The content produced by article writing services provides a firm foundation for effective digital marketing. Well written articles improve search engine rankings, establish industry authority, offer relevant information, and drive traffic. But articles alone have limited value. For them to reach their maximum potential, they need to be enhanced with other forms of digital content.
To understand this concept, it is helpful to take a quick look back at marketing in the early 20th century. Back then, marketing was a combination of printed literature and live, in-person promotion. Marketers who relied only on printing and distributing pamphlets didn’t do very well. Success required distributing printed literature, going door-to-door, and even standing in the public square to verbally engage those passing by.
Today’s digital marketing requires a similar approach. Success is a combination of written content, social media, video, and other resources. You start with article writing services and then build on them.
Planning for Article Writing Services
Planning is everything in digital marketing. And since a good marketing strategy is built on article writing, the first step on the road to success is developing a plan for the articles to be published. That plan should include the following:
- The kinds of articles to be produced;
- Topics to be covered in the articles;
- Length and depth of the discussed topics;
- A schedule for posting the articles; and
- A means of measuring the effectiveness of each one.
How much time should a plan cover? That depends on the organisation’s marketing strategy. The general rule is one or two months at a time. An organisation can plan quarterly if that is more convenient, but going beyond a single quarter is not advised.
Building on Articles
A good strategic plan for article writing services unleashes writers to do what they do. It is up to the marketing department to take those articles and combine them with other forms of content for maximum effect. For example, every new article should be accompanied by shares on Facebook, Twitter, Google+, LinkedIn, and any other social media sites the organisation is active on.
Topics that lend themselves well to video content can be promoted on websites like YouTube and Vimeo. Given that the internet is so visually focused, a well-produced video can boost the performance of an accompanying article significantly.
Some articles lend themselves well to follow-up guest posts. Guest posting is an opportunity to generate backlinks that take readers to the original article. It is also an opportunity to develop relationships with other website owners that could lead to reciprocal posting of original content.
Analytics for Article Writing
Publishing well-written articles and enhancing them with social media, video, and guest posting is all tied together by analytics. What are analytics? They are metrics digital markers use to measure the success of their efforts. In terms of article writing, three good metrics are:
- Traffic – The primary purpose of article writing is to drive website traffic. Therefore, this is the metric to start with. Articles should drive traffic via better organic page rankings.
- Reader Response – Article content is intended to inform rather than sell. As such, well-written articles should generate responses in the form of comments, questions, and general inquiries.
- Conversion Optimisation – Lastly, increased traffic and reader responses should eventually translate into better conversion rates. No single article will send sales through the roof, but a consistent stream of well-written pieces should improve conversion rates.
Article writing services can be enhanced with other forms of content. They should be tracked with metrics capable of measuring the productivity. When all of this is combined into a digital marketing strategy, good things happen.