Can Your Business Be Found Online?
ByCreating and publishing stories or reports is the easiest and one of the most effective ways to market your business on the internet. Not only can you get your message in front of a large number of people very quickly, you are viewed not as a marketer yet as an author which gives you credibility and your message a greater acceptability.
Just like any other message, it needs to be “found” by your prospect, read, of interest and then leading them to a natural action which you direct them to.
First things first. Whenever you are writing anything, you must first identify your audience and then identify with your reader. It is most enjoyable for a reader to read something that is “speaks” to them as though it were written just for them.
Your writing needs to be interesting, especially in stories. Now don’t make the mistake of thinking that what you write your story about has to be dry, just because the article directories tell you that your report can’t be an “advertorial”.
You can be lively, have fun, and be interesting. Just don’t make what you write so dry that you lose the reader’s interest, out of fear of sounding “salesy”. You have something to say here, so go ahead and say it!
Besides, in your story you want to raise the reader’s awareness to their need, and then talk about how the general solution is the way for them to go. In your close, you’ll be directing them to a specific solution.
You can be somewhat indirect if you want, if you have a particular spin on how you get to the punchline.
For example, you could make your story about increasing sales conversion, talk about how it takes multiple exposure to get most prospects to buy, and then have it all tie together at the end with how a good series of reports will help them increase conversion with the follow-ups.
The main thing is that you want to identify the various needs of your prospective reader, and then look for the various ways that your solution helps address their needs. This can generate interesting topics and titles.
The flow of your marketing message within the report is to get their attention with a helpful headline that sparks their curiosity and interest, then in the body of the report, raise their awareness to the problem at hand and the general solution to it, focusing benefits of the service in general. Your blog post is where you’ll make the natural connection from the general solution to the specific solution you’re recommending.
The first part: Creating your report
Briefly, here are the components of a great report
• A compelling and intriguing headline that includes at least one of your high-traffic primary keywords
• Tagged with the right keywords
• Content that that is interesting and enjoyable to read.
• A short closing paragraph containing a summary of the content and reinforcing the need for the service.
• An “Author’s Bio” (A.K.A. the resource box) where you’ll include the link to your blog post.
• Some directories also like for you to have a 2-5 sentence summary that is different from the beginning of the article.
• Submitted to the right category.
Let’s look at each of these components and make this easy to do.
The Headline (or title of the article)
The headline is by far the most important part of your story. It is the intro by which people are going to decide if they look at anything else. You’ll want to include one or more of your tier-1 or broad keywords in the title.
To make this really easy, I’m going to give you some of the things that I’ve used successfully (including using pen names for some of your stories). For now though, simply go to http://ezinearticles.com/ and run a search on one of the keywords from your short list.
You should have in front of you a list of recently published articles. Click on any one of them. Scroll down to the bottom of the article.
Now scroll down below the article and you’ll find three lists that correspond to the category that the article you’re viewing is in. Note the category.
The first is the list of recently published articles in the category.
The second list contains the most viewed articles in this category over the last 90 days.
The third list contains the most published articles from the last 90 days.
You can take or leave the first list, yet pay attention to the second and third. In these two lists, you have 30 of the most popular articles from the last 3 months! You can see directly what it people are paying attention to! Cool!
You would do well to look at the other categories that your article might be submitted to. See what the headlines are in those “most popular” lists.
Headlines
Take a look at the headlines that are found most popular. You should see some patterns and characteristics that give you clues to good headlines.
For example:
Numbers are usually good in headlines.
Tips, things to avoid, things to look for.
Questions can also make good headlines
Here are some examples:
“How to Increase Your Sales by 20% in Three Simple Steps”
“3 Things to Avoid When Writing Follow-up Emails”
“Should You Host Your Own Email Follow-up, or Use a Service?”
“Are Email Follow-up Services Cost-Effective?”
“5 Must Have Qualities of a Good Follow-up Service”
“Is Lack of Email Follow-up Costing You Sales?”
Your headline ideally will intrigue the reader enough that they want to read it.
The Keywords to Use
Here’s a little trick I discovered and it’s one of the reasons that I love EzineArticles.
While you’re viewing an article in the category appropriate for you to submit to, go to the list of most view articles below the main body of the article you’re reading.
Open NotePad, save the file with a name like “follow up services keywords for articles.txt”.
Click on the first article in the list of most viewed articles over the last 90 days.
In the body of the article, Right-click and then select “View Page Source”. If you look a few lines down, you’ll see the keywords that the author used to tag this article.
Copy and paste those keywords in to NotePad. Close the window with the page source.
In your browser, go back to the list and get the keywords for the other articles in the “Most viewed” list and the “Most Published” list.
Now when you look at these lists of keywords, you should see some keywords that are common to almost all of them. These are good keywords for you to use to tag your articles with. You should have 3-10 keywords that have been used in all of the most popular articles.
Between this list and your list from your research at SEODigger and WordTracker, you now have several good keywords to use. Focus on these for your tags for the articles and for use in the headline and the body.
There is a term called “keyword density” which means what percentage of your article words are keywords. There are many different opinions on this, yet you’ll be safe with 2-3%. In clearer terms, if you have a 500 word article with a 2% keyword density, you’d use your keyword(s) 10 times throughout the article.
You do want some keyword density, yet make sure that it still reads well. Don’t get so carried away that it sounds like rubbish!
The Content – what your report says
There are several themes that you can use, yet make sure of a couple things in writing your story:
• It should flow decently, particularly from the headline, all the way through to the close where you have your call to action.
• Whenever you mention features, tie them to the related benefits.
• The article is to fill a specific part of our overall flow.
• In the article, you want to address the problem-problem part, leading into the problem-general solution. The blog post will address the specific solution to their need.
Different themes you can use (with your target reader in mind, of course)
• “What is XXX and is it something to consider?”
• Comparison of using the service versus doing it yourself.
• Mistakes that people make by NOT using [the service you’re recommending]
• Tips to making XXXX more time/cost efficient, easier, etc.
Again, these are some suggestions, yet there are numerous examples of what is being well received in the “Most Viewed” and “Most Published” lists at ezinearticles.com.
Generally, you can include:
• The benefits of the service (not the company) you’re marketing
O How the service will save them time
O How the service will save them money (in terms of the value of their time)
O How it will allow them to increase their sales
O How it will allow them to increase their productivity
O How their lives will be easier and more secure
O How it will protect them from problems
• The downsides of NOT using the service you’re marketing
O How much it costs your prospect to not have it
O How it makes life more challenging by not having it
Again, you want to speak to your reader and their wants and needs.
The Resource box or Author’s Bio
This is where you have your call to action to send people to your blog post. It will be at the end of the report and you want to make it compelling. Use curiosity, humor, or again, just plain a natural step for the reader to take at the end of your article.
The story body is focusing on the problem the reader has, and you flow into the general solution (the service you are recommending). The close is where you can lead into the review or comparison between specific solutions that logically follow the article.
Later on, you’ll want to offer them a freebie at your site – this is a great way to get people to click on through!
Getting Your Story In Front of Thousands of Prospects
The simplest way to get your articles in front of thousands of people is to create an account with us.
With your account, we can submit your articles to about 30 directories and numerous sites and mailing lists. This is a partial distribution list and later on, you will sign up for our full distribution service to really get your article widely distributed. Our full list goes out to about 500 directories.
James Tyler
Managing Editor
Online Publishing Group.com
Publishing & Media Professionals
1-800-341-3593
http://Online-Publishing-Group.com/
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