Your Marketing Power
Tammy Ames
wahmconnections.com
2004
One of the most important marketing tools available online to promote your business cannot be purchased. You can spend hours on end looking all over the internet for the best program or system to market your product or service but truth be told, the answer is right there where you are sitting.
Yes!
You are the answer to viral marketing. It costs you only your time, your commitment and discipline to produce well written articles with information people are seeking. You are an expert. Share your expertise and build a following for your knowledge while creating a market for your offerings online!
Honestly, it doesn't matter if you are on a music or parenting site. We all browse through websites for advice and articles that will solve our life problems, explain life's mysteries, make our lives easier, less cluttered, and show us how to be more successful in relationships and business. We stumble across articles that help us, that answer our questions.
Have you ever found an article that when you finish reading it, you have this sudden feeling of "rightness?" After experiencing a writer's viewpoint, you understand something that baffled you. When a writer "clicks" with the reader, it is a reflex for the reader to want to know more about the author. Reader automatically searches for more writings by the author. Why? The author answered something for you!
Articles truly are the most powerful marketing tool you can use to sell yourself as a business.
Power? Yes! Marketing Power.
Online articles allow you to market yourself as knowledgeable, helpful, and consistent and willing to take the time to share what you know to friends you haven't met yet. This is power to develop relationships on-line. Through articles we can develop friendships, business contacts, customers, and online credibility. There is no need to "sell" yourself or your business within the article. Simply share your knowledge, your thoughts and ideas.
Selling occurs outside the article in the "resource box." A great deal has been written on how to sell within the "resource box." What exactly does this little blurb of information about the author provide the reader? The resource box allows the reader to know the author on a more personal note. Being able to identify with the author's role as single mom or work from home dad is a powerful human connector!
You create an image of the author but want to know if the image holds, so you click to visit their website or subscribe to receive their free e-mail course, maybe even download of their latest e-book. Each of these clicks brings you closer to the author. You feel connected and will remember them.
A single encounter with an author online doesn't usually make an immediate impact but after the second or third time you read yet another of this same author's articles found on yet another website. You take notice. You realize this is person to look up!
Just think about this.
Finding a great article that explains multi-level marketing, affiliate programs, baking home-made bread or how to potty train your resistance 3 year old can be a literal bright spot in your day! You open your mailbox and a friend has sent you a poem or story that had been forwarded to them.
That in a nutshell is viral marketing.
Over time you will notice websites, article banks and e-zines publishing articles by these same authors that have already helped you in some way. You mentally filed their name and maybe even their website to back of your mind as a positive. You find security in reading their latest article because you feel you already know that author on some level.
So if you share great stories, articles, poems, writings with friends and customers online then you already know the power of words to influence and change lives. It can be a very overwhelming. The thought of writing for others to read can be scary.
The joy comes in having someone send you an email or subscribe to your newsletter because you helped them with one of your articles. It is an important step in working from home. Developing a series of articles to help others to meet whatever challenges face them day to day..that is the goal and you will suddenly realize you are marketable.
Just as a musician has to strum their first chord before they can play in a band. The first step is the hardest but with practice you will see the power in your skills to share information others need or want. Now start writing!
Tammy Ames is a work at home mom to 4 children. Living in Maine, she has been in nursing for over 20 years and enjoys the challenges of working full time online from home. Tammy offers support for women starting their own home business with her work at home mom resource site:
Work at Home Connections
. Permission granted for use on DrLaura.com.
