One of the most successful online marketing strategies you can do these days is to submit your articles to various article submission websites. This is a great way to promote your services, your expertise, and your book (if you’re a published author!). It has been well documented that one-way links to your website increase search engine rankings more than reciprocal linking, and article submission is an excellent way to achieve one-way linking.
However, the downside is that it takes time to manually submit your articles, and if you have several articles, you could spend hours submitting them to the various websites. There is software available that will automatically submit your articles for you, but you do need to check this out carefully. And if you do decide to manually submit your articles you need to have a system in place that makes maximum use of your time, but also keeps a detailed record of which articles you’ve submitted where, and when.
If you have articles already written, you’re off to a great start. All you need to do now is to set up an article submission system. But if you don’t have any articles written, then you might find the task of writing quite daunting, and you’re not sure where to start.
I have always found a good article comes from working with my clients on a day-to-day basis. They might have a question that requires a detailed reply. Use this reply to form the basis of an article. For example I had one client ask me, ‘how do I get an mp3 audio file to you, and how do you turn it into a word document?’ I sent them back my reply and, hey presto, I’d got the basis for an article.
Brainstorm some ideas. Some great article titles, and which will also get you thinking, are:
[Number – odd numbers work best] Top Tips For [fill in the blank]
How To [fill in the blank].
Try and come up with three or four articles – you will probably find that you can think of a lot more!
So now you have your articles, you need a system for submitting those articles. Below are my tips for an organized and efficient article submission system (I use it so I know it works!):
1. Convert all your articles to plain text as this will make the submission process easier! Most article submission sites require plain text articles; some will allow html. You will need to refer to each site for their guidelines.
2. Set up a spreadsheet which is broken down into various workbooks for article submission sites, ezine directories, and ebook directories.
3. Use this spreadsheet to track the article submission sites, log in info, and other relevant information.
4. Go to each of the article submission sites and submit each article to the article directory by copying and pasting from your plain text document.
Tracey Lawton is a certified Master Virtual Assistant with many years of experience, helping professional speakers, coaches, and authors operate an efficient, organized, and profitable business. Visit http://www.CompleteArticleTrackingToolkit.com for more information about her Complete Article Tracking Toolkit, with immediate access to over 100 resources for submitting your articles.