Marketing is often segmented into four distinct sets of activity. The four P's - Product, Pricing, Promotion and Placement or distribution. Article Marketing Strategies can play a significant role in at least two of these activities and should be incorporated into every Internet Marketing Campaign.


Writing and submitting articles strategically to various Sites is of tremendous value in both Promotion and Placement.


Promotion includes advertising, sales promotion, publicity, and personal selling, and refers to the various methods of promoting the product, brand, or company.


Placement or distribution refers to how the product gets to the customer - the channel by which a product or service is sold (e.g. online vs. retail), which geographic region or industry, to which segment (young adults, families, business people), etc.

To all writers and non-writers out there, now is the time to start digging up those creative writing skills back.


With modern communication technology comes the popularity of information-based marketing, which is one of the oldest and most effective techniques in getting targeted prospects to sites and converting them into buyers. This is why article writing, submissions and publications are also getting popular.


There are already many tools that people can use to make the process of distributing their articles more easily. Though this is invaluable in getting the contents more exposure, which is only half of the story.


Let us take a look first at the common mistakes that some people make before submitting their contents to article directories:


1. Confusing the reason to promote the articles with the reason to write them.


In article writing, there are three key benefits why you are promoting them; branding, lead generation and promotion, which are all part of your optimization efforts.


But there is only one reason why you write an article, and that is to inform your audience. If the article is not focused on this primary and most important purpose, it will fail to achieve the three promotion benefits because no one will be interested in reading them.


You need to figure out first how to get people to read what is in your article, then make them click on your resource box. You can achieve this by producing better contents.


2. Failing to maximize the promotional opportunities of article marketing.


You may know already that your articles can help you generate additional links back to your site. But do you know that you can get more visitors and better search engine results from that same articles?


Mention keywords at strategic places. Just be sure not to overdo them. Some are even using anchor texts which is also an effective method. But it is important to know that majority of the directories are not able to support this.


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Did you know?


That writing and submitting high quality articles to article directories is an excellent way of building your link popularity. This is a key promotion tool and increases the likelihood that customers will find your product or service.


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Remember that is not only about the links back to your site. Part of doing well in your article marketing is getting picked up by publishers with a large number of audiences and gaining the ability of leveraging other brands because of the quality of your work. Better search engine results also are great benefits.


But these things do not put much money in your pocket. There are other factors that can turn your article marketing efforts into an opportunity that can boost your earnings. Not just increase the number of visitors to your site.


Start out with a plan and see to it that your article will serve the function that you intended it to have.


3. Publishing content that does not help your readers.


Maybe in the process of writing articles, you are thinking that all that is you wanted is links back to your site. And any visitors it can generate are fine.


Guess what? Not all article banks and directories are going to accept your content automatically. Oftentimes, they have some guidelines and specifications on the articles that they are accepting.


You can double the number of sites you can submit to by writing articles that the directories want to share with other people. All it takes is one publisher with a hundred thousand readers to increase your potential audience overnight.


Write the articles that publishers want in their publications if you want your article marketing to work the most effective way for you. This also means you have to obey the standard guidelines, spell checks, researching on a good topic and even hiring a writer to produce a good content on your behalf.


In the end, it is all really a matter of choice on your part. You can start getting a little exposure from increased links back but on a very basic level. Or enjoy massive exposure from a little extra time making quality contents.


It will be your choice. You may not be aware of the fact that an article submitted on directories is not meant to have the same level of exposure as highly-targeted content ones geared on a narrow group of people.


Learn the difference between these two and it will surely help you know what kinds of articles to write and to submit.

Michael Saunders has an MBA from the Stanford Graduate School of Business. He edits a site on Article Directories and another on Site Promotion Strategies.