Promoting with articles has long been one of my favorite book marketing strategies.
Here’s how it works:
1. Write a brief how-to type article about a topic of interest to your target audience.
2. Include an author bio of less than a paragraph that explains who you are, includes your book title and a link to your website.
3. Submit the article for publication to websites and print publications.
4. Post the article on your website or blog.
5. Reap the benefits.
By publishing a single article to dozens of online and traditional publications, you have the ability to reach all kinds of new readers for your books and clients for your business. Since your bio includes details about your book and website, you are bound to gain new fans.
As an added bonus, posting your articles online adds links pointing back to your website. This is great for search engine optimization since Google wants to see lots of incoming links to your website. Do note, however, that Google will not display multiple websites with the same article. The search engine identifies duplicate content and will only display a single instance of the article, likely on the most popular site where it is displayed. However, each article doesn’t need to show up in search results to attract traffic from the various websites where it appears.
Generating Article Ideas
Every author can find topics for articles. For example, if your book is about finding the right career, you could write articles about job hunting, effective interview skills, negotiating salaries, and dressing for success. An attorney could write articles about business law, while a leadership consultant could write business-related articles for her target audience of business executives.
Submitting to Internet Content Portals
There are dozens of content sites that allow you to post articles that others can reprint in their newsletters, websites and blogs. While you make the article available for free reprint, anyone who uses your article must provide proper credit and include your bio with website link.
You might be surprised by how quickly your articles—and your website link—will proliferate across the Internet once you begin posting to content sites. For years I have made it a steady habit to write one to two articles each month and then have my assistant submit them to my favorite content portals. Here are some of the top content sites:
Submitting to Websites
Many websites operate on a limited budget and appreciate high-quality articles written by authors. Ideally you want to offer your articles for reprint to websites that reach your target audience. The best way to accomplish this is to begin searching for sites on Google and build your own contact list. Each site should offer submission guidelines and if you can’t find them, contact the site administrator or owner to inquire. You can simply submit your articles for consideration or offer to swap articles with website owners and co-promote each other.
In my next post we will cover how to submit articles to print publications.
If you like this blog post, you’ll love our Ultimate Author Marketing Course! Learn more about our courses for authors here.
