Article Submission – Your First Viral Marketing Tool

One of the most important aspects of having success online is to use your limited marketing and time resources in the most effective way possible. In other words, you need to get as much return on your investment as you can by spending the smallest amount of resources (which could be monetary or time-related). For Internet marketing, there is one excellent strategy that answers all of the requirements from above – it’s called viral marketing.

Through viral marketing you initiate an action and then allow it to propagate, much like water ripples would do in a pond if you threw a rock in the water. The whole concept uses the “word of mouth” idea, but is ads the speed and efficiency of virtual communication.

On the Internet, a viral marketing campaign may bring your website a huge amount of traffic for an initial investment that is almost negligible.

One of the most important, effective and easy to use tools of viral marketing is the process of submitting articles to directories – let’s have a look at how this works and why it’s so effective in Internet Marketing.

How does it work?

The process is simple and you don’t need any programming skills to initiate a viral marketing campaign. Simply write a high quality article, or commission someone else to do it for you. Choose a topic that is related to your website, but make sure it addresses issues that are of general interest in the target audience.

For example, if you own a site on dog training or dog products, you might want to write a more general article on this topic, as that has a better chance of spreading around. Add a “resource box” at the end of the article, writing about yourself in the 3rd person and describing your website.

Also make sure to add at least one active link in your resource box – note that some directories will require you to place HTML code with your links in order to make them active. Here is what the link code should look like:

Site Name

Of course, replace the URL and the description of the site to suit your needs. Your article is good to go and now it's time to submit it to several directories, for increased efficiency. Make sure to choose the appropriate category where the site will appear. It also helps if you can find some niche-specific article directories. Some great resources to submit your articles to are:

o http://www.MyContentBuilder.com
o http://www.MyPetContent.com
o http://www.Buzzle.com
o http://www.EzineArticles.com

Getting back to the dog training site example from above, you might want to look for specific, pet-resource oriented directories. The efficiency of submitting to specialized directories is a lot higher than general content directories, but there are also fewer of them and it’s hard to locate more than a bunch of really good ones. A great pet related resource to submit articles is:

o http://www.MyPetContent.com

If you are already submitting articles, but you're looking for an easier and faster method, you might want to try an automatic article submitter. It will submit your article to over 30 directories in half an hour. To watch a video on how to do this, go to:

o http://1trac.com/dt/t/Article_Submitter_Video.php

Karianne Kline is a Graphic Design student currently attaining her Associate's Degree. She is also learning the other end of the spectrum in Marketing and SEO. She strives to learn as much about these topics as she can as it will help her become a better designer and marketer. You can learn more about what she does by visiting http://www.LazyLinking.com .