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If you've been following along in this series of articles, you may have noticed we haven't really touched on writing skills. For one thing, this series is about article marketing and not article writing. And secondly, being a skilled writer, though helpful, isn't all that vital a requirement to success.

Now we're not talking about proper punctuation and sentence structure. Those things are vital to give your readers the impression of intelligence coming from your words. There are plenty of courses around the web for that however.
We're more interested in content. That is, what your articles really say to the public.

In the last article we touched on this concept of uniqueness, and basically what it isn't. Spinning an article by changing the paragraph order or replacing a few words with synonyms is not making anything unique. It's just saying the same old thing in different ways, and no one will be fooled by it. Turned off maybe, but not fooled.

We mentioned how "unique" was about concept and not structure. Unique is about ideas and viewpoints designed to peak interest. Something your reader hadn't thought of before that brings them to a place more fertile for receiving your ideas and recommendations.

Now notice we didn't say "something brand new" never before thought of? After all, if we could all do that, we'd each have our own Pulitzer Prize!

What we did say however is, "something your readers hadn't thought of before."

Look at it this way . . .

A teacher works in a classroom. Why? Because the people in his or her environment know less than he or she does. But take a first grade teacher and set her up as the professor in a university, and she may have problems finding anyone whom she can teach anything to.

Yet that same first grade teacher knows exactly what her 6 year old students need to learn, and so provides it with ease. She has all the techniques, skills, and understanding to teach people at their level. The big secret is simple. She knows what they don't know and knows how to give it to them.

So how does this all apply to creating unique content that will teach your readers? Let's repeat the secret of teaching first graders once more for good measure . . .

By putting yourself in the position to "Know what they don't know and know how to give it to them."

You see, the web is full of forums on all different subjects as well as other sites designed to let people ask questions in the hope of getting answers. A lot can be learned about how people think and what sort of information they want to learn but just can't seem to find on their own.

With a little browsing through these places, and a moderate amount of research, you can learn enough to get smarter than they are and put yourself in the same position as that first grade teacher. In other words, you can, with a little effort, find the answers people are asking about.

Now its just a matter of taking this knowledge and presenting it from a slightly different angle than most others would respond with, and you're a pioneer in the field!

Another way to blaze a new trail is to apply knowledge of one topic to a different topic. For example, you may have some knowledge of communication that could be applied to relationships. Or you could use some skill you have in military training to create a unique strategy for getting through a life crisis.

Another fine example of this is when someone learned about the science of NLP, or Neural Linguistic Programming and applied it as a solution for creating hypnotic sales promotions to increase conversion rates.

Here's an exercise for you . . .

Sit in front of the television and watch the commercials. See how they promote their offers and try to think of another way they could have done it. Apply your own life experience to the mix and see if you can relate the product promotion to you. Chances are, you will come up with a take on it that others could relate to as well.

Unless you've lived in a bubble somewhere, you have knowledge. So it's just a matter of taking what you know and finding ways of applying it to different circumstances. In this way you can create unique approaches to common problems and situations.

We could go on and on with examples, but hopefully you have the idea.

Just remember, "unique" is about concept and viewpoint. Creating unique content then is matter of infusing new ideas, or at least new angles to old scenarios and making them reasonable. With practice, you'll be able to take any topic on any niche and find new ways of looking at it.

So the new idea we can glean from this? Spin the thoughts, not the words in your articles!

Technorati Tags: article marketing, coming up with new ideas, How to Write Unique Content, unique content

Somewhere along the way, someone noticed that Google and the other search engines frown on duplicate content. Until that time, people were writing articles and submitting them to as many places as they possibly could, and seeing good results. But the frenzy over the duplicate content issue that was about to happen rocked the marketing industry, and becomes a good case study for the power of using articles as a teaching tool, albeit a misguided one in this case.

In the last article entitled "Teaching Your Way to the Top With Articles," we discussed how the gurus and other clever marketers figured out that being a teacher was more profitable than being a marketer. They created a "pied piper" effect that had thousands of people waiting for their next words to come out in print so they could follow.

They made millions!

But not all the information was all that good, and a lot of people got taken for a ride due to partial techniques and funneling tactics that basically made more money for the teacher and nothing for the "students." Yes, there was a "dark side" to marketers becoming teachers and gurus.

Well this all happened again recently when something Google had in its guidelines got misconstrued, and whether intentionally or not, the effect was astronomical.

In the Google guidelines it mentions duplicate content and how its a bad thing. However, when you read the document completely, it explains what duplicate content actually is to them. According to Google, duplicate content is plastering the same content on the same site to try and fool the search engines into thinking a site has much greater relevancy than it actually does.

In other words, it would equate to reposting this article over and over again on this blog with little or nothing else on the blog so as to make it look like it was one huge case study involving article marketing.

That's all Google or any other search engine say about duplicate content. No posting the same content on the same site over and over again. Period!

Now recently one resident Google expert mentioned taking care not to use an article already posted on your site for the purposes of submitting it to the article directories. But that's just common sense, because most article directories have a higher page rank than the average site, so posting the same content to them as you'd have on your own site would be shooting yourself in the foot. You would in effect be "withdrawing" any weight your article may have and giving it to the article directories.

But that's an entirely different matter than the duplicate content issue causing all the fuss . . .

The big misconception caused by taking Google's words out of context meant to some that everything had to be unique. You couldn't have more than one copy of any article or document on the web for fear of being Google Slapped.

Suddenly, all the "experts" were coming out of the woodwork with advice and software to assist people to find ways of "spinning" articles so they came off as unique and non-duplicated. Big bucks were made for people coming out with article spinning software that would rearrange an article's paragraph structure and changing around some of the keywords.

Unfortunately, most of these tools would make an article so unreadable and absurd that the author came off looking like a moron. But it solved the big problem of duplicate content though!

Of course what no one thought of at the time but a few who could see through the frenzy, was the matter of link popularity and the weight the search engines gave to documents viewed by others as important. If an article was posted and reposted on hundreds of sites, it indicated people felt it was good enough and important enough to share.

Ahem, what this means is, having a highly popular document on the web gave it more power, and in turn gave more value to the site it linked to.

Think of it this way . . .

A book becomes a #1 best seller. Why? Because a lot of people buy it, of course! They don't buy variations of the book, with different wording, or shuffled chapters. They buy the book, and the more it gets bought, the more popular and valuable it becomes.

Why would anyone think documents on the web would be any different?

So if the "duplicate content experts" think their approach to the issue is correct, then its in direct conflict with Google's methods of determining popularity, value and ranking. Either Google has some diabolical plan to trip everybody up, or these teachers of panic and dread are dead wrong.

But the case in point is, someone decided to teach something about duplicate content that wasn't commonly known and it created an explosion of activity. Article spinning software flew off the "shelves" and thousands of ebooks and reports were purchased and used to guide the fearful around the deep waters where the Google Slap lives.

Now no one is telling you to do anything deceptive, or disseminate false information. This case study is just to show you how, by taking an issue and teaching something no one else is, you can create a real flow of interest.

And you can do this with just about any topic. It's all about finding a different viewpoint than others have, and making it known through your articles.

This case study actually had a two-fold purpose. It showed you how easy it can be to become a teacher rather than a marketer, and how you could turn that into big profits. But it also touched on the issue of unique content and some misconceptions about it.

Unique is about concept, not structure. What the search engines look for in an article is options. They want to provide their users with as many viewpoints as possible, so providing them with one will make them very happy to display it for you. It doesn't have to be a drastic 360 degree turn around from what others are saying either. Just a slight tilt of perspective will do the trick.

You may not create an explosion of panic like this duplicate content issue did, but the true mark of a good teacher is in his or her ability to persuade, not force. It might take a little longer to get people to see your point of view, but the effects are much longer lasting than creating fad out of fear.

In the next article we'll look at some ways to take any topic in a new direction and how doing so will win you some appreciative followers who may just accept you as their teacher.

Technorati Tags: article marketing, article marketing case study, articles as teaching tools, case study, case study on article marketing, duplicte content, teaching with articles

One misconception many marketers who consider using article marketing make is, they see it as a product promotional tool only. While the idea might be viable, and to some extent successful, using articles just to promote a product can leave a lot of its potential on the back burner. This article is a continuation of the previous, entitled "Using Articles to Increase Your Level of Authority," and will get into how becoming a teacher can make all the difference in the world for your expert status.

The World View of You

It's been said many, many times . . .

In order to sell anything, you first have to sell you.

In other words, to be successful at selling products, regardless of what they are, you need to portray yourself as someone who can be trusted and respected first and foremost. Anything less than this will have you spinning your wheels and locked in at the bottom of the marketing chain with the rest of the bottom feeders.

Sorry to be so blunt, but it's the absolute truth. Without credibility, you're nothing and you'll never stand out with any sort of authority on any subject.

To be successful over the long term, you need to build a perception of authority for the rest of the world to see and make it stick. You can't scam your way to the top.

So how do you go about gaining this credibility?

By being perceived as a teacher rather than a marketer!

The "gurus" mentioned in the last article took some very old, tried and true marketing concepts and brought them forward into the online arena. This shed new light and made these almost ancient ideas look brand new.

That's the plain and simple truth! They really didn't come up with new ideas. They just took some old ideas and made them appear new by applying them to a new platform (the Internet).

However, by making the new application of these old ideas, they created a spotlight in which to bask themselves in. And so while everyone else was scratching their heads trying to figure out how to create a market online, these people opened the door and taught them how.

They became teachers!

When you think about it, anyone could have done the same thing with a little knowledge of real world marketing techniques. They just did it first and got the credit for it!

So they walk off with the credit for blazing a new trail and are heralded as the pioneers of online marketing. Instant guru status! Experts and authorities each and every one of them because the perception of themselves they broadcast were as teachers and not marketers, even though they were marketing their lessons and making big bucks at it.

As the appreciation for what they were teaching people grew, so did their profits. They were seen as experts and that status gave them the credibility to recommend any product, whether their own or a friends, and make sales from it.

Now again, the chance of anyone breaking into this huge market now and achieving that kind of status is remote at best. But the same principles can be applied to any market with the same success ratio using articles.

It's all about teaching, and using your articles to touch on issues and ideas not commonly known. One way to do this is to find some popular misconception about your topic and setting things straight. It doesn't have to be a new idea, just a better and more reasonable way of looking at things.

For example, most people who market with articles will tell you, you need to use unique content. Even some article directories state right in their terms of service that articles submitted to them have to be "original."

This created a whole new market of article spinners that manipulate articles by changing them around and inserting new keywords in them to make them appear to read differently. But is this what "unique" really means? Is an article, reconfigured with paragraph shuffling and changed keywords really "original'?

You'd be amazed at how many marketers think so. Yet, there's a unique and original, and yes factual way to look at this, which will be the topic for the next installment of this Article Marketing eCourse.

Technorati Tags: Articles, becoming an expert, teaching tool, using articles to teach

The prime objective to any success online goes way beyond simply getting a site up on the web, requiring instead some level of authority or at least an implied value of importance. It all has to do with content value and how other authority sites view that content. This is where submitting articles can effectively help your site's authority by strategically building you up as an expert, plus add quality back links in a couple very important and valuable ways.

What Constitutes Authority?

Authority depends on how you look at it . . .

From an SEO (Search Engine Optimization) perspective, authority has to do with the value of a site based on the number of high level back links it has as well as the amount of quality content it displays. Search engines such as Google take into consideration the popularity of a site in determining its value and weight in comparison to other sites on the same topic.

Technorati Tags: authority, authority site, becoming and expert, expert status, SEO

Since the dawn of online marketing, people have been trying to "build a better mouse trap" to funnel potential buyers onto sales pages and order forms. And while outlets such as classified ads, and lately social networks, have proved successful to one extent or another, they tend to lack the ability to solidify a real base of enthusiastic customers. This is one area where article marketing works, perhaps better than all others.

The Long Sales Page Dilemma

When you think about it, long sales pages became necessary in the era of the classified ads. Classifieds are short, maybe three line blurbs about a product or service with little room for elaboration. So it was necessary to use the sales page as the clarification and justification for purchases.

A marketer would have to use the sales page to do all the convincing and explaining in order to make the sale. Most times visitors would still simply scroll down to the bottom of the page to get to the "bottom line," or the price. At best, a long sales page could produce a 10% conversion rate, IF the visitor took the time to read the argument in favor of the product.

But in reality, the more serious customer wants to know just a couple of things, namely, "what you have; what it does; and how much it costs." Everything else on a long sales page is seen as fluff.

So this creates a dilemma for the marketer because he or she is forced to do all the convincing on a single page that, frankly will probably not be read in its entirety. Thus it becomes a hit or miss scenario for him.

The Social Resistance Movement

Social networking a sales promotion seems to be doing a little better than classified ads. At the least, a marketer can create a blog post, much like writing an article with some elaboration allowed, and spread it far and wide across the social platforms. However there seems to be an enormous group of "socialites" who resent having their "news" format used for advertising.

So the trick is to camouflage the concept of marketing so it can penetrate the front lines of social network puritans just looking to vote down or bury anything that smack of sales promotions. It doesn't always work.

On top of that, the social network system is all about getting on the coveted "front page," or convincing enough social enthusiasts to make your story popular by voting it up. This puts anything submitted in direct competition with real news stories, political pieces, and everything else the trends refer to as "hot topics."

The good part about social networking is, you get to network. You can build a large group of "friends and fans" who you can share your stories with in hopes that they will vote it up. The down side is, it's very difficult to determine what a friend or fan might actually be into. So again, we find the hit or miss scenario which may get a story voted up, but without sales conversion from the people we share the promotions with. Most often friends and fans who do vote up a story, do so to get you to vote theirs up in return.

The Logic of Article Marketing

So now let's take the shortfalls of classified ads and social networking and see how article marketing can remedy and counteract them . . .

Now no one is saying these other methods of promotion are wrong or useless. They have their merit for sure. But article marketing offers an entirely different opportunity the others do not.

>From a targeting perspective, articles are submitted to article directories and placed in a specific category so they're easily found by people looking for specific information on the topic. This enhanced relevance not only allows for more enthusiastic readers, but creates a more relevant and valuable back link to your site. (We'll get into back links in another article shortly).

Looking at it from a promotional aspect, articles can be used to build interest for a recommended product by touching on the benefits and explaining its value. This can alleviate the need for long explanations on a sales page and actually pre-sell a prospective customer long before they ever reach your sale page or order form.

If we look at this from a "real life" perspective, classified ads in magazines tend to get a much better conversion rate when there's a full length article somewhere in the magazine highlighting the value of the product the ad offers. And this stands to reason because, the article predisposes the reader in a favorable way and thus they are more likely to follow through having just read something about it.

Likewise, in the online world, targeted articles tend to predispose the reader favorably toward the recommended product they talk about. (Again, we'll elaborate on this in another article).

Finally, as we saw with social networking, article marketing can get you a following of people if you do it right. The difference however, is the following you get from article marketing is much more finely tuned and targeted than merely befriending other socialites. These people who follow your articles tend to be much more enthusiastic about the message, and so become a much higher percentage of buyers.

On top of this, when your articles are used as a teaching tool, these readers will gradually begin seeing you as an expert in your field which will increase the potential for sales. People tend to take the recommendations from others they can learn from much more readily than from someone simply promoting something. (More on this later as well.)

This article then becomes the first in a mini eCourse series on article marketing where we'll get into the real meat about how to create a successful article campaign that'll seriously enhance your online career. Article Marketing works wonders when done correctly, and you're about to learn how. Stay tuned!

Technorati Tags: article marketing, ecourse, teaching