Using Articles to Drive Traffic to Your Site

Writing to Help Others Can Help You Brand Yourself.
by Billie A Williams ©2007
(Small Town Secrets - January 2008 - ISBN 978-1-59705-283-2 )http://www.wings-press.com

The internet is full of content starved web masters, newsletter publishers and ezine operators always looking for your articles if they will increase the publication’s value to its readers. This is a win win situation. As you help others, you help yourself. How, you might ask.

If you include a link in your signature line, a link back to your website people who see your name on articles time and again begin to trust and rely on your word. They’ll want to check out your web site to see what else you are about.

Spend some time looking around the various article directories. See what people are writing about. Can you contribute something similar? You know things that no one else knows because your words are colored by your experiences, your life. You are unique and therefore, anything you write will have your personality all over it. This is more or less branding you – like a Campbell soup label, no one needs to tell you who that is — a Pepsi label no one needs to tell you who that is. You become similar when people see your name and your articles they feel like they know you personally.

You don’t need to be a literary genius – if you wrote a book you have expertise – you had stick-to-it-ness. You started some how, you wrote pages and pages to finish a book length manuscript. People – your readers— want to know how you did that. Where did you get your idea, how did you keep at it in spite of rejections (and we all get those). Think of the tons of questions you had as a newbie to the writing craft. What did you want to know? Now you are the expert, you can help others by telling them what you know in an article.

Your web site (You do have one don’t you? You should if you are hoping for a career in writing.) is full of ideas to write about. If you have a bio page, go through it — what have you done, what do you do? Do you have a day job? There is a wealth of information on your own website. Use it to create articles.

What was your book about? How did you find that information to make it appear real? Are you an amateur detective? How did you get to be that, did you take courses where, how long did it take you? If you aren’t, where did you get your idea and how did you expand on it? If you talk of abuse, are you a victim, have you worked with victims in your other life? Who did your book cover, did you have input? How did you decide on what you wanted? What is the process you used to get from page one to “the end” and did you have a cover in mind before you started? Some people are visual, they see a picture and they have a story – is that you or how did you ‘see’ your cover and when?

As you can see there are a million questions readers and would-be-writers would love to know. You can use that to help them, help other publications as described above and help yourself. That sounds like a winning situation all the way around to me.

Feel free to use this article as long as you leave the writer’s resource box below intact. Thank you.
Billie A Williams Accidental Sleuths solve crimes with wit, wisdom and chutzpah
http://www.billiewilliams.com/
http://printedwords.blogspot.com/
writer’s group http://www.word-mage.com/