Article Marketing

Article Marketing - A Proliferation Of Garbage
Recommended by Norhisham Rahmat
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This article is likely to upset some people but I’m afraid it’s just something that has to be aired.

Do you remember the episode of Friends when Joey was trying to help Chandler and Monica with their attempt to become adoptive parents? In case you’re not familiar with it, here’s a quick precis. He attempted to write a reference for his friends, who, although touched, were none to keen on the idea, knowing all too well his, shall we say, limited writing skills. As Joey struggled with his efforts, Ross kindly introduced him to the concept of the thesaurus provided with his word processing software and Joey was amazed and extremely grateful.

Unfortunately, as was inevitable, Joey’s enthusiasm led him to replace virtually every word he had written with alternatives provided by said thesaurus, finishing by signing his name as “Baby Kangaroo Tribiani”.

It was a good comic moment, but what’s the point?

Articles. It seems that everyone and their dog now aspire to writing articles. Let’s be fair, they have been hailed as the holy grail of free online promotion and advertising.

There have been all kinds of claims made about article marketing; some accurate, some outlandish and some just plain ridiculous. Nevertheless, it has spawned a deluge, a frenzy of writing by hopeful webmasters, marketers and advertisers.

It has led to the creation of all kinds of article related software for everything from writing the article itself through to submitting it to hundreds of directories. It has also resulted in the birth of “submission services” who charge authors a fee to carpet bomb the directories and a veritable feast of freelancers and ghost writers all keen to cash in.

Sadly however, there really are a huge number of “Baby Kangaroos” out there. I say this with the knowledge of a directory editor who sees, on a daily basis, some truly awful attempts at writing and article marketing.

Before I end up ranting about plain, honest to goodness bad writing, let’s examine what article marketing is really about. It is not about building links - at least, that was never its primary purpose.

Writing articles is about informing the world at large on a particular topic of interest. The sharing of knowledge. Providing others with well considered and researched information, offering the benefit of your knowledge on a subject for which they have been searching. The motivation for writing articles should be, first and foremost, the desire to inform and to establish yourself as a creditable authority on a particular subject. The knock on effect was often an increase in links to the author’s website or blog, and, possibly, an increased following and perhaps an improvement in sales if they were indeed providing a marketable product or service.

Never confuse writing articles with the entirely different discipline of writing ads. I lose count of the number of ads that I delete every day where the authors have not even the wit to try and disguise them. No, articles are not advertisements, neither are they testimonials (especially for ridiculous money making schemes and scams).

Writing articles involves work and authors should always take care to ensure their writing is of a high standard. This means grammar, spelling, punctuation and all the other things you might not have paid attention to at school. It also means proofreading the finished article for errors before sending it out across the web. Articles littered with errors are damaging - firstly to you, the author and secondly, to the fabric of article marketing as a whole.

If you really want your work to be syndicated by article directories (at least, any directory worth submitting to)and picked up for wider publication by website owners and bloggers, you must pay attention to quality. Do you think that most blog owners or webmasters want to publish poorly written drivel? It seems apparent that some authors really do believe this, what other explanation is there for all the crap that they insist on polluting the internet with?

Equally guilty, to my mind at least, are the directories who impose zero quality control, and likewise the submission services who seem far more intent on raking in their charges than in displaying any kind of long term interest in cultivating article marketing as a viable low cost marketing strategy for everyone.

It’s sad because this short sighted greed on behalf of authors, directories and associated middlemen is slowly strangling the wonderful opportunity that article marketing represents.

The next time you decide to submit an article, please stop and think. Have you reread and corrected your mistakes? Does it read like an advertisement? Is it overstuffed with keywords and phrases to the point of absurdity? Is the subject matter remotely related to your resource box links? Is that PLR article written by someone on a distant non-English speaking continent really something you want to put your name to? Do you really have any knowledge of what you have attempted to write about? Are you sharing your knowledge or just rehashing a few tired phrases that have been published a thousand times before and trying to pass it off as original thought?

To be brutally honest, if you can’t be bothered with any of this, don’t expect a directory owner/editor to be bothered either. Filling up a directory with rubbish is akin to killing their own site and stripping it of all credibility. The only option available to them is to hit delete and consign your attempt to the trash can.

Be honest with yourself before you hit the “enter” key. Then go back and learn about article marketing, because, done correctly it really can do most of the things that you’ve heard others claim. Get it wrong however, and you are doing little more than wasting the ten minutes it took you to dash off that “article” with your instant content producing software.

The Cayman Host writes regularly at his Marketing Blog and operates a general free article directory where the focus is on quality content for publishers and bloggers.

Article Directory: Article Dashboard

About Norhisham Rahmat:
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He provides FREE training to make money online.
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