subject: Article Marketing: It's Not About Selling [print this page] If you're getting ready to use article marketing to promote your personal brand, you're probably thinking about the many different topics that you can write about. And you're probably also tempted to include in those articles information on all the wonderful products or services that you provide, and to try and sell them through your articles. Stop! Article marketing to promote your personal brand isn't about selling or advertising your products. It's about providing people with relative and helpful information that will make them more inclined to use you in the future when they do need a product or service that you specialize in.
When you fill an article up with too much promotional information, it comes off as being very "salesy" and it will read as a giant advertisement. This will turn people off of your articles because people aren't interested in reading advertisements while they're browsing, especially if that advertisement is between 400 - 500 words long. Instead, they're looking for helpful information that they will be able to use. There's so much information on the Internet today and if they don't get it from you, they will leave and find it somewhere else!
Because of this, any articles you're writing to promote your personal brand must contain helpful, general information about products, services, or anything else that people might need to know about. So if you run a pest control company, you may write a few articles about how to get rid of rats or mice. And if you sell television stands, you might write a few articles about the different kinds of stands and the pros and cons of each. This is valuable information that will help people with a problem, or give them more insight into something they're considering buying. And it's this kind of information that they will find useful and will take the time to read.
But this doesn't mean that you can't attach your name or your company's name to the article in any way. You are after all, writing the articles to promote your personal brand. At the bottom of the helpful article, you can include a sentence about how you are the professional in the industry and they can visit your blog or your website for more information. They'll be more inclined to visit, because you've already given them such valuable information for free; and you'll look like an expert, not a salesman.
Article marketing is about selling and promoting your personal brand. But doing so within the content of your articles is only going to turn people off of your product or service. Fill the article with useful information and at the bottom, mention that you're the expert and redirect them where to go to get more information. When it comes time for you to advertise and openly and directly sell, everyone who comes to your site after reading one of your articles will be much more open to it.
