Blogs, forums, and social media are great ways to build credibility with other people, and to educate others about you and what you offer.  As Jynell explained in Friday’s issue, there is a right way and a wrong way to post on blogs, forums, and social media. 
 
You first focus on adding value to the conversation, and not about what you offer.  As long as you are adding value, you can also mention your web site beneath your name to give people more info about who you are if they liked what you had to say.
 
In today’s article, I’ll share my favorite strategy for getting lots of free exposure for your business through article marketing.  With article marketing, you basically distribute articles that you write to various article directories all over the internet.
 
The great thing about article marketing is that it serves two purposes: 
 
(1) you can get human visitors who read your article on an article directory and then clicked the link you listed for more information; and
 
(2) you can help improve the ranking of your web site from the search engines, if you follow the steps that I describe herein.
 
Let’s jump right in to how you can make article marketing work for you.
 
Step 1 – Write The Article
 
You should write a high quality article that is 100-150 words.  Try and use words that the average person would understand, even without a college degree.  You should also make the article interesting, and start with a lead story that ties it all together.
 
Step 2 – Create a Title That Has Your Desired Key Words
 
Within the title of the article, make sure you include the key words that you would like to rank for in the search engines.  Let’s look at an example. 
 
Suppose you want people to find you in the search engines for the key word “start a business”.  You might want to name your article something like “The Easiest Way To Start A Business”, so it contains the key words as part of the title.  Or you might say something like “Start a Business – The Fast and Easy Way”.
 
Step 3 – Create An Author Resource Box
 
Nearly all of the article directories allow you to use an author resource box at the end of your article to tell others about you.  This is a great opportunity for you to tell others about a free report that you offer or something else that they should check out. 
 
However, there is a right way and a wrong way to use the author resource box.  Most people jump right in to talking about the author, and not about what the reader would care about.  A good author resource box is written in a way that it is just a continuation of the article above. 
 
You can certainly mention the author, but you want to do so after you have given them a compelling reason to click your link to get what you have to offer them.
 
Here’s an example of how an article could end, and how an author resource box could start:
 
----
That’s all it takes.  If you put these steps into action, you can get a lot of free traffic from article marketing for your own business.
 
For more information about article marketing and other great marketing strategies, please visit http://www.businessthrival.com.
----
 
In the above example, the “That’s all it takes” paragraph is the last paragraph of the main article, and the “For more information” is the first part of the author biography section.  But as you will notice in the above example, the author resource box is really just a continuation of the primary article. 
 
You can certainly add more details about the author if you prefer, but the key point is to get the person to take the action that you want and visit your web site to opt-in for something of value so you can continue to communicate with them. 
 
That’s why it is so important to write the author resource box in a way that focuses on getting them to take the action and visit your site.
 
Note in the above example how I also included one anchor text URL (with the clickable link behind the word “marketing strategies”), and one textual URL. 
 
The reason for specifying at least one anchor text URL and one textual URL is that some article directories will allow you to use anchor text, and others won’t.  This ensures that the person reading your article will see at least one clickable link.
 
Step 4 – Write Multiple Variations Of The Same Article
 
In order to get the most exposure from your articles, it’s generally a good idea to write up to 5 variations of the same article, or to at least re-write the first 4-5 paragraphs 5 times.  This gives you several unique combinations of articles that you can distribute all over the Internet to different article directories, or have an automated software program do for you.
 
Here’s the process that I personally use.  I write 5 different versions of each article.  To do so, I simply paste my original article into an Excel spreadsheet.  Each paragraph is contained in a different cell.  I then start with the first paragraph, and re-write that paragraph 4 additional times, so there will be 5 total.  I then repeat this for each of the paragraphs.
 
I then use an automated tool such as Unique Article Wizard to distribute the articles to hundreds of article directories programmatically, as I describe in more detail in the next step.
 
Step 5 – Distribute Your Articles
 
In the final step, you distribute your articles to the various article directories, such as eZineArticles.com.  I personally prefer to use an automated tool that can submit articles to hundreds of article directories over a period of time, so it appears more natural.
 
If you created the 5 versions of the article like I suggested, you can easily use a tool such as Unique Article Wizard to load up each variation of your article.  Unique Article Wizard is able to create hundreds of unique articles from just the 5 that you created.  You can then specify to have the articles distributed to just 10-20 directories per day, so that it looks very natural.
 
If you prefer, you can also open accounts with the most popular article directories, and just upload unique versions of your article manually.
 
There are numerous other ways to effectively use article marketing for free advertising, but these are the steps that have worked best for me.

By Denise Gosnell: link to original story........