How many of you reading this are regularly writing for your blog? Given recent statistics I'd say quite a few. However, are you leveraging that effort to maximize your results? If you aren't submitting your blog posts to one or more article directories then the answer is no!

Why Do We Blog?
Everyone who blogs has a reason to blog, even if it is just to have some number of people read your thoughts. Other reasons to blog might include: linking to a commercial web site in your posts, developing search engine traffic for revenue purposes, or perhaps attracting links to your blog to attain a higher PR. In fact, every time you create a post you have the opportunity to create outbound links, optimize your post for search engines and to earn advertising revenue when readers visit.

Reusing Posts as Articles
Once you create a blog post, why stop there? With very little additional effort you could submit your original blog posts to article directories. Every time your article is used by another webmaster you can expect to have them link to you via the author's bio that you provide. This allows you to improve search engine rankings for terms you choose, attract links to attain a higher PR and increase the number of visitors to your site.

These are exactly the same things you are doing when you write a blog post in the first place! Obviously, if you aren't taking advantage of the synergies available between blogs and article directories, then you should start doing so. The effort involved is minimal and the payback is potentially huge.

I do have one note of caution to provide. Search engines generally detect duplicate content and keep it out of the search engine rankings. Web browsers may find your article elsewhere instead of on your own site if it generates traffic via the search engines. You can simply make sure that you rewrite your article to exclude the use of any keywords you are targeting.

Blog Posts vs Articles
The way I like to describe the difference is that blog posts are generally friendlier. You can link to things or otherwise use HTML to spice up your post as desired. Articles are much more restrictive. To provide yourself with the widest options for publication you should rewrite your blog post so that it includes no HTML except perhaps subheadings displayed as bold text.

Submitting to Article Directories
There are a ton of article directories available to choose from. Personally, I use an article directory that also provides a distribution service. This allows me to add my article to one single site and not have to add it to a whole bunch of other sites by hand - the article distribution service takes care of the additional legwork for me.

The mechanics of submitting to an article directory include: register or log in to my account, click on a submit icon, paste my blog post into the form provided, add a short bio including a link to my blog, blog post, or related web site, and then finally to preview the result prior to confirming my submission. It really is that simple.

What are you waiting for?