Article Marketing: How Do I Know My Articles Are Useful?

One of the most frequently asked article marketing questions that members and clients ask me is one that typically comes from a place of a lack of writing confidence and perhaps a little disconnect or lack of communication with the prospects in their niche. Perhaps this is an issue in your article marketing and article writing as well…

Question: How do I know that my articles are useful to the readers in my niche?

Answer: The best way to assure that you are writing articles that potential prospects will want to read is to get an idea of what “problems” prospects need to solve. When people are searching for something in search engines like Google or Yahoo, it usually is for an ANSWER to a question.

For example: If a prospect conducts a search for “How do I make the perfect omelette?”
The best thing to do then is to have an article written on “Making The Perfect Omelette“.

If you feel as though you don’t know what prospects in your marketplace are searching for and what those “hot button” questions are that they need answered, it’s probably because you haven’t asked! Here are a couple of tips for finding out what your prospects want the answers to a.k.a. what their source of “pain” is…

1. Ask your list. “What is your biggest question about…”
An easy way to get this done is by adding this as a question on your opt-in list sign up form OR you can create a form somewhere on your website where people can input their answers.

2. Cruise the forums. Find out what people are talking about. The kinds of questions they are asking about your topic, and then write articles that solve those questions.

3. What is your biggest competitor writing about? This isn’t stealing, this is market research. If you are aware of a very successful competitor in your market, then you need to examine what kinds of content they are providing their prospects, write on similar topics, but write something better!

4. Put yourself in their shoes. What kinds of things did you need answered about your topic when you first started out? You can pretty much guarantee that whatever were your stumbling blocks are someone else’s too.