Writing for Social Marketing
Social marketing through articles is an excellent strategy to drive traffic to your site and build your brand image. I love to write. I never thought of myself as a writer before but over the last few years I’ve become more open with this creative side of me. My downfall? Grammar and spelling! It was this area of my writing that always held me back. I over came it when I found I could actually have someone proof read and correct these errors without losing my personal voice in the writing. This was tremendously freeing. The learning curve didn’t stop there for me. I realized there were a few critical pieces that I needed to keep in mind when writing my articles and blogs and that is social media!
Lessons Learned
My lessons are still happening, my writing is still improving but I have learned quite a bit and I thought I would share a few of the tips that helped me out along the way.
First Lesson
Your articles must be relevant, informational and interesting. The better the quality of your article, the more its chances of being bookmarked are. Finding a place on social bookmarking sites can help you direct more traffic to your business website.
Second Lesson
Choose relevant niche area keywords instead of generic ones and write your articles around them. For instance, if you run an online gadget store, you may find keywords like blackberry phones, iPhone covers, iPod accessories, etc, useful. The advantage of using such niche keywords is that your article will have to compete with fewer articles for search engine attention.
Remember SEO doesn’t end with what your title is or what the URL of the article is. These days, search engines are scanning the content to make sure the actual writing is consistent with the title and URL. As well, your articles must be Search Engine Optimized, this means that the keyword density must be appropriate and the articles should be properly tagged.
Third Lesson
Post your articles to the popular article directories and on platforms relevant to your area of work. Article directories like E-zines for example are quite popular among search engines, posting your articles on such directories can therefore help you grab more eyeballs, improve your chances of people clicking back through to your site.
Fourth Lesson
This is a big one … Your articles can not sound overtly promotional. Ideally, you can embed a link leading to your main website at the bottom of the page or hyperlink some relevant keywords to you business website. The idea is to market yourself subtly and build your brand image as an expert in your niche area. Remember that an article is very different from an advertisement. While an advertisement is meant to entice people to buy a product or service, an article is a more subtle marketing tool that is used to educate readers and build a more direct rapport with them.
Final Lesson
For you advanced writers … Establish a link wheel. A link wheel is a social marketing strategy referring to writing several articles each related to the other with links to the main website. For example, let’s say you run a travel website; you can build a link wheel of articles describing different attractions of a certain state and link them all to your main website. This, however, is a theoretical example; in real life marketers establish a web of link wheels, with each wheel containing a minimum of 5 articles.
One of the key strategies behind embracing the concept of article marketing is you are reaching out to your target market or demographic by educating them. People always have a desire to learn something new that is relevant in their lives and that is applicable immediately. The added bonus is it is also a simple and cost-effective marketing strategy. Keeping in the mind the key points listed above. And you may have just found yourself a new, enjoyable and creative form of marketing and branding yourself.
Share in the SpringBoard group your social marketing tips. We would love to hear and learn from you.
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