Article marketing guide -Introduction

When you first get the idea to make some money online by promoting your product or you become an affiliate for selling other people’s products it is very nice idea but it can be very frustrating too because of the information overload. You go and search the net for what is the best and easiest way to promote your product to make some money as quickly as possible and frankly there are so many ways you can go that you can get lost and even discouraged.

I always say and it is also proven that the best way for you to start is to do article marketing because it is pretty easy and it doesn’t really cost you anything. All it takes it’s time and lot of patience. Yes patience too. You have to understand that it doesn’t take one or just a couple articles for you to drive some traffic to your site and make some sales. So many people start with article marketing and they quit because they don’t see any result after couple of days and one or two articles they wrote.

It takes time. It is a long term strategy and believe me it works. The traffic will come and so are the sales. You will never learn how to get traffic that you want if you bounce around from article marketing guide to social networking guide and so on. Pick one and stick with it. Don’t worry about making mistakes because you will make them but you will also learn from them.

If you want to save your time money and energy don’t scatter your focus and learn to master one traffic source at a time and when you master it then you move to the next. Again it takes time for you to see that what you are doing right now is working and you will also learn what is not working.

As an internet marketer you want to learn the skills and use them to drive traffic to your site the most effective way and you can get my FREE article marketing guide to learn how.

This article from the Affiliate Marketing Guide is going to take you through the importance of keywords, and how to develop a strategy that will optimise everything you do to ensure that you are attracting as much free traffic from the search engines as possible.

Let me say first of all, that, starting out the whole concept around keywords seems like a black science – at least that is what it seemed to me! However, once you get it clear in your head then it is simply a matter of following a process!

Very simply put, keywords are those words or phrases (also known as long tail keywords) that people type into search engines on the internet to find some answers to questions they have. The challenge is to find those keywords that you are going to focus on to get yourself on the first page of the search engines, be it Google, Yahoo or Bing, which is where you want to be.

So, what are the steps to finding the right keywords, and once found, what do you do next?

1. Find keywords. One truism I am sharing with you on this – there is no substitute for continuous digging and hard work to determine your keywords. You simply have to put the time and effort into finding the right keywords for you. There are tools that can help you enormously in this exercise. For example, Google Keyword Tool is a fantastic resource and it is free! This will help you find out how many searches are made for those keywords on a monthly basis which helps you determine how big the market is for those words or phrases. But, be warned, the more popular a keyword is, the more competition you will face to get ranking on the search engines. There are other tools that can help you dig deeper and get a better understand of the competitiveness or otherwise of these keywords. Tools like Wordtracker or Market Samurai, and there are others, are really good for this type of work, but you will have to pay for them. You can get them on a free weekly trial to have a look at to see which you like best, but after that you will be paying. This is just grunt work that has to be done and there is no quick solution. However, done properly and it is giving you a great foundation for your business.
2. Select your keywords. Once you have completed this exercise then select, say, the first 10 keywords that you are going to work on. The reason I say 10 is that you want to have a number that you are working on simultaneously so that you are driving traffic to your site, or blog, from as many different places as you can. Also, 10 is a relatively comfortable number to do a really good job on before you move on to the next batch. You will end up with a long list of keywords, but tackle them in blocks of 10 to make it manageable.
3. Develop a strategy. Once you have your list you now need to have a clear strategy and plan as to how you are going to approach this part of your business. You will hear me say this time and time again in the Affiliate Marketing Guide that maximising the opportunity that using the correct keywords offers, is a critical element in the establishment and growth of your business. So, what should be included in your strategy? The first and, to me, the easiest approach to this is to ask – how am I going to communicate with my audience? If the answer is, for example, my website, my blog, articles, videos, social media, then I must have a clear strategy for each of those and they must interlink. So, how am I going to integrate all these routes to market into one clear plan? The answer to that question will give you the strategy that is right for you.

That’s it for Part 4 of the Affiliate Marketing Guide. I am writing these articles in separate parts with 3 clear action steps in each article to enable you to build your business brick by brick rather than giving it to you all in one document, that is more likely to result in overwhelm!

Unlike big business owners, small business owners have the burden of taking care of every single aspect of their business – recruitment, marketing, finance, accounts, managing employees to managing vendors, and so forth. But here we focused only on books that can help you gain marketing knowledge and skills. Here are the top 10 books on marketing which we believe are helpful for new as well as established small business owners.

Book # 1: The New Rules of Marketing & PR – David Meerman Scott

In the new marketing scenario, the methods such as ad copy, etc. do not bring results for your business. With the popularity of smartphones and other devices and proliferation of the Internet, new methods, rules, etc. of marketing have evolved. This book discusses the importance and benefits of using such techniques.

David M Scott provides fresh examples of success from various industries and businesses across the world. He highlights the new tools and techniques that marketers should use to communicate with their buyers directly – Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and YouTube. In short, this book is a guide that offers actionable strategies and insider tips that can be implemented immediately.

Book # 2: Word of Mouth Marketing: How Smart Companies Get People Talking – Andy Sernovitz

This book by Andy Sernovitz emphasizes the use of word of mouth marketing for businesses. The book elaborates purpose of blogs, social media, viral emails, etc. – when to use them and how to make them work.

Word of mouth is an effective tool to share information quickly and easily to promote businesses. It is an effective tool that can promote your business via your customers, friends and relations.

Book # 3: Guerrilla Marketing: Easy and Inexpensive Strategies for Making Big Profits from Your Small Business – Jay Conrad Levinson

This book furnishes strategies for Internet marketing, tips on using technology like pod-casting and automated marketing, programs for targeting prospects, cultivating repeat, referral business, management lessons in the age of telecommuting and freelance employees, etc. – exclusively for small businesses.

Book # 4: Duct Tape Marketing: The World’s Most Practical Small Business Marketing Guide – John Jantsch

John Jantsch is a well-known expert in small business marketing. In the book, he discusses all the proven tools and tactics together in a step-by-step marketing system. This road map helps small business owners in knowing what they need to do to market their businesses.

Book # 5: Smarter, Faster, Cheaper: Non-Boring, Fluff-Free Strategies for Marketing and Promoting Your Business – David Siteman Garland

This book provides strategies for building, marketing and promoting businesses. These techniques are smarter, faster, cheaper and therefore save your time and money. The book is equally helpful for start-ups as well as those who are already in the market for sometime.

Book # 6: Marketing Shortcuts for the Self-Employed: Leverage Resources, Establish Online Credibility and Crush Your Competition – Patrick Schwerdtfeger

This book provides effective practical strategies and tactics – a complete tool kit to use resources sensibly, to establish online credibility. If you apply these strategies, you can get good results for your business within a brief span of time.

Book # 7: Ultimate Small Business Marketing Guide – James Stephenson

This book is an essential guide for every business owner. James Stephenson presents in this book 1500 great marketing ideas that are sure to boost your sales revenue, profits and customer loyalty and also to help you stay ahead of your competitors.

Book # 8: Web Marketing for Small Businesses: 7 Steps to Explosive Business Growth – Stephanie Diamond

Marketing for small businesses was difficult in the past. But today, it is not the case. Web marketing enables small businesses to take advantage of marketing opportunities and win new customers.

The book ‘Web Marketing for Small Businesses: 7 Steps to Explosive Business Growth’ focuses on different ways of marketing with a detailed strategy to put them into action. The main content of the book comprises checklists – niche, brand, story, search, content, social media tactics, traditional tactics and results. This book helps you implement web marketing strategies.

Book # 9: Likeable Social Media: How to Delight Your Customers, Create an Irresistible Brand, and Be Generally Amazing on Facebook – Dave Kerpen

This book is a key to unlock the door to new opportunities. It tells you about how to build brand awareness by engaging customers in social networking sites like Facebook, Twitter and other social media networking sites.

Book # 10: 500 Social Media Marketing Tips: Essential Advice, Hints and Strategy for Business: Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Google+, YouTube, Instagram, LinkedIn, and More! – Andrew Macarthy

This book is a guide to small businesses. It provides 500 social media marketing tips covering all the web’s biggest players like Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Google+, YouTube and others. These tips will help you build brand awareness in social media networks, attract and engage your customers and ultimately help you increase sales.