I recently read on a forum that someone was about to start their Internet business and wanted to know a little about article marketing. They had absolutely no idea about what they should be writing. I gather they meant in both the technical and imaginative sense. For the purposes of this article, we’ll discuss each of these aspects.
What To Write About When You Start An internet Business
I recently read on a forum that someone was about to start their Internet business and wanted to know a little about article marketing. They had absolutely no idea about what they should be writing. I gather they meant in both the technical and imaginative sense. For the purposes of this article,
we’ll discuss each of these aspects.
To someone who writes without effort, I found myself feeling both sympathetic and comforted at the same time. Sympathetic, because I think it must be very difficult not being able to put pen to paper at the drop of a hat - especially when you want to get something off your chest! - but rather that you have to make a concerted effort to do so.
My comfort derived from a rather more selfish state - that of feeling empowered by my realisation that not everyone would be out there competing against me as I use my own ( albeit modest ) writing skill for marketing my business.
So, what advice do we give to someone with neither the technical nor the imaginative skills? The best thing is to consider the following points one at a time.
1. Imagination.
2. Value.
3. Keyword Research.
4. Technical skills.
Let’s take the first point - imagination. If this is something that you have a problem with, try picturing yourself doing something that you really enjoy and could do moderately well (at the very least). You will that as you build a picture in your mind, it enables you to get passionately involved as well as increasing your focus. This means that you are now likely to come up with an idea that is both useful and attractive to a like minded person - yes, there will be plenty of them. Indeed, you are probably not quite as unique as you imagine yourself to be.
This brings us to the next point which is Value. Assuming you have managed step 1, you are halfway there. Your next task is to make sure that you offer people something in you article that is going to help them move forward. If in doubt about this, keep in as simple as possible. There are plenty of beginners out there and if you even only know a small amount about your subject, chances are, someone will be grateful for your knowledge. Do not try to be too clever - just be honest about how much you know. The aim is to help people and empower them - not pull the wool over their eyes.
The third point is keyword research. When you advertise on the Internet, the biggest problem is getting people to know you are there. If you have no audience, you can be the best writer in the world and no one will know. Working on the Internet can be a little like sitting in an empty room and chatting away to yourself. Therapeutic in the emotional sense, perhaps, but not in the financial one. My advice is to check out Wordtracker who do a free trial for a week along with a daily web based training session. Even if you do not purchase the product, you can do a fair bit of research in that time. Look upon key word research as the market research of the Internet.
Finally ( and perhaps easier than people think in this day and age ) is the technical skill you will need to be accepted by one of the many publishers of articles that are out there. Most errors can be cleared up via a simple spell checking program and followed up by a grammar checker ( if necessary ). If your computer didn’t come with one, then there are many such programs available for free on the Internet. Once you are really keen to take article marketing up as a regular item, you may wish to do a short basic writing course which ( in the UK ) can be done at various libraries on computer. Like most things, however, this is a bottomless pit that you can pursue further and in to college, so spending as much money as you wish.
My advice is to start as soon and as simply as possible and you will find out if you are cut out for it - basically, are you enjoying yourself ?- not to mention, generating leads! Article marketing is a vast subject and I only wished to go through the bare bones here in order to help those of you who were thinking of testing the waters. If you take on board the four points mentioned above, I really cannot see how you can go wrong.
Good luck!
To see how I started an Internet business that offers education on this subject and more, you can watch the short video on my site.
Hilary Hughes
www.hilaryahughes.com?t=a8
http://www.articlemarketer.com/12158.html
