Marketing yourself by writing short articles is the easiest, most cost-effective way to market and advertise a small business. Most multi-media advertising slots are way too expensive for the average small business owner, but article marketing is so effective and cheap it can suit almost any budget.

And to make it even easier and more productive, use an automated article distribution service to get your articles out to the widest possible audience. There are a few good ones out there, just do a search on "article distribution" and check out the first five or so.

Once you find the submission service you're most comfortable with, it's time to start honing your skills and making sure your writing is at its most effective. You can:

-- Read about your subject. Reading what others have written about your topic can give you new ideas and approaches to an old subject. Just be sure not to plagiarize!

-- Research and write articles that are outside your niche. Sometimes going out of your comfort zone can give you access to new knowledge and information, and you may find you enjoy writing about things other than your business all the time.

-- Target your audience. If you write about racing Formula One cars, you don't want to show up on a mailing list about beauty tips. Be sure you appropriately spec each of your articles to match a category, and even give it subcategories to target even more specialized audiences.

Writing articles is fun and challenging, and there are ways to make your writing campaigns more effective.

There are countless websites out there with writing tips and tricks, including PhantomWriters, with tips for women, teachers and ghostwriters. There's Article Marketer, with its AM University offering free articles and podcasts by successful online entrepreneurs. There's the Writer's Block website, with everything from explanations about grammar to what to avoid at all costs when writing.

Then of course, are the real books every writer should own, like Strunk & White's "The Elements of Style" and "On Writing Well" by William K. Zinsser.

The key to a successful marketing campaign is twofold: volume and quality. In order to really get noticed, you have to write more than one article. One piece will quickly get completely lost in the avalanche of information added to the Web every day.

Quality is also of utmost importance. The articles that get read all the way through in newsletters and mailing lists start with a great title, have a detailed introduction and a beginning, middle and end. They aren't too long, and they teach you something you didn't know when you started.

If you begin your campaign with these tips in mind, you will be an article marketing success, and you'll begin to see success in a concrete way, with better Page Rank, more traffic and higher sales.