Use Article Marketing to Build Your Expert Reputation

One of the best ways to gain exposure for you and your business and influence your ideal client is to use article marketing. Article marketing is a very cost-effective promotional strategy where you write articles and publish them online via content sites with permission for others to republish your work on their blog, website or in their email newsletter. In return, you get to include a short bio and links back to your site at the end of your article.

Writing articles and having them syndicated throughout the Internet draws your prospects to your website and demonstrates your knowledge and expertise in a way other marketing techniques don’t necessarily do. A good article can convince your ideal client to check you out more, get to know you and ultimately, choose you for their business partner.

Why do you want to give people your knowledge? As a professional service business, it is very difficult for people to know how good you really are at your discipline. The more you share your knowledge, the more you help grow your reputation as an expert. When you write articles, you solidify your position as an expert problem-solver to let your ideal customer know you’re the person who will best help them solve their problems.

Major benefits of article marketing:

• Builds credibility and awareness of you, your business and your expertise, increasing the potential for your ideal client to find you. In addition, writing and publishing on the Internet opens up opportunities for you such as being selected to write a monthly column for a publication, hosting a radio show or being asked to speak at an event.
• Develops inbound links and increased traffic to your website or blog from the sites or eZines where the article is posted, increasing your search engine ranking. This is one of the most legitimate ways to acquire inbound links to your website or blog. People who read your articles eventually make their way to your blog, giving you even more readership over time.



• Helps you stay up on what is happening in your area of expertise. Everytime you write an article, research what other people are saying. Occassionally write about topics where you have limited knowledge so it forces you to learn more about it. It keeps you from growing stale.

Article marketing is a real opportunity for service professionals and entrepreneurs to gain a lot of exposure for a relatively small cost. Research services that target your market as well as the more general article distribution services such as eZine Articles or Idea Marketers.

I have several articles distributed via SalesVantage.com, a directory of sales and marketing resources, that have resulted in me getting clients as well as a monthly column in a golf publication.