Getting Published: Powerful Marketing For Next To Nothing

Are you looking for an effective cheap way to build your practice? Article marketing is a fantastic option (and is even available if you simply can't write)!

How does writing help me get more clients?

You are an expert in your modality, that's a given; but writing about it, really helps people to see you as an expert. Regular publishing of articles can really build a reputation for you as a a leader in your field.


Articles are more effective than advertising because:

  • People actually read articles. They tend to gloss over adverts.
  • You can go into much more detail about the benefits of your treatments. You can also write about topics that will interest your target market, educating them about the conditions that you treat.
  • Marketing through articles is usually much cheaper than paying for advertising. The main investment is usually time, although if you’re not doing the writing yourself, you will need to invest some cash too.
  • Online articles help your website to rank more highly in the search engines.

An added advantage is that you are educating the public about your modality, thereby helping the industry as a whole.

Sounds great, how do I get started?

Here are some ideas for articles:

  • Produce a simple Q&A about your modality. Q&A type articles are fairly easy to write and effective.
  • Write about a particular condition and how your modality can treat it. A real life story adds interest and draws the reader in.
  • Write about how your modality can help a particular type of person (e.g. a pregnant woman, or a stressed corporate worker).
  • Choose an aspect of your modality that clients are curious about and write about that.


The most important part of your article from a marketing point of view is your biography - the blurb about the author that appears with your article. Your contact details are essential - make sure to include your website URL and your phone number. Email address is optional - automated programs harvest email addresses from the web and pass them on to unscrupulous spammers. If you don't want to quadruple the amount of junk mails you receive, you might want to omit your email address! It's also a good idea to include a little bit of information about your qualifications or experience to reinforce the fact that you know what you're talking about.

Remember that your article is acting as an ambassador for you, so you want it to be good! Make sure your article is free of spelling and grammatical errors. (A good editor will correct these before publication, but a lot of online article sites simply publish articles exactly as submitted, errors and all.)

It's also a good idea to read over your article a few days after finishing it. Does it still make sense? Would it read better if you reordered the information? A few tweaks later can make a world of difference.

If you're not much of a writer, or maybe you don't have a lot of time on your hands, there are some alternatives that will allow you to use this powerful marketing strategy. One option is to hire a ghost writer, however it might be difficult to find one who knows your niche well enough to write about it, and good ghost writers don't come cheap. Another cheaper option is to buy private label rights (PLR) articles (massage therapists can try BodyWorkBiz), which you can then use as it, or modify them to stamp your own personality on to them. With PLR articles you are buying the right to modify them in any way you wish and to distribute the articles as if you are the author.

How do I get published?

One approach that works well, is to directly approach online publications and ezines that take article submissions. Many of these are crying out for good content to fill a demanding publishing schedule. For the best chance of being published, your article should be well-written, free of spelling mistakes and grammatical errors, and on-topic. Look at the other articles on the site to get a feel for the types of article they publish and their audience. If they have writing guidelines do your best to follow them. Come up with a shortlist of sites that are appropriate for your topic and try to submit articles to them regularly. That way, the regular readers become familiar with you and really start to see you as an expert.

If you don't have time to search out sites that publish articles, a faster approach is to submit your articles to syndication sites such as:

Online publications sometimes use these sites to find content to reproduce in their newsletters and web sites. However, as the editor of an holistic health website myself (yes, we do take article submissions!), I find I rarely use these sources, as the articles are often poor quality and I am usually looking for more unique content (the search engines actually penalise sites with duplicate content, which is one reason to be selective in distributing your articles).

Of course, you can also submit your articles to print publications, although these tend to be harder to get into, and you may find that they want exclusive use of your article. Being published in print usually has more kudos than being published online, and so this is a great way to build your reputation as an expert. To bring in local clients, approach publications that publish in your immediate geographical area.

Finally, don't forget about your own web site and client newsletter. You've put all that hard work in, so why not let your existing clients benefit? You'd be surprised at how many don't know that you treat condition X; and now they do know, they can refer their friends!
 

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