One of my first business ventures on the Internet was an Oldies radio station that was started with a childhood friend of mine. While he was the expert on the music, my role consisted of public relations and internet marketing. Through trial and error, I discovered that one of the most effective ways to build traffic to our site was by writing short articles about music and other topics related to our business and marketing them through various article directories. This article takes a look at article marketing, and shows why this could be a great choice for you in marketing your business.

In simple terms, Article Marketing is the process of getting your article in as many places on the Internet as possible. While there are numerous ways to accomplish this, one of the most effective is through the submission of an article to Article Directories. The reason this arrangement works so well is because Newsletter and Ezine publishers, website owners, and other interested parties are always looking for new content to post on their sites, and the first place many of them turn to find this information is Article Directories. As a writer, your task is to provide the information that these people need, and in exchange you receive backlinks and traffic to your site. The more places that your articles appear, the more traffic you receive. While this process is commonly referred to as Viral Marketing, I like to call it magic, because once it's started, it's nearly impossible to stop.

When it comes to writing and distributing articles, there are a couple schools of thought. The one says that you should pump out as many articles as possible even employing what they call 'ghost writers' to write articles that you can use. With this method, quantity trumps quality, and your main concern is getting as many articles and backlinks out as quickly as possible. The other approach is to write your own quality articles which attract newsletter publishers, ezine operators and others. While only you can decide what is the best approach to use, I would add that writing your own articles gives you complete control over the content, and allows you to place your name on an article that expresses your own unique thoughts and knowledge.

Once you have completed an article, you then need to distribute it to the Article Directories. What are some of your options in trying to achieve this?

1. Submitting Your Article Manually

This is the most time consuming and tedious method of all, and if you're not careful, you'll spend more time submitting your articles to directories than writing them. While there are literally thousands of article directories on the Internet, my suggestion is to focus on the major directories; the one's with the largest readership base. You can find out which one's are the most popular by simply doing a search with the words, 'best article directories'. While space prohibits me from listing them all, some that I consider must do are 'Ezine Articles', 'Go Articles', 'Article Dashboard', Idea Marketers', SearchWarp' and 'ArticlesBase'.

2. Using Article Submission Software

Article Submission Software is supposed to automate many of the functions of article submission such as filling in forms. etc. My experience however with this type of software left a lot to be desired. A few of the problems that I encountered with it were having numerous sites listed in their directory that were no longer in business, many sites not loading, and having your articles submitted in the wrong categories. In the end, I had to go back and 'cut and paste' most of my articles into the directories which sort of defeated the whole purpose of why I purchased the software in the first place. While I would imagine that there are in fact article submission software that actually does what it claims, I would urge diligent research before purchasing this type of software.

3. Article Submission Services

Another option that you can use to distribute your articles is Article Submission Services. The reasoning behind using a article submission service is that you will get your articles distributed much faster because of their large network of contacts such as Newsletter and Ezine publishers. As mentioned previously, these publishers are looking for valuable content and they rely upon places such as submission services to obtain it. It's a real win-win situation for all concerned. I currently use a submission service and it seems to working very well for me in that I have noticed a big increase in my backlinks since I started using them. If you are a busy person(who isn't)this might be a good option for you.

Article marketing can be a great way to get the word out about yourself and your business. While there are several ways to accomplish this, by consistently submitting your articles to various article directories, you will see an increase in your traffic, and most likely your profits.