How Online Articles Can Bring More Customers // Dream Seed Multimedia, Lancaster, PA

How Online Articles Can Bring More Customers

Written by Adam J. Barkafski Added: 01 November 2010

Article writing can be a great tool to reach more potential customers, market your business, boost website traffic, and improve your standing as an expert in the field. Any business owner or nonprofit manager can harness an article’s power to bring about these positive changes for their organization.

Write your article.

It goes without saying that, first, you need to write an article. If you’re stuck developing ideas, think about what you know, what you find yourself frequently telling customers, what you wish customers would know, and what pieces of information you can “give away” that feel like gold to a customer but don’t take any business away from you.

If you think you can’t write, try it anyway. Most people underestimate their writing skills. With practice, you’ll probably write articles faster than you ever thought you could. However, consider hiring a freelance writer if you feel you just don’t have the time or skill to write. These professionals are used to writing good articles on a variety of subjects.

Revise and edit.

Before you publish, be sure that your article is ready to go. Read it over several times, looking for grammar and spelling errors as well as to see if it is well organized, focused on one topic, and has comprehensible explanations and examples. I highly recommend that you also ask a few other people to read it over, too. Outside views can reveal a lot of great tips!

Prepare it for the web.

To really take advantage of what the web can offer, make sure that your article is ready for electronic publishing. Do your title and headings have carefully chosen keywords and phrases? Are these keywords also in the text? Do you have a meta description written that’s a short, keyword-rich summary of your article? Remember, if you want search engines to send visitors to your site, you need to have specific and targeted keywords and phrases to be placed in search results.

Publish…and publicize.

After your article is written, reviewed, and prepared for search engines, it’s time to publish. Add the article to your website so that it can get indexed by search engines. Make sure that it is easily accessible so that visitors to your site can find it. But don’t stop there.

If you have an established email newsletter base, send out the first paragraph or so of your article as a teaser. Make sure there’s a link to the article so that readers can click to finish reading. This gives people a reason to visit your site.

You also want to share an appetizing blurb and a link to your article via any social media sites you are part of, such as Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn. Not only does this accomplish the goal of attracting visitors to your website, it also encourages others in your social network to pass along and comment on your article link. This is a great example of how social media can help market your business!

To push social media a little further, use easy methods for visitors to link to social media sites. You’ve probably seen little icons on web pages that allow someone to share a page with Facebook, Digg, Delicious, or more. Those are just one way to encourage social sharing of your article. Make it easy for others to pass along your work, thereby increasing your exposure!

Article writing can be a win-win situation for you and your customers. You get positive publicity, website traffic, potential customers, and standing as an expert, and your customers get helpful information that they find useful.

Category: Writing Tips