Are you ever stumped on what to write about?

When you’re doing article marketing to drive traffic to your website, you need to be submitting articles consistently month in and month out. That means that you need to have a steady stream of article ideas, and that can be a challenge sometimes!

I’ve got some good news for you though: You have more article ideas than you realize. Most likely, you have several article ideas right under your nose on your own website or in your business.

Here are some tips for finding hidden article ideas:

1. Look on your own website. You probably have content that would be perfect for one or more articles. For example, if you are a business coach, you might have a page on your website called “Why use a business coach?”. That sort of topic can be turned into an article.
2. Your old newsletters. What messages have you been sending your list? If you have a list you’ve probably been in steady communication with your subscribers. You send them helpful tips, observations, anything that will provide value to them. If you have any teaching topics from old newsletters you’ve sent, you can use them as an article. You may have to rework things a little to meet word count requirements and make the newsletter content article worthy, but you’ve got a great head start on the writing process.
3. Written any e-books? An e-book is a great source of article ideas because you already have the content broken into chapters. When using content from an e-book, you can extract whatever material you would like to use, and then add an intro and concluding paragraph to form an article.
4. Your blog. If you have a well-tended blog, you have a continuous source of article ideas at your fingertips. Look for posts that teach: how to’s or list posts are readily adapted to be articles.
5. Audio interviews that you’ve done. Listen to old interviews you’ve done and write down the questions you were asked and a synopsis of your answers. You may be able to get several articles out of one interview.
6. Your replies to questions from your customers. Sometimes you’ll get a great question on a general topic from a customer that necessitates a more involved reply. As long as you’ve taken the time to explain things, why not use your reply as the foundation of an article that answers the same question?

Here’s what to do when you’ve found hidden content that you can morph into articles:

• Rework the content if it is appearing on your own site. It is beneficial that the content on your own website be original, so you wouldn’t want to submit anything verbatim from your website. This is not necessary if the original content was in a newsletter, audio interview, or a customer support answer. Only content from your own website needs to be reworked to be unique.
• Remove all promotional references from the content–that may be appropriate on your own website or in a newsletter, but trying to make a sales pitch in an article is not appropriate. Save that for the resource box.
• The website content should be used as a general guide for your article. Don’t try to reword the content line by line–it’s too easy to copy the original content. Instead, look at your original work as an outline for your article and write the article fresh.
• Write for newbies and for more advanced audiences. You can cover the same topic writing on different levels.

Did you find any article ideas that were hiding right under your nose? It’s a great feeling when you do. Remember, when you feel like “there’s nothing to right about”, look at your website and your business from a fresh perspective, and you’ll be surprised at the article ideas you find.

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Steve Shaw is an article marketing expert, and founder of the popular article distribution service http://www.submityourarticle.com , used by thousands of business owners. Discover how to use the power of article marketing to reach thousands of potential prospects for your website – download a powerful free report on successful article marketing from http://www.submityourarticle.com/report

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How To Find Hidden Article Ideas

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How To Find Hidden Article Ideas

Hi Kalena

I had a big discussion last night with my husband and my son-in-law who has done some work on my husband’s web site.

Jason (my son-in-law) has used WordPress for the site. There are currently about 79 pages on the site. In our conversation I was pretty adamant that I wanted to be able to SEO all the pages. I don’t want to rely on WordPress and it’s blog meta tags to get ranked.

Shouldn’t we be better served by a web building program than a blog program like Wordpress? I understand that WordPress has an all singing all dancing SEO plug in but is that really the best option?

I know that you use WordPress for your blog. And it seems the right thing to do. But do you also use it for your main site? Any advice you may give me would be most appreciated.

Thanks so much.

Vicki
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Hi Vicki

Actually, sites built with WordPress are perfect for SEO purposes. We are actually thinking of switching our Search Engine College site over to WordPress because of the SEO benefits including deep indexing, cross linking, tagging, filenaming and various SEO plugins that pretty much make other CMS packages obsolete.

You and your son in law should have no trouble optimizing your husband’s WordPress site and hopefully achieving some good ranks and traffic as a result. There are a number of fantastic SEO plugins for WordPress and people are raving about how SEO friendly the WordPress Thesis theme is so you might want to check it out.

You might also want to my review my favorite WordPress plugins. Add to that list the SEO Smart Links plugin and you should be set.

cheers
Kalena

Got a Reader Rescue question of your own? Send it to kjordan [ at ] sitepronews [ dot ] com and you might see it featured here.

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Reader Rescue: Is it possible to SEO a WordPress site?

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Reader Rescue: Is it possible to SEO a WordPress site?

It is now becoming apparent that Tim O’Reilly’s vision of the web being “One Ring to Rule Them All” and “Small Pieces Loosely Joined”, is coming apart at the seams as the big media company News Corp and Microsoft join hands to threaten Google and, in turn, Web 2.0 itself.

In “O’Reilly: The Web is at war, and it’s making me sad” (see http://news.cnet.com/8301-13577_3-10399710-36.html), we have seen over the past few months that News Corp has stepped up the stakes in its battle to block Google from indexing content from Rupert Murdoch’s online media titles, and that now Microsoft is said to be willing to pay Time Warner and News Corporation, among others, to make these sources available exclusively through Bing, it’s new search engine.

During this time, and many articles later, Rupert Murdoch has criticised Google for “kleptomania” and has threatened to cut them off from all his online publications. That is not quite as easy as he thinks, though, as nearly a quarter of all traffic to the Wall Street Journal’s website, for example, comes via Google. Microsoft, for their part, is willing to spend up to 10% of its operating income over the next five years, which could add up to a sum somewhere around $US11bn. Tim O’Reilly, who coined the term Web 2.0, questions the war for the control of the web, which directly contradicts his “interoperable platform” concept.

Not all agree though, as the Economist argues that, “a handful of well-funded and powerful platforms, locked in heated competition, could be better for consumers and generate more innovation than Mr O’Reilly’s vision of an internet made of many ’small pieces loosely joined’.”

The bursting of the dot-com bubble in 2001 was a turning point for the web and, with it, the concept of “Web 2.0″ was born. Its web pioneer Tim O’Reilly warned an audience at a recent Web 2.0 Expo that he thinks “we’re headed into another ugly time”, meaning that the corporates are ganging up on Google’s dominance, with Rupert “Dr Evil” Murdoch leading the charge and threatening to pull News Corp’s content carpet from under Google’s feet.

In the same CNet article, it says that: “O’Reilly’s attitude isn’t ‘bring it on, and get me a large popcorn with extra butter, while you’re at it’. Rather, he hinted that at least in some cases, he’s willing to embrace Google as a big, cuddly, benevolent dictator in the midst of it all.” Rather like Stalin dressed up in a Winnie The Pooh fancy dress outfit, maybe?

But with all fancy dress parties there are reactionaries in the mix, as Barbarian Group executive Rick Webb announced: “Setting aside the boo hoo, the internet is becoming a bunch of walled gardens arguments, when rational people have conversations about how to make the web actually usable and not 95 percent piracy, spam, and fraud…”

All this aside, it is becoming clearer by the day that the web is heading into a full-frontal period of bloody competition that could kill the concept of the web’s interoperability as we know it today.

In radar.oreilly.com, Mr O’Reilly clearly states that: “And so we’ve grown used to a world with one dominant search engine, one dominant online encyclopaedia, one dominant online retailer, one dominant auction site, one dominant online classified site, and we’ve been readying ourselves for one dominant social network…

“It could be that everyone will figure out how to play nicely with each other, and we’ll see a continuation of the interoperable web model we’ve enjoyed for the past two decades. But I’m betting that things are going to get ugly. We’re heading into a war for control of the web. And in the end, it’s more than that, it’s a war against the web as an interoperable platform. Instead, we’re facing the prospect of Facebook as the platform, Apple as the platform, Google as the platform, Amazon as the platform, where big companies slug it out until one is king of the hill.”

In a postscript, he predicts that: “Microsoft will emerge as a champion of the open web platform, supporting interoperable web services from many independent players, much as IBM emerged as the leading enterprise backer of Linux.”

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John Sylvester is the media director of V9 Design & Build and an expert in search engine optimization and web marketing strategies.

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The web is at war, threatening Web 2.0’s interoperability

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You might think that writing 100 articles in a year is a Herculean feat that only the most advanced or professional writer can accomplish, but the truth is that even a beginner can reach this goal with a little bit of planning and consistency.

What’s the benefit of having a ‘100 articles’ goal?

When you’re doing article marketing, a pivotal factor of your success will be how consistently you submit articles. Many amateurs decide to try article marketing and then give up prematurely when they don’t see immediate results.

What a shame! Article marketing is one of the most effective, reliable, and user friendly website marketing tools, but you need to submit articles consistently over an extended span of time in order to reap the benefits.

Even when you know you should be submitting articles every month, it can be a challenge to stay focused and write articles on a regular basis.

This is where the ‘100 articles’ goal comes in–focusing on that long term goal and coming up with a plan on how to reach it is like building consistency into your marketing plan. Instead of thinking of each article as a one-off, you start to see each article you submit as contributing to a larger goal.

Why should you aim to accomplish this goal in a year?

The goal is not just to submit 100 articles–the goal is to do it in about a year’s time. There are SEO benefits for trickling out your article submissions consistently over an extended span of time. This allows you to build links in a more organic way, which is attractive to search engines.

So, a year’s time is a good time frame. Space your articles submissions out evenly over that time. Submit just 8 articles a month, and you will reach your goal with ease.

Strategies For Submitting 100 Articles In A Year:

Just 8 articles a month will let you accomplish this goal in a little over a year. That’s just 2 articles a week.

• Write one article 2 days a week. Create regular ‘writing days’ where you have a block of time set aside for writing.
• Or schedule, one or more extended writing sessions where you produce multiple articles at one sitting.
• Or you can stockpile articles: Write 5 articles a week for 5 weeks. That will produce enough articles to last you about 3 months and will allow you to take a break from writing for a couple months (while still providing you with articles to submit during that time). Then do it all over again.

Need Writing Ideas?

Easy enough to decide to write 2 articles a week–the hard part is coming up with ideas of what to write about. Here are some suggestions to keep your creative juices flowing:

1. Use a free article writing template that gives you a basic structure for crafting an article on your topic. I’ve created some of my own, and I use them all the time.
2. Adapt content from your blog to create articles.
3. Remember to write for newbies and more advanced readers–you can cover the same topic in two different articles geared towards groups with different knowledge levels.
4. Use customer frequently asked questions as the basis for an article.
5. Use a keyword suggestion tool such as WordTracker to see what keywords your target readers are typing into search engines. Then write articles to satisfy those searches.

Your Assignment:

1. Commit to writing 100 articles in about a year’s time.
2. Develop a plan to reach your goals using one of the strategies I’ve outlined here or customize your own plan.

Imagine how you’ll feel at the end of a year when you know you’ve stuck to your goal and made a huge and lasting impact on your website’s health. Consistency is the key–it is not hard. It just takes writing a steady amount of articles every month. You can do this!

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How To Reach The 100 Article Milestone In A Year

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How To Reach The 100 Article Milestone In A Year

I’ve been listening to a number of list building and lead generation teleclasses lately, and many of them have been offered in the form of a telesummit. A telesummit is a virtual online conference that offers a line-up of varied speakers over a period of time, like a few days or over several weeks.  The telesummit is usually organized by a theme, like outsourcing or lead generation, or for a particular target market, like the online telesummit for virtual assistants for which I was recently a guest speaker.

Participation in many of these telesummits requires you to pay a registration fee, but the model I’ve been seeing a great deal recently is the “free for live” model in which registrants can participate in the “live” version of the program, but if they’re not able to be on the call live, the only way that they can access the content is to pay a registration fee for the audio file and PDF transcripts.

What I love about telesummits is that they are perfect for a downturned economy.  There’s no airline reservation to make, no hotel to book, no clothes to pack, no shuttle fees to pay, no bad hotel food to endure….it’s simply conducted from the convenience of your home, the home of your speakers, and the home of your participants.  You offer high value with low cost — a great combination!

In my opinion, this type of event is a genius way to turbocharge your business.

Here are 5 secrets to turbocharging your online business with a telesummit:

1. Grows your list fast.  Many telesummit hosts report that holding a telesummit has helped them grow their list from 2,000 to 10,000 or 15,000 or greater in a span of only a few weeks when the participants are required to give their name and email address to get the telesummit call-in information.  Best of all, the additions to the host’s email list are perfect leads for their target market. How did this happen?  Because the host carefully chose their speakers who market products and services to a similar target market and created a telesummit around an issue or theme important to their target market.  And, in an ideal world, the speaker has a large list and agrees to help market the telesummit to that list.
2. Establishes you as the preeminent expert. When you hold an event featuring well-known speakers, you suddenly become the authority, or the expert in the field.  After all, how else could you have attracted these experts if you were not an expert yourself?
3. Helps you open the door for valuable joint ventures (JVs) and strategic alliances.  Once you’ve invited someone to be a guest on your telesummit, you have provided a great service to them by introducing them to others who may not have previously heard of them. And, if you offered some healthy affiliate commissions for telesummit upgrades, they love you because you’ve helped them make money without a lot of effort. Assuming that your event was a success and there were no major hiccups in the process, this success has paved the way for future joint ventures and strategic alliances with this person.  This certainly beats cold-calling someone to try and speak to them to sell them on a JV proposal, doesn’t it?
4. Increases your credibility.  Another key factor in hosting a telesummit is that the notoriety of your speakers rubs off on you as the host.  One of the quickest ways to go from “no name” to “big name” in your industry is to invite the industry experts to speak at your telesummit. The fact that you now have a connection with the movers and shakers in your industry gives you a leg up boosting your own credibility and expertise in the industry.
5. Makes some cash in the process.  In addition to the advantages listed previously, there are a number of ways to make a little money in this free telesummit model.  First, you offer every participant the ability to “upgrade” to get all the recordings and transcripts of the telesummit. Creating a price increase deadline (before summit vs after summit pricing) may encourage more participants to buy. Secondly, once the telesummit is complete, you can go back to your speakers and offer to interview them a second time exclusively for members of their list.  The upsell in this second interview is the complete telesummit recordings and transcripts, on which you pay them a healthy commission on all packages sold.

Examine your business model and see how well a telesummit fits into the mix.  You’ll need to begin planning 8-10 weeks in advance, but once you see the results, you may want to make your telesummit an annual event.

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Internet Marketing Automation Coach Donna Gunter helps independent service professionals create prosperous online businesses that make more profit in less time. Would you like to learn the specific Internet marketing strategies that get results? Discover how to increase your visibility and get found online by claiming your FREE gift, TurboCharge Your Online Marketing Toolkit, at http://www.TurbochargeYourOnlineMarketing.com

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5 Secrets to Turbocharging Your Online Business with a Telesummit, Today!

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5 Secrets to Turbocharging Your Online Business with a Telesummit, Today!