Internet Marketing 101

Two Of The Most Effective Online Marketing Tools

Summary: Writing articles and participating in online forums are the two most effective online marketing tools that a person promoting a business can do, as they are free, giving the most bang for the buck, and are one of the fastest ways to become recognized as an expert and establish credibility in marketing oneself, which is a precursor to marketing anything else.

Article Writing As A Marketing Tool

Whether you are targeting a niche market or a wider more general audience, one of the most effective tools to reach those interested in what you have to offer is writing and submitting articles concerning your particular craft. Article marketing is a great way for the average person to do some great things with their marketing efforts. One of the reasons it is so effective is that it allows the marketer to truly project the writer’s own business ideas, values, and expectations into the article itself giving the reader a real sense of the writers character thus establishing an immediate bond or sense of trust and instills confidence in the reader for the writer, product and or service. At the same time, it can also reveal character flaws in writers of poorly written articles. The fakes will eventually make themselves known. Anyone who knows something and can write, or even pay someone to write for them can use articles to their advantage. Here are a few tips in writing an article that will attract the most readers.

It will help your sales if you keep your articles short and to the point, as the cliché goes, long enough to cover the subject but short enough to keep it interesting. 500 to 750 words is long enough to give your readers information they can use and implement instantly and still be short enough not to bore them.

When people read articles they want information that they can put to use immediately. I've found that if you're targeting the Internet Marketing niche, you'll find your articles will get a better response and you will make more sales if you give people a plan they can use to make money from your article. If your writing the article for a niche market you want to sell to, tell them the benefits of your items and how the readers can use or apply them to make their lives easier, get things done faster, or whatever it is your items do.
One of the most important parts to your article is your article title; it can make or break your article. Describe in your article title what the article is about or what information it will disclose. Example, if your writing about how to prepare good quality and quick after work meals, you might compose a title such as “5 Easy And Delicious After Work Meals You Can Fix This Week” Not perfect but you get the idea.

Article writing works as a very effective online marketing tool because it goes hand in hand with learning to market yourself as your primary product rather than focusing entirely on a particular business or program.

To help you along with your own efforts with articles here's a fewe resources I highly recommend:

*ArticleBuilder.Net A very useful article building tool to help in the formulation and mental stimulation for ideas and the actual creation of the article. It has a very large database of articles to draw from.

*ArticleMarketer.com A very useful service that will submit your article to 30,000 publishers

* EzineArticles.com Hands down the best directory to submit your articles to for maximum exposure. Pretty strict "quality" policy too so once you're in; you gain some instant credibility. But you have to live up to it with each subsequent submission too...plus I'm listed as an Expert Author. Sweet!

The Value Of Forums As A Marketing Tool

Another extremely effective online marketing tool is the use of online business or general information forums. Simply put, recognition as an expert in your field leads to acceptance and respect which in turn leads to Sales! One of the fastest ways to become recognized as an expert is to offer helpful and valuable posts on a regular basis in forums where your target market or audience gather.

A forum is an online community for discussion among Internet users, used by some of the best Internet marketers in the world. It is also a training ground for the up and coming. It is a place to share ideas, find answers, solve problems, make friends, and develop partnerships. It is also a support system or resource for most any business, on or offline.

It is no secret, but takes some longer to learn than others, that to be successful you must market yourself first. Forums are the perfect place to promote yourself and your business. By adding value to discussions, you are promoting yourself as an expert in your field, gaining recognition. There is a legend in most forums that the more posts you have, the more money you make online. By becoming an active contributor to forums, you gain recognition, and people pay more attention to your posts.

Search “forum” plus the topic of your choice using Google or AltaVista to find a whole list of forums available. You may also contact some of the professional organizations in your trade to see if they have a forum.

Posting to many forums can be a little tedious if you have to log in and browse through your previous postings or find new topics you can respond to. I recommend an automated posting package or software to enable multiple thread tracking. This will speed up the task of message posting and an unlimited number of forums while managing multiple conversation threads. You can automatically track all replies and organize them as you continue to respond and post to multiple forums. I am sure there are many to choose from but I use and recommend Forum Fortune as the submitter of choice.