Article Marketing In 5 Simple Steps Part 3

In the last two installments of this series, we talked about the first two steps to kick off your article marketing campaigns.

Step 1 was to identify topics that you think your target market will be interested in learning more about.

And, step 2 was to choose a title that would capture your target audiences attention and make them interested in what you have to say.

In this installment I’ll address Step 3, which is…

Step 3: Write an article that actually gives valuable insight, information or step-by-step instructions concerning the topic.

I can’t tell you how many articles I read that are flagrant advertisements for the product or service that the author is selling. Basically, they’re just glorified sales letters.

But that’s not the way to go about building trust and loyalty in your readership. The minute your reader smells a marketing rat, you’ve lost them.

People are so sensitive to detecting sales pitches that they simply turn off their attention when they realize that someone is trying to sell them something.

Use Your Article to Build a Relationship

Your article should be designed to build a relationship and start a conversation with your reader.

The best way to do this is to provide your reader with information that shares your insights on a subject that they are interested in. Alternatively, you can give them breaking news or how-to information.

Or, you can do what I’m doing in this series, which is to provide step-by-step instructions that walk them through the specifics on achieving a particular result that they want to achieve.

Providing that valuable information endears you to your reader, takes advantage of the principle of reciprocity, AND positions you as a valuable resource who has a message worth listening to.

In this age of overstimulation and information overload, the real value can frequently be simply having access to your market’s attention for long enough to deliver a message.

Give them something valuable and you will earn that attention for when you want to move from merely providing information to actually recommending that they buy something you have to sell them.

In our next intallment, we’ll talk about including a way for your readers to reach you if they want to find out more about you or see if you have any products or services to sell them.

Tags: roland frasier, e-mail marketing, niche marketing, EzineArticles.com, Ezine Articles, ezine marketing, article marketing, information marketing, Social Marketing