A common misconception about Public Relations is that it is completely separate from marketing; that effective marketing can be done without PR.  That is not the case.  These two subjects (marketing and PR) are actually complementary to each other and they both ultimately have the same goal—a positive result from the public, whether it is in the acquisition of acquired admiration, trust or respect, or whether if it is in the form of product interest and purchase. Watch this short video:

Ultimate Postcard Manual

Really Simple Postcard Marketing Tips.

In my plethora of experience tucked away between these ears, I have managed to cull out for you what I consider the “best of the best” – in other words, I took the most proven details about postcards that were significant to you starting a postcard campaign and really winning at it. So here goes the most incisive highlights about postcards.

1) I know that a postcard is better than something in an envelope.

For many reasons, the main one being, in an envelope you can’t make your potential customer see your message.

People are fast. We see and read very quickly – actually much more quickly than we even realize. Think about yourself – how fast do you go through your mail and process out what you want to keep and what you don’t want to keep? Pretty darn fast. It takes fractions of seconds to go through and process in your mind “bill, bill, advertisement, bill, advertisement, letter.” And it also takes fractions of seconds to decide whether you are even going to bother giving more attention to the pieces that you designated as advertisements.

With a postcard, even if they throw it away, they already saw your message regardless of whether they think they did or not. They saw it enough to throw it away, didn’t they? And the next time they get that same postcard in the mail, they see it again as they throw it in the trash.

Let’s face it – junk mail gets thrown away. And postcards are junk mail to a lot of people.

Although they may be junk mail, postcards get read no matter what – even if thrown away without reading them, they get seen. It’s like the phoenix rising up from the ashes.

2) I know that if you are not doing repeat mail with your postcards you are flushing your money down the toilet.

Repeat mailings cannot be repeated enough. DO REPEAT MAILINGS! DO REPEAT MAILINGS! DO REPEAT MAILINGS! A one shot in the dark postcard mailing is not going to change your business, your bottom line, your life or your anything.

The long and the short of it is, if you are not up to confronting that you need to do a campaign then don’t bother being in business. Sorry if I sound a bit harsh!

3) I know that the best price is not best necessarily the best postcard.

The cheapest is not necessarily the best. The old adage “you get what you pay for” applies here. Get whatever potential postcard company you interview to send you samples. Make sure the postcard is a very good, quality, stiff card that catches your attention. Get them to give you customer references. Call those references and find out what they think of that company’s service, product, etc.

There is a lot of behind-the-scenes work that goes into getting your postcard done right. If they screw up printing, if they don’t get your mailing out on deadline, etc. – doing it dirt cheap might not mean getting the quality service you need or want.

4) I know that although most people, if surveyed, say they like full color on both sides, the truth is black on white on the back of the postcard gets a better response. Why? Because full color on both sides is confusing. On the other hand, if you have a very aesthetic, pleasing-to-the-eye front – with a great headline – you just want to turn that postcard over and simply get the message on the back. You want good eye trail.

Eye trail is where your eye goes when you look at the postcard. You can have good eye trail with full color on both sides – but it has to be done correctly. Usually when you give people a choice to do full color on both sides they go overboard and the creative juices start flying, not flowing, flying with, “WOW!!! full color on both sides?!!” And they make it too busy. You don’t want it to be dispersing – you want it to go like a trail. Have a start, a middle and an end.

Example:

Did YOU Notice this Postcard?

$389

Look at it from the customer viewpoint – really look at it from their viewpoint and you can see what I mean by eye trail.

5) I know that you should promote only one thing at a time on your postcard.

Even if you sell lots of different products, you only promote one of them. It is fine to mention them on the back of the postcard bullet pointed. But your main focus on the front of your postcard needs to be one product, service, item, what have you – just one thing.

Say you have a flooring store and a furniture showroom in the back. Your postcard should only talk about flooring. It is not that people who are looking for flooring are not also looking for furniture – it’s just too much information on the front of postcard.

The purpose of a postcard is to get your prospect interested with one thing. You can put on the back as just a mention: “We also have a giant showroom full of furniture.”

But on the front – one item! ONE ITEM!

If a company sells hot tubs, above-ground pools and jungle gyms they need to pick the one that gives them the most income and make their postcard about that.

6) And I know that a person could grow a company with no other marketing media.

With postcards alone, one could take a company from zero to over a million bucks in revenue or more. How do I know? Because I did it.

We mailed postcards every single week, and the more postcards we mailed out, the more we grew. Yes, it is good to diversify and as we grew and became more successful and had more money to try other media, we did. Some we kept and some we nixed. Postcards are a staple that works no matter what.

These six points of postcard marketing data are proven techniques of making your postcards WOW your prospective clients while at the same time being faithful to the time-honored methods that have proven to get more bang for your buck. These tips are what will put your postcard in a class all by itself.

Need a plan to bring in more business leads? Check out this report for free marketing” ideas.

by Joy Gendusa

Slick Salesman

As a consumer do you prefer to buy (purchase, acquire, invest, etc.) or to be sold? Most people prefer to make the self-determined decision to make a purchase and usually equate the concept of “being sold” to the category of being tricked, coerced, bamboozled or “forced to buy against their better judgment”.

As a salesperson, it is your job to inform, enlighten, guide and help the prospect to a make buying decision; if you fail to grasp that concept and mistakenly think that instead it is your job to “sell” (using trickery and guile), then your life as a salesperson will just be that much more stressful and difficult.

Ask anyone and they will tell you that they would rather buy something because they really want it as opposed to being “sold” something by some slick talking salesperson.

People, first and foremost, buy things because they think the product or service they acquire will satisfy a need or desire they have. They do not buy because they like you, or because you “built a relationship” with them—they buy because they believe what you are selling will help them in some way.

Some consumers sometimes mistakenly buy from disingenuous salespeople (conmen) who misrepresent what they are selling (lie) and tell prospects that their needs or desires will all be met; but these buyers will be dissatisfied with their purchase, and later rightfully accuse the salesperson of “selling them” and often force the salesperson to deal with the repercussions or consequences of such a transaction—which is not actually a sale at all, but fraud.

There are some sales philosophies that promote soft-selling with things like long-term relationship building and there are other sales philosophies that endorse crush-selling tactics such as pressuring consumers by being aggressive, hardnosed, and using confrontational means. Both strategies have varying degrees of success—but as the saying goes “if you throw enough stuff against a wall, some of it is bound to stick”.

Relationship Building—do you want the prospect to date you or buy from you?

The truth is that underlying every legitimate sale/purchase made with any tactic (soft sell, crush sell, etc.) is the undeniable fact that the client had a need or desire that he felt the service/product would satisfy.

It is not the “relationship” you build that gets the prospect to buy and it is not the slick sales tactic used that corners a prospect into giving up his credit card—it is the belief the prospect has that he will benefit from the purchase that makes him buy.

You should know that no one is going to buy from you merely because you have kept in touch with them for months “building a relationship”; you are not dating the prospect, you are trying to prove that you can resolve their problem (and either you can or you can’t).

The length of time a sale takes to develop and close is not bound by some arbitrary limit—it can be very quick or it can be slow (depending on your sales skills and the complexity of the problem/solution at hand).

Follow a sales process

A true sales professional uses an effective question-based discovery process to uncover a prospect’s actual needs and wants. Based on the answers he receives, a comprehensive presentation can be given that enlightens the prospect that the solution offered can fulfill his need/desire.

Only after the realization is achieved by the prospect that the proposed offering is the solution to his need/desire, can a salesperson begin to help the prospect get past his fears and apprehensions about making the buying decision—and that is essential, a salesperson needs to be able to help the prospect overcome his hesitation in a professional and caring manner.

In today’s world of selling you are the prospects’ guide to making the buying decision. When you have exercised a realistic qualification, a comprehensive sales interview and, an enlightening and engaging presentation, only then is closing a natural conclusion.

Jamie Sene

Search-Engine-Results

A common problem that impacts both businesses and individuals is negative Internet postings that come up on Google searches and other search engine results. Negative or false information about a person or business can cause untold trouble.

For a business, it can cause substantial revenue losses, upset existing customers and ruin a company’s reputation or credibility. For an individual, it can mean losing a job or not getting one, being humiliated and many other types of problems.

As more people (potential customers, future employers, competitors, media representatives, friends and family, and even your enemies) turn to Google for information about you or your business, Google has become more than just a search engine for data, it has evolved into a sort of out-of-control PR or reputation engine.

The situation is further compounded by “consumer protection” websites that make a living out of posting, sometimes truthful but often false, negative and anonymous comments they receive about a business without any verification about the veracity of the claims being made.

Ripoff Reports is a perfect example of such a website. It is a website that illustrates blatant irresponsibility and greed by hiding behind a flawed legal system that protects their right to post unsubstantiated allegations. These for-profit websites will post anything about a business as long as the author (often completely anonymous) says it’s true; they don’t verify anything or require proof and they’ll never remove a post once it’s up (at least none that I’ve ever seen or heard of).

I have one client that had a “potential customer” post negative and slanderous comments about their business. The comments were about one of the company’s employees; they were inflammatory, misleading and false. But the kicker was that this post was put up anonymously, and was not even made by a customer, but by a “potential customer” who said he had spoken with a representative. Without being able to identify who the author was, it was impossible to know if the complaint had any merit—it could have simply been a competitor trying to soil a company’s reputation.

Since it is nearly impossible to have such posts removed, the best way to counter negative search results is to have many more positive search results that push the bad ones down beyond page three or even further down the search results. If you can’t get rid of the bad, you just have to counter it with much more good.

In helping clients with their online reputation, I’m often asked how to push down negative search results that appear on page one of Google (or Yahoo) for a search for their name or company. The solution is to create lots good press, postings, articles, web pages and websites about you or your company.

Following are some simple recommendations that a business or individual can use for online content that can come up ahead of the negative search results you want to push off of page one:

1. Create a blog.
Blogs usually rank very well, and do not require as much attention or updating as one might think. But you should try to keep your blogs as relevant to you or your business as much as possible. WordPress.com and Blogger.com offer free blogs, many design templates to choose from as well as free hosting. Create a few posts; keep them targeted to your name. Use your name in the blog title, posts etc. Add links to relevant websites and you’re done.

2. Build a web site with your name.
Register your name or your company’s name and use it as your own branded domain name on a web site. Registering yourcompanyname.com or yourpersonalname.com (also get .net and .org extensions for a business) and adding a basic web site is a guaranteed way to get on the top ten Google listings for your name. Network Solutions offers an easy way to check domain names and buy them.

3. Create a social networking profile.
Facebook, Twitter and MySpace profiles will rank well for both individuals and businesses. When you sign-up, use your real name—using a nickname won’t help with your online reputation—and enable the option that lets you pick the URL of your profile: facebook.com/first-last-name or myspace.com/company-name works much better than myspace.com/mighty-thor29

4. Create a personal page on Google.
Build a free page with Google Sites It will definitely rank well and help in your quest for positive information about yourself or business.

5. Create a business profile.
Join LinkedIn.com to network with peers, business associates and business groups. You can talk about yourself, your business and link to your other online web content. This is also great to network for new jobs or new employees.

6. Build your online identity.
Naymz.com This networking platform allows you create a profile and then link out to all of your other profiles. Whereas LinkedIn leans more toward the networking-side, Naymz is more geared toward brand building.

7. Post photos.
Upload photos of you, your business logo, building, products, etc., to Flickr (from Yahoo) label them accordingly. Be sure to add comments to photos (using your name or company name). Also use your name or company name for your profile name.

If you do all of the above, it will certainly help drive down any negative posts about your business – and if you don’t have bad online PR it will create lots of good PR that you control. Good luck!

Jamie Sene

marketing

The three variables that most positively influence the success of every marketing attempt you make can be summed up in one line: The Right Message to The Right Target Market at The Right Time

It is extremely easy to miss on any one of these factors. For example, your target market may be women, but a product that is perfect for a 19 year old female may be utterly inappropriate for a 60 year old lady. Case in point, selling Daisy Duke shorts—you don’t see many 60 year old women in those (hopefully).

Secondly, you may have the right target market (audience), but your message could be off base. Using the Daisy Duke shorts as an example, you could have the perfect audience, e.g., single 18 to 25 year old females living in warmer climates with all the other demographics that match your target market. But if your message is about how durable these shorts are, and how they are flame retardant and how the denim they are made from comes from specially grown materials, you may not sell as many of these shorts as if you positioned the shorts with things that actually interest the desires of your audience. Namely, looking attractive while wearing them.

And lastly, there’s timing; selling Daisy Duke shorts in the dead of winter is an obvious miscalculation, especially if your product line includes winter apparel. There can be countless examples of mistiming and not all of them related to the seasons of the year. Fashion goes in and out vogue regularly, technology advances daily, commodities and stocks markets shift by the minute, etc. Carefully consider your timing before launching a new marketing campaign.

Many businesses miss one, two or all three of these factors, and end up with very ineffective marketing and advertising results. Now that you are aware of these elements, there’s no reason to violate these guidelines.

Marketing to Diverse Populations

Do you know how effective each of your individual marketing tactics are? Many small business owners market in a vacuum. They spend money on brochures, advertisements and web sites with no real way to tie specific results to specific endeavors.

If you are unable to associate leads and sales with the specific marketing efforts that generate them you have no way of knowing what is working as an effective marketing mechanism and what is not.

The money you invest in marketing your company is precious. In order for you to maximize your marketing dollars you need to know the results individual marketing efforts generate. When you know the results of your marketing tactics you can make intelligent decisions about how to better allocate your marketing budget.

For instance, if you concurrently run a direct mail campaign, a search engine advertising campaign and weekly ads in industry periodicals without some method to discern results you will not know which effort generates the lions share of any new business.

If you don’t know that your direct mail campaign yielded 90% of your revenue with a 2% response rate, you are powerless to make the wise decision to reinvest in the direct mail campaign and make changes to or drop entirely the other campaigns. What’s more, if you can figure out how to double the response rate of your mail campaign, you can nearly double the revenue your marketing campaign without spending money on search engine marketing and periodical advertisements.

Measuring your marketing results will help you save money by allowing you to eliminate unproductive marketing tactics and at the same time, will help you make more money by allowing you to reinvest in productive marketing tactics.

Do you have a method for measuring the effect of your marketing?

Here are four tips for gathering the information you need to make wise marketing investment decisions.

Use a Database
Start by designing a database to keep track of individual marketing efforts and the leads and sales they generate. Make sure you include fields to track the dates of your campaigns, campaign descriptions, the number of leads generated and sales made. Once you have a central storage location for this information you will be able to make queries to glean the information you need to make wise marketing decisions.

Ask Questions
When you or your staff speaks with a prospect on the phone make sure you ask how they heard of your business; was it a referral or an ad in the local newspaper? It’s such simple way to gather valuable information many small business owners overlook it.

Be sure to ask your prospects how they heard of your business.
Make It Easy for Your Prospect to Help You Make it easy for your prospects to properly identify the marketing piece to which they respond. If you have multiple phone lines into your office you can easily accomplish this by assigning a unique phone number to individual marketing efforts. This way, you or a staff member can ask what number your prospect dialed or, if you have the right phone system you can look at the phone to see which line the call is on.

Data Entry Should Be Easy Too
Once you or a staff member have garnered the information you seek from your prospect, make it as easy as possible to have this information to be entered into your database system. If you employ a staff, make certain everyone is up to speed on your latest systems. Training is a must.

Move Your Marketing Forward
The idea is to gather as much information as you can about which marketing mechanisms generate the best (and worst) response, who is responding and why they chose to respond.

copy writing

To begin with use clear, concise, well-written copy that highlights the key feature and benefit of your product or service. You only have a small space in which to communicate your ideas on a page that is usually loaded with your competitors. So, if you can come up with something that sets your product/service above the rest then use that—but the key is to get to the prospect by letting him know you have the solution to his need, thus use a key benefit to him.
Below are some specific tips to help you create compelling ad text.

• Use keywords in ad copy.
Take a performing keyword from your ad group and include it in your ad text, especially in the title. If a user happens to use that keyword in his search, the keyword phrase will appear in bold font within your ad on Google.

• Create easy to read ads that have impact.
Give the reader a reason to click your ad. Use something that is different than the competitors on that page.

• Include discounts, prices and promotions –if applicable.
Ads don’t sell but they do create interest. When you can run specials or discounts that set you apart from competitors use them.

• Powerful call-to-action.
Call-to-action phrases include: Buy, Purchase, Call today, Order, Browse, Sign up, and Get a quote. Create urgency in your call to action – command the reader to do something.

• Select the right landing page (destination URL).
If you haven’t created a unique landing page for your ad then use the specific page on your website that has the information or product described in your ad. If users do not see what is promoted in your ad when they click your ad, they are liable to leave your website quickly.

• Test multiple ads in each ad group.
Experiment with different offers and call-to-action phrases to see what’s most effective for your advertising goals. The Google system automatically rotates ads within an ad group and shows the better-performing ad more often.

Jamie Sene
SmartMarketingGuys

The design of your logo really doesn’t matter. Would you choose MSN as your search engine over Google because of their logo? No, having a nice professional logo is great, but it very rarely increases sales. I’m all for a professional logo, but don’t think you need to spend a fortune on it. It’s more important to include your logo on every piece of communication. Put it on business cards, letterhead, envelopes, invoices, yellow page ads, building signage, newsletters, etc…

Have a professional website. It’s not just good enough to just have a website, you must reflect your brand image. If your known as a top notch photographer, the last thing you want is a website designed 10 years ago. It doesn’t reflect well on you. Everyone, yes everyone, uses the web today to check references. If someone recommends your service, you can almost guarantee that they will go online to look for you. Your website design should be updated at least every two years to stay current.

Blogs are good. Blogs help your business on multiple levels. First off, valuable content on a consistent basis will make you look like an expert. People are looking for experts, not apprentices. The software that powers blogs has multiple advantages. It’s very easy to publish. It’s a database driven environment where style is separate from content so you will not need to go back to your web design agency for every little change. And use of tags and sitemaps make basic search engine optimization easy. But the real reason blogs are great is that they enable conversation. Two-way dialog is much more valuable than a company that just dumps messaging and collateral on their customers.

Blogs are good, but they’re just one tool. A blog should not be your sole marketing strategy. You should have a comprehensive multi-touch marketing plan to get your value proposition in front of your target audience. This can take many forms. You can launch a direct mail campaign, email campaign, host a webinar, sponsor a local event, attend a trade show, attend networking events, cold call prospects, win awards, etc… There are a thousand different ways for you to be noticed. You have to find the best combination of methods for your strategic goals. Data shows that people need to be exposed to a brand at least seven times before they buy. If you simply do one touch and stop, you’re wasting valuable budget dollars and probably wondering why your efforts are not successful.

Prepare a one page corporate overview. This one pager will be vital as a leave behind when you meet a prospect. Use short sentences in short paragraphs – people like to read quickly. Also make it very conversational; it’s not a white paper. Your one page overview should include your value proposition, target audience benefits, previous audience experience and a mini-case study – and don’t forget your contact information.

Participate in local business events. And by participate, I mean be on a committee. Just showing up at events is great, but you’re just a face in the crowd. Ask to be on one of the committees. Believe it or not, it’s as simple as just asking most of time. Groups are looking for volunteer help and it’s a great way to elevate your status and visibility among the entire organization.

Do what you say you’re going to do. I know it may sound like common sense, but one of the primary drivers of brand loyalty is a consistent experience. If you say you’re going to have the photographs ready on a set day, be sure they are ready. Nothing leaves a bad taste in someone’s mouth like missed expectations. Positive experiences lead to good feelings which lead to telling their friends. But don’t forget that bad experiences spread much faster and are harder to overcome – if you get a chance at all.

Stand for something. People latch on to something they can understand and appreciate. If you’re trying to be everything to everybody, chances are you’ll attract no one. If you think it’s too controversial to choose a niche, remember the power of being seen as an expert. Experts are not good at everything, they’re awesome at one thing. This allows you to better position yourself and charge more for your services. People seek out experts, not generalists.

Realize that you’re not in control of your brand. That’s right, you only set the direction for your brand. Your actual brand image is determined by your audience. You can use these tips to ensure alignment between your desired brand image and your actual brand image in the minds of your customers. Branding isn’t a one shot deal, it’s an on-going juggling act of marketing, research and conversation. If you’re not tapping into those conversations with your audience, how do you know what their real impression of you is? How will you know how to address it? Brand growth comes from alignment. You have to ensure that your actions, stationary, website and marketing efforts put out the right image. But you cannot stop there; Those are pre-sales activities that get you noticed and hopefully bought. You also have to ensure that all actions and engagements during the sale and post-sale are positive and in line with your desired brand image. If your audience has a different view of you than you’d like, then you need help. And it’s probably best to bring in an outside perspective.

BONUS TIP #10: Branding is as much about your people as anything else. Never forget that the best interactions come from one-on-one conversations between executives, employees, suppliers, and customers. Employees that want to help and do the best job possible go a long way.

Proper branding is critical to your long term success. A lot of people think of branding as logo development. But in reality, branding is managing the thoughts and feelings of your customers to ensure that you are what they desire. If your desired brand image isn’t what’s in the minds of your target audience, you’ve got to figure out where the gaps are and how to address them. And fixing those issues is hard work because the old adage still rings true – the customer is always right.

This article was reposted from http://www.smallbusinessbranding.com/655/branding-tips-small-business/ by author Nick Rice.

Check out this video featuring Apples VP of Worldwide Marketing, Phil Schiller – a Prime example of the KISS approach.

Dominating the Web

Domination on the Internet
One of the first things I did for one of my clients several years ago was figure out how to get her positioned as an expert online. She had a wealth of information on a subject and was quite the expert. What she wanted was valuable “organic” links pointing back to her website. So I rolled up my sleeves to try and figure out how to do this. When it was all said and done, she had 6500-plus sites carrying her content and all linking back to her site “organically.” Of course we had others working on this project full time so we were able to create this kind of volume for her, but you can just as easily do the same. By the way, none of these links were paid nor shared links – they were totally organic.

I wish that I could write an elaborate hat for you to let you know all the work I have done and the research on the web I have labored over to figure this out, but when it boils down to it, it is really simple and fairly brief to describe. What is does take, though, is diligence and patience and a willingness to outflow and do this activity newly every day.

So, here goes…

What is Article PR
Back in the day before I even knew what an article bank* was, I was finding article directories that I described as “article clearing houses”. There was not even a term to define them. They took articles that one wrote and placed them on their website when the authors submitted them. Others could come and use these articles free of charge for their sites, ezines, blogs, newsletters, e-newsletters, etc. This is a practice that has gotten more and more popular over time – more and more people doing it and more and more article directories (banks, clearing houses, etc.) popping up. I don’t see an end to it. Now some are trying to make money off their site by offering other services.

[Note: Ezines are electronic magazines. Blogs are web logs — like a personal diary posted on the web. E-newsletters are electronic newsletters. E-magazines are electronic magazines. You get the picture.]

Now what is an article bank? It is a storage place on the web of content. Articles. The articles have to be helpful in nature, written by the person submitting them or by an authorized representative and must not further violence, perverted activity or any other immoral type of activity. The banks would then allow webmasters (another name for someone that handles one’s website) to search, view and use free of charge the articles. The only stipulation being that the user agrees that he/she will keep the author’s bio and website link in tact with the article. Some sites allow one to use parts of the articles if they don’t want to their whole, but with the same stipulation. Editors, publishers, bloggers, etc. also use these articles for the content they need, so there is always a plethora of content needed on a variety of subjects, specialty subjects and so forth.

The purpose of articles on these sites is to increase the quality of content to the site. Your purpose for submitting your article to them is to get organic links back to your site and make sure content available to others who might need and use it. It’s good PR for you and increases you/your company’s credibility.

This content cannot be gibberish — it has to be relevant to the site and be quality content. This increases organic (not paid) search engine rankings. The actual keywords that people most readily use to search for and find your company should be in your articles regularly throughout. Use this datum with caution. You don’t want to sound corny or trite. Try to make sure you put your keywords in your title — if it fits and doesn’t lose the communication. The main point here is utilize your keywords (search terms) without lowering the quality of your communication in your articles. I am not an SEO expert, but this is what I have gleaned from reading articles and talking to experts. In fact it is the simplest way to describe what you have to do regarding search terms – plus it’s just plain common sense.

How to get started
The best way to get started is to write or have written 10 articles. Why 10? It is a good round number. After you have written the first 10, write 15 more right after that. While you are writing the remaining 15, the first 10 are being submitted to all the article banks. So in reality, 25 is the best number to launch with – I just wanted to give you a step-by-step approach to getting started. But basically do what you are comfortable with – be as aggressive as you wish.

These articles must be a helpful and the title should be compelling. Don’t add any “self-puffery” at all — if you do your articles will get turned down by the article banks and plus it will make you seem like you are too self-aggrandizing. You also cannot duplicate content in your articles – like using the same article, just changing a few things to make it seem like a new article. You will be denied authorization to publish your article on the same site.

How long should your articles be? 500-600 words are good to start out. A lot of sites now want minimum 500 words. 800 is more preferable. Sometimes 1200 word count works great for some articles. It depends on the subject. Do not make the paragraphs long. And always include a bio for the author with a link to your website at the bottom. Do not put hyperlinks (links to sites) within the body of your text. Bios should not be long either — say, 250 characters.

Where to find Article Banks
Next, instead of doing it the hard way — which is what I did because of two reasons:
1) I didn’t know and
2) The article banks were just developing (told ya it was “back in the day”) — Google (go to www.google.com) and type in “article directories”/”article banks”. There will be a list of article directory (article bank) links to go to to start submitting articles. Today there are A LOT.

Pick 10. Go to each site. Make a folder for each one. Read their guidelines — article length, number of submissions allowed per day/week, bio restrictions, etc., etc. Follow these rules. It is good manners plus you don’t want to piss them off. Many of these article banks are owned by the same people — you get ousted from one — you get ousted from several. And who knows who they know, right?

After you have read their submission guidelines, start setting up accounts with them. They will or should be free. I never submit to any I have to pay — usually if you do have to pay is it a paid distribution service which I will get to later. Skip those for now.

Choose a user name and password that you will remember. And make it one that you can use for all article bank sites. Usually the user name is the author. I would do it that way anyway because what I have found is that if you are not the author (even though you may be a ghost writer) the site’s format program will list you as the author. And then you have to go through the hassle of contacting them and getting them to fix it. Sometimes this will be impossible because these sites are automated and run with a part-time person who never responds to you. But that doesn’t matter if you do it right because your name, bio, company name and link will be published on their site only to increase the number of sites that are carrying your content.

Log in and start submitting from your Word document files. Just copy and paste. Paste into Notepad first – sometimes Word tends to carry code with it when you cut and paste directly from it which creates funny symbols and characters you don’t want.

Some sites will ask you for keywords – those are the keywords that should be entered if someone were to search for the topic of your article. This is not the same thing as the keywords for your website. It is the keywords for your article, which may or may not be the same for your website.

Say I have an article about how to apply makeup if you are nearsighted women and wear glasses. My keywords might be nearsighted, eyeglasses, women and makeup. Or better yet, it might be nearsighted makeup application – yes, it can be a term (more than one word). Many times keywords are longer terms (and sometimes downright sentences) as your internet users are getting wise to the fact that their searches can be narrowed by being more specific. I think the average now is 5 words in a search term. But if you are writing an article about your optometric practice or some other optical business, most likely you will have data that is relevant to your business and makes sense for you to add your own website keywords into the article so when people search that those keywords, they read your great advice article and get directed to your website. It establishes credibility and also leads people to your business to potentially buy. So it’s a two-fold benefit.

Next, you may be asked for a ‘lead in’ — something that would make one want to read your article. You may pick a line out of your article that leads someone on to want to read your article — or you may have to write one. Whatever it is, make it enticing. Make them want to read your article. Don’t tell them what the article is all about in that leader, just a teaser.

How to Track Your Submissions
There are more sophisticated ways of doing this – this method is just something you can do to get started. After submitting the articles make a spread sheet in Excel with several columns. One for date submitted; one for date published; one for website name; one for article name; one for author; one for website address; one for notes about that site — your user name and password, maybe how you found it, any particular notes you would want to remember. Make the website names different colors so that when you go back to submit more articles in the future, once you have more written, you an easily see which sites have what articles. I do the same for each author — giving them a certain color. That is if you have more than one author. You can even make a spread sheet within that one as Sheet 2 as the list of new sites publishing your content. Then you can easily see how many are posting your work. These are non-reciprocal links to your site — very valuable and considered more valuable by far than shared links. It means people find your content useful and are using it.

(And for even more organization you can even make a Sheet 3 that lists all the banks down on the left, and all the articles at the top from left to right, and then put a ‘yes’ underneath each article for each site that you get to publish that article… then you know who has what and what articles you have left to go. You might need to draw this out to really understand it or just create a sample spreadsheet in Excel.)

That is really the lot of it. But as you go, you will usually see — if you scroll down the web page of each article bank site — links to other sites that company also owns and operates. Some are more article bank sites. Be alert to these and go to those sites and see if those are sites you can also submit to. If you don’t have time at that moment, bookmark it to get back to it when you do have time.

Next, continue to go back to Google to exhaust the article banks that it lists.

Getting Alerted When Others are Linking Back to You
Next set up a Google Alert on your company’s name or its website address or even the author. Go to Google and enter ‘Google Alerts’ and you will be directed to the area that explains how to do this. Google will alert you when its search engine “spiders” crawl around the web and find your content/link on other sites that you did not submit to directly yourself (but picked up your content from one of the sites you submitted to), as well as the sites you submitted to directly. “Spiders” are computer programs/algorithms (really complicated math formulas) that find what content is out there that is new and what it is linked to. It is basically like a sophisticated cataloguer of the internet and indexes what is being published online.

By checking your exposure online via Google, you will then see other sites that you can now submit more articles to. Some may not be article banks and may only be a website of a company, or a blog, or an ezine, etc. But they are using your content which is great; and they may or may not want more content from you. Email them and see if they would like more of your articles. If they do, submit. If not, be polite and thank them for posting your article(s) to begin with.

Also search the search engines yourself to see where your articles end up. Don’t just reply on the spiders. Spiders may not catch everything before they circle around again so MSN, Yahoo, Ask.com, Bing, etc. should be checked. There are more search engines – use what you want. Use your company’s name, website address, author’s name, etc. to see what comes up. Using the quotation marks around the search terms eliminates superfluous search results not pertinent to your search.

Some Minor Details
1) You also might need a ‘permission to publish clause’. Some article banks require that you give the conditions by which others may use your articles. This should be a simple one-to-two liner. “You may have permission to publish this article free of charge as long as the author’s name and byline stays in tact. Notification of its use and where it is published would be greatly appreciated.”

2) Never submit to sites that then own your articles and you no longer do. Most all sites will allow the author to retain full rights to his/her articles.

3) Watch out for SPAM sites. These are sites that take your content and put hyperlinks all through your articles to paid ads for OTHER businesses – like your competitors.

Paid Distribution Sites
After you have done this for a while and gotten a feel for it, then you can go to article distribution sites and have them distribute your articles for a fee. Why do it on your own first? There is so much to learn and the web is constantly changing that if you just let others do it you would never learn the ins and outs. There is so much data that I could never give you in a nutshell. It is its own universe and you have to get in it and learn it and wrap your wits around it to get control of it. Once you feel that way or close to it, as one never really gets on top of it forever before it changes out from underneath you (but you can get familiar with it to be causative — and you should), go to paid distribution sites like www.isnare.com. Pay them about $1 per article (or less) to distribute your articles to many other article banks, article announcement groups, ezines, blogs, etc. that you haven’t been able to find on your own.

(By the way, it doesn’t take long to wrap your wits around this – today it is much easier and simpler than it was 6-7 years ago — mainly because there are so many article bank sites now and so many people doing it and many of them directories use the same format.)

Note: Distribution sites are only as good as the other directory sites that will accept their content. Many sites regard these mass submissions as SPAM and reject them. Others post them, but there is no format and the entire article is bunched together with no paragraphs, so it is not readable thus degrading the content of your articles. You should never pay a lot of money at distribution sites — there are too many variables and they cannot guarantee your articles will be accepted, is a waste of money really.

Keep on Truckin’
Continue writing and submitting. Get your presence known on the web. Look at other authors at the article banks sites that have submitted many articles. Google their names and see where all they are published — see if those are the right forums (sites) for you. If so, utilize those sites, publish on them and get your content out.

Remember: post all of you articles on your own site and make it available to others to use in the same way that the article banks do… except that you do not have to accept others’ articles. That’s your prerogative.

Another great resource about this subject is via the article The Rise and Rise of Article PR – What are the Implications?

I hope this helps you — happy submitting!

* “What’s the difference between an article directory and an article bank?
Article directories are one-way places on a website where the site’s owner lists their articles. Here you can read the articles and sometimes these articles are available as free or paid content for publishers. Article banks are two-way websites or pages within a website. They are places where authors “deposit” articles to invest and where lenders “take” the article to use. The “interest” someone pays for using an article consists of a bio or resource box. Each article bank site includes guidelines for authors and potential publishers. Authors retain first rights – retain ownership – to articles placed on article banks. Some article bank sites publish ezines that include recently submitted articles, ad swap requests and/or an “articles wanted” area, too.” ~Definition by © 2009 Maria Marsala, Founder of Elevating Your Business at ElevatingYourBusiness.com
NOTE: The terms “Article Banks” and “Articles Directories” are used interchangeably today and both do virtually the same thing.