Brisbane Audi

Not everyone can write well. But if you can, article writing can add significantly to your prestige, create very favorable publicity, and generate incoming links( backlinks), to your web site. Think for a moment about the types of articles you can write and use as marketing tools and who would read them.

Marketing, and not additional income from freelancing, is your primary reason for writing articles. Your goal is to appear to prospective clients as a sophisticated expert who can solve their problems. Therefore, fight hard to get information included on how to contact you.

Format and Submission Rules

You can prepare “canned” features and send them off to papers. Be sure to send them only to newspapers that don’t compete with each other. However, expect a very low placement rate.

With article directories, make sure you check their submission guidelines in terms of number of links and text verses html formats. There are some article submission serices that can help.

A better approach is to send out queries briefly outlining an article you’d like to write, and why you’re qualified to write it. You can send the same query out to several people at once, with individualised addresses. Don’t send the article itself simultaneously to competing markets, but you can send queries.

Submit articles freely to noncompeting markets, as long as you don’t sign a contract that says “all rights” or “work for hire.” For instance, publish the same article in journals serving Baptists, Lutherans, and Congregationalists. And a how-to article aimed at business owners in Queensland could easily be modified for business publications elsewhere.

However, even if the market isn’t as clearly segmented, you can multiply your audience. I once proposed the same storyto computer, safe energy, back-to-the-land, regional, and bicycling magazines. If one market rejects your idea, query a competitor. Finally, you can even query different editors at the same publication with the same idea (wait two years or so).

If an editor perceives an article as written just for his or her magazine (in response to a go-ahead on your initial query), the publication will be much more likely to accept it. Once your material begins to appear in print, send tearsheets of your published work with your queries. After you get rolling, you should be able to place about one in every fifteen to twenty ideas. Find them in Writer’s Market (Writer’s Digest Books, annually), the freelance writer’s bible.
===

Searchtempo.com is a Brisbane marketing consultant firm specialising in search engine marketing and SEO training. BSON061208