Are you asking yourself if this is a trick question?

It might be!

Can it help drive traffic? Yep! Can it help you be seen as an expert in your chosen niche? Yep! Can it act as your silent salesman for years to come! Yep!

So who shouldn’t use article marketing? Not really sure. I really don’t see any downsides to using article marketing.

Honestly, I don’t consider myself to be a great writer. I think I do a pretty good job at getting my point across. To be honest, I haven’t written an article in almost a year. So the other day, I made the decision to get back into the habit of writing. I decided I was going to check out some of the articles I had written years ago.

OMG!!!!

They were all still live and still driving traffic! It was the greatest thing ever! I just figured if I had forgotten about them, then so had everyone else. Years later, these articles are still working for me. Below is a screen shot of the articles I am talking about.

As you can see from the image above, my articles have had over 7,000 views. Even with an extremely low Click Rate of 9.4% I was able to get almost 700 people to look at something I wanted them to see. That is 700 people that I didn’t have to spend a dime on. I simply wrote an article and posted in the internet.

To get that same amount of traffic via PPC or other media avenues, it would have cost me a fortune. Most services charge you either by the click or by the impression. Either way, I was able to get all of this traffic for free! Gotta love the word FREE!

So some of you may be thinking, I don’t know anything or I can’t write… blah blah blah!!!

I used to say the same thing! Now… look! You’re reading an article I have written! I don’t have that excuse anymore. If you want my advice (even if you don’t), just write! You would be really surprised the amount of knowledge you have once you start putting the pen to the paper. We all have some knowledge that someone else needs. Something that you may consider to be common knowledge may not be as common as you think.

I will end this post with this…

Just write something… anything! Take action!

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Social Network Marketing is the easiest and fastest way to drive traffic to your site. Sounds like a pretty bold statement, right? Well in this article, we will be discovering why this statement is true. For the uninitiated, Social Network Marketing is the use of social networking sites to bring attention to your business. It uses the power of word-of-mouth and relationship building as the basis for driving traffic to your site. The two largest and best sites for driving free traffic to your site or business are Twitter and Facebook.

Two of the fastest growing social networking sites on the internet is called Facebook. This is a site where you can connect with old friends, network with new people, and overall just eavesdrop on the lives of the people in your network. The reason why I called out this site is due to it’s enormous growth over the past few years. Sites like these are always being created and as a result marketers are able to reach more people and in much faster way than before. Facebook is probably one of my favorite ways to market using Social Networking sites. this is because of the sheer amount of members it currently has. This is also due to the multitude of way that one can market to potential customers. These ways include paid advertising, Facebook pages, Facebook groups, and Facebook Events. In a later article, I will cover these in more detail but for now, these are the best ways I have found to really get the most out of Facebook for my marketing needs.

The other site I recommend is Twitter. Now there has been a lot of people jumping off the Twitter bandwagon as of late. In my honest opinion, I can definitely understand why. It is hard to really target your potential customers within Twitter. It is possible and with a little practice, you definitely use it to drive enormous amounts of traffic to your site. If used correctly it can be an excellent list building source. Some of the best ways to market in Twitter is through the use of ‘hash tags’ (#socialmarketing) which are basically used to call out trends. A trend is a topic or subject that is being discuss in Twitter. The use of a hash tag can really help in your marketing efforts if used the right way. Overall, it takes a little longer to really get to Twitter to become a huge source of free traffic, but it can be worth it in the end. As with anything, “Nothing ventured, nothing gained!”

There are a ton of other sites that could be used in your social network marketing strategy. These sites could include Myspace, LinkedIn, and others. All of these sites have their pros and cons. My advise to anyone thinking about using these sites is to first read the TOS that each site has. This will tell you what you are able to do and not do. This will ultimately make sure you stay out of hot water. Next I would suggest that you simply jump in with both feet and get started.

Finally, I would suggest using sites that can be used simultaneously when first starting out. A perfect example of this is Twitter and Facebook. When I say, using them simultaneously, i am referring to the ability to post to one site and have it show up on the other sites as well. If this ability is not available natively, I would suggest locating services that would help you accomplish this same thing.

Social network marketing is a strange beast. There isn’t really a right or a wrong way to do it. Most of what you learn will come through the School of Hard-Knocks. This is ultimately the best knowledge you can gain.

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