Writing Reviews For Article Marketing

There are several review sites on the Internet and for two years I regularly submitted reviews to two of them. Reviews are a writer’s opinion of a product or service and writing and submitting them are in some ways similar but also different to writing for article marketing. In this article I’m going to make comparisons and show how I think that reviews can be used in article marketing.

Detail and Information

For me writing reviews was good grounding for article marketing. I had previously written articles for home business magazines but when I started to write reviews I soon found that I needed to add more detail and information to do well in the review site ratings and earnings, sometimes it could get a bit silly when over critical members would want to know every little detail about packaging when the site owners did not.

The more detail and information we add to an article the better. Some article marketers split their information into several articles instead of writing one information packed article. That may work better for getting quick back links but if I tried to do that I would feel as if I was selling myself and readers short. There is always the option of using part 1, 2, 3 etc in the article titles but if a site visitor looking for information found part 3 first would they bother to look for parts 1 and 2 when they can just click back to the search engine and find a full article on the subject that they are interested in?

As we are always hopeful that a publisher may use our articles as website or ezine content I suspect that if an article comes in several parts it would have to be really good to stand a chance of being chosen.

Warts And All

There is a difference between reviews written for sites like Ciao and Dooyoo and reviews written for article marketing. On the review sites you review a product warts and all. The reviews need to be honest because it is useful feedback for manufacturers and because the review sites are communities your credibility is at stake amongst other members. The rewards are not very high even for top writers, but I guess that would depend on which area of the world that you live in.

Most of the reviews that I’ve seen in article or Internet marketing are full of praise and no warts. You know that the authors are trying to sell a product or get readers to join the latest millionaire making affiliate programme. You also know that many of the reviews will be dishonest because the authors are trying to gain product or affiliate sales.

In article marketing the rewards are backlinks to your sites and hopefully syndication of your articles to get more backlinks. The money that can be earned through article marketing is greater and especially if an article goes viral, but as with review sites you don’t earn anything if you don’t get it right.

Getting Content Right

Getting the content right for reviews and article marketing is much the same. Quality, information, legibility, correct grammar and punctuation, advice, detail, layout and for me simplifying technical explanations to a level that most can understand. That last one was my idea! If a reviewer is writing about a particular model of mp3 player and that review is found in a search for information about mp3 players by somebody interested in buying one; and the reader can’t understand the technical jargon then they are going to look elsewhere for advice.

The same applies to article marketing. If your article about mp3 players is linking back to your site or blog that incidentally has adverts for mp3 players you want the reader to go all the way down to the bottom and click on your link, not click away because you have lost their understanding part way through. As a publisher looking for website content I would be more likely to go for an article that is easy to understand rather than one giving the same information but full of technical jargon. That is unless you are aiming your article towards techie sites and that’s a whole different ball game.

When you write product reviews for the review sites you don’t need to think about key words and phrases as in article marketing, though if the review sites pay per visitor click it’s not a bad idea to use them. In article marketing we learn to use key words and phrases in our article titles and article body, but when we use too many it can make an article harder to understand and read. If a publisher is looking for good content that will capture visitor’s interest and keep them on their site longer they will be happy with key words and phrases used in context with an article but not if they are too many and placed where they don’t fit.

Knowing Your Subject

When you review a product you are expected be familiar with and have used the product enough to be able to give a fair assessment of it. For instance a review about a washing machine that you have been using regularly for several months is far more credible and useful as feedback and for prospective buyer information than a review about a washing machine that you have only just bought and used twice.

The same should apply to article marketing and in many cases it happens, but there are also lots of contrived articles. The best writers can carry it off and make it seem as if they use a product or service but many writers can’t fake it. It is pretty obvious that they have gleaned their information from sales spiel and the lack of user experience in an article lowers it’s worth for readers looking for information and publishers looking for content.

My biggest bugbear is travel articles. I love reading about different places from a visitor’s point of view. Contrived travel articles are generally boring and next to useless for readers who want to know what a place is really like and are looking for tips before they book their holiday. If I couldn’t produce more information than can be found on a travel brochure I wouldn’t write about a place.

Do Reviews Work In Article Marketing

I think that there is a place for reviews in article marketing and if they are well written and show user experience they are good for publishers to use as content. Reviews can be written about almost any product or service giving a wide range of subjects to write about – as long as that product or service isn’t your own!

The author Patricia Jones writes for several websites including Mega Music Site, Articles Abroad which offers travel information and The Creative Writer

Article Marketing Success And Sheep Do not Mix

I like article marketing and find it an enjoyable and profitable way of promoting my websites. I never plan articles, the ideas just come out of the blue from something I have seen or heard. Once I start writing the words just flow, but before I write an article there are two things that I consider.

1. Why am I writing the article?
2. Would it be of any use to webmasters for their sites or for newsletter publishers?

It does not take rocket science to figure that I and every other article marketer am using articles to benefit our own promotions, but they will be of little benefit to us if we do not produce quality articles that others will actually want to read and use.

Owning my own article directory I have read thousands of articles, many of which I would never use on my other sites or in newsletters and many I have declined for various reasons. Let us consider the rights and wrongs of articles starting at the beginning.

Attention Grabbing

Your title is your headline, there to grab attention and many people never look past the first 2 or 3 words. I could have called this Sheep Do Not Mix With Article Marketing Success but I want people who are interested in article marketing and not sheep to read it. Another type of title that will not grab me is The Top 20 Tips For Passionate Sex. It would be more likely to create interest if it was Passionate Sex My Top 20 Tips.

Writing Standards

Spelling and grammar are important. You are promoting yourself and your business and you need to present yourself as professional to be taken seriously. I write my articles in Word first and use the spell checker. I sometimes fall out with it because I am English and prefer not to use Americanised spelling.

If you have problems with writing but good information the answer is to use a ghostwriter or copywriter. There are plenty of good writers advertising on the Internet and personally I think that one good quality article will do more for your business than 10 poor articles.

Know Your Subject

Good advice for writers is that they should always know and understand what they are writing about or their articles have no credibility. I was gobsmacked last week to read an article about my own country that I knew to be very ill informed and by somebody I suspected had never set foot on our shores. The guy could not even spell Britain right and as his misspelling was in the title he sunk without trace before he even started!

Original Copy

The best and most memorable articles are purely original, thought provoking and offer different viewpoints to a subject. Some writers submit zillions of slightly changed articles about the same subject over and over; yawn. They are boring and eminently unreadable after the first one or two. There are exceptions where writers are providing updates and news about their chosen subjects. I would use those articles for my sites.

Lists of quotes from the bible for instance are not original articles. At least 90% should be your own work and quotes only used as a point of interest not as the whole article. Submitting articles on behalf of others is suspect, how do readers know whether you have filched them or not? Plagiarism, not worth going there, eagle eyes and google will find you out!

Advertorial Blues

An advertorial is an advert written in article form. They carry no unbiased information or advice that would be of any help to anybody interested in that subject. There are plenty of places to advertise for free on the Internet, so trying to fob adverts off as articles is unfair on directory site owners or visitors who want to read articles not adverts.

Link Usage

The reason most of us use Article Marketing for promoting our businesses is to place links to our websites in the author resource boxes usually placed at the foot of articles.

I like to maximise the potential and use the up to 3 links usually allowed. Many article directories allow active links, but some do not. A problem can arise when articles are automatically submitted if the script the site uses strips the html. I prefer to submit manually mostly and then I can activate the links myself or just put my website address if the site doesn't accept html links.

Links within the articles are unacceptable on most directory sites, but as you get 3 chances in the resource boxes there is no point trying to cheat.

All Keyed Up

You will be asked to provide some keywords for your articles so choose wisely. Study your content and consider what somebody who might be interested in your article is most likely to enter into the search engines. A poor example is if you are writing about search engine optimisation and your title is SEO, Internet Business Bread And Jam, you would not use jam and bread as keywords unless you wanted to attract hungry people. Apart from that your articles credibility takes a nosedive if you do not know what a good keyword is.

Readability

Finally, your article should not be repetitive and should be interesting. Short paragraphs make it easier to read, text talk makes it more difficult. All capitals in the article body or title are a no no, they only stand out in the sense that the reader feels shouted at and nobody wants to feel like that.

I hope that you have found this interesting and useful and that we get lots more quality articles to read.

Article Source: bb-articles.com

Banging My Head Against A Brick Wall

Today was the pits. I got home from a hard days work, logged on and saw more new writers and more new articles than any day since I stopped automatic submission. I should have been pleased, I was pleased until reality snuck in.

Despite adding a paragraph in red above the article submission page about not accepting anything that is plagiarised etc. 27 out of 36 articles submitted I suspected were plagiarised. Some of the same writers that I had deleted their accounts for that reason signed up again and submitted more plagiarised articles. 6 of the articles were not written in English and as the site is all English I had to decline them. 3 decent articles left and a heck of a lot of my time wasted.

I have come across article directories that have suspended submissions because of spamming or plagiarism and I don't blame them.

Because so much of my time is being wasted I have less time to promote the site and write my own articles. That will have an effect on the genuine writers and of course my business. One little ray of sunshine is that I found a very low cost article writing service which I am now recommending to the cheats. I've no doubt that most will ignore me, but maybe some will get the message.

What Next?

This blog is turning out to be more of a moan than a blog but I guess we all have to get things off our chests somehow.

During the last couple of weeks a lot of my time has been wasted checking articles for cheats. Something like 3 out of 4 articles submitted have been plagiarised fully or partially and the amount has been growing.

At first I felt sorry for some of the posters, I know that not everybody can write acceptable quality articles and I know that a lot of people cannot afford to pay for ghost writers. I feel that these cheats want to jump on the article marketing bandwagon and plagiarism is their only option.

I can't condone plagiarism though. I know that some article directory owners have been threatened with the law for accepting plagiarised articles and I am not prepared to put myself in that position.

Some of the cheaters have had the nerve to try it on more than once. I've deleted accounts and they have just signed up and cheated again. I have now added a notice about plagiarism to the article submit page. It is going to be one strike and they are out. I know where I can get a script to block people and I will install that if necessary.

I wonder if these people think that because I am relatively new to owning an article directory I have no experience of spotting cheats. If so they can think again, I've been writing on internet sites for years and can usually easily spot plagiarised work. There are lots of tells to look for and google does the rest.

To end on an high note my 2 and 3 year old grandchildren came visiting today. We went to the park and did lots of sliding and playing on the swings. Much more fun that checking plagiarised articles!