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Article Marketing, Blogging or Both?

As I mentioned in a previous post, article marketing is NOT writing an effortless article (or buying one), submitting it to thousands of article directories and driving traffic to a generic page infested with Google Ad Sense.  When creating an article marketing strategy, time should be spent writing an article that has value and/or satisfies a particular need. The title, probably the most important aspect of the article itself, should be written as bait to draw the attention of potential readers.

The biggest no-no in executing an article marketing strategy is to post the same article on your blog that you do in a directory.  Not only is this considered duplicate content but its proven to be a horrible customer experience. As a user, the last thing I want to do after reading an article somewhere is click through to the blog and see the same exact article.

What I normally do when I write an article is submit it only to a few select directories like (Associated Content, Buzzle, Ezine Articles, Go Articles, Web Pro News, Site Pro News, etc.). Then, I will write a paragraph or two about the article in my blog (perhaps why I wrote it) and then link to it on Associated Content (AC). The reason I choose AC is that they allow readers on their site to easily add content (articles) to social bookmarking sites like Digg, Newsvine, Netscape, De.licio.us, etc.

Lastly, and keeping in mind Social Media Optimization, I would also add the ability for the readers of your blog to easily link to it, subscribe to it, tag it, post a comment; and then add it their favorite social bookmarking site(s).

Technorati Tags: article marketing, article syndication, article distribution, article submission, blogging, blog marketing, social media optimization, socialmediaoptimization

About the author

Michael Brito

Michael Brito is a Senior Vice President of Social Business Planning at Edelman Digital. He helps his clients transform their organizations to be more open, collaborative and socially proficient; with the end result of creating shared value with employees, partners and customers. Prior to Edelman, Michael worked for Intel and Hewlett Packard in various social media marketing roles. Opinions posted here are his own. Feel free to follow him on Twitter, subscribe to this blog or read some more of his content on Social Business News.

  • http://www.mclady.net/blog/ colbert

    writing articles take up considerable time..thanks for this post. Now at least I know what is effective if I ever did article marketing

  • http://www.seoresearcher.com oleg ishenko

    regarding duplicate content: the modern SE algos are sophisticated enough to determine the real source of your article. simply make sure that spiders have already crawled your content, then share your articles. SE’s use date of indexing as the major factor in duplicate content issue resolution. Also shared articles usually have a link (one-way of course) to the original publication – another way to tell the SEs where the content comes from.

  • http://www.britopian.com Michael Brito

    Oleg…thanks for the tip. I appreciate it.

  • http://www.seoresearcher.com/ oleg ishenko

    By the way, does anyone know how to get your articles into the Site Pro News newsletter? Any way to submit an article to Site Pro news at all?

  • http://www.britopian.com Michael Brito

    Oleg. I took a long shot and emailed their editors directly. You might also try http://www.sitepoint.com/. The only issue with them is that they have exclusive rights to your article for 6 months. They do receive a ton of traffic though.

    Michael

  • http://www.seoresearcher.com oleg ishenko

    Thanks, Michael

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  • http://www.blogoxide.com/blog BlogOxide

    Article marketing does work and as far as the duplicate content issue is concerned, it is there, but just version your blog post if you intend to post the same to article directories. But a far better way is to use a different article for marketing, and be sure that it is of supreme quality, coz that’s what derives more traffic to you.

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  • http://www.taglinkwatch.com tag link

    Good post overall. Enjoyed reading it.

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    You do a good job!

  • Anonymous

    This topic is good thanks for sharing with me. Article marketing is one of the best ways to promote your website and
    the products you sell. Items are published online or offline also helps
    establish the credibility of your website or product.