Willie Crawford is a marketing consultant, promotion specialist and popular writer. His mentoring has helped hundreds build successful online businesses. Visit today and begin learning how to Really Make Money Online!
http://www.williecrawford.com/
© 2000 by Willie Crawford
In Step 1 we looked at the necessity of determining "WHY Anyone Would Want To Visit YOUR Site. In Step 2 we discussed brainstorming and planning your promotion campaign. In the next several issues, we'll examine specific elements of your campaign.
First we need to determine what promotional avenues we will use. Some of the avenues we identified in Step 2 will now need to be ruled out as impractical. This will be different for each one of us. The specific tools that we will focus on in future
issues (not necessarily in the order listed) include:
Publishing Ezine Articles
Publishing Your Own Ezine
Using Ezine Ads
Website Optimization
Search Engine Promotion
Using Pay Per Click Promotions
Using Your Stationery and Business Cards
Using Press Releases
Creating and Distributing Ebooks
Creating and Using Signature Files
Using Testimonials
Cross Promotions and Joint Ventures
Using Discussion Lists
Using Newsgroups
Using Affiliate Programs
Creating Your Own Products
Fostering Website Stickiness
Building Your List
Effective and Automated Follow-up
As we examine each of these tools, we need to meticulously track results. That is the only way that you can tell if your efforts are paying off. That is the only way to tell if you're properly using your limited resources.
Ideally, you want to get all of your campaigns running simultaneously. That's where planning comes in. As you decide which tools you are going to use, you also flow out how you are going to use these tools. Actually write it out. Then, on your
master schedule, integrate each of these tools. Look at the time and resources allocated to each part of your plan.
Let's start with ezine articles. Why would you want to spend your limited time writing and then giving away ezine articles? If your subject is specialized enough, and your writing is in sufficient demand, you can sell your material. For this series
though we are looking at giving away the material. Our ultimate purpose is to get your articles in as many places as possible. We are looking at creating as many links as possible pointing back to you and your business. These links will be
persistent and over the long-term can create thousands of pointers to you and your business. To create these thousands of links, we want to get your articles published in:
Ezines
Ebooks
Websites
Offline Publications
As you start this portion of the campaign, one essential element you will need is a publishers list. This is a list of appropriate ezine publishers in a database that you will constantly update. In this database you will need data such
as:
Ezine Name
Publishers Name
Publishers Email Address
Circulation
Publication Frequency
Submission Requirements
Do They Exchange Ads
Types of Articles Accepted
You can start building this database by visiting any of the websites scattered around the internet that catalog ezines. They usually list this type of data for ezines. You can also
build your list by writing to publishers of ezines that you currently read. Explain that you are a current subscriber, and that you are interested in their submission requirements. If
you have feedback on the ezine, provide that too. Any ezine publisher should be happy to get reader feedback, and giving the feedback may make them more likely to look at your article submissions. Keep your database up to date to prevent emailing
publishers who no longer accept articles or who have changed the theme of their publication.
The format that you build your database in depends upon the tool you will use for distributing your articles. Common formats include comma delimited fields, tab delimited fields, and pipe delimited fields. Many programs can handle any of these but
you need to look at what format you need before you start building your database. Some database management programs can also export data to files in many formats.
As you write ezine articles you have two options in distributing them. You can mass submit to publishers and announce lists, or your can submit exclusive articles to ezine publishers. If a publisher knows that he has first shot at an article he is
more likely to run it. He knows that he will be offering his readers unique content, or that he will be providing it to them FIRST.
If you are going to offer exclusive content, get an agreement that the publisher will let you know if he is NOT going to use your material. That way, you don't let a great article just sit
on the shelf. If you are going to offer exclusive articles, you also want to target the bigger ezines. You can offer to allow a publisher to be the only one to publish an exclusive article,
or you can offer him the rights to publish it first. Make sure that there is a clear understand of what you're offering.
You should write to a publisher to confirm that he accepts ezine articles prior to your first submission. This courtesy prevents you from annoying publishers who aren't interested in your work. It also alerts them to be looking for your article -
increasing the chance of them being published.
If you are going to mass submit your articles to ezine publishers, you may still want to personalize each submission. For that you can use any good email program that takes a database and personalizes. I have used WorldMerge, which sends the
mailings right from your computer's desktop. It has full personalization capabilities. I also use and recommend Mail Master Pro. This is a browser-based application that allows you to store your database on your server. The benefit of using this
application is that you can be anywhere you have internet access. I travel a lot, and often publish to my lists while on the road. I keep my updated database on disk, and load it on my server just prior to sending a mailing. This keeps my list away
from hackers and allows me to update the database offline.
With Mail Master Pro it's as simple as:
Calling up a specific page at my website
Inserting my message which I composed on my word processor
Deciding whether or not to use features such as html or
personalization
Making updates to the database
Then clicking send
Thousands of messages go out in seconds! If you'd like to check out Mail Master Pro just visit:
[http://williecrawford.com/cgi-bin/tk.cgi?mmp3]
In addition to submitting to a list of appropriate publishers (based upon the topic of the article), I also submit to a few article announce lists. These lists forward your articles to
all of their subscribers. For a list of article announce lists that you can use simply request my latest list from my autoresponder at ">mailto:announce_list@williecrawford.com>
I update this list regularly.
In our article writing campaign, you will:
1) Write a great article. Thoroughly proof-read, and properly format this article. Have a trusted friend or two look it over too. Make sure that this article is offering genuinely helpful
information. It should not just read like an ad, or have too many links to your affiliate programs. Readers of such articles see right through them and see them as sales pitches. If you want to refer them to useful resources, Great, but don't make
your entire article one long sales pitch! It will not be run. If it is run, many subscribes will just scan it, see all of the urls you're pushing, and skip right over it.
2) Craft a great resource box to place at the end of your article. What this resource box says depends upon the action you want your reader to take. Do you want him to visit your
website, sign up for your ezine or take some other action. Tell him how and why in a few lines. If your resource box is too long, many publishers may reject your article for that reason.
I mentioned tracking results earlier. If you want to track how many hits you get from running an article in a specific ezine, you can create a special url for just that resource box. Then check your server log or your statistics tracking program to
see how many hits that page received. This information would let you know if it was worthwhile to offer exclusive content to a given ezine. It may also give you some indication of the ezine's readership.
3) Build a publisher database. This database should be sortable so that you can pick and choose the publishers that you mail to. Continuously update this database. Make "update publishers database" one of the items on your weekly "To Do" list.
4) Submit your articles to your list regularly. Also post these articles on your website and/or to autoresponders. If you want others to freely use them, post a note at the bottom
stating this. Tell readers the conditions for using your articles. For example, most of my articles can freely be posted on website, in ezines, and used in ebooks. I frequently
post a note to that effect just below my resource box. Do this and you will be surprised at the number of website and ezines that will publish your work.
Properly format the article pages posted on your website and make sure the search engines can find your pages. This will cause your pages to show up in relevant keyword searches.
5) Decide how frequently you want to write and submit articles. If you submit too frequently to the same publishers you will overwhelm them. As an ezine publisher, I have days when I get 20 to 30 article submissions. I'd recommend submitting one or
two articles per month to your list. However, if your writing is top quality, you can get away with submitting more frequently since publishers are always looking for good material. Put time for writing ezine articles right into your schedule! You
need to schedule time to develop article ideas, draft articles, revise them, and then revise them some more.
Writing ezine articles will prove to be a very powerful traffic generator. By publishing your work, ezine publishers are indirectly endorsing you to their readers. If your work is helpful,
these readers will visit your website looking for more information or to examine things you recommend. Many of them will be able to see that you are an expert on a given topic. When they need more information or help on that topic, they will
naturally think of you.
Start this portion of your promotion campaign right away. It can generate traffic to your website or business almost instantly.Write a good article, submit it to your list, and you should notice an increase in traffic as soon as the article is
published. The beauty of this method though, is that the articles will continue generating traffic FOR YEARS. They will be archived in web-based ezines and on webpages where they tirelessly work at drawing in traffic.
Willie Crawford is a marketing consultant, promotion specialist and popular writer.
His mentoring has helped hundreds build successful online businesses. Visit today and begin learning how to Really Make Money Online!
http://www.williecrawford.com/