If there has been one thing that has contributed to the success my business it is article marketing and blogging. I got into it all by chance.
About two years ago a competitor wrote a nasty email to me accusing me of steeling the product photos from his website. He actually had a point but I had not been steeling them directly – the SEO (search engine optimisation) firm I was using at the time, based in India had been taking his photos and placing them on my site without my knowledge.
I work in the promotional gift industry and the competitor in question had a site that was ranking number one on Google for all of the top keywords. My site seemed to be non-existent. In fact I am surprised he found it to complain in the first place.
Out of pure frustration with my naivety about SEO and being accused of being a promotional products photo thief, I decided to do something about it.
I started researching the complaining competitor and soon found that he had written over a thousand articles about promotional products and the promotional gifts industry. In fact his company had two other sites called by different company names and articles were being written on their behalf as well by other employees of the company.
Many of the articles had been submitted to top article distribution website EzineArticles and I soon learned that other people in the promotional gifts industry all over the world were using article marketing to build their brand and increase their sales.
Some articles were very well written while others were not brilliant but they all had one thing in common – they were trying to share their knowledge about promotional gifts through their own words.
I have never won any awards for my writing nor will I. But I was excited about the possibilities of article marketing. At that time, I had not written anything other than the odd letter in years. I didn’t know where to start. All I knew was that I had to start writing!
My first article ‘Promotional Pens – Advice on How to Source Corporate Pens in a Hurry – Printed Pens Fast’ was hardly a Hemingway masterpiece but it was a start.
I submitted it to EzineArticles to see if it would be accepted. I waited five days for their answer trying to put it out of my mind. What if it was rejected? What would I do then? Am I finished?
On the fifth day I received news that my article had been published and I was over the moon.
I would like to make a very important point to all of you new writers out there that to date I have written and had published over 1100 articles at EzineArticles but it has not always been smooth sailing. I have had my share of articles rejected.
My initial fear or rejection was unfounded. There are plenty of article submission sites where you can submit your articles without ever being read by the publisher but EzineArticles tries to ensure that the articles they publish are worth reading.
At EzineArticles your article will be read by two professional editors before being published. Over the past two years many of my articles have been rejected for this or that reason but this has helped me improve my writing. I took their suggestions on board, made the required changes and resubmitted the articles for approval. It’s like having your own article writing coach.
The way we promote our businesses if changing. Old style interruption based advertising such as telemarketing are on their way out and nicer, more people friendly ways of promoting your business are thankfully on their way in. I don’t need to resort to such tactics as having someone who knows nothing about my business phone other businesses trying to promote my products.
My business is found easily daily by people who require one or more of the hundreds of promotional products my company supplies. At first they found me through my articles but now I am being found through my blogs daily blogs as well which I write daily about not only products but case studies on how promotional products can be successfully used.
If the truth be known, I didn’t know what a blog was when I started article marketing. In fact, they are really the same thing. Blogs are often much shorter but mine are not. I actually publish my blogs on my site and then later with a few minor changes publish them on article submission sites like EzineArticles.
I think the best way to explain how important blogging and article marketing are to the success of a company is to look at it like that much loved superhero TV series of the 60s, Batman. Content – that’s what you write – is Batman. Links – what used to matter a lot more in how you rank in the search engines is Robin.
Links ‘Robin’ are still important but Content ‘Batman’ owns the keys to the Batcave and all the great things that go with it.
I write blogposts about all of the promotional products I sell and each time I do, my site ranks a little higher for some of the keywords I use regularly. If I want to rank high for a certain keyword phrase such as ‘Promotional Koziol desktop gifts’ – Koziol is a popular brand of desktop promotional products – then I write ten to 20 articles about Koziol promotional products.
I wrote a series about promotional farm animal shaped stress balls and voila… we started receiving enquiries from people looking for cow shaped stress balls, bull shaped stress balls, horse shaped stress balls and more!
Put simply, this writing thing works to attract the people who need your products and/or services when they need your products and/or services!
You can do this too.
Give it a try and let me know how you get on. If you have any questions, I am just a mouse click away.
By Dan Toombs
