Heard of the AIDA method before? Well, for starters, all that it really stands for is Attention Interest Desire Action, and it is really one of the most widely used writing formulas on the internet.

Honestly, you’d be surprised how far the use of AIDA has spread. Nowadays it isn’t just used for articles, but is even used for basic copywriting, and pretty much anything else that would require a compelling piece of writing that is geared towards convincing the reader of a certain action.

To fully utilize the strength of the AIDA method though, you’re going to need to understand what each part of its formula entails.

1. Attention

First and foremost, before you can advocate any course of action, or even start to interest a reader, you’re going to have to get their attention.

Grabbing attention is an art that is key to a number of different fields, and primarily it is the focal point of the headline. Remember this always: Your headline is not just there to inform the reader what your article is about, but it is also there to get their attention right from the get go.

Most readers decide within the span of the headline whether or not they’re going to keep on reading, so the importance of this cannot be stressed enough.

2. Interest

After you’ve successfully managed to grab attention, you need to build on that and really start to interest the reader. Due to this, the first paragraph or two of each article should be dedicated towards building an interest in the reader as to the contents of the article.

Getting this interest sorted out is relatively easy though. Ideally, your article should be about a certain topic that is, by nature, interesting, and so all that you really need to do is tell the reader what they’ll obtain by reading your article.

Should the reader feel that they’re going to gain something of value from your article, they will naturally be interested.

3. Desire

Note that desire and interest are two very different things. Having successfully started to interest a reader, what you ultimately want to achieve is to have them truly desiring an outcome of your choosing.

To do this, you’re going to need to advocate your points strongly, and harp on the advantages and reasons why they should desire the outcome that you intend them to. Don’t try to ‘sell’ the idea to them, so much as present it and let them come to their own conclusion.

4. Action

Finally, you are going to want to encourage action, and this means giving incentives in the form of something tangible or a really strong reason why the reader should do what you want them to.

If you’ve followed the rest of the method, this should be an easier prospect than it otherwise would be!

As you should see, the AIDA method is a guide that ensures that each and every essential is in place so that your articles will deliver the type of results you desire. Few other formulas compare to this one when it comes to article marketing, so be sure to use it carefully and effectively!

Considering the fact that there are so many traffic generation methods out there, it is easy to perhaps concentrate on one or two and ignore all the rest. After all, as long as you’re getting traffic, there really is nothing to worry about, right?

While the above philosophy isn’t exactly ‘wrong’, it isn’t entirely right either, and the truth is, there are several compelling reasons why you should definitely be starting some form of article marketing. Once you know these, you should even have a clearer understanding of what your goals with it should be too!

Here are the top reasons why you should use article marketing to your own advantage:

1. Simple and Quick Method of Building Numerous High Quality Backlinks

Today, backlinks form an important part of Search Engine Optimization (SEO), and so building them up is something that practically every website owner needs to be doing. Of course, there are other techniques such as social bookmarking, that can yield a high number of backlinks, but article marketing tends to be ‘longer lasting’, and have greater effects.

2. Potential for Getting Highly Targeted and Pre-Sold Traffic

If used properly, article marketing could get you a ton of highly targeted traffic that is already pre-sold on whatever it is you intend to use that traffic for. For instance, if you’re selling remote-control cars, you could be getting traffic that is very interested in making a purchase, and has already read an article on a certain type of car before clicking the backlink.

What this means is that those who do click the backlink are that much more likely to make a purchase.

As a marketer, this is the kind of traffic that is priceless to you, and you should definitely want as much of it as you can. Simply put: Article marketing is one of the best and most clear cut ways to get it.

3. Ability to Act as a ‘Shortcut’ for New Websites

One of the things that many new websites have problems with is tapping into the traffic from search engines. Sometimes, it can take months until search engines fully index and list every page on a new website.

In this, article marketing really comes up as an attractive option because it allows you to tap into search engine traffic by taking advantage of the already high attention that is given to article directories. Thus, a new website can get a lot more traffic than it otherwise would.

Based on these three reasons, you should be able to see just how powerful article marketing can be if you use it well. Whether you intend to use it primarily as a source of traffic or as a source of backlinks, the advantages that you stand to gain are still pretty clear cut.

Once you start off with article marketing, the sky is really the limit when it comes to the results that you’re going to be able to obtain.

Do you wish sometimes that you could write articles quicker than you currently do? If you’re slaving away spending hours and hours writing a single article while others churn them out in minutes, then at some point or other you’re going to start wondering if you can ever compete with these super-fast article writers.

But the fact of the matter is: You definitely can compete with them!

Truth be told, every super-fast article writer started off slow, and slowly, with practice, built up their speed to the point where they’re just breezing along and writing articles on a whim and fancy. So there’s no reason why you can’t do the same.

Of course, to accomplish this you’re going to need a place to start, which is exactly what we’re going to be giving you here:

1. Develop a system that works for you

If you’ve looked into article writing methods before, you’d have come up with a lot of answers, such as the 3-point system, the AIDA method, and so on. But the true key of writing fast articles is simple: You just need to find a system that works for you.

Experiment with as many systems as you like, but with each one be sure to develop a ‘feel’ for it and try to figure out whether or not you’re comfortable with it. By trying out various techniques, you’ll gradually find one that you’re comfortable with – or even maybe combine several into your own unique style.

2. Improve your typing speed

Part and parcel of the ‘trick’ to writing fast articles is that you need to type as fast as you think. For some, touch typing is something that they learnt ages ago, and hence are intimately familiar with it.

For others though, and possibly in your case, you’re going to need to learn how to do it.

Practice makes perfect when it comes to typing, and you should find that the more you write (or rather, type!), the faster you’ll become.

3. Seek alternatives to typing

Assuming you just can’t seem to type fast enough, you might even want to seek alternatives that enable you to churn out articles just as quickly and overcome your slow typing speed.

One popularly used tool is a Dictaphone, that will allow you to dictate your article, and record your words in the form of text as you do. This way, you won’t have to type fast, but can just talk fast instead!

By taking these three simple steps, you should fin that you’re able to vastly improve on the speed at which you turn out articles. Sure, it will take time, but seeing as you’re going to be article marketing anyway, you’re going to be getting a lot of practice and should get used to these techniques pretty quickly.

Once you can churn out articles faster, you’ll be able to get greater results in a shorter span of time, and that is truly something worth working towards.

Getting into article marketing is often viewed as a pretty daunting task. If you’ve looked into it before, you probably already know the basics, i.e. writing and submitting articles to article directories.

And while that sounds easy enough to some, for others, the idea of writing articles is something that is very unappealing.

Whether you intend to carry out an article marketing campaign for backlinks or traffic, the one inescapable fact of the matter is that you’re going to need to be writing articles, and lots of them at that. Really, there’s no two ways around this, so you might as well get used to it now.

By writing more articles, your results will be vastly improved, as each article will bring yet more traffic, and yet more backlinks, to your website. Some marketers have been known to write hundreds of articles for article marketing – and that should give you an idea of what you’re getting into.

Needless to say, if you write slowly, at the rate of an article a day or something, you’re going to be stuck at this for quite some time. So there’s definitely a compelling reason as to why you should want to know the quickest approach to writing articles, and here’s what you should do:

1. Decide on a topic

To do this, head over to article directories, blogs, and other websites that deal with the niche that you’re in and get ideas. Choosing a topic this way is going to cut your work in half because you can then…

2. Extract facts from various sources

Remember: Don’t plagiarize. Instead, extract facts about your chosen topic from multiple sources. If you followed step 1, you should already have these sources handy, so this shouldn’t be too hard.

3. Write a great headline

Spend a little time thinking about your headline. Mull it over and try to figure out what would appeal to people and attract their attention. If you want, draft a few and then decide on one later on.

4. Clearly write about each fact that you extracted

Since you already have the facts, all you need to do now is use them, and clearly go over each one. Use a conversational tone if you can, and ‘talk’ to the reader. That way you’ll bridge the gap even better!

5. Call the reader to action

Finally, be sure that your call to action (i.e. resource box) is well written and really seamlessly flows from the body of the article before recommending a course of action to the reader. Be sure to give your readers a reason for this, and you’ll find that your results are that much better.

Simple isn’t it? This approach to article writing is really not complicated, and is something that anyone can use to their advantage. With it, you’ll find that you’re writing articles faster and more effectively than ever before.

And thus, churning out the sheer quantity of articles that you’ll need for your marketing will not be a problem at all!

Do you know what the mistake that most article marketers make is? Simple: They waste their efforts.

If you’re getting into article marketing, that probably means that you’re churning out as many articles as you can per day, submitting them, and then possibly even building backlinks to them. That is essentially the core of article marketing itself, and your plan probably doesn’t vary much from this.

What you’re probably counting on is the fact that your article marketing will then channel traffic to your website, where you advertise a product, service, or something else of that like.

Does this sound familiar? It really is the most common template out there and it is what most people do with their article marketing. Unfortunately, this really isn’t the best use of your time, simply because it doesn’t use a single concept that is crucially important in marketing: Leverage.

Basically, what you’re doing is creating a lot of informative content that then leads to someplace that you advertise something related. Great – but all that informative content that you’re creating, in itself, serves only to channel traffic, which is a bit of a waste considering you’re going to be doing a ton of research and spending a lot of time creating it.

What if there was a better use for that content?

With leveraging, you could do something different. One of the best examples of leveraging in action is this: Create an eBook on a certain topic, then extract and rewrite 7 pages of it as a report. Then, for each chapter of the eBook, write an article or two that covers some of the basics of each chapter.

So assuming you’ve created a 10 chapter eBook, you should at the end of it have that, plus a 7 page report and 10 to 20 articles.

Naturally, the articles would be used for article marketing, but the great part is that they’d be intimately related to the eBook and report too, and so you could offer the report free, and build a list from it, and then later on advertise the eBook.

Considering that the readers who read the article, subscribe to your list, and read the report probably already like what you have to offer by that stage, you then have a simple task of selling of the eBook to them!

See how leveraging your products can provide you with many different opportunities? As far as article marketing is concerned, it also means that you’re going to be able to get more clear-cut and continuous benefits from your efforts.

Putting in the same amount of work, and the same amount of effort as you otherwise would, you could therefore end up with many times the returns as if you’d just carried out regular article marketing. That certainly is something to think about isn’t it?

Go ahead and start trying to leverage with article marketing now. Really, there’s no way you’ll regret it!

If you were to write any old article and submit it to directories, you’ll probably end up finding that it isn’t the stunning success that you hoped it would be. In fact, the main problem you’ll have is that it seems to get few, if any, readers.

Sure, you could have really written a masterpiece that is worthy of being published in more than just an article directory, and sure, it may be the most informative and useful article on the matter ever.

But if it’s not getting any readers, then it could all just go to waste.

Essentially, the reason many articles face this problem is the fact that they’re not keyword-optimized. If you’ve encountered search engine optimization before, you’ll probably know something about this, but keywords are basically just phrases that people use to search for topics on the internet.

Optimizing your article for keywords means that you’ve identified certain keywords that have decent popularity and low competition, then inserted them throughout your article. By doing so, every time those keywords are searched for, your article should pop up.

And thus, you’re going to be able to let readers find your article!

Using keyword research tools, such as Google’s Keyword Tool and Wordtracker, you’ll be able to get data on the popularity of any keywords related to your topic. Furthermore, if you head to a search engine and search for those keywords, you should be able to get an idea of the competition that it has.

Armed with this information, you’ll be able to decide what keywords it is best to target, and then insert them into your article. Remember though that using 1 to 3 keywords per 100 words is normally more than enough. Any more than that and you could find yourself being penalized by search engines.

Also, although keywords are important, at the end of the day your article is going to be read by real people, and so you don’t want to concentrate on the keywords so much that the quality of the article itself is affected. Try to find a balance between the two, and you’ll find that you’re able to casually insert keywords in a manner that appears ‘natural’.

Last, but certainly not least, make sure that the first four words or so of your article, i.e. your headline, contains keywords. Most search engines take this as a form of ‘relevancy’ and give you extra credit for it, which is definitely going to make a difference when it comes to overcoming your competition!

See, nothing too complicated right? Keywords really are something simple, but using them could make all the difference in how well your article does.

Should you target the right keywords, and use them as we just prescribed, you’ll find that you’re able to get tons and tons of readers to your article, and from there, do with them as you please.

Do you know what the biggest obstacle is when it comes to article marketing for traffic? Let’s face it, for the most part, what you need to do is pretty easy, and that’s why many are attracted to article marketing at first.

Writing an article isn’t that complicated to do, after all. Publishing that article to an article directory is just as easy too, at the end of the day.

But the problem that many people face is that even though they’ve published a great article to a pretty good article directory, and even though that article is getting tons of hits, those hits aren’t translating into traffic!

Mainly the problem with this lies in one place: The resource box.

Within the resource box, you’re given space for a few lines of text, followed by a link that leads back to your own website. That much you already probably knew. Unfortunately, due to this understanding of the resource box, most people are prone to write something like ‘Click on this link now!’ in their resource box, and leave it at that.

Needless to say, this is not an effective approach. If you’re just going to be telling people what you want them to do, you’re going to find that very few people actually follow what you say, and most simply ignore it outright.

So since ‘telling people what to do’ doesn’t work, what does? Simple: Providing people with a good reason why they should want to do what you want them to do!

Notice the subtle difference between the two approaches. In the second, you’re not telling people just to ‘click here’, but instead you’re telling them ‘click here if you want to find out the number one secret of article marketing!’ or something like that.

By giving people a reason why they would want to do what you want them to do, you’ll find that you’re going to be getting a lot more clicks than you otherwise would. This approach that we’ve been discussing is known simply as: Incentives.

Giving an incentive for taking an action is one of the oldest marketing tricks in the books, and it is worth noting that your incentive can take many forms. Offering up discounts, free gifts, unique opportunities, and so on are all acceptable and effective forms of incentives.

All you need to do is choose one that suits your purposes well, and incorporate it into your articles.

Frankly speaking, the only downside of using incentives is the fact that whenever you offer an incentive, you need to be able to deliver. Not delivering on your promises is something that is going to be very detrimental and so, in a nutshell, you should make certain that you live up to your promised incentives at all times.

Use this newfound technique to your advantage, and start pulling in more traffic than you ever did before! All it takes is a few minutes to set things up right, and you’ll be well on your way to successfully article marketing for traffic.

In article marketing, the resource box represents the culmination of the article. Yet, it is unfortunately ignored quite often, and even brushed off as being just a simple ‘one line’ link that is put at the end of the page.

Creating the ideal article marketing resource box is something that doesn’t take long though, and if you do spend just a little time on it, you’ll find that you’re able to dramatically increase the amount of traffic that you gain from your article. Basically, you’ll be maximizing your results, which is always a good thing to do.

Now to start off on the right foot, you should realize that the ‘ideal’ resource box is one that:

1. Provides an intuitive ‘next step’ in the form of a backlink

2. Convinces the reader that this ‘next step’ is one that is worth taking

Should you be able to accomplish both these goals, then you have the ideal resource box already. More often than not though, most articles do not fill either of them, and that’s why you’re going to need to go about things using the correct approach.

Really, that approach starts right before the resource box, at the tail end of the body of the article. It is here that many writers make the mistake of concluding their article, which is a big ‘no no’ as far as article marketing is concerned.

Instead, your article should flow into the resource box, and it should be the resource box itself that acts as a ‘conclusion’, albeit not one of the conventional mold.

So once your article flows into the resource box, you should continue it seamlessly and draw things together. Start to conclude your article as you normally would, by summing it up, but then put a link there that leads to your own website.

Placing a link is only the beginning though. Sure, you’ve provided the intuitive ‘next step’ but now you’re going to need to explain to your readers why they would want to take that step. Most readers are going to be prone to thinking that they’re done when they finished the article, but you’re going to need to let them know that if they click on the link, they’ll find out more, and gain something useful to them.

To get this done, the best way is to provide an incentive. Honestly, this incentive is a reason why readers would want to click on the link, and it can either be something tangible, i.e. a free report or eBook, or even just a really strong reason, i.e. ‘discovering the full secret of article marketing’ or something of the like.

When you pull off both of the criteria that we just talked about, you’ll find that readers go through your article and read it all the way down to your resource box. There, they’ll find that they stand to gain more by just clicking one simple link… and, well, that’s where you have them ensnared!

Writing the ideal resource box is, as you now know, not difficult – but you stand to gain a lot by spending a minute or two on it!

By now, you’ve probably already heard mention of article marketing in the past. Whether you’re a beginner or a hardened expert, the fact of the matter is that article marketing is one of those techniques of internet marketing that is so popular, it’s hard to not hear about it when you’re in the field.

Assuming that you haven’t tried your own hand at article marketing before though, you probably only have a very, very basic view of what it entails. More often than not, all that people understand about article marketing to start off with is that it involves submitting articles to article directories.

Certainly, this isn’t wrong, but it is really just skimming the surface, because contrary to popular belief, there isn’t just one approach to article marketing: There are two!

1. Article Marketing for Backlinks

Over the years, this type of article marketing has emerged as being an immensely popular option. As more and more search engines start to incorporate backlinks into their ranking algorithms, the necessity to continuously be building new and high quality backlinks is increasing.

So it should come as no surprise that using article submissions to get backlinks is a very useful form of article marketing.

In each article that you submit, you’re allowed to have a backlink (or sometimes two) in the final part of the article. Commonly, this part is known as the resource box. Therefore, for every article that you submit, you’re actually going to be gaining a backlink.

Hence the more articles are submitted, the more backlinks you gain and the better you’ll do with search engines. Simple, isn’t it?

2. Article Marketing for Traffic

In contrast to article marketing for backlinks, article marketing for traffic is regarded by many advanced marketers as being the more ‘useful’ method. To put it in easy terms, this approach uses articles to create ‘streams’ of traffic.

If you remember how we just talked about the backlink in the resource box of the article, well, what if the readers of that article actually were to click it? Should that happen, then you’d be getting more and more traffic to wherever that backlink points.

Of course, for this to become a reality, you’ll need to convince the readers to click it, and you’ll also need to take care of a number of other intricacies.

On the whole, the main advantage of using article directories in this manner is the fact that you’ll be taking advantage of their existing value with search engines, and so you’ll probably rank better using them than you would if you used a fresh website.

Now that we’ve taken you through the two main approaches of article marketing, you should definitely be able to see that there is more to it than you might’ve thought at first glance. Truth be told, article marketing is a powerful technique, and either one of these approaches could be used to tremendous advantage.

End of the day, all you need to do is figure out which approach is going to serve you best.

Both social bookmarking and article marketing are commonly used by marketers for a variety of purposes. Primarily, these are concentrated around the twin aims of either:

1. Increasing the amount of traffic to a website, or

2. Boosting its ranking with search engines.

Needless to say, the second aim also inadvertently ends up helping the first, which is why both social bookmarking and article marketing are such attractive options, and are so widely used nowadays.

However when you combine both of these techniques, you’re going to be able to achieve far greater results than if you were to just use them individually.

Essentially, social bookmarking is primarily a form of building backlinks. Admittedly, it can be a good traffic source in its own right, but only under very special circumstances with very specific types of content. In terms of backlinks though, there are very few ways of building up a large quantity of backlinks in such a short span of time.

On these same lines, article marketing also has a similar dual purpose too, only this time, article marketing is a much more effective traffic source than social bookmarking. In fact, if used as a traffic source, it can also act as a ‘pre sell’ of a conversion, which makes it all the more powerful in its own right.

Due to this, the best way of combining both social bookmarking and article marketing is to let both play to their inherent strengths. In other words, article marketing should act as the traffic source, since it is good at playing that role, while social bookmarking can be used to boost the articles ranking with search engines, by building backlinks to it.

To put it simply, what you should be doing is publishing articles that are designed to garner traffic, and then once they’re up on article directories, you should build social bookmarks to the article.

Do so, and you’ll notice that your article is listed faster on search engines and ends up ranking higher than it otherwise would. As a result, you’ll end up having more traffic viewing your article, which in turn will mean more traffic clicking on your backlink and heading over to your website.

See how this is going to multiply your traffic results by an enormous amount?

Of course, for this to work well, you’ll need to be able to write articles that are convincing enough to ensure that the extra traffic you get to your article is going to be channeled to your website effectively.

But if you can pull that off, you’re pretty much home free, and on the road to achieving a thorough success in terms of pulling traffic to your website.

From there on out, what you do with the extra traffic you’ve attained is up to you, and I you can turn those traffic numbers into profit numbers then you’re going to be appreciating the full value of combining article marketing and social bookmarking!