Content Marketing: How To Market Your Article Directory

When your article directory has been set up (see the previous article directory start up hubpage!) you need to be aware of the promotional opportunities available to you and this is worked out in your initial marketing plan, so that you can get your article site out there like it was intended.

So your marketing plan must consist of the top online promotional methods and a combination of the best ones that work well for you, here are them marketing methods:-

Article Marketing

This is one of the top and best promotions you can do, after all it is directly linked to your article directory in that you are providing content to be linked to outside sources to bring in the traffic to your website, if done correctly you could bring in long term traffic for your directory for years to come.

Your article content is a reflection on you and your knowledge limitations, so try and produce consistently good articles that deliver quality information all the time as you will have your website link in the author resource box anyway and this is equally important to get people to click and see your website and so a call to action could be what's needed here, an example could be - Wayne Tully an artist, writer and blogger who has many drawing tutorials to read and be inspired by right here - http://hubpages.com/_drawfantasyart/profile/waynet

Simple, quick and effective bylines can work wonders for click throughs to your website from your writer resource box.

Blogging

Sort of like article marketing, in that you are creating content that will be linked to your main website, but with more diverse opinions and daily thoughts on your specific niche market, your content styles can be vastly different and it is up to you how you present yourself to others who read your blog, reviews and industry specific content are the best types of blog posts, but you may find that other writing styles from different angles may suit you better.

On your blogs sidebar you could have a prominent link to your article directory and plus the great benefit of using an article directory is the more articles that are submitted that fit your blogs niche you can add relevant articles to your blog as links, which will provide content that you haven't written directly but you only link to for relevancy, or what I tend to do is write a review style paragraph that is unique and then add an anchored text link with relevant keywords as this is better from the search engines perspective.

Forum Posts

Relevant forums work well for link building, often it is required that you join the forums with a view to joining in discussions and also helping other people, your forum signature will include a link that will lead others to your site if you provide accurate or thought provoking forum posts.

High traffic forums are all over the Internet and it is these that will have a good page rank and deemed important by Google and other search engine players involved, I myself like to contribute to forums and I hate it when I see others just write one word forum posts as I think to myself what's the point, people are going to think you are dumb in the head if yes or no answers is all you can say or the worse one "I agree with you"

I like it when you get a good thread discussion going on, it could be daft or serious stuff, so long as you get your time spent interacting and networking along the way, because it pays off to try and be memorable rather than the one word answer guy.

Social Bookmarking

Bookmarking any content that you have written can be a good thing, although it generally is the best thing for other people to do this for you in the form of a positive vote or review after they have read and like your articles, alot of article directories already have these social bookmark features after the articles content resource box.

By promoting your article directory, the articles that you write to market your directory will have to be written in a style that delivers the benefits of what your article directory does, this way, people will be more likely to bookmark and share your link with others and this benefits you and your article directory.

Email Marketing

This could be an option, as you could promote a series of emails for a course on article writing and article marketing, of course this is dependant on traffic, but you should pool all available resources and promote on free web pages like hubpages and squidoo or a blog that you have like Wordpress or Blogger.

It's all about creating free offers which are the hooks that make people sign up and in every email you add your directory link url, so that people associate the business with what you are offering.

Offer a free report too, the top Internet marketers always say "Hungry prospects get fat free content" or something along them clever copy writing lines.

Add An Affiliate Program

This would suit if you offered a paid monthly membership plan alongside the free membership and you could create an affiliate program for the referral of article writers who want more from their article accounts, always offer lots of promotional tools for the affiliates to use and more importantly customize towards their own way of marketing.

Adding an affiliate program requires you to promote this almost separate to your existing article directory, but this will benefit your article directory in the long run, by driving more traffic to your site and having an online canvassing team behind you promoting your directory at different timezones which works well in your favour.

Of course an affiliate program means you'll have to pay out to affiliates but this is all grows your site and you can set a good commission rate and you'll still be the top earner as you own the site and the advertising for the directory.

Know Your Back linking Strategy

By increasing all o the above combinations, you are in effect increasing and fulfilling a link building strategy that will boost your article directories traffic for the long term, by tracking your results, you are more likely to find out which marketing method is more efficient at producing quality traffic.

Of course ther are a range of other marketing methods that will also be good to invest some time and effort to set up.

Paid Advertising Spots

Offer paid advertising spots on your article directory such as banner ads and text links and promote these through adwords(PPC) advertising or any other types of advertising free or paid, these can prove quite lucrative, the more your sites page rank and importance increases with high traffic, Just remember you may need statistical proof for advertisers to see that you indeed do have the amounts of web visitors that you say you do, back up with as much data as you can.

Marketing your article directory takes commitment and a certain type of motivation to see it through, owning any type of website is like running a business and should be treated as such and that's what will set you apart from those dreamers who just can't be arsed.

Set up your article directory and keep on marketing and promoting it, don't ever stop, because if you do stop with your promotions, then other sites will overtake yours in the search engines and any revenue that you have built up will decline rapidly, so keep on pushing on with it.

Next Up - How To Write An Article To Submit To An Article Directory - Yep simple stuff that people forget about!