Summer Speaker Series 2009

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Erin Blaskie’s 2009 Summer Speaker Series Interview

On June 10th, I had the opportunity to be one of the speakers for Erin Blaskie’s 2nd annual Summer Speaker Series for an interview entitled “Article Marketing: What You Need to Know.”

This interview was designed to be an overview of what article marketing is all about.

Listen to the interview:

[Download the MP3] (57 minutes / 19.6MB)

Sorry, there is no transcript… But, I took 45 notes:

1. To follow the discussion on Twitter, here’s the hash tag: sss09
2. To follow everyone in the discussion: @ChrisKnight @EzineArticles @ErinBlaskie @TaraKachaturoff
3. The best kind of traffic is highly pre-qualified traffic… the kind where they are already warmed up to you and your expertise because they just read your article.
4. A good reason to write & submit articles to EzineArticles is because you want to build your platform of people who know, like and trust you.
5. Repurpose existing content you already have to create your first set of article submissions.
6. Article marketing is not a strategy to get rich overnight, but when you do it over-time, you build up a foundation of traffic that never stops coming to your website.
7. 25-250 articles is a good quantity to shoot for to start with.
8. Best article writers do it habitually… It’s part of their routine.
9. Always write in article sets of 2 or more articles at a time to save time.
10. To get started, create a Free Membership account and submit your first 10 articles.
11. Current rejection rate is 30-40% of everything submitted… but, don’t be discouraged because most members use the rejection process to learn the system.
12. Massive action is way more important than perfect article submissions.
13. Get free article writing & marketing training here.
14. Each article submission is reviewed by 2 humans on our team.
15. After your article is submitted it’s reviewed by the first editor. Then it’s reviewed a second time by a QC editor before it’s published.
16. 400-5000 words is our allowed word-count range, but 400-800 words is the ‘sweet spot’.
17. One of our primary goals is to be your highest non-search engine referrer of free traffic back to your website!
18. Article title will determine up to 95% of the success of your article.
• Include a primary keyword hook and a secondary hook.
• Article titles can be up to 100 characters long.
• Don’t be cute or do a ‘play on words’… Be blunt.
• Your article title is a PROMISE. We then check to see if you delivered on the promise in the article body.
• Your article title should make English sense… shoot for 60% natural human language and 40% keyword efficiency.
19. Don’t write highly/overly keyword dense articles. ie: Don’t repeat the same keyword more than once or twice per 100 words.
20. Article Body is the Give;
    Resource Box is the Take.
21. Keep “sales pitches” in the Resource Box.
22. Don’t include every expertise or every item in your resume in your Resource Box. Also don’t include every website you own.
23. Basic-Platinum members can have up to 3 Resource Boxes that we database for you to save time. Premium members can database up to 12 Resource Boxes.
24. While some members achieve 20-30% CTR (Click Through Rate), realistically you should expect to see 2-12% CTR.
25. Most of the top articles that achieve breakout traffic with tens of thousands of referrals from our site do so with a full http://Your-Company-Name.com/ URL in their resource box and not anchored text links.
26. Deep Linking is allowed. This is where you include a link to a specific page within your website.
27. Use the word FREE in your Resource Box. Give something away for FREE, such as a free report [related to whatever the topic of your expertise is].
28. Keep the Resource Box highly aligned with the article body content.
29. Once published, you’ll receive an email that your article was published, RSS feeds are updated (niche category rss, your expert author rss feed and widgets are all updated in real-time), permission-based email alerts are sent out to both our daily summary alerts for your article’s niche category and to any email subscribers who are fans of yours on our site.
30. Some members who are also on Twitter AND FaceBook setup their tweets to automatically be syndicated to FaceBook…further allowing our auto-tweets to make it to your FaceBook friends’ awareness.
31. Use EzineArticles.com to do research about what to write about or for someone to interview for your next info/media product.
32. Update & include your author photo and extended bio to get access to more exposure benefits.
33. Watch the Roadmap to Platinum video or read the PDF.
34. Platinum members get a free limited-edition mug & International new Platinum authors get a care package that includes a mouse pad, pen, notepad & stickers. Be sure to update your postal address.
35. Head of the Long Tail gets the most traffic, yet also the most content market supply. Mid to long tail gets less traffic, but the market supply is lower and thus your chances of getting high rank & exposure is better.
36. 25-40% of your articles should target the HEAD of the Long Tail.
37. Article quality without quantity means you’ll achieve very little success. You must find a way to reach a high QUANTITY of articles that are unique/high-quality.
38. Because you don’t just advertise your business once a year, why would you only write articles once a year? No… instead, write & submit daily, weekly or bi-weekly.
39. Don’t worry about losing sales by giving away all of your expertise via short/informative articles. It isn’t possible to give away all of your expertise anyway in 400-800 words.
40. When you submit to us, your articles do not have to be exclusive to EzineArticles.com; but it does need to be exclusive to your name. That means, we should not find your article submission on any other website in the world under someone else’s name or no name.
41. Should you submit 1 article to 200 articles to one site or 200 articles to 1 site? Obviously I’m biased that you should submit 200 articles to EzineArticles.com because I’m not certain you can find 200 other sites you can trust.
42. We’re very efficient at keeping regurgitated/rehashed garbage (a.k.a. ‘article vomit’) off of our site, so don’t use software article rewriters.
43. Keep writing, don’t stop, don’t worry about perfection, focus on continuous improvement.
44. Lastly, get big or get out. That means focus on dominating your niche by being the expert author who writes & submits the most articles that each share slivers of your expertise.

Okay, it’s your turn. What did you discover/learn from this interview & what can you apply to your article writing & marketing strategy?

Posted by Christopher M. Knight on June 16, 2009 at 3:08 pm | 6,640 views