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More than a century ago, a savvy PR professional offered a guest article to a publisher written by his client. The magazine accepted and in short order, article marketing was born. With article marketing, you offer your firm or another firm 2 distinct marketing advantages: free exposure and positioning as an industry expert.
Let’s say you are the owner of a firm that makes widgets. Since no one knows what your product does, you’ll have to advertise the product’s features and advantages. You can either pay for this advertising, or you can use a series of publicity techniques to demonstrate the value of your widget. Once you write articles effectively selling the product, showing how it meets a certain need, you’ll be seen as someone who is an expert about widgets. This status lends you an ability to speak with great credibility about widgets, and your reputation and knowledge will carry forward to your name or brand.
Content meets the Internet:
 In the ‘90’s, website owners began to publish this content online, and with the advent of search engines to index and present this information, ezines were born. The website that does the best job of featuring a product or service, adding value to the consumer will be the one that gains the most traffic and reputation for being the expert. These content websites can then sell their service, brand, product, or ad space to produce a revenue stream.
However, content cannot be simply written and locked away in a secure location so that no one ever reads it. It must be added to effective distribution channels so the widest audience possible can read it and pass it along. The effect of such distribution is exponential. Once reprinted, your article has the ability to:
- Position your brand of product or service as a market leader in your particular targeted market
- Increase your link ability and have the potential for other authors to syndicate your content on their site, back linking to your site.
- Increase your social network usability and relevance
- Drive traffic to your sell pages and create a marketing funnel that leads to a conversion
- Provide free advertising
- Propagate to all corners of the internet, canvassing many users to target those that are interested in what you are writing about.
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