Article marketing through syndication

I asked the following questions to some very prominent members of the WF and wanted to share their responses. A special thanks goes out to Alexa Smith, Kay King, Nicole Beckett, and John McCabe. If you thank anyone, thank them.


Question:

"From what I’ve read I need to create quality original articles around 1,000+ words and put them on my site, then put on ezine after it’s indexed. After that go out and try to find context-relevant outlets for syndication. My question is how do I find outlets? Do you do this manually or are there any software programs to automate or make this process faster?"

Answers:


1. 1.) I tend to write long articles but that's not required. WRITE SOMETHING WORTH READING is the best advice. Don't keep throwing in the keywords over and over. Know your subject well enough to have something intereesting to write about.

I don't look for syndication except to offer to write an occasional guest post in the niche. My articles are syndicated because they get found on EZA and they are worth syndicating (usually ;-))- I'm a little sloppy and unplanned in that area.

I usually put an articles on my site first and then submit it. But sometimes I submit articles and don't put them on my site. Why? Don't know - it's not a plan but I don't want everything on my site mirrored on directories.


2. 2.) Big subject! But the very heart of article marketing, of course - this is most of the value of article marketing. I strongly recommend this. Instead of using software it’s better to do it manually, always. By building relationships with people.
Resist software/automation.
Software/automation and making a living are more or less mutually exclusive concepts, in this context.


3. 3.) You don't have to always write articles that are 1,000 words. There is no "magic" word length. Your topic may lend itself nicely to 1,000 words, but it also may make people want to claw their eyes out if you drag on for 1,000 words [IMG]file:///C:/Users/Rusty/AppData/Local/Temp/msohtmlclip1/01/clip_image001.gif[/IMG]Instead of shooting for a particular word length each time, look at each article individually and figure out how long you think people will stick around to read it.

If I were you, I would look for relevant sites that accept guest posts. There are free services - like MyBlogGuest and Cathy Stucker's email list - that can put you in touch with webmasters who are looking for guest posts. Each one will give you a link back to your site (much like a resource box in an article directory). You can also do a Google search for relevant sites and contact webmasters directly.

I've never used any automated programs, but I doubt they'd be able to help you syndicate your content. After all, how do you "automate" contacting a site owner and offering to be a guest author??


4. 4.) I do it manually, using Google. Combine your niche with phrases like "submit article", "write for us" and so on. You can also use [niche] + "editorial guidelines" or "author guidelines" or "guest post". As you find search queries that yield results, save them in a text document for reuse.

Another way is to find articles on EZA in your niche and search on either the title or a chunk of text from the middle of the article. You should find sites that a) deal with your niche and b) use syndicated articles.