 Lead Generation Through Ezines and ArticlesPublished Date: 2003-06-01 11:41:10 WorkOnInternet.com
And how would that generate leads for you? Think of your article as a giant ad, to be placed into someone's ezine. This is an indirect process: you first have to find directories of ezines. That's where you will also find announcement lists...which announce your ezine.! (In thee Resource section of this e-zine, I have listed all the linking information.) Why do people want to know if you have an e-zine? Because they want to know if you take ads or articles. They are always looking for new places to promote their own information. The assumption is that if you have an ezine, you also have a mailing list of leads, and that's what these people want to access. There are thousands and thousands of e-zines, but only a few directories by comparison. You could go to AskJeeves.com or Dogpile.com or any other of the directories or search engines, but that's not necessary. People like Rick Beneteau, Terry Dean, and Jim Daniels, plus others, have made it very easy for us to locate these directories. They have already found the safe and professional ones. Some are free, but have a lot of advertising to wade through. Others like Ruth Townsend's Lifestyle Publishing are a real pleasure to work with. The totally professional and comprehensive layout far outweighs the tiny annual fee. Ruth even has a very helpful manual with which to understand and use her site correctly. This should be your very first stop. What do these directories do for you? Well look at it like a yellow pages phone book. All have sections of topics and all you have to do is to find your section. Then choose the subcategories you need. You may also want to look at related topics if you can't find enough listings in the main category. Once you are in the site that's best for you, start collecting the information. If you want to promote your e-zine, find announcement lists. If you are looking for places to send your articles, create a folder in your word processing program and copy the listings into it. Make sure you know where you found it: it's very confusing once you gather more than a few listings. Look for listings that accept articles and copy their guidelines. There might have a different email address to which to send the article. Look for the editor's name: you'll want to send your introductory letter to the editor personally. OK: you have found the site that announces new ezines and you've added your title to the list. You have also located lists of e-zines that accept articles in you field of knowledge. It would be a good idea if you collected about 100 listings, as some won't be useful for a variety of reasons. In my experience, some people that say they take articles, in fact don't. So have some extras available. Once you are ready to use the article listings, I suggest you create a table in your word processing program to track your placements. Very soon after you start, you won't be able to remember just where you placed your article. You might also want to use a tracking system involving your email address. (Let me know if you need help with this and I will send you an article we had in a previous e-zine.) I realize that I have jumped from ezine to article and back, but you need to do both activities together in order to save time. There you have it in a "nutshell" well it's a little bit bigger, but equally as practical. This whole process is fun once you get over the basic confusion of what information to collect and what to leave behind. Oh, and don't forget to process all the responses you get! So follow the steps of the Internet marketing leaders. They have found the directories, given us courses on how to write e-zines and articles, and finally, shown us how to process all the important information. It's almost like a paint-by-number system and you can't go wrong if you follow it. Here's to your successful e-zine! |
