Article Campaign Management (Part 5) Ghost Writers & Submission Managers!

PART I - GHOST WRITERS:
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What is A Ghost Writer?

Ghost writers offer their writing skills in order to create unique articles for clients with the intension on promoting their articles online. Some ghost writers will write in bulk, others will research the industry and write very informative articles. The key for ghost writers is massive production while keeping a certain set of high standards for their articles.

What Should I Look For From A Ghost Writer?

1. Make sure you have exclusive rights to each article they create for their clients.
2. Make sure NONE of the text within each writing material is copied from somewhere else.
3. Take a close look at their previous work for copied content.
4. Make sure they won't try to promote themselves within the material they create.
5. Make sure they write more than 300 words for each article they create.
6. Ask for 10 individual writing pieces for examples within your industry.
   (Most ghost writers have written about your industry before)
7. If you write the article yourself, will they be able to review/edit spelling and grammar?
8. Do they offer writing in multiple languages?
9. Do they have a background in writing?
10. Have they written over 1000 articles for their clients?
    (Many ghost writers have written ten's of thousands of articles)
11. Do they look at you for ideas?
12. Will they sit down with you over the phone or in person discussing your business 1st?

Hiring a ghost writer is pretty simple. The most important thing to look for is originality! Unfortunately, the article marketing industry is full of copycats and spammers online. This allows for many ghost writing companies to take content from others without you knowing it.

When you receive a piece of material, take the "Title of the article" and search within Google for that specific title. Make sure to add "Quotes to your title". This will give exact search results for the title in question. If you even discover 1-5 results with the exact article title, you might be a victim of content scamming. Copying content is serious business. Article directories look down at copied content and many of them already have measures in place to remove any copied content. If you do receive an article that is copied, your submission manager will have a terrible time trying to get that article through the submission process with any success.

CopyScape has made a search engine for copied content!


Simply publish your article within a blog or website and enter the address within the search bar. If your writing material is in fact copied, the CopyScape search engine will be able to show you those results.

PART II - SUBMISSION MANAGERS:
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PR Manager, Submission Manager, or SEO Specialist:

Now that you have your writing material, it's now time to promote your information online. You can do this the old fashion way by spending countless hours

• Registering your authors accounts.
• Verifying your email.
• One by one submitting your material online.
• Fixing any errors if your submissions come back as problematic.
• Starting the process all over again.

Or you can submit online by outsourcing to a 3rd party company that specializes in article submissions online.

Some of these companies include:

1. PR (Press Release) Marketing Companies
2. Ghost Writers
3. Specialized Article Submission Companies
4. SEO (Search Engine Optimization) Companies

These four types of services provide a service for their clients by promoting the clients business online through ezine articles, press releases, and directory submissions. Whether the client writes the articles themselves, or hire a "ghost writer" to create the article for them, it's up to the submission manager to make sure each article is promoted properly online.

All of the above service companies will most likely provide some form of promotion services for your articles. Article marketing is so lucrative; you won't have any troubles finding a company suited to your needs.

What Do I Look For In An Article Marketing Package?

300-500 Directories Within Their List:

Some services you find online only submit to the top 25-50 directories. This is a big mistake. Anyone can submit to 50 directories within 1-3 hours. The power of content marketing is through massive numbers. The greater the list of directories, the more you'll be guaranteed success even for just 1 article let alone 30. Higher end services will show you a list of 300-500 directories they submit to.

High Goolge Page Rank Doesn't Always Mean High Traffic:

Try not to go with companies that only submit to high page ranking directories. Page ranking changes all the time and just because a directory has a page rank of 3/10, it doesn't mean that they don't receive massive traffic on a daily basis.

Unique Author Accounts Setup:

This above all is the most important. Make sure that the company you hire creates a unique author account for you when submitting your articles online. This ensures that your business receives the necessary promotion, and not the submissions companies business. Many services out there tend to promote themselves within the accounts they setup online. Most clients never know that this ever happens so they don't typically see anything wrong with it. I assert you that many directories online have "extras" to promote your business, and by creating an author account you guarantee that these extras are helping you.

If anything make sure to ask them to add your unique author name, and to completely fill out a company biography for your company under that name including but not limted to:

• Company contact information
• Website address
• Blog address
• Company biography (Provided by you)

Use An Author Picture When You Can!

Author accounts who have an author picture associated with the account get 10x more exposure compared to authors who hide themselves, here's why:

• A picture builds credibility.
• People will relate to your articles better.
• Visitors will remember who you are.
• Directories have areas specific for promoting authors with pictures!

Don't be shy. Get the best picture you have and give it to your submission service representative. Make sure to tell them that you want your picture added to each directory that accepts picture uploads.

Make Sure They Promote 1-3 Website Links:

I've seen this time and time again. When promoting their clients articles, marketing companies tend to insert their own website at the bottom of the article within the author resource box. This is seriously wrong, each link that is provided within your author bio looks as though you own it. If anything, make sure to give 3 different website addresses to promote within your author resource section. Each link can be from one website, but must be different than the other.

Again, Make Sure YOU Get Promoted Within The Author Resource Box!

Watch out for companies that use the author resource box as their own and not for you. Some companies submit your company information directly within the article body. This is a HUGE mistake. There aren't many directories out there that accept the author's information within the article body, let alone actually activating any of the links within the body. Notify your marketing company that you want to make it clear that they need to promote YOU within the author resource box, not themselves.

Do They Provide HTML Setup As Well As Text Setup?

A good submission company will provide 2 versions of your article for online promotion.

1) HTML formatted article for directories that accept text with bolding, italics, underline, lists, active links, etc. The more dynamic your text is setup, the better search engine optimization and more attention for your text.

2) Simple Text for directories that only accept simple text formatting. Promoting both is the key to getting well formatted articles online. Not all directories accept HTML and will penalize you for submitting an HTML formatted article.

Will The Company You Hire Provide Support For Problem Articles?

Not all ezine article directories are the same. Some accept this, and others accept that. When promoting an article, it's almost certain that one-two directories will send the article back with problems that need to be fixed. Make sure to ask whether or not the company you hired provides support for articles that come back as problematic. If they don't, then they haven't fulfilled your contract that should state "We will provide successful submissions for each article". A successful submission is not a problematic one.

Above All - Track Your Efforts Online!

The worst thing you can do is sit back and wait for new clients to come pouring in. It may take weeks, or even months before your article really gets the traffic power it needs online. Even then, it sometimes takes years before your article is republished within 1000's of websites online. The best way to track your article is by:

1) Searching for the title of your article in Google.
2) Searching for your author name.
3) Searching for copied content within Copyscape.

How Many Visitors Can I Expect?

(JUST AN ILLUSTRATION ONLY)

Remember 1 article = 30-100 visitors a year per directory, depending on the directory. So if you submit 1 article to 300 directories, expect around 9,000-30,000 readers. Take the 3% rule and your website should receive around 270-900 actual visitors per article in one year.

This is just an estimated sample, but you can get a good idea from this alone the importance of submitting more than 1-5 articles in a year!

Imagine you submit 30 articles a year and 300 directories accept them, here would be your results:

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1st Year (30 articles):
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270,000 - 900,000 Readers
8,100 - 27,000 Actual web site visitors

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2nd Year (60 articles):
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Because of publishers reprinted your 1st set of 30, those 30 articles you posted last year are now on 1000 web sites all receiving between 30-100 visitors for this year. Now those results might turn into:

30,000 - 100,000 Readers per article
900,000 - 3,000,000 Readers for 30 articles
27,000 - 90,000 Actual web site visitors

Don't forget that you kept to your word and submitted another 30 articles which compounded into:

270,000 - 900,000 Readers
8,100 - 27,000 Actual web site visitors

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Giving you a total for the 2nd year (60 articles):

1,170,000 - 3,900,000 Readers for 30 articles
35,100 - 117,000 Actual web site visitors

Isn't it time you submitted another article?

About The Author:

Download PDF Version: Article Management Campaign (Part 5)

About The Author:

Martin Lemieux is the owner of a successful article directory network with over 80,000 author submitted articles.

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