Article Marketing: Jeff Herring, The Article Guy, interviews Chris Knight of EzineArticles.com

1. What is the one thing every article writer and marketer should do?

Start and then be consistent. Marketing or syndication and distribution of your articles is an ‘advertising’ function (in addition to good traditional popular marketing and branding). Because it’s an advertising feature, it’s an activity that you want to invest in on a monthly basis throughout the year.

You don’t advertise your business once and you shouldn’t engage in article marketing just once. Give yourself at least 90 days to 6 months to prove to yourself that writing and marketing articles can pay dividends in terms of your ability to drive qualified visitors and return traffic to your website.

2. What is the one thing every article writer and marketer should avoid?

Article writers should avoid the very basic sins of not checking spelling and grammar or not checking sentence structure and punctuation.

Article marketers should avoid spam with their article writing and syndication strategies. This can be avoided with two simple rules:

1) Always give value in the body of the article and it can be sold in the resource box (never the other way around); and

2) Always read the published editorial guidelines to abide by the publishers’ rules for the type of content they accept. You will save yourself a lot of time and find an easier path to greater acceptance of your article content.

I know you only asked for one thing that they should avoid, but another equally important thing is to avoid PLR (private label rights) articles. Article marketers want to avoid buying into those crazy article rewriters that turn PLR content into Frankenstein articles that make it look silly, not to mention can carry legal penalties for infringement. If you want to find shortcuts, look for ways to keep your integrity intact by improving the efficiency of your article writing or by hiring a team of article writers to help you with your article inventory production goals.

3. Is this item just a fad or something that is here to stay?

Article writing and marketing are not a passing fad and have been around for many decades in the world of print media. It wasn’t until the mid-1990s that Internet article syndication took off with a significantly greater viral nature than its print cousin.

It’s here to stay despite many saying the sky is falling due to concerns about the duplicate content penalty. The reality is that search engines use duplicate content identification as just one of over 70 metrics they use to determine how much value to place on an article. It’s hardly the main factor as to whether or not article syndication will hurt you in terms of search engine love or lack of love… and my recommendation is that you have the most to lose if you don’t syndicate your original articles from quality. .

4. Can someone successfully write and market articles if they are in a crowded niche?

Yes they can, but they will need to increase the volume of articles at least 10 times more than an uncrowded niche. A decade ago, 20 syndicated articles would have been enough to drive your hit counter crazy. Nowadays you will need at least 200 articles in any niche to get a shot at the top and it may take 2000 or more articles to make a dent in a crowded niche. Is it still worth it? Yes it is!

Keep in mind that only about 82-85% of authors or experts involved in article marketing go beyond 10 articles. That means the vast majority of the millions of qualified visitors disproportionately belong to the 15% who go beyond 10 or more articles.

5. What has article writing and marketing done for you?

I have built a business on it and it has allowed me to grow the business to serve the tens of thousands of authors who submit their quality original articles to us by the thousands every day. I am very grateful for the opportunity to serve as a catalyst for an industry that seems to have no ceiling.

Every day I hear success stories of authors landing multi-million dollar contracts or interview appearances in the Wall Street Journal, NY Post, various TV show producers, or countless other high-value intangible and tangible financial benefits. For some people, it changes their lives and gives them access to qualified leads that they couldn’t have acquired without article marketing.

6. What trends do you currently see in article writing and marketing?

Mass adoption. Article marketing is no longer a question of “should I or shouldn’t I” get involved in the strategy, but rather a question of “how many qualified visitors do I want to attract with my articles?”

shorter articles. Articles of 2000-5000 words are better left for white papers and research reports rather than research papers. the 250-700 word count that is most appropriate for article syndication.

tactical planning. In the past, article writing and marketing was a hit or miss activity with very little planning or goal setting for many authors. Instead, today, a growing segment of authors are setting very specific numerical targets for their article writing and distribution strategies, and you can guess what that leads to:

BEST RESULTS!