Article marketing is the process of writing and publishing online articles with the aim of increasing the credibility of your business, by positioning you as an expert in your field, as well as improving its search engine visibility.

As with any other advertising campaign, if you choose to use this approach it is essential to have a good marketing strategy in place. You need to take into account your objectives in using articles to market your business, decide who will actually write the articles, develop an effective resource box to disseminate your information and plan where to place the articles once they are written.

Determining your objectives.

The primary objective of article marketing is usually to increase the flow of traffic to your website. In order to do this you will need to write a great many quality articles. One or two will make little or no difference to your turnover. To meet this objective you will need to commit yourself to writing or commissioning a constant flow of articles.

Writing the articles.

If you have the time and the inclination, learning to write articles will equip you with a valuable skill. Contrary to the general assumption, while writing a best-seller might require real talent, article writing is a skill which can be learnt. The important thing is to choose a topic you understand and which is related to your business.

Your articles should be informative, interesting and concise and should be a means of presenting yourself as an expert in your field. Avoid blatantly advertising your product., which is often a turnoff for readers, and instead provide useful information on a related topic.

If you are unable or reluctant to write your own articles there are many freelance writers who can be contracted to do so. Before entrusting your reputation to another writer, however, make sure that their work is of good quality and, above all, original.

Developing your resource box.

The resource box is quite simply the short paragraph at the end of your article which contains your information. It is, however, critical to the success of your article marketing campaign and should be carefully planned.

Your planning should be done in conjunction with the guidelines of the article directory you will use as most of these limit the number of links you are able to include. At the very least your resource box should contain your name, one or two key phrases, including an incentive for readers to visit your site, and a direct hyperlink to your website. You can use the same resource box for all your articles or adapt the information to suit the topic of the article.

Any re-publication of your article should include your resource box, creating an increasing number of backlinks to your website.

Publishing your articles.

The final part of your marketing strategy is deciding where to publish your articles. The best websites, blogs or even social networks to link to are obviously those which are related to your product or service. In this way you are able to target a ready made market of interested readers.

However, there is no shortage of article distribution sites out there. Use a search engine to find the hundreds of choices available and research the more popular ones before making your decision.

Article marketing is an effective marketing strategy as a well written article has the potential to be reproduced numerous times on the internet and, as it is re-published, an increasing number of other websites are linked to yours.