article marketing

MyBlogGuest: Two Years Later

More than two years have passed since MyBlogGuest.com launched, a website dedicated to connecting bloggers who like to share articles for republishing elsewhere. I was one of the early adopters of this very powerful website, having written my initial review of this site in February 2010 and following up with another post in May 2010 and yet another one the next month.

Last month, I made my first mention of MyBlogGuest.com in quite some time, and that mention reminded me to follow up with this article where I will explain to you my current involvement with this tool. There is a reason why I have kept MyBlogGuest’s widget on this site for the past two years — if you’re looking for greater exposure to your blog, forum or website, you’ll want to join MyBlogLog to reap the benefits.

The way that MyBlogGuest.com (MBG) works is quite simple. You sign up and you begin to either claim articles through the Article Gallery for your website or write fresh content and submit your articles for others to claim. Yes, you can do both. The end goal here for contributors is to acquire backlinks, a perfectly acceptable and wise strategy for raising your visibility online.

Given that I’ve talked about the claiming process before, today I’ll hone in on the article writing process. I’ve written nearly a dozen articles over the past week and have posted these for others to grab. As a contributor, you get to decide who will post your work and where. You’ll want to keep the following in mind as you write:

Contribute original work only — Everything you offer to MBG must be original. If you attempt to submit an article that appears elsewhere, you’ll be stopped — MBG uses Copyscape to automatically check every submission. I was “caught” sharing an article where I obtained some quotes from a press release for an automaker. This is standard journalistic practice, but those words are often shared in articles published to other websites. To comply, I still kept the quotes in, but I rephrased some other language to ensure that the article was unique. In some cases that isn’t easy to do because a 300-horsepower 24-valve 3.5-liter V-6 engine can only be described in one way.

Write lengthier articles — Although articles as short as 400 words are accepted, you’ll want to write at least 500 words, preferably much longer. The handful of articles I’ve written that were 750 words or longer, including two that came in around 1,200 words, attracted more attention and I had many offers to choose from. Those articles are now hosted on PR4 or PR5 websites, quality destinations I am happy to be associated with. I can’t wait to see how those backlinks will help my websites! My current strategy, however, is to write both shorter and longer articles — I’m finding that both are in demand, especially for automotive topics.

Include a photo — This is one area where I am at odds with MBG. You’ll be expected, not required, to contribute a photo with your article. And herein lies the problem: you’ll need to ensure that the photo has been released and includes attribution. Go without a photo and you’ll get a note from a moderator suggesting that you include one. Personally, whenever I claim an article from MBG, I don’t usually keep the photos. Why? Because some are not released into the public domain or the approval from the photographer is sketchy at best. Also, a MBG moderator may suggest you include multiple photos for a longer article, but I usually don’t. I look at it this way: if I pour my heart and soul into an article, the person who hosts the article can find suitable pictures to make it shine. Leave the “release” issue up to the webmaster.

Write regularly — My recent explosion of writing is new. In fact, I’ve only contributed one article to MBG in my two years of participating with this site and that article I eventually withdrew as I did not see sufficient interest in it. I’ve claimed dozens of articles and published these to sites I own or manage, but one thing was lacking: the benefit I could receive from having quality backlinks to my websites. My goal this year is to raise the visibility of every site that I own or manage. I’m just not going to pay a bundle for advertising, but I am investing a part of my time in contributing high quality articles. Even if you wrote just one article per week, that makes for 52 potential articles pointing to your website(s). Figure you’ll invest about two hours writing and submitting your best quality work, so you’ll need to set aside about 100 hours per year on article marketing. Can’t afford the time? Look at this way — you can’t afford not to market.

In future MBG articles I discuss other topics including subscriptions, whether you should consider a pro account and share updates on my various writing campaigns. What I like about MBG versus article marketing with the article directories is that your article is only published in one place. That place should be a quality site, one that you’re proud to host your best work and a site you can show to your freelance client as part of your writing “clips.”

Why Article Marketing Just Won’t Go Away

How you can benefit from this established marketing practice.

Article marketing isn’t about to go away. You probably knew that, but what you might not know is why this form of “getting the word out” still works.

Marketing Expertise

I consider myself an expert of sorts in article marketing. Beginning in 2005, I was hired by a client to write articles for his business and post those articles to various marketing directories, but especially to EzineArticles. “Ezine” is owned by Christopher Knight and if there is any one person who knows article marketing better than Knight, then I haven’t met him. Come to think of it I haven’t met Knight either. Moving on….

Seven years later, I have scads of articles posted to directories. At one point I was No. 10 on EzineArticles’ list, but eventually I shifted my sites to magazines, blogs and websites. Yes, I was paid to write for the directories and to post those articles. Maybe I should change my tense here because I still market articles on a regular basis. These days I write about a dozen articles each month for EzineArticles and other sites for my clients.

I thought article marketing would eventually fade away, but at this point in the game, I still see benefit from having original and interesting articles posted to other sites and picked up, with backlinks intact and posted elsewhere.

Here is why article marketing will continue to thrive over the next few years:

1. It is free content — Even if an article is eventually posted to multiple sites, the people who are doing the posting are getting free content. Sure, you NEVER want to rely exclusively on content used available for use elsewhere, but with article directories you can find some good reads to include on your site. In exchange, you’re expected to keep the links in the “author’s resource” section in place.

2. Authors can build a name for themselves — If everyone knows who you are, then article marketing won’t matter to you. For people who want to make a name for themselves or desire to expand their base, then writing several quality articles and offering these to the directories makes sense. The alternative is to find a website to host these articles, but that doesn’t always work out. Besides, if you want multiple backlinks, then article marketing is the fastest way to gain these.

3. You don’t have to be a writer — Writing for the article directories is one way people who aren’t especially good at writing can hone their skills. Of course, that means some of the articles submitted to and accepted by the directories aren’t first-rate. Still, if you are looking for an audience and can’t afford the services of a copywriter, then the article submission route is a very good way to go.

4. Your article stays in place always — This is where you need to be careful about submitting your articles. Use a directory that isn’t proven or regularly updated and you’ll risk that your article will someday disappear. Personally, I don’t count who picks up my articles and where they get republished — I’m satisfied that the article directory has a copy and that copy will continue to send links back to my sites or my customers’ sites for years to come. Choose only an established directory and avoid those with little to no standards.

5. You’ll get new business — As a writer, I know my articles have brought in new business for me. As for my clients, they’re satisfied on two fronts: 1) backlinks are gradually built up and, 2) more customers find their websites. What they pay for my services is a cost they’ll need to recoup. I’m confident that my services are a moneymaker for them, otherwise why am I still doing article marketing?

Final Thoughts

One bit of advice that should be used is this: when you market your articles, submit what you write to just one directory. Multiple submits are a waste of time — find a directory or two or three that you like and send your articles there. Keep track of your articles including how many times each article is picked up and redistributed. Work on writing catchy titles, use your keywords wisely and put in place your sub-heads too.

A Few Proven Article Marketing Tips for Traffic (ronmedlin.com)
Time-Tested Article Marketing Strategies for Your Next Campaign (leccoworkshop.com)
Article Marketing is a waste of time (webcontentxpress.net)

MyBlogGuest: Two Years Later

Why Article Marketing Just Won’t Go Away

Marketing Expertise