How To Win Clients And Influence Markets with Article Marketing

Get Rid of the Hidden Mystery behind Article Marketing.

As one of the most-used tactics in all of the web business, article marketing reigns supreme as the king of all marketing techniques. If you notice, even Google does better via text than they do with pictures. There's just something about quality content that really helps a business thrive. If you want your business to thrive through article marketing, pay attention to this article.

Whilst writing about products you are selling positioned the key phrases away and simply flow for a valid description. You could constantly tag the web page with a keyword for SEO purposes; however, your customers want to observe real information approximately the product. They want to recognize if it is nicely worth purchasing for, and seeing a poorly written, keyword-crammed fluff piece goes to turn them off.

Make certain your articles are enormously nice. If you have quite some typos, spelling mistakes, or grammatical mistakes, you are making your self-appear to be a beginner. People may not take you critically and they will avoid all your articles. The identical is actual when you have wrong facts or misinform your readers.

Continue to regularly post new articles. Your content is re-indexed on a predetermined schedule by search-engine bots. By keeping your content new and fresh, the search engines pick up on the new content and index your information more; this will get more readers your way.

Work on your writing. Consider your writing ability to be a skill that you can improve upon. The more you work on honing your article writing, the happier your readers will be with the results. Practice writing about things you will not be publishing to keep up with your new talents.

Following the tips you've just learned in the above article will help your business to not only survive on the web but also thrive amidst the thick and thorough competition out there. If you can keep busy and keep learning useful information to implement, you can beat your competitors and take control of your respective niche market.

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Tactics and Tips for Marketing B2B Services

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Selling Your Services

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An intensive training session presenting a proven Five-Step Service Selling Process' forgetting more clients to hire you or your firm.https://copywritersforums.com/blog/selling-your-services/

Writing News releases For Fiction Books

What a great string of posts. Sid Jackson asked: 

How do you make "news" with a book of fiction? 

How do you write news releases for fiction books? 

What a wonderful and important question. This post is excellent and I agree with the ideas that news releases should be different for feature editors and book review editors, and different again for radio and TV vs. print. 

I think the range of possible answers is vast, although a number of clear patterns emerge when one studies the American media. Which approach will work best for you will depend on which media you are aiming at and what you have to offer. 

Like everything else in life, to me there is no right answer, there is only the journey. And I believe that this particular journey will be different for each person who travels down the path. The destinations will be varied and endless. So I'm going to talk about the journey. 

Regardless of whether you write a non-fiction or fiction book, I think it is critical for anyone acting as a publicist to understand that when they send a news release they are asking for space (or air time for radio and TV), from a "fellow publisher" , albeit a highly successful one. 

Media are businesses that are based on subscriptions and advertising revenue in the case of print, or primarily advertising or donations in the case of radio and tv. 

They make all their content-based decisions based on their ever changing ideas of what their audience wants the most and likes the best, all to achieve financial success in their businesses. 

Their survival depends on their choice of information of interest to their particular audience. The better choices they make, the more money they make. 

Print media publish newspapers and magazines and look for information. Day to day they will use the best information available for their particular subscribers. Their subscribers pay them to publish information in a particular way or on a particular subject. 

Radio and TV are audio and visual entertainment media, so they look for the best entertainment. 

The producers compare what's available day after day and make decisions to use the best entertainment they can find based on their perceived understanding of what their particular audience wants and needs. 

So when you pitch to media, you must cater to their specific needs. You study your target media and identify what they publish. You create a list or matrix of the identified needs, content, and style. Then you do a self-assessment, and identify what you can offer that satisfies these needs. 

When you create and pitch the content in the style that a media typically uses, you save them tremendous time and effort, and you make their decision to use your material over some one else’s much easier to make. 

You goal in crafting a news release is to out-compete all others. 

Content wise, you must remember the differences between the media: 

Print wants the best information. Radio and TV want to be told why you have the best entertainment. 

Notice the difference: To the specific information or topic is of lesser importance than it's entertainment value to the producer. Print speaks to the head. Print requires more written words -- it is intellectual and focuses on getting you to think. 

Radio and TV speak to the stomach. Radio and TV focus on provoking emotional response. They speak to your heart and soul. 

Did you know that radio provides out-pulls print and tv when it comes to motivating people? 

Did you know that more people respond to audio speech than written speech? Did you know who proved this point better than anyone else in the entire 20th Century? 

Adolph Hitler. His oratory motivated the German’s to start a World War. 

Listen carefully to the speeches given by our President’s. Look at what the powerful emotions they can evoke with very few words. The speech writers are media masters. 

Ha! I know you may get bored after a few minutes, but oh well, they are the ones who are “on the air”, so pay attention as long as you can get something out of it. 

You can learn a lot by listening to others, and paying attention to the powerful and successful people around you, especially those who are featured in the media. Study what they do. Learn what they do. 

You can modify and improve your media success by learning from the masters all around you. They are in print everywhere you look, on the radio everywhere you go, and on tv day in and day out. 

If you become a student of the media with the goal of improving your media success, you will seek to learn and apply what learn, especially if you focus on people who successfully pitched to media, and are now "on the air'. 

When you pitch to media, you must ask yourself three simple questions: 

What do they want? 

What can I offer? 

How can I present it so I can be more persuasive than others who are also vying for the space, or air time? 

So if you have a fiction book, and want to find out ways of publicizing your book, what you must do is start studying the publicity that has been acquired by other fiction book authors. 

You can once again use a technique I have described before. I call it the 3 I Technique: 

1. Identify the success stories 

2. Imitate the success stories 

3. Innovate with your own information. 

I've been criticized by some journalists for how apparently mechanical and potentially devoid of creativity this formula for success is, but believe me, it works. 

So start paying attention to what is out there. Head to the magazine rack. Open up the magazines you want to be in and identify the feature articles about fiction authors. Cut them out and create a scrap book. Then use these for ideas. 

Watch TV and listen to the radio and do the same thing. Tape the shows, watch them or listen to them several times, and learn the behaviors. 

Accumulate enough examples from your particular target media that you can craft news angles, headlines, and content in a comparable style. Then prepare your own materials using the successful models and mentors as a guide. 

There is another way to describe this process, which I get into in much more detail in my new Magic Search Word series. The process is this: 

Search, Find, Match and Apply. 


You search for the opportunity what you want. 

You find that opportunity or a place where you think the opportunity exists. 

You make sure what you can offer matches their needs. 

And then you apply for to see if you can be selected for the opportunity you identified. 

This process works as well for searching for scholarships or jobs, as it does for getting contracts, agents, publishers, or publicity. 

I will bet that if you apply these techniques, a pattern will quickly emerge from your efforts that will clearly guide you to the type of articles you will wish for. The pattern that emerges will be one that is colored by your particular set of needs and desires, and by what type of book you have written. 


The articles you find will tell you to the types of news release you will need to create to pitch this type of feature article story, or get interviews based on the themes you discover. Analyze them. Identify the content, length, style, and other characteristics of the information. Then create information about your book that parallels what you have found. 

I recommend that authors stay away from news releases that simply say "I've published a book and am marketing it....." It may get you local publicity, but you do not see too many feature articles that result in stellar book sales and movie deals. 

But if you pay attention, you'll see the types of things that turn your particular media on. 

Many of you know I've developed a secret formula for publicity success, which I developed from rigorous assessment of other people's successes with the media, is in operation everywhere you look. It goes like this: 

"Tell me a story, give me a local news angle, touch my heart (make me laugh or cry), hit me in my pocketbook, teach me something I didn't know before, astound or amaze me, make my stomach turn over, or turn me on." 

You need to do this as many times as possible in a one page news release of 400 words or less, in 30 seconds or less. 

I guarantee you that if you learn how to do this, you will succeed in getting publicity. Easily and often. 

You will still need to transmit your pitch to custom targeted media lists, but the job of writing your news release will be much simpler. You can do this one media at a time, or hundreds or thousands at a time. The reason this works is that believe it or not, media are human beings, and they tend to respond in a similar manner when stimulated appropriately. What turns one media on, is likely to turn other media on as well. 

Look at TV, listen to radio, read the newspaper. You'll see what every media in the country does! They do this repeatedly -- cover to cover, day in day out. Study what you see, listen to and read. 

They copy each other! They cover the same or similar news. 

Americans love to be entertained, they love have their heart strings tugged, they want to save or make money and they like to be turned on. Some media focus on educating, some focus on shocking, while others use sleaze and cheese. 

This tactic works for print and it works for radio and tv. It has been proven again and again, and it works very, very well, for non-fiction and for fiction books. 

In particular, pay really close attention to the leaders. USA Today, and Associated Press, Knight-Ridder, Reuter's and the other major syndicates. Look at how they feature authors, both fiction and non-fiction. 

There's only one qualification, and that is your book has to be great. Even if it is great, fiction in my opinion, is very hard to pitch via fax or e-mail, but it can be done. 

A recent success story: 

Just a few weeks ago, M.K. Fottrell had us transmit a news release titled: 

AUTHOR'S FIRST NOVEL RESONATES FOR FEBRUARY AND BEYOND The Color of Blood a Timely Choice for Black History Month -- for All 

The book is a mystery, a thriller a novel, a work of historical fiction, with social conscience. 

please place the words "MK Fottrell Release" in the subject line>. 

We sent the news release out via e-mail to 1,700 editors, and she received over 20 requests for review copies and media kits, including several from major "national" magazines of note. 

In my opinion, she hit a home run on the first try, with an e-mail news release of 465 words. Her release followed my formula pretty well. 

Or go to www.google.com, and use a search string with the words: 

"fiction books news releases" or "fiction books press releases". 

If you write romantic novels, use a search string with the words: 

"romantic novels news releases" or "romantic novels press releases". 

These searches will get you to web sites that post news releases. Some will be good, but my quick review tells me that most are not. Judge for yourself. 

I wrote an article in response to a post here about a year ago, which I will happily share, titled "Creating a USA Today Book Review News Release Using the 3 I Technique". This article does an analysis and dissection of USA Today book reviews. 

If you have a fiction book, this technique may give you some fresh new insights in to how to follow in the footsteps of those who have proceeded before you. You can adapt the technique to any media you aim at. 

Building Your Online Media Kit

What goes in an online media kit? 

An effective online media kit can be one of the most valuable media and 
marketing tools you can create on your web site. It will help persuade even the most doubtful media that you are newsworthy and have what it takes to make their day. 

These go by a variety of names these days: press room, media center, press 
releases, press center, but whatever they are called, they are the place you tell media to go upon entering your web site. 

When you send out a news release to your media, many of them will click on 
your link and come to your site. They are on a mission. They are searching for the information they need to write a feature story of some sort or an interview. 
Your job is to make their visit fruitful and productive. 

You must not only validate any claims you’ve made regarding your book, 
services or products, but you must also make it easy for the media editor or producer to find facts sufficient for them to quickly satisfy their needs. 

When it comes to the Internet, the operative word to key in on is this one: “quick”. You must make it quick as a click to get what the editor needs. 
This may be facts, bio, pictures or interview questions. It can also be 200, 400, 600, 800, 1,000, 2,000 or 5,000 word articles. 

Everything must be ready to go. Click they get it. 

The goal is to make it attractive, easy to use, and ready to go for immediate media utilization. 

An online media kit should contain the following key elements in text form: 
News releases (most recent first) 
Biography (long and short) 
Company information and statistics (long & short) 
Fact sheets (various on different topics) 
Contact information (key person, and public relations people) 
Articles 
Interview questions and answers 
Pictures of the book, product or service. 
You create what you need to make the experience successful and enjoyable. 
So you can also place other persuasive and helpful things in the online media kit: 
Links to major media articles. 
Links to other reviews 
Lists of prior interviews conducted, where, when, with producer comments or 
testimonials 
Past events 
Planned and future events 
Powerpoint Presentations 
White papers 
Case studies 
Surveys, questionnaires, results 
Graphics 
Streaming video and Multimedia files 
All this information should be kept up to date and current. The Neopets web site actually has a link off it’s press center which goes to a web site which contains the Neopets Diary of new features: 
http://www.neopets
.com/newfeatures.phtml?arr=2004-05-03 
Cool. 
You should have text materials available in html, text, and in pdf file 
formats. You should indicate your willingness get the media what they 
need, in whatever format they need it, on demand. 

What this means is that over time you may actually end up growing a press 
center and organizing it by date, by topic or by initiative. The press center may end up having several press kits in it by the end of a year, depending on how many individual initiatives you get involved in. 

Remember the goal is persuasion, so content, and quality counts. 
You goal is to have enough information readily available to supply the media with at least five completely self-sufficient, stand alone articles or story angles. You do this to allow media choice, and also to demonstrate your adaptability and the diversity of your newsworthiness. 

Photography is worth special attention. Make sure you include both black and white and low and high resolution color photography. Low resolution can be 72 dpi. High resolution should be either 300 or 600 dpi. 
You can and should offer photography in a variety of sizes, and indicate that it can be either downloaded immediately, or delivered via e-mail as zipped jpegs (up to ten MB) upon request. 

The high resolution color photography in particular will attract the most 
attention to your book, (or product or service) if it tells a human interest story, highlights a local news angle, and provokes strong deep feelings or intense desire. 

Forget the boring straight headshot. Look at those MTV video's our kids are 
watching day in and out and realize that the sexy and provocative is what 
editors and producers are looking for. 

The human body in motion is a visual experience. For many it's a visual turn on. The photography can't be boring if it is to be successful. It must sizzle. Sure sex sells. But you don't have to go there if you don't want to. You can explore the visual aspects of a book, product or service in all sorts of professional or action oriented settings. 

In one of my questionnaires to the media, high-resolution color photography 
was most often cited as the sole distinguishing feature of a press kit or media kit. It was this that got the editors attention more than any other piece of offered information. If you make the file available online, make sure you have a crisp clear picture of it for the media to see. 

Add a one line Title, which describes the photograph. 
Then write and post a 50 to 100 word descriptive caption. Make the 
description have high interest and high impact. 

Photography in your online media kit is crucial. The photographs will 
often be the single factor that stimulates editor interest and drives them to make a decision to do a feature story. 

The story is built around the picture. With your book, you can select and 
offer photography that suggests or parallels what you would like to see in a feature story. You can actually create a feature story and provide the picture that complements the story. 

With a publicity plan you could identify five or six different story angles 
and shoot a photograph to go with each one. This then fulfills your goal of having a media press center, which contains at least five, detailed, different and complete, stand alone story angles. 

Now there is no doubt a huge range of photography one can create. Pick only the best. 

There is a variety of news angles one can propose which would all be 
complemented by some type of photograph. The photography must illustrate 
something an editor or reporter can write a story about. 
The rest of your media kit must provide the text details to flesh out the 
feature or story. 
The real goal will be to decide what media you want to be in, in order to sell books, and then figure out what combination of photography and feature story material will get you publicity. Each media publication will not respond the same to each photograph or news angle. 

Women's mags will want something different than sports mags. Health and 
fitness mags will want something different than men's health. One single picture will not fit all needs of all the media. 

You obviously want to avoid being caught in a situation where the response you evoke is "Seen one, seen 'em all." 

To be successful, you'll need to be distinctive. To be distinctive you should get on the phone and call the feature, lifestyle or photography editor of each and every magazine you want to be in. 

Ask them straight out key questions like: "What can I give to you that will 
allow you to write a feature story?" and find out what sort of photography 
will be most appreciated and most readily used. Then go and get it photographed and present it back to that editor. Write the letter that says: "In response to our conversation I went and had the enclosed pictures taken". Then send them the choices along with appropriate complimentary feature story material. 

Then add them to your online press kit. Make it available to everyone else. You'll be surprised and pleased when other media use the same materials over and over again. 

Each of online media kit’s listed below has some excellent design elements, 
and illustrate a range of sophistication and cost. 
Stan and Sandra Posner Drive I-95 
http://www.mascon.net/z3_press_room.htm
O’Reilly Publications Press Center 
http://press.oreilly.com/index.html
Parenting Press 
http://www.parentingpress.com/media.html
Net Lingo Press 
http://www.netlingo.com/press.cfm
AT & T Online Media Center 
http://www.att.com/presskit/
Mothers Against Drunk Driving 
http://www.madd.org/news/
American Women Road and Travel Magazine 
http://www.roadandtravel.com/company/caldwellpresskit/courtn
ey_caldwell%20press%20kit.htm 
Susun Weed’s Press Kit 
http://www.susunweed.com
/A_press-kit_plus-more.htm 
Get in the habit of using search engines and surfing the web. When you find a link to a press room or online media center click on it. Study it. 
Search on the words: 
Online media kit 
online press kit 
press center 
media center 
couple these search words with learning words such as: 
tips 
article 
tactics 
strategy 
guide 
You'll find plenty of articles by experts and web sites with free advice and information. 

Heck, some of the stuff may be so good you find yourself buying a book by a 
self-published author! 

You may find that some of the best materials available by a company are 
organized for easy use in the press center. It will likely also be the best place for you to find the right contact information to get you in the door at the company. So a company's media center is often the best place to go to when you need to identify and get a hold of the right people to do business. 

Regards all,