prospects and 3 potential strategic partners who found me via my articles on the site.

Of course, since I specialize in helping small business owners take the stress, struggle and confusion out of marketing-and that site is dedicated to entrepreneurs-it’s a perfect match.

Now that I’m also a regular contributor on www.startupnation.com  -another site dedicated to entrepreneurs-I’m getting even more targeted traffic.

Bottom line? If you like to write or have reams of content lying around, and you set realistic expectations, I think you’ll be very happy with the bang for the buck you get from online article marketing.

Just make sure you have Google Analytics on your Website so you can see where your site visitors are coming from. That way you can focus your time and money on the sites that bring you the most traffic. Any Web designer or developer should be able to set this up for you for a few bucks, and the service is free. All you need is a gmail account.

One final word of advice, and this one comes from experience.Don’t try to do your own article submissions manually. It’s incredibly time-consuming. And I have yet to find any software that truly automates the process. Instead, hire an experienced Virtual Assistant to do them for you.

Have you had good luck using online article submissions to market your small business?

Are there particular sites you’ve found to be better than others for article marketing?

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