Writing and distributing articles is an extremely effective way of generating leads and building your business. Article marketing is a term that means that you write articles on topics that your target market is interested in and submit them online to search engines. When people search for advice or information online regarding your topic, a link to your article will pop up. If you are already writing articles for your ezine, you can easily leverage your work by submitting your articles online.

Here’s how it works:

1. Write an article on a topic your target market commonly has questions about.
2. Submit your article online through an article submission resource such as SubmitYOURArticle.com
3. When someone enters search terms (words that you use in your article) into a search engine like Google or Yahoo, a link to your article pops up.
4. Readers click on your article and receive the information they need directly from you – the expert!
5. Your target market is introduced to you through your article. Then they read your “resource box” at the end of your articles that leads them to your web site, where they can subscribe to your ezine and receive your special report. (See below for my resource box and feel free to model it for your articles.)
6. Bingo! You have another warm lead added to your ezine subscription list!

This is a very powerful marketing strategy, but it is time consuming to submit articles to many different directories. To bypass that time consuming task, I recommend SubmitYOURArticle.com as an article submission service. It costs less than $40 a month. If you do not use a submission service, you will want to hire a Virtual Assistant to submit articles for you because it’s quite time consuming. There are many free article submission sites that your Virtual Assistant can submit your articles to, but do your due diligence so you know if your time is well spent with their service.

Also, don’t forget that many traditional newspapers and magazines look for articles as well! I’ve had articles published in trade magazines also. Think about local newspapers that accept articles from the community. In fact, if you can become a guest columnist, go for it! You’re the expert, so showcase your expertise!

© 2009-2010 Meredith Liepelt, Rich Life Marketing

Meredith Liepelt, President of Rich Life Marketing, offers a free report called “101 Ways to Attract Ideal Clients, Build Your List and Raise Your Profile,” which can be downloaded immediately at www.RichLifeMarketing.com.