6 Article Marketing Smarts: How to Get More Reprints and Exposure

by Priya Shah

Published on this site: July 25th, 2005 - See more articles from this month

Article marketing is the latest buzzword for marketers looking to promote their sites and products online. But how do you measure the success of your article marketing campaign?

It probably depends on what you expect your article to achieve for you - better branding, more sales, or more publicity.

One way to measure article performance is to check how many times your article has been picked up and reproduced on various sites.

To do that, just copy and paste the article title in quotes into a search engine like Google, and you'll see how many sites it's been reprinted on.

My article "How To Get To The Top Of The Marketing Food Chain" shows 1061 links in Google.http://ebizwhiz-publishing.com/articles/priyashah16.htm

That means Google has indexed 1061 sites on which this article appears. http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=%

This gives me about 1061 quality links to each of the sites I included in my resource box.

As you can see, this makes article marketing a very powerful way of building quality links.

So how do you ensure that your article gets picked up and reprinted by as many publishers as possible?

1. Pick A Topic That's Hot Or Always Fresh
   
   For instance, my article on Neuromarketing got picked up pretty quickly because it was a hot topic. http://marketingslave.com/2005/06/01/neuromarketing
   
   The problem with hot topics is that they also tend to cool off quickly. So while they may get a lot of reprints over a short time, they may get very few reprints once the craze is over.
   
   There are some articles that are slow starters but eternally fresh, like the one I wrote here.
   
   To Be A Champion, Become A Child http://www.growmymind.com/positive-attitudes/be-a-champion.htm (591 links in Google)
   
   These are the ones that will give you reprints over a longer period of time. I think in the long run, these are more valuable.
   
   
2. Target A Large Audience
   
   Another way to get a lot of coverage is write an article for a large target audience or one that is very active online - like bloggers.
   
   This article gave me 164 links back, mostly from other blogs, even some for which I had to use a translation service http://www.blog-maniac.com/blog-burnout.htm
   
   This shows 248 links back http://www.blog-maniac.com/questions-business-blog.htm 316 links for this one http://www.blog-maniac.com/spam-blogging.htm
   
   But again, it's the quality of links back that matters - not the quantity.
   
   Another large target audience is the health market. I get a lot of links back from my health articles.
   
   
3. Craft A Catchy, Relevant Title
   
   A catchy title ensures that your article gets the attention of publishers - the first step to getting your article published.
   
   Follow the basic rules of copywriting to make your article interesting and readable.
   
   Publishers are more likely to pick up an article if its title includes the keywords that they (and you) want to target.
   
   Use your main keywords in your title, preferable in the first half (like I did in the title of this article), to ensure better rankings for those who reprint it.
   
   
4. Offer Publishers A Monetary Incentive
   
   Give people an incentive to publish your article. I have an affiliate program and I allow publishers to use their affiliate link for my ezine in the resource box.
   
   Allow publishers to earn by publishing your article and they will gladly reprint it.
   
   
5. Write An Article Series
   
   Break up a long article or report into a series of articles like I did with my "Marketing With Blogs" series here.
   
   Marketing With Blogs - Part 1, 2, 3 and 4
   http://www.blog-maniac.com/marketing-with-blogs1.htm
   http://www.blog-maniac.com/marketing-with-blogs2.htm
   http://www.blog-maniac.com/marketing-with-blogs3.htm
   http://www.blog-maniac.com/marketing-with-blogs4.htm
   
   These gave me 5270 links back in all. As you can see, a series of articles can be a very powerful link-building technique.
   
   
6. Distribute Your Article Widely
   
   Ensure that your article is distributed to the best and most appropriate article directories and announcement lists online.

Feel free to browse through my own collection of article directories and announcement lists
http://ebizwhiz-publishing.com/write-articles/submit-articles.htm



Priya Shah is the CEO of "http://www.ebrand360.com". She writes the "http://www.marketingslave.com"and publishes an "http://www.ebizwhiz.biz" internet marketing newsletter