Perhaps you've heard the term "article marketing", but don't fully understand it. What is article marketing? Who can benefit from it? And what do you need to remember when you're actually doing article marketing?

What is article marketing?

Article marketing is a type of web promotion where you develop short pieces of content (typically 500-750 words) that pre-sell viewers on a product or direct potential customers to your website. Normally - when you're talking about article marketing - these articles are submitted to various article directories and made available to web publishers around the world. These publishers can use your articles on their sites, provided they include a resource box that gives you and your site credit for the text.

What is the main purpose of article marketing?

A lot of internet marketers and business owners use article marketing to promote their businesses and increase traffic to their sites. Typically, internet visitors and potential customers will be enticed to click on the link to your website by the call to action in your resource box. When used effectively, your visitors will be pre-sold to purchase your products or use your services.

Breaking the whole term down further, article marketing gives you an opportunity to discuss the features and the benefits your customers can obtain from the products you're offering outside of a direct sales situation. Moreover, your articles help to develop your authority in your chosen field, which - in turn - makes it easier for your customers to trust and rely on you.

Articles can also help boost your rankings in the search engines and increase the traffic to your website. If your articles are published on other well-ranking websites, you'll gain inbound links that send even more traffic your way. As more and more people are exposed to your website, your traffic will increase tremendously.

What skills do you need to have to be successful in article marketing?

You don't need to be a Pulitzer Prize winner or hold a Master's degree in English to be able to come up with your own articles, although technical communications knowledge will absolutely help you get started. If you have a limited writing background, try focusing on the following two critical skills:

1. Research skills. It's important to learn how to research effectively, since you can't write everything based on your own opinions. To be taken seriously as an author, you need to back up your claims with facts and testimonials, which you can only obtain through extra research. The best places to look for information on your given topic are the internet, books and magazines in your public libraries, or even from your own surveys and reports on the subject.

2. Style and personality. It's not enough to be able to write fluently, with correct sentence structure, grammar, spelling, and punctuation. Your articles also need to have their own personality - whether it's witty, striking, informative, or appealing. After all, how can you expect to capture your audience's attention with dry text and boring prose?

If you don't feel comfortable with your own writing style, you can always find someone else to write your articles for you. There are several freelance writers and companies (like me - shameless plug!) who can provide you with article writing services. Needless to say, though, make sure that the articles are well-written and will help to enhance your professional image. By keeping this advice in mind, you'll see huge returns from your investment in article marketing.