It's almost old news by now, but one of the number one ways to get your name out there, to continue your company branding efforts, is to submit your articles to free article submission sites, to directories, and to announcement and other lists. According to writer Michael Southon, “The number one reason people go online is not to buy things but to find free information.”
So write down that information in a helpful article, submit your article to an article directory or community, and increase your traffic when that article (with your bio and company info at the end) is picked up by thousands of other web masters and mistresses seeking content.
Given one caveat—that you be sure to submit to article sites that insist your article be unchanged and your bio left intact when used by others—all you need now are a few tips on how to submit and where to submit:
HOW TO SUBMIT YOUR ARTICLES
Using common sense and following the specific guidelines at each article community helps. But here are a few more suggestions:
-Be sure to read and follow the guidelines set forth by the site to which you are submitting.
-Make your article(s) interesting, informative, and helpful. Tell a story to introduce your topic, explain your topic, and provide numerous examples and/or tips. Make all content in your article relevant! If your business is selling Viagra (ugh), an article on admissions essays for college will be inappropriate, won't it?
-Avoid overuse of ALL CAPS, which will NOT set your article apart from the others but WILL make you appear to be YELLING, and will give you an image of being unprofessional, of not knowing what the article-writing protocol is.
-Most (if not all) sites where you will submit your article prohibit linking and the use of URLs within the body of your text (though you are, of course, encouraged to use your URLs in your bio/source box). Avoid, then, the content article that has no content but is instead just a list of links—which will only result in what appears as an unimpressive article written by a lazy businessperson, at best.
-Do not poach, lift, copy, or steal any written matter from the internet. Besides the existence of intellectual property and copyright laws, and besides the handy copy-check engines that will red-flag you and your work for eternity, copying and pasting text and attempting to pass it off as your own is a cyber-sin—unethical, immoral, and, in many (or most) instances, illegal.
-Since you likely want to submit your article to article resource sites for the purpose of generating traffic, be sure, then, to include keywords that speak for your site/business. As Chris Knight of ezinearticles.com notes, such a strategy will help “…bring more traffic to your site.”
-Be sure to include a bio, which is written in the third person, kept brief, and includes contact info.
-Proofread and edit before you submit your article. Nothing will do the opposite of generating interest in you and your company better than screwing up your grammar, punctuation, spelling, syntax, and overall coherence of a piece.
-Format your article: if the site does not provide a formatting tool, format
your article to 60 to 65 characters per line of text.
WHERE TO SUBMIT YOUR ARTICLES
You might come across lists of article directories where you can submit your articles. You might choose to submit to all of them. But you might want to save valuable time—as submitting manually takes time, at least ten minutes per article/per site.
Consider that your article, once published by a few directories or resource banks, will be picked up and distributed all over the net. (My first was adopted by over 150 web masters and mistresses on all major continents!) That is, if those few directories are at the premier sites:
http://ezinearticles.com – Chris Knight, the brains behind EZine Articles, offers thorough support and guidelines for you to submit your articles. While this is just one writer's opinion, I find EZine Articles to be the absolute best article community on the web—having submitted to and worked with many….
http://articlecity.com – also a fine directory, provided you can tolerate the pop-ups that don't get blocked and provided you can pull yourself away from reading all of the fascinating articles at Article City.
http://www.ideamarketers.com – Idea Marketers is another premier site for submitting articles that get adopted by thousands. (In my tracking program—which I use just out of curiosity, not to invade in any way—I find many visitors to my site have come by way of reading my articles at Idea Marketers, 2nd only to Chris Knight's site.)
http://www.certificate.net – This was referred to me, so I list it here…but I wish you better luck than I had getting past the drop-down ad, which one cannot X out of to first investigate the site and its offerings…which I always recommend you do before submitting anything! So best of luck on this one.
And best of luck expressing, describing, defining, and informing your potential visitors!
Thanks for visiting 07!