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The Most Effective
Technique for Small
Business Visibility Online
by Mike Banks
Valentine
It is extremely
effective to write articles for distribution.
This is the method that has brought more traffic and
more
sales for WebSite101 than any other technique. It
always
leads to ezine subscriptions, which then lead to
more sales,
more and better advertising in the my own Reading
List and
more exposure. It is a self-feeding loop that grows
your
business non-stop.
If I were to stop writing articles and submitting them to
other publishers, my advertising costs would
skyrocket in
order to maintain the same exposure and visibility
for
WebSite101. Having articles accepted by large
circulation
ezines and published on high traffic web sites is of
far
more value than having an ad appear below the
article.
Subscribers of ezines may look at those ads, but they
are reading the articles far more often than the ads!
There is another method rarely used by website owners
that is very effective as well -- Participation in
discussion lists targeted to your peers! It is inevitable
that each web business owner will have their own ezine
because it is such a well recognized method of
establishing
a relationship with web site visitors and
*maintaining*
a relationship with customers and clients.
Your peers are always looking for content for their
ezine,
sometimes they will include an article on their
website
permanently if it deals directly with an issue of
interest
to their visitors! I have done the same with topics
of
interest to my own visitors, I have reproduced
articles
submitted by my peers on my own site just because a
particular piece so clearly deals with matters of
importance to my site visitors. I have established
article swapping with some groups of publishers
where
we all agree to run articles by each of the others
in
a discussion list or professional organization.
Recently each of the members of Paul Seigel's
"Learning
Fountain Network" contributed both articles and
ads to
each other over several weeks to be run in the ezines
of each of the members of that organization. It
leads
to a great sort of cross-pollination of ideas and
the growth of each of our lists. Of course the main
benefit
included several new members for the Learning
Fountain
Network when readers of those lists discovered the
viewpoints of the members of LFN.
Instead of placing ads meant to distract and sell, I am
writing articles meant to instruct and entertain! They
are both means to an end, but the latter establishes
rapport and respect from the readers (ideally) while
the former interrupts and often annoys us with
hyperbole
and sales pitch. Obviously those who purchase
products
and services based on informative articles will be
far
more willing customers than those that were cajoled
and
convinced by crafty headlines in advertisements.
I'll go so far as to argue that good writing is far more
important to small web businesses than good advertising
is!
Would you rather read 500 words of reason or one
paragraph
of exaggerated claims when both serve the same end
but produce
vastly differing results?
These 500 words gain more attention than the 50 in a
carefully
crafted classified advertisement!
*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
Mike Banks Valentine operates WebSite101 Short Course,
Small
Business Internet Tutorial mailto:website101@smartb
otpro.net
Join the WebSite101 "Reading List" Small
Business Web Marketing
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