Graham Jones Interviews Chris Knight on Article Writing & Marketing

For some time now I've been telling people that writing articles is an essential component of their online business. But why should they believe me? So, I've interviewed the expert - Christopher Knight. He runs the world's most popular directory of articles, Ezinearticles.com. Here are the questions I asked him - and his answers.

1. How does writing articles help promote a small business? Writing and submitting articles to sites like EzineArticles.com and others like it gives small businesses a grassroots marketing strategy to attract qualified visitors and traffic back to their websites. You're only limited to how many articles you can put into syndication and that gives you the ability to determine how much traffic you want to attract with your articles. There is a very low cost of entry in this type of marketing, that's another one of the attractive reasons it's very popular among small business entrepreneurs.

2. What should I do within an article to ensure people connect with me, rather than just reading the article for information? Don't solve 100% of the problem. Instead, solve 20% of a problem and use the rest of your article to discuss WHY solving the problem is important. This will leave your reader interested in learning more about you and clicking on your website URL. Another important strategy is to make your Resource Box 'benefit-driven' instead of about me me me me me. Instead, invite your reader to download a free report, subscribe to your free email newsletter, or visit your website to discover more about the topic they were just reading about.

3. What could I do within an article to help readers realise I can help them? In articles that are 400-750 words in length, it's hard to convince someone you are an expert first and then try to teach them something. Instead, just jump right in and give strategy tips, recommendations, and techniques that have worked for you and your clients or friends. If your article body and resource box are aligned, you'll subconsciously give the impression that you have your act together. It's important to never include unrelated websites or unrelated information in your resource box. Some authors mess this up by mentioning every website they own and every award they've earned when the reader could care less. Give your readers some consistency and congruency between the content in your article body and the benefit-driven sales pitch in your resource box.

4. How do I make it easy for people to find my articles and want to use them? Most ezine and online publishers are looking for less than 1,000 word articles, so start by making your article word count in the 400-750 words per article range. No one has time to read a novel online any more. Short, brief, valuable tips-driven articles are in strong demand today. To make your articles easy to find, focus on creating keyword-intelligent article titles that use a 40% keyword or keyphrase intelligent and 60% natural language ratio. 90%+ of the findability of your article will be on how well you craft your article title.

5. What should I write about - are there any "tricks" to ensuring my material is highly usable? In terms of writing style, I'd vary your articles so that you reach both left and right brain readers. The left brain reader wants data points, bullets, numbered lists, sub-heads, and the intro, body, conclusion format. The right brain reader wants to listen to a story or conversation or to know how an issue is related to another issue. If you want to make your articles more valuable, don't load up the article body with direct or subtle sales pitches for yourself or your business. You 'give' of your expertise in the article body and you get to 'take' or sell yourself and your website or business in the resource box. Lastly, it should go without saying, but don't include affiliate links in your articles as publishers won't want to pick them up and many (such as ourselves) won't knowingly accepted them at all.

6. What are the most popular topics for articles these days? The better question to ask yourself, "Which keywords or keyphrases relating to my core niche and expertise should I be writing articles about?" I recommend that your readers should study the concept of the 'long tail' because the future belongs to expert authors who write about topics that the market wants to read vs. writing about what you think the market wants to read. Big difference and your traffic attraction metric per article will show it.

7. How can I be sure my material isn't simply going to be copied by others? At some point, if you become popular enough, your works will be copied by others without giving you an active link back or credit for your works. You can use free and fee-based tools to monitor your works, such as Google Alert and Copyscape - so you can be notified when someone else reprints your articles. The benefits far outweigh the negatives when it comes to how much traffic you can attract with your quality original content. If it's any consolation, I have yet to see any publisher who rips off others works without giving proper credit or an active link back to survive over the long-haul. It just doesn't happen. In most cases, they are out to make a fast buck and when they fail at it (which they all do at some point), they fold. Best way to ensure that you never get ripped off is to unplug your PC and cancel your Internet access account. I know that sounds silly, but it's the only guaranteed way to make sure no one ever takes your works without giving proper credit.

8. What can I do to make my article "stand out" above any others that people might want to use? Assuming you're already producing a very high quality article and you've not only mastered the mechanics of article writing, but the style and quality of content - the next big step to make your articles stand out is to write and submit them on a frequent basis… meaning, every single month. Let me give you an example: Two expert authors have each produced 25 articles. One of them produced the 25 articles more than 2 years ago and has not added any new articles since then. The other has produced the 25 articles over the last 2 years and can predictable be expected to continue creating new articles at a rate of 2 or more per month. Which expert author do you think has a more attractive or a more up-to-date message to deliver? If you guessed the one who produces new articles on a consistent basis, you win.

9. As a small business owner, how do I find the time to write articles when I'm so busy running my business? If you have more money than time, then I recommend that you may want to outsource your article writing to an in-house staff writer or a ghost writer. Many people might ask you if you are working "in" your business or "on" it. Article writing and marketing is an activity that helps to advance your business and shows that you are working on it, rather than in it. There is nothing wrong with working in your business, but then your earning potential is reduced to the same earning level of someone on your team who can do the same job. When I look at one of my whiteboards of "High ROI Activities", the 4th item on my list is media interviews and publicity or attracting the attention of our ideal customer. A better question to ask yourself is this: "How can you afford not to be marketing with articles?"

10. If you had to give one tip to a small business owner about article writing, what would it be? Go deep and write in sets. Translation is what I recommend that you go deep on whatever area of expertise you have and if that means writing 2,000+ articles to accomplish that, do it. One article writing speed tip: Write in sets of articles instead of sitting down to write one article at a time. Instead, sit down and determine to produce 2, 3, 4 or 5 at a time. You'll be amazed how easy it is and how quickly your article inventory will grow when you see this strategy work for yourself. -

Christopher M. Knight invites you to submit your best articles for massive exposure to the high-traffic http://EzineArticles.com/directory. When you submit your articles to EzineArticles.com, your articles will be picked up by ezine publishers who will reprint your articles with your content and links intact giving you traffic surges to help you increase your sales. To submit your article, setup a free membership account today: http://EzineArticles.com/submit/ For Ezine Publishers, Chris produces a weekly free email newsletter on strategies for helping you grow your email lists, improve your email deliverability, and manage your ezine. To subscribe, surf on over to: http://Ezine-Tips.com/