The problem with writing content is it's sometimes boring and it takes too much time. I even wonder if the content I'm writing is useful, but you keep going and make it better as you move forward.

What Is Article Marketing

Articles are written collections of words used to describe any topic, news, product or service. Readers want up-to-date, and relevant content that is short and succinct. An article can educate, inspire or excite the reader. At the very least, your articles should be useful, informative and relevant, allowing the reader to apply whatever knowledge they have learned to their own situation.

Once you have a product or service available for your website, you will want to inform the public about its features and benefits. I advise you to follow the best practices for the online environment. This entails “offering objective and valuable information” rather than a sales pitches to advance your brand. In other words, articles are not meant to sell, only to inform. If you provide information that readers can use or learn, then they will naturally want to learn more about your product or service. Thus, by natural behavior, they will buy your product. Let you website layout do the selling on the peripheral areas in the sidebar, footer and header.

How To Inform Without Selling

Article marketing is about creating a symbiotic relationship with your customer. When you talk with someone online, you cannot see the person's face, hand or body language. Communication with your readers is through written words.

Do your best to create a common feeling of trust. This starts by providing your readers with relevant content. You offer something of value to a visitor who will then perceive you as a subject matter expert. Psychologically, we are drawn to those who make us feel better or smarter.

Creating good content will lead to an article directory. A Web surfer can peruse old articles to learn more about your products and services. These articles will create an identifiable online presence.

Writing Articles That Attract and Engage Readers

Article marketing is one of the best methods of introducing your product or service to the public. It helps you engage the public in a “discussion” about your business. It allows you to talk about, promote, explain, and answer questions in a non-confronting approach.

However, when you decide to use this method to market your business, it is important that you follow a specific format to ensure that your articles are read. Internet articles have a very specific posting process. These steps will make your article marketing efforts more successful.

Writing Successful Articles

After creating a catchy title for your piece, you will want to divide your article into three primary parts:

Introduction
Body
Conclusion

Each part has a specific type of content that should be included.

Introduction

The introduction should fast-track information to the reader. Include what you are talking about and why. Insert a keyword for SEO so you increase chances of the search engines finding your article. However, do not overuse this word or the search engines will most likely reject your entry. The intro is not mean to be long. You might risk losing the readers interest. The trick of the intro is to hit hard and fast.

Body

Within this part of the article you will want to provide more detailed information. Answer questions you may have presented in the introduction. Use organized lists like bullet points and numbers to make specific points stand out to the reader and keep the word count down. The content of your article should be between 400 to 500 words. Internet readers are skimmers and typically will not read articles that are excessively long, filled with large boxes of text, or are not broken up with subheadings.

Within the body, I also use a writing method called, P.A.S.T.O.R. This method of writing was originally introduced to me by Pat Flynn at Smart Passive Income. The the P.A.S.T.O.R. method was introduced during podcast, SPI 327: How to Write Copy that Sells with Ray Edwards.

“P” is for PROBLEM
“A” is for AMPLIFY
“S” is for STORY and SOLUTION
“T” is for TRANSFORMATION and TESTIMONY
“O” is for OFFER
“R” is for RESPONSE

It's a very effective way of writing. I suggest you try it too.

Conclusion

Your ending should reaffirm the name and purposes of your product. This promotes brand awareness and refreshes the reader’s memory. Then you make a call-for-action. This encourages the reader to find out more information, join a mailing list, call, download an eBook, set an appointment, watch a webinar, purchase, etc.

Keywords, Descriptions, and Titles

Keywords are critical for search engine marketing. This is what people type into the Google, Yahoo!, or Bing, and find you. Ideally, your main keyword should be included in your title, then peppered 2-3 times throughout your article content. The description/excerpt should also include the main keyword too. By doing this consistently, you will be lightyears ahead of your competition. This is true because it is time consuming, but after learning the process, it's easier and quick. This is where lazy and hard work meet. If you want to outthink your competition online, then you need to do this, consistently. You heard me say consistently twice now. The reason for this is because search engines look for living sites that are continuously informing their audience. Constant online marketing will help you gain momentum and you will slowly crawl up the search engine results pages (SERP).

Be Sure To Scatter The Keywords Throughout The Article

Be sure to scatter the keywords throughout the article, but do not overstuff them. The search engines will penalize you. Make your sentences brief and stay on-point. People need to feel that you are the authority on the product or service, so filling the article with “fluff” information diminishes from your credibility.

Your business will soon discover that this is one of the most cost effective ways to promote the company. People like to feel that they can connect with the company, and writing personalized information in the form of an article gives them that connection.

Tools Needed For Writing Articles On Your WordPress Blog

WordPress Hosting – Self hosted WordPress site.
JetPack Plugin – “Jetpack adds powerful features previously only available to WordPress.com users including customization, traffic, mobile, content, and performance tools.”
WordPress SEO Plugin – “Improve your WordPress SEO: Write better content and have a fully optimized WordPress site.”
EzineArticles – Article Directory – Upload your content to EzineArticles directory to increase traffic to your WordPress site.

Steps To Writing A Successful Article

Keywords – Ideally, you should have at least 1 keyword that you want to optimize for each article. Do the proper research first so that you know exactly what keyword you want to capitalize on; Type this keyword into the WordPress SEO by Yoast tool in the section titled, Focus Keyword. See example below:
Article Title – Write the title of your article. Be sure to include the same keyword in the title. Also, make sure the Permalink (in the URL – below title in WordPress) displays your keyword too. For example, if my keyword and title is “Article Marketing, then my URL is https://marketingmediaplanner.com/article-marketing/. See how “article-marketing” is in the URL address. Wherever you use a space, WordPress SEO converts that space to a dash (or you can customize to another symbol in WordPress SEO Settings). See example below:
Body – Write body of your content as described above. Use the three primary parts mentioned above. Use keywords sparingly:
- Introduction – Use keyword 1 time.
- Body – Use keyword 2 times maximum.
- Conclusion – Use keyword 1 time.
Description/Excerpt – This is also known as meta description. It should completed after you write the body of the article. Be sure to to include your keyword 1 time in this section. Depending on how you setup the WordPress SEO by Yoast tool, it will affect how your description is displayed. I prefer to set the Titles & Metas to read the WordPress excerpt. This way, my excerpts are automatically displayed in the WP SEO tool in the Snippet Preview section. See the example in step 1, and view examples below for titles & metas, and WordPress Excerpts:
Categories and Tags – Categories are for grouping post topics together. Tags provide a useful way to group related posts together and to tell readers what a post is specifically about. Tags also make it easier for people to find your content. Learn more about Categories vs. Tags. Most of time, I only use categories … just a personal preference. You are welcome to use this feature however you like. You can also create custom menus from categories and tags. See below:
Featured Image – Adding an image to your page is a fantastic way to visually share with your reader what your article is about. Images are also great for search engines. When you site is setup properly, search engines will index your images in their results pages. You don't always have to use the featured image tool; you can also use the “Add Media” tool provided by WordPress. This allows you to add the images that you like anywhere on the page. The content of this section includes images throughout. What's critical is edit the image details such as:
- URL (change name before uploading to WP – use keyword)
- Title
- Caption (optional)
- Alt Text
- Description
Publish

That's pretty much it to successfully creating content as an article marketing strategy. The very last thing that you will want to do is upload your article to an article directory like EzineArticles (follow the instructions there). The steps above will help you develop a strong content marketing strategy should you choose to incorporate articles into your marketing media schedule. There are also other types of content that you develop using the same content from the article here (without affecting your SEO), such as:

Excerpt Articles
Excerpt Presentations
Presentations
Videos
Much more

Let me know if you have questions. I'm here to help. Let's plan your content marketing.