novell => NOVL
microsoft => MSFT
intel => INTC
pfizer => PFE
google => GOOG
Polaris International => PIHN.PK

Some people say article marketing doesn’t work anymore. Which that might be true if you just write crap and expect people to love you for it. If you do it correctly it still works and could be one of your most powerful promotion strategies. Here are three common article marketing mistakes.

1. Confusing the reason for writing articles with the reason for promoting your business with articles.

While a number of reasons exist for the promotion of your business using articles, there is just one reason to write those articles.

Let’s begin by discussing the purpose of promoting your business through article marketing. Articles can bring a lot of visitors to your site. No matter what topic your articles cover, you will be seen as an expert on that topic. While this is great, it can’t be the sole reason for writing articles. So what should your focus be in writing articles?

Good value is what you should be giving readers with your article writing. Readers will know right away if you have any other agenda for your writing and they won’t like it one bit. If you are writing articles this way, you are spinning your wheels.

You need to provide value to your readers before they are going to trust you. Then in the resource box you let them know you have additional information on your website.

2. Not using the full potential of each article

After you write an article, then what do you do? Your next step is to make certain your resource box is enticing. It will do you no good if you produce marvelous articles but no one clicks the links in you resource box. Provide a reason for readers to want to click the link to your site.

The technique of making keywords into hyperlink text is a very effective way of using your resource box to increase the impact of your article. Getting help with you search engine rank is an indirect benefit you will see as well as increased traffic to your site when visitors click those links.

After your article is prepared, submission to article directories is next. And that’s it, right? WRONG!

A lot of people stop here and this is where they go wrong. Individual web publishers is where you go next to submit your article. Article directories are mostly visited by others also submitting articles. You want your article to be read by actual people and this will happen when web publishers put your article on their sites and email it to their lists.

3. Writing articles that aren’t helpful to the reader

Your articles have to be of help to people or two things can happen. Your business can be negatively impacted by either of them.

The first thing is that no one is going to trust you after reading your article. And that’s assuming that they finished reading your article. Which they probably won’t. More than likely they’ll just leave.

The second problem is that you will have trouble finding anyone willing to post your article on their website. Their reputations are important to them so they will not risk it by posting your article. They know putting a bad article on their site will lose them the trust of their visitors. They won’t give you many links for your article and that would be a waste of your time

Article marketing isn’t dead. Far from it. Doing it right takes more time but there are great benefits to be realized from it.