Article Directory Writers should Solve Problems
Don’t let anyone kid you. Article marketing is one of the most powerful tools there are for traffic generation. What’s even better is that the traffic you get from article marketing is both long-lasting and highly targeted. You get fewer tire kickers from article marketing. Also, when someone clicks through the link on your article to your webpage, you can bet they’re already pre-disposed to be interested in what you’re offering, be it just more information, CPA offers, or even buying an expensive coaching program.
Unfortunately, when it comes to article marketing, a lot of people do it wrong, and it doesn’t work for them. The problem is not with article marketing, however. So that you don’t make these same mistakes, let’s learn how to do article marketing right.
For the purposes of this article, we’re assuming that you’re not writing articles just to get your name in print, or just to entertain or even teach people. We’re assuming that article marketing is part of a money making venture for you. Basically, you’re using it to drive traffic to some sort of web page, be it a squeeze page, sales letter, or a blog.
In other words, you have an action you want your reader to perform when they get to the bottom of the article…click through to your “money site”. Just making this realization should make your article marketing efforts two or three times more effective. You see, an article is not just information. It’s essentially a sales letter. You’re trying to sell your reading on taking action when they’re done.
If you look at an article as if it were a sales letter, then, of course, the most important part is the headline. Right there is where you’re going to hook your readers. Look at the headline of this article, “How to Write an Effective Ezine Style Article.” That headline does several things. One, it weeds out the folks who are not interested in writing these sorts of articles. They’re not going to be interested in clicking through to your website, so who cares about them! Two, it makes a promise, that hopefully the article fulfills. It’s going to teach you how to do something.
“How to” headlines are some of the most effective headlines around. People use the Internet for information. Telling them how to do something they want to do is exactly what your hungry readers are looking for.
Of course, if you’re promising to tell your readers how to do something, hopefully you’ll deliver. At least, you’ll deliver enough so that the reader thinks there’s more to learn, if they click on your link. This is why a lot of your best article marketers never actually nail down the end of their articles with a heavy conclusion. They want the reader to feel a sense of needing something…like clicking on your link in your bio box.
(See how this article has done that very thing?)