HowTo: Execute a Kick-Ass Online Article Writing Campaign

One of the key elements of any online marketing strategy is doing online article submissions.

It's fast, simple, and relatively inexpensive. An article submission site can deliver your articles to massive quantities of publishers with the click of a button and garner you residual targeted traffic to your website for years and years to come, all while also establishing you as an expert in your field.

Although it isn't rocket science or anything, there are still some tricks you need to know in order to execute an online article campaign that gets you the most bang for your buck (and your effort).

Here are my 5 crucial tips for taking over the internet with online articles:

1. Choose an upstanding article submission site. You may think, "Aren't all article submission sites the same? After all, it's just sumbitting articles--how much different can they be?" If you did think that, you'd be oh so wrong. Consider this:

When you submit an article to an article submission site, it doesn't go directly out onto the internet. What happens is the submission site electronically submits your article to hundreds of online article directories, ezine editors and Yahoo! article distribution groups.

Then those directories and groups either accept or reject your article, depending on if it meets the standards for their site. Many of these sites have rules about what they'll accept and not accept and how many articles they're willing to take from any one author at a time. This is why it's really important to submit your articles through an article submission site that's well-respected by the industry and known for producing quality articles.

If you're submitting from a site that is known for putting out tons of articles of questionable quality, the article distribution sites and groups will cringe when they see your article show up before they've even seen what you've written. It may be rejected just for the fact that it was sent to them from the seedy site you're using. So, it's paramount that you use a well-respected service.

My personal fave is www.submitYOURarticle.com. This is the site that everyone I know uses (me included), and it's the leading online article submission service in town for good reason.

Every single article is reviewed by an actual live human being (gasp!) to be sure that it meets the standards of the article directories and has the best chance of being accepted.

If for some reason it doesn't pass muster, they'll email you and tell you why so that you can make the alterations and try again. How's that for personal hands-on service?

BTW--Don't feel bad if it gets declined at first--this has happened to me before :-)! I'd rather submitYOURarticle.com tell me and give me a chance to fix it than to have it be ultimately rejected by the article directories.

(I have to fess up to something: I happen to be a part of the submitYOURarticle.com team, but I was a HUGE fan of theirs even before we joined forces. In fact, that's what made me want to work with them! Honestly I wouldn't recommend them if they weren't offering a top-notch service.)

2. Space 'em out. SubmitYOURarticle.com suggests that you stagger your article submissions. I would suggest no more than 2 per week submitted on different days. These guidelines may sound wacky to you at first, but trust me, there's method to the madness :-).

The article submission site is submitting  your articles to the article distribution sites, and like I said before, those sites have standards and rules. Some don't like multiple article submissions by the same author within a short time period, and if you submit more than one or two a week you reduce your chances of your article being picked up for publication.

So, don't let yourself get into the "it's the last day of my subscription cycle, so I need to submit 8 articles today!" frenzy.

You may be allowed to submit a certain number of articles during your subscription cycle* but you need to space them out across the month so that you'll have the best chance of getting your articles accepted.

*Side note: About the subscription cycles--your subscription cycle starts the day you sign up for the service and ends 30 days later. If you sign up on Nov. 17, then you have until Dec. 17 to use your 8 article credits. As each cycle ends your account will be re-loaded with 8 credits. If you don't know when your cycle begins and ends, just ask customer support for that info.

3. Focus on quality, not quantity. It isn't enough to just get your articles to the distribution sites; the articles have to be of such quality that it makes website and newsletter owners want to publish them. That's how you get your best exposure and boost your targeted traffic to your website.

SubmitYOURarticle.com will allow you to submit up to 8 articles in each subscription period, but don't get it into your head that you MUST submit 8.

I know--you want to submit as many as you're allowed so you can get your money's worth--I hear ya! I tend to think like that too :-) in most instances. If they give us an allowance of article submissions each month, then we want to use them all up to get what we paid for, right?

Not exactly...this is one of those cases where it's in your best interest to take the "less is more" approach.

Submitting more than 1 to 2 articles a week can actually hurt your chances of publication, and honestly, who has time to write 8 high quality articles every month while being foresighted enough to space them out appropriately--definitely not me!

Here's the insider secret--What I've heard is that some top internet marketers will submit only 1 or 2 top-notch articles a month and get very satisfying results. Let's learn from those online marketing gurus--less is often more when it comes to article submissions.

But, hey--if you get the writing bug and are able to come up with 8 breathtaking articles, and you're super-organized so that you space out your submissions throughout the month, go for it! Blow it out and take over the internet!

It's fine to do that, but just don't feel pressured or guilty if you can't attain that level of organization and prolificness (yes, that's a real word--I checked!).

Rest easy--you're doing just fine if you can submit 1 or 2 articles a month.

4. It's a long-term investment. While it's not in your best interest to inundate the internet with tons of articles all at one time, it is extremely effective to consistently produce quality articles and trickle them out over the long term. Here's how that works:

The more quality articles you write, the more websites will publish your article online. The more websites pick up your article, the more inbound links you'll have coming to your site (remember, you'll have your URL in your bio that's attached to your article). The more inbound links you have, the more long-term targeted traffic you'll have. The inbound links and steady traffic will improve your search engine ranking, which will then, in turn bring you even more traffic.

Also, the more articles you write over time, the more you solidify yourself as an expert in your field.  Publishers will start to know who you are and be more likely to choose your articles for publication. Readers will also get the feeling that you really know what you're talking about. After all, you've been consistently publishing valuable articles on your area of expertise over a span of time. 

The benefits of article submission increase exponentially over time, so stick with it!

5. Carefully craft your resource box. This is a biggie, so listen up! Your resource box is the piece of bio info that appears at the end of your article. It's the one place where you get to include a link to your website and do a little promo for yourself. Therefore, it's uber-important to take special care when crafting it.

Here are some resource box pointers I picked up from Steve Shaw himself (the mastermind behind submitYOURarticle.com):

• Ask folks to click the link to your URL. I have to admit I never would have thought of that. You don't have to be blatantly obvious about it, but you can phrase your resource box info so that you're telling the reader what to do and why. This is what my resource box looks like now that I've re-tooled it to follow Steve's tip:

"Sharon Sarmiento is a Virtual Assistant who specializes in helping folks with internet technology & web media companies explode their businesses to the next level. She organizes, oversees and manages the million tiny details that go into the day-to-day operations of online businesses. For free resources on how you can work less and have more free time while still making more money, visit Sharon's blog, eSoup, at: => http://www.eSoupBlog.com ."

• Relate your bio to the article. Some folks come up with a catch-all bio and use the same one on all the articles they submit. If you do this, you're missing a HUGE opportunity to capitolize on the targeted traffic that's reading your article. If I were to ever write about something completely unrelated to online marketing and business, such as dog training or baking, I would do a complete overhaul of my resource box to appeal to the interests of the folks who would be reading the article.
  

• Use a single link. I know, it's so very tempting to put links in your resource box to your website, your blog, your product pages and everything on the internet that's yours, but you've gotta exercise some control ;-). The more links you put in your resource box, the less likely anyone is to click any of them. You're diluting your impact on your readers with the more links you put in their face, so do yourself a favor and pick just one special link to share.

I hope this info puts some folks' minds at ease who think that they need to produce massive numbers of articles in order to have an effective article writing campaign.

That's just not so--you can do fewer articles (as long as they're high quality) and still get as much (or more) bang for your buck than if you submitted bunches.

With these basic guidelines, you should be able to generate a kick-ass online article writing campaign that will bring more traffic to your website, establish you as an expert in your field, and bring you a few steps closer to taking over the world within your chosen niche ;-).

Comments

[Lani & Allen Voivod]

We're both laughing right now. Hard! We know you're dead-on right about your article submission strategy. And we think we may have been a living, breathing case study.

Having just signed up for SubmitYOURarticle.com two months ago, we just tried to cram all eight articles into one DAY at the end of the month.

By reading this awesome post, you've helped us laugh at ourselves, forgive ourselves, and quite possibly enjoy the holidays without the pressure of coming up with ANOTHER eight articles this month.

Thanks for your guidance, Sharon. We love your writing, and we're glad to have "met" you this evening!

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You're so very welcome! It's such a relief when we can actually truthfully tell ourselves that we'll make a bigger impact by doing LESS. I know how you feel :-). Life is complicated enough without feeling pressure and guilt for not writing tons of articles every month. Also, now that we know that we don't need to write 8 articles a month, we can actually ENJOY the writing process, which is icing on the cake.

Sharon

[Gavin Heaton]

But you are giving away your secrets!

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:-) Hi Gavin! I'm an open book, aren't I?

[Marianne]

Sharon,
What a GREAT article! Thank you for all that information!!!

Marianne

*****
Thanks so much Marianne. I'm glad you stopped by :-). I'm so glad I've gotten a behind-the-scenes look at how to do article submissions--there's so many little things we wouldn't normally think about. I'm happy to pass the info along!

Cheers,
Sharon

[Kelly Moore]

Sharon,
I'm a PR consultant who works daily with trade magazine editors in the construction industry. While there are exceptions, most of these editors (both online and print) demand articles tailored specifically to their audiences. What's more, many of them want articles that have not been previously published by their competitors. Can an article distributed by such a service still appeal to this type of discriminating editor?

[Sharon Sarmiento]

Hi Kelly,

Thanks so much for your question. I'm happy to help you with this. Generally speaking, editors who want unique content will not turn to free re-print articles, because with it being free content and all, many publishers publish it on their sites. The types of publishers who want free re-print articles are article directories and people who want free content for their websites.

Authors will generally do online article submissions to build links and to drive traffic to their websites, rather than with the intention of getting published by exclusive publishers.