Remembering That Your Audience Is Real

Diner
Originally uploaded by country_boy_shane

I saw Kristin Gorski from Write Now Is Good relating a story that she'd heard a friend re-tell her (seems like this is one of those stories that gets told and retold, and no one is really sure where it originally came from!) She says:

A family sits down in a restaurant and starts to look at their menus. After a few minutes, the waitress comes over and first takes the parents' orders. She then turns to the little boy.

"And what would you like?" she says.

"A hot dog," he says.

The father looks at the son and then says to the waitress, "He'll have the roast chicken."

The waitress then turns back to the little boy. "And what would you like with your hot dog?"

"French fries," he says, quietly, looking sheepishly at his father.

The father states, "No, he'll have the rice and broccoli."

The waitress, writing nothing down, then turns back to the boy. "And what would you like to drink?"

"Chocolate milk," the boy says.

"He'll have the plain milk," says the father, looking directly at the waitress.

"Alright. That'll be a hot dog, french fries, and chocolate milk for the little mister," the waitress repeats back. She turns and walks towards the kitchen.

The boys turns to his mother and whispers, "She knows I'm real."

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HowTo Drive Traffic To Your Brand Spankin’ New Website

newborn shoot
Originally uploaded by CWieme

You've got a website, and it is not doing as well as you'd hoped.

You started it a couple days ago, a couple weeks ago, a couple months ago, or even a couple years ago–and your traffic stats are looking like a flat line on a graph.

You thought that having a website would be an "if I build it, they will come" situation, like in the movie Field Of Dreams where people just showed up out of nowhere. But driving traffic to your newborn website is harder than you thought it would be.  

I think we've all been there . We've all experienced the joy of "birthing" a new website, marveling at the beautiful design and reading over and over our eloquent, clever, warm and insightful content. When we launch a new website it's a labor of love, and we have to nurture the site along so that it can move from crawling, to walking, and finally to running at a full on sprint!

But how? When you're staring at your website not knowing what in the world to do to get the ignition started, where do you begin?

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How Do I Get Started With Keyword Research?

magnetic poetry
Originally uploaded by surrealmuse

In a recent post about keywords we learned that when a website owner is determining her keywords for her website that she needs to think backwards–she needs to put herself in the place of the person who is searching for information on the topic of her website. 

If there's one thing I've learned, it's that I am not good at figuring out what someone would type into Google to reach one of my sites. I always think I know the obvious search terms that someone would use, and then I'm shocked at the simplicity of what folks actually do type in.

The lesson of the story is–it's worth it to do keyword research. You'll be creating your website keeping your keywords in mind, and also writing your articles on the topics of your keywords (and entering your keywords into the "Enter Your Article Form" on SubmitYOURArticle.com to be used in your article submissions).

So, it might be a good idea to take some time on the front end and figure out what your keywords are. But how? 

Luckily there are tools created just for this purpose. On the web there are many free keyword research resources and some that cost money. Let's look at a few:

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Reader Question: What Are Keywords?

flight attendant.
Originally uploaded by solecism

When you're entering your article into SubmitYOURArticle.com, you'll notice that there's a space where it asks you to insert your keywords.

What are keywords, you ask? Great question!

First let me tell you a story:

Once upon a time many years ago there was a major airline that wanted to drive traffic to their website. In particular, they wanted to attract people who were looking for inexpensive air travel fares. 

So, they created a gorgeous website and on appropriate pages on their website they talked about their "inexpensive air travel fares".

They thought, "Who doesn't want to travel inexpensively? Surely we will get lots of search engine traffic to our site because we've made it clear that we specialize in inexpensive air travel fares!"

But their faces fell when they saw their website traffic stats–they were hardly getting any site visitors at all, and they were extremely perplexed and disappointed.

"Why?!" they asked. "We know that oodles of people want inexpensive air travel fares, so why isn't Google sending all those people to our site?"

Then one day a wise person answered their cries of distress and confusion.

She said to them, "The reason why Google isn't sending any traffic to your website is because no one is interested in inexpensive air travel fares."

The airline people were outraged. "What?", they demanded. "Who in their right mind would prefer to pay a higher price for an airline ticket? Everyone always wants the lowest price."

"You're exactly right about that," the wise person told them. "Everyone does want the lowest cost that they can get, but there is one problem. When these people go to Google they are not searching for inexpensive air travel fares."

Intrigued, the airline people asked, "Well, then what in the world are our potential customers typing into Google?"

The wise person told them, "They're typing in the words "cheap flights"." 

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7 Great Tips for Writing Articles That Ezine Editors Want To Publish

  Eye Candy 
  Originally uploaded by [j]t

We know that having your article published on an article directory builds backlinks to your website and increases your exposure, but what are the perks of getting picked up by a publisher who puts your article in an ezine?

Well, think about it:

You reach the inboxes of a very specific target market. Most ezines are very specific in their topic and target market, so if your article is picked up for publication by an ezine you have the opportunity for your article to be emailed directly to people who are interested in what you're writing about (now that's a plus!).

You can reach people you might not normally come into contact with. People who read your article in an ezine did not have to do a search for your article topic in Google–they simply subscribed to a particular newsletter and then the newsletter containing your article showed up in their inbox. The reader did no work to find your article other than subscribing to the newsletter.

They can bring a dramatic surge of immediate traffic. Publication in a major ezine can bring a surge of traffic over a few days. Of course every time your article is picked up by an ezine editor your resource box is included along with a link back to your website. It depends on how big the ezine editors list is (it could be 50 people, or it could be 50,000) as to how much traffic publication in an ezine can bring, but even if the ezine subscriber base is on the small side, it's still exposure to a targeted readership, and every little bit counts!

Your article gets spotlighted attention. Most ezines are limited in length–they don't run on and on with hundreds of articles. Usually there are just a few articles in the ezine, so if your article is chosen to appear in an email newsletter you are pretty much getting the undivided attention of whoever is on that email list.

So, we know it's a cool thing to have your article be chosen to appear as article in an ezine, but is there anything you can do to increase your odds of being chosen?

Yes! Some of these tips may sound obvious, but I see a gazillion articles every day, and you'd be surprised how many folks write in such a way that their articles will almost assuredly not be desirable to an ezine editor. 

These are tiny, doable tricks, but if you follow them your article will stand out and you'll increase the odds that an ezine editor will want to publish it:

Read more… | Article Submission Service (SubmitYOURArticle.com)

What do the “EasyPublish” and “Content Feed” stats mean?

One of the funnest things for me after I publish an article is looking on our article directory and watching the stats change for my article.

I know, that might now sound like "fun" to some folks, but when you've spent hours working on an article it's like immediate gratification to see that people are viewing your article and picking it up for publication right off of the SubmitYOURArticle.com article directory.

Now, keep in mind, the stats on our directory only reflect the folks who are viewing and finding your article on our own directory, not every place that your article is published. Still it's gratifying to see that people are enjoying your article.

What stats can you see on our article directory?

• View

• Easy Publish

• Content Feed

What do these mean?

Read more… | Article Submission Service (SubmitYOURArticle.com)

How Do You Establish Trust Online?

  Trust 
  Originally uploaded by sujathafan

Online marketing has many perks–we can communicate with people on a global scale, reach many targeted customers very easily for a minimal price, and we also have the added bonus of being able to show our readers that we're experts in our niches (which builds customer confidence).

But one of the challenges of marketing our businesses online is figuring out how to reach through the cold, mechanical computer screen and make a real human connection, one that conveys who we are as people, not just as random, anonymous website owners.

People want to do business with people they trust. When a potential customer does a Google search for your keywords or your business or product name, they get a feel for who you are from reading your articles or looking at your website or blog or your Facebook profile.

Through getting a feel for who you are– your professionalism, your friendliness, your knowledge, your personality–they form an impression of your business. 

What can you do to establish trust online with people you may never see or meet in real life?

Read more… | Article Submission Service (SubmitYOURArticle.com)

New Feature Upgrades for SubmitYOURArticle.com!

This week we've been super busy adding some new features to a few areas of SubmitYOURArticle.com that will make it even easier for you to submit your articles. 

New Feature #1: There is now an auto-save feature, so when you are entering or editing articles the system auto-saves your article every two minutes. Now that's helpful! (Update: We're still in the process of launching this feature, but it should be ready some time next week.)

New Feature #2: We've just put in place a new feature in Article Leverage that allows you to copy down your original text into the variation boxes, where you can then quickly edit them. If you'll recall, previously you would do a manual copy and paste, so this should speed things up a lot!

Just to let you know–Each of these new features was prompted by member suggestions. We value and learn from your input!

We have a few more new feature updates on the way, so stay tuned…

Oh, and if you aren't a member of SubmitYOURArticle.com yet, and you'd like to submit articles through our service, you're welcome to sign up here.

What is the best way to write articles to drive traffic back to my product website?

  for you … only the best! 
  Originally uploaded by juntos (on and off)

That is a fabulous question, and one thing I've noticed is that people who are using article marketing to promote their product based websites encounter certain unique challenges in writing the types of non-promotional articles that quality publishes are looking for.  

First off, let's clarify what a "product based website" is.

A product based website is any website that is used primarily to sell particular pieces of merchandise. For example, let's say your website is a sales site devoted to baby clothes. That is a product based website. So is a website that is all product information and sales pages for particular brands of vitamins, or watches, or gourmet chocolates or umbrellas. 

You get the idea–if you're using article marketing to try to drive traffic back to a website that is sales oriented and that is comprised of product information and actual sales pages ("Click here to buy such and such!"), then you have yourself a product based website, and you have to be creative when writing articles to use for article marketing.

Why does having a product based website create unique challenges for a writer?

Well, there is something in us that thinks, "Hey, this is a no-brainer. If my website is trying to sell Brand XYZ of chocolate, then naturally I should write articles trying to tell people why they should buy Brand XYZ of chocolate, right?"

Read more… | Article Submission Service (SubmitYOURArticle.com)

What’s the deal with that “Bookmark” icon I see below my articles?

  bookmark (envelope challenge) 
  Originally uploaded by Tami Hartley

 Ahh, so you've noticed that when you look at your articles on our article directory that there is a cute little icon that says "Bookmark" on it. (You can actually see what the bookmarking icon looks like right here, because there is one beneath this post.)

This icon is referring to social bookmarking, but what is that anyway? Great question! 

Let's forget about the internet for a second–if you are reading a book and you want to stop, what do you do? You look for something (a piece of paper, a ribbon, or maybe a bona fide official bookmark that you bought at the store) to mark your place. You insert a bookmark to mark your place so you know where to start reading again.  

Then the internet was invented, and you found yourself looking at lots of content on the web rather than just in books. Some of the web pages you saw you just glanced at and passed on by, but other pieces made you say, "Hold on–this is great! I want to remember where this is for later."

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