“Article marketing no longer works” is what some say. Of course, if you write garbage and expect people to eat it, this could be true. But it works if you do it right and can be about the most powerful marketing tools you have. Below are three mistakes in article marketing that are commonly made.

1. Confusing the reason for writing articles with the reason for promoting your business with articles.

While a number of reasons exist for the promotion of your business using articles, there is just one reason to write those articles.

First lets talk about reasons for promoting your business with articles. Articles drive traffic to your website. They also position you as an expert in whatever field you are writing about. Now those are great and all but it should not be your focus for writing an article. Then why write articles?

Giving value to your readers is why you should be writing articles. Any other motives will stand out like a sore thumb. False motives will turn people away. If you write in this manner, it is best not to bother.

Your readers will only trust you if you give them good value. You can advise them that you have more information on your site in the resource box.

2. Using less than an article’s full potential.

What is next after writing an article? Making the resource box attractive enough to entice people to click the link to your site is the next step. You may write wonderful articles that do nothing for you if readers stop short of clicking your links. Make readers want to click those links.

Using your keywords as hyperlinks in your resource box is a good technique that will increase your articles effectiveness. This will not only have the effect of getting visitors to your site from direct clicks on the links but will help the rank of your site in the search engines indirectly.

Then you submit your article to article to article directories. And then you’re done, right? WRONG.

A lot of people stop here and this is where they go wrong. Individual web publishers is where you go next to submit your article. Article directories are mostly visited by others also submitting articles. You want your article to be read by actual people and this will happen when web publishers put your article on their sites and email it to their lists.

3. Writing articles that are of little help to readers

Your articles have to be of help to people or two things can happen. Your business can be negatively impacted by either of them.

First, no one will trust you after reading your article. If they even do finish reading it. Chances are they won’t. The likelihood is that they will click away first.

Second, anyone putting your article on their site is not even going to be considered. If they put your article on their site, they would be risking their own reputation. They will lose trust if they put an article up that is garbage. This means you won’t get much in the way of links either. So it would be a waste of time.

Dead is not a good description of article marketing. It just takes a little more time and effort to do it right. But doing it right will mean great benefits for your business, so it is worth the effort.

About the Author:

About the author: Aaron Anderson runs his own successful online business. He gives you tips on how to do it. Make sure you check this out if you are running an online business.