It can be the beginning of a beautiful friendship, with apologies to Humphrey Bogart in Casablanca. This relationship can be part of your Internet-marketing efforts, and it involves the combining of your blog writing and article marketing efforts. When you use these two marketing approaches together, you can increase traffic to your websites efficiently.

With article marketing you write articles full of quality content which receive distribution to a broad spectrum of Internet publishers. Article distribution via a good distribution service gets your links out into the marketplace where your potential customers are.

An advantage of article promotion campaigns is that you can target your articles to specific niche publishers who specialize in your topic. You perform focused niche marketing this way. You direct high quality articles to an audience who craves the information you offer them. If you write informative articles you can have faith that a good portion of those readers will click on a link at the end of your article back to your website or blog.

When you make article submissions to a good article distribution service you gain access to their full complement of web publishers across a number of categories. Article marketing with a good article distribution service provides you the opportunity to submit unlimited amounts of articles for one set fee for a defined period.

A good service will also provide you resources, free-of-charge, that you can use to become a better Internet marketer. Because you sign-up for their service a quality distribution service will provide you free e-books, podcasts, and information articles to guide your marketing efforts for your affiliate business. That's why article marketing pays. On top of the excellent distribution potential for your links, you get these value-added services as well.

Article marketing is one of the best ways to establish credibility with consumers. When you offer them relevant, informative content, that is current, you help them meet their needs as consumers. Think of how you feel when you come across a web article that answers questions you have about a particular issue or subject. Think of how an informative article full of useful content causes you to make buying decisions or take action.

If you supply your web readers this kind of content they will seek out more content and information from you. They will more than likely click links at the end of your articles that take them to your site. Here they are in an "accepting' state-of-mind for any products and services you have to offer them. It's all because of your great content that offered something of value to them.

Now the key is to let your articles work together with your blog content. You want that beautiful friendship to take hold whereby your blogs and articles mutually benefit one another. The thing you want to do is drive traffic to your blogs from your articles and vice-versa. In some of your articles you can include blog links.

This allows readers of your article to arrive at your blog where you can talk to them on a more personal level. You can also offer them daily, up-to-date information on your blog. Blogs are more time-sensitive than articles because you can update blog content hourly if you want. Articles can be timely but there is that period between when you write them and when they get published and read.

The mutually beneficial part of the friendship is when you use blogs to send people to your quality articles on niche sites. You can be informal in tone in a blog and get people interested in you and your business. You can then drive them to detailed, specific article content that further establishes your credibility. They can then link to your website from the articles.

It's all one big circle really, when you combine article marketing and blog efforts. You can use an article to drive traffic to a blog where you offer more information in a casual posting. This posting can then link to your website. You can chat up potential customers on a personal blog and then point them to where you have deeper informative content in article form. From the article you drive those readers to your affiliate website. It's the circle-of-life, business-wise, and an efficient method for building your sales.

It can all work smoothly when article marketing and blogs unite as friends. It can be the beginning of a lifelong friendship, where each marketing focus uses its best aspects to help the other. Try using these two marketing tools together and see where the relationship goes. Here's looking at you kid, and all your marketing efforts, Bogart would be so proud of you.