Article Marketing Success: Put The Pressure On!

August 1, 2009 By Lisa Angelettie 15 Comments

Here is a little article marketing success secret that I don’t often share…

As a psychotherapist I have studied the topic of human psychology over the years, and sometimes it comes in quite handy in my online business. And not for examining clients, but for increasing my own productivity.

There is something very psychological about having to complete a task in a specific period of time. While a few of us may fall apart under the pressure, most of us tend to fall in line and produce when we are under pressure to do so.

Think about writing papers in school – didn’t most of us procrastinate until the last minute but always got it done? Or what about your last project at work? Didn’t you get it done because you only had a few days to do so? Plus – I don’t know about you, but amazingly enough I seemed to write “better” when I had the pressure of a deadline. I always got a “Great Job Lisa!”

Well the same principles can be applied to your business and especially in your marketing tasks. Now while you have to put the pressure on yourself rather than an outside force doing it – I find that it still works.

In order to give myself a strict timeline, I like to use an old standard – a kitchen timer – when I sit down at the computer to write my articles for the day or for the week.

Kitchen timers are virtually indestructible and are loud! They also are portable, so you can travel with them and are very inexpensive to buy. I love them.

This is why I look at my kitchen timer 3 times while I am writing an article…

1. First I set the timer. I usually give myself about 30 minutes per article. You may need more or less depending on how many words you write. A good rule of thumb to follow is 300 words in 30 minutes.

2. I always get to a point in an article when I’m either tired, stuck, or thirsty! I take a look at the timer around this point in the writing process to see how much more time I have. I usually learn that I have about 10 more minutes, and then I get to furiously writing and “closing” the article.

3. I hear the timer go BUZZ!!! or DING! DING! Time’s up. I may have to close out a sentence. Then I save. Do a quick read through and then start the article submission process, or I save it for submitting another day.

Bottom line? Put yourself on a self-imposed deadline and watch your article marketing productivity soar!

Get your own Kitchen Timer and get started putting the pressure on!

Writing Articles: How To Write A Killer Opinion Article

July 31, 2009 By Lisa Angelettie 11 Comments

I saw this article over at Writer’s Digest, and while it was probably written with a traditional freelance writer in mind, the same rules really do apply to web writers writing articles to make a point AND to attract new and timely traffic to your site a.k.a. Opinion Articles.

Remember that writing opinion pieces on a current event in the news (browse Google News for ideas), or of an article by a bigger company in your niche, is a good way of standing out, making a name for yourself, and tapping into the traffic generated from the original event.

Check out the full article here: http://writersdigest.com/article/10-rules-for-writing-opinion-pieces/

Tell me what you think…

Article Writing: Writing Effectively Online

July 30, 2009 By Lisa Angelettie 5 Comments

The web is full of content, so it’s more important than ever for your writing to effectively stand out among the crowd. And that goes for any sort of online writing: articles, sales copy, blog posts, newsletters, information products, books.

Yet there are two very different distinct readers in the universe – online readers and offline readers. I am a member of both clubs, as both a reader and a writer. So I have seen how truly a distinct skill it takes when writing effectively online. Online readers require different things from their authors.

1. Writing Effectively Online – Tip 1

When writing almost anything online, you should not write anything that is too long. A lot of words on a computer is difficult on the eyes and online readers cannot stay reading something on a computer as long as they can something in print. If your article is over 1000 words, it’s too long. You need to break it up into two separate articles. 400-500 words is great. Search engines love them at that length, and so will online readers.

2. Writing Effectively Online – Tip 2

Write from the heart and add some personality. All too often readers will search their favorite niche and find a lot of empty, meaningless articles void of real information. This is where you have chance to shine and stand out in your niche. While everyone is writing straight forward articles about how to crate train a new puppy, you are going to write an article on how to do it along with your personal experience on doing it yourself. Maybe with even a funny anecdote about housebreaking. A picture of you doing it along with the article would be even better. Anything you can use to make the article a more personal experience for the reader, and you are effectively reaching the reader. Not talking over or around him – but to him.

3. Writing Effectively Online – Tip 3

Write often. You cannot expect to really break into your niche without having a decent amount of content written and published on your topic. It’s just a numbers game. The person who is writing more useful stuff is the person who is going to be considered the resident expert. Or one of “the” experts in your niche.

4. Writing Effectively Online – Tip 4

Use white space. When writing articles, ebooks, or sales letters for your website, it’s very important that there are “visual breaks” for the reader. So do not write really lengthy paragraphs. Break them up if they are too long. Remember that every new thought or concept should be a new paragraph. I think of paragraph breaks in terms of where I take a breath when telling a story. Too many sentences in one paragraph online start to look like one big run-on sentence. So remember – it’s fine to have white space.

5. Writing Effectively Online – Tip 5

Spread yourself around. It’s important to spread your content around to gain maximum visibility. Sure it’s great if you are columnist on a high-traffic site in your niche, but that’s not the only place that people can find you. Not every search on keywords in your niche will lead your prospects back to one site. That’s why it’s important to spread your content around and increase your chances of being found. Now keep in mind this does not mean to publish on every Tom, Dick and Harry article directory out there. That can possibly dilute your message. Focus on several lucrative high-traffic sites in your niche, as well as your own, and you will do well.

Related Websites

Ezine Articles: Are The URL Links In Your Articles Working?

July 22, 2009 By Lisa Angelettie 8 Comments

There is a great blog article over at one of my favorite article directories, EzineArticles.com, about how they have begun to implement an invalid URL link detection system. Now that gets me really excited! So if I sound a little geeky, let me explain why it should matter to you as well…

As you dive into your article marketing, you will notice how articles from two, three, five years ago still bring you a steady stream of traffic. Of course this depends on if you have written a good amount of information rich “evergreen” articles, but that’s another story. The point here is that articles can continue to bring you traffic for as long as they are published and live somewhere.

Sometimes though, we put urls in our resource or bio boxes or even in the body of the article (depending on what directory you are submitting to) that no longer exist months or years later, or they have changed page structure. This happened to me when I first converted my relationship advice site (GirlShrink) from an old html-only site to a wordpress one. The structure of my entire site changed, eliminating the (.html) at the end of each page. When that happens, readers will get a 404 error page. Boy was that a nightmare — and these were my options.

1. Try to remember every site I every submitted articles to with the old url. (Uh – not going to happen!)

2. Hope that they figure out where to go once they get to my customized error page. (A long shot, but put in place just in case.)

3. Change my .htaccess file so that all my old page urls are forwarded to the new ones. (This is what I ended up doing because I had a lot of files to change, but you have to be painstakingly correct when doing this. You might miss one.)

4. Have a directory that checks your urls either as you write or afterwards in an attempt to make sure that you have working, live links up. This is now what EzineArticles is doing. This is a good tool put in place by the article directory for two good reasons.

First, it ensures that readers of your articles will get to your intended final destination for them – your landing page, squeeze page, sales page, etc. Second, it’s best for the directory not to have any broken links for search engine purposes. So everyone wins.

Now not just EzineArticles is doing this, but autoresponder/newsletter company Aweber does this too. Every time I create a newsletter or autoresponder message, their system automatically checks to make sure my links are working. This is great while you are creating a message, because how many times have you mistyped a url? I know I have, and the system catches it in a matter of seconds.

So think about the articles and newsletters that you have written in the past, are all your url links correct and still working? Do you now push readers to a different squeeze page? Has your link structure changed on your site? Do you even own that domain name any longer?

At least you know of two places: EzineArticles and Aweber where you won’t have to worry about this type of thing happening. Remember that readers will only be disappointed or annoyed by broken links. You don’t want a frustrated reader, you want one that can easily seek more information from you.

Click Here to read more about the new invalid url link detector tool over at EzineArticles.

Article Marketing Questions: What Is The Biggest Article Marketing Mistake?

July 20, 2009 By Lisa Angelettie 2 Comments

Here is a commonly asked article marketing question from members:

Q: What is the biggest mistake that people make when trying article marketing? I’m just trying to make sure that I don’t make too many mistakes that would cost me time.

A: One of the biggest mistakes that people make when trying article marketing is that they do not write effective titles for their articles. The title of your article is important for two very good reasons.

Reason 1.
Your title holds the most importance or the most keyword weight in your entire article. If your keywords are not in your title, then you can pretty much forget about seeing that article in the top results in the search engines. While there can be exceptions to this rule based on the importance of the website where you publish your articles — this seems to be a steadfast search engine optimization rule. Main keywords should be in the title.

Reason 2.
Your title has to be eye-catching and appealing to your readers. If the title doesn’t grab the reader’s attention, then the article will not get read. It’s that simple.

So while article marketing is not rocket science, there is an art to writing titles that readers will gravitate towards AND that the search engines love and will rank favorably. Sometimes the two do not mesh very well, and you have to be a little clever to make the two work synergistically. Other times it can work effortlessly, but like anything else — the more you practice writing article titles the better you will get at it.

Use this checklist to write better titles today:

1. Research the top (your main) keywords and longtail keywords in your niche. (I create a spreadsheet of these keywords)

2. Pick the keywords with the least amount of web competition to start with.

3. Write an article utilizing that keyword. One that will preferably solve a problem for your readers.

4. Place the keyword or keyword phrase in the far front of your article title.

5. Make sure the rest of the title entices the reader’s hot spot and sparks interest.

6. Write several versions of that same title to practice which you can also later use for different versions or variations of your article.

7. Rinse and repeat.

In addition to doing these article title writing steps, you could also do a little more research. I like to do research in my niche and find out from various article directories or high traffic blogs in my marketplace – which articles were the most viewed, republished, shared, etc. Chances are that folks who first read them, tweeted them, or published them in their newsletters were attracted to the titles first!

Related Websites

Writing Articles: Do You Procrastinate?

July 11, 2009 By Lisa Angelettie Leave a Comment

Here’s a funny article I ran across on writing procrastination. Read it and enjoy that you are not the only one:-) (Click “the examiner” link to read the entire article.)

clipped from www.examiner.com

Writing secrets for procrastinators

I’ve been writing a book. I’ve been working on it for a couple of years now. I think about twenty-eight, if I’m calculating correctly. So far I have the title. Actually I have a number of titles. I have an extraordinary talent for coming up with titles. So now, I have about three hundred and sixty-four of them, and I can’t decide which one is best. Maybe I should just write one book for each of the titles. Or better yet, why not write a book entitled, “The Book of Titles of the Books I’ll one day write”?

Do you think I could be suffering from Art Carney Syndrome? Remember the physical pre-writing ritual Ed Norton performed, that never failed to drive Ralph Cramden crazy on The Honeymooners?

Article Marketing Tips: Article Marketing Sabotage Part 4

July 10, 2009 By Lisa Angelettie 8 Comments

When you are searching for content on the web, the top results for the keywords that you are using can more than likely be found in the titles of your results. Title of the website or Title of the article.

So it’s no surprise just how important it is to get the “titles” of your articles right. It can really make a strong difference on whether or not people find your content or not.

That brings me to my next article marketing sabotage tip:

Tip 4 – Fix Your Poor Title Writing

There are marketing experts out there who write entire ebooks or courses on writing effective titles for articles, infoproducts, and sales copy but I don’t think the topic warrants that much information. Not if you follow these simple guidlines:

1. Do not panic. Let your titles flow from a genuine place and you tweak the title later with proper keywords etc. First write titles that makes sense in regards to the topic of the articles.

2. Add your keywords as close to the beginning of your title as possible. Keywords in the “front” position hold more weight.

3. Do not make your titles too long. The keywords that I just asked you to place in the front of the title, will lose their “juice” the more you dilute them with other words around them. Keep your article titles short and simple, but of course they still must make sense.

4. Have the titles ask the reader a question or make a strong, memorable statement.

5. Make SURE that they keywords you build your article title around are terms that your niche is searching for. Do your keyword research. Ultimately this will decide how many people will purposefully visit your sites and convert.

Article Marketing 101: The real reason why you aren’t writing articles

July 6, 2009 By Lisa Angelettie 4 Comments

I’m about to call you out. Yes you. Have you written an article today? This week? This month? This year?

If you haven’t been writing articles like you should and like you planned, it isn’t because you don’t know how. It isn’t because you don’t have the time. If you aren’t writing at all – there is something else crippling you…

You don’t truly believe that you are an expert at what you do.

There is something that people who really use article marketing and use it well have in common. We all are confident in what we do and what we are writing about.

So ask yourself:

1. Have you created a business that comes from an authentic place?

2. Do you truly know about your service or product or are you faking it?

3. Are you writing about things that you truly have experience in or things that you have detailed knowledge of?

4. If you are writing about a great weight loss method, have you used it? Have you ever even lost weight before?

Now I am not saying that you have to be the resident “Einstein” of your niche, but doesn’t it make more sense to write a lot about things that you know about rather than to write on things that you don’t know anything about.

Could that be why you’re stuck every time you sit down to write a quick blog article? Could that be why it is taking you a week to write an article that should take an hour?

And this is why I know this…

When I was a professional writer, years ago, it would take me weeks to research, write, and edit an article for whatever publication I was writing for. The main reason for this was because I was often writing on topics that I knew nothing about. Now of course, part of being a good journalist is that you can write on anything as long as you are a thorough researcher. BUT the same rules do not apply in article marketing.

Article marketing should be painless and quick.

Research should only be required if you are going to quote statistics or provide a list of resources for your readers, etc. Otherwise, you should know what you are talking about and the words should just spill out your head and onto the computer screen.

It is very easy for me to write articles on article marketing – because I am a writer, I use article marketing exclusively for marketing my sites, and I know what works and what doesn’t.

It is important that in order to get writing effortlessly and regularly that you have chosen a niche that you have acquired a certain amount of knowledge in. An authentic one. And when you have done that – you will be confident. And when you’re confident, the articles will just pour out of you!

I promise you.

Article Marketing Success: Put The Pressure On!

Writing Articles: How To Write A Killer Opinion Article

Article Writing: Writing Effectively Online

Related Websites

Ezine Articles: Are The URL Links In Your Articles Working?

Article Marketing Questions: What Is The Biggest Article Marketing Mistake?

Related Websites

Writing Articles: Do You Procrastinate?

Writing secrets for procrastinators

Article Marketing Tips: Article Marketing Sabotage Part 4

Article Marketing 101: The real reason why you aren’t writing articles

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