Thursday, May 22, 2008

Article Marketing Mastery And Sexy Lawn Furniture

Article marketing mastery sounds more like an unattainable ideal than an actual destination doesn't it?

I don't expect to ever leave my trusty Dell one day, after writing an article and say "Damn. Nailed it. Time to 'master' something else."

It won't happen. And that's the beauty of all of this.

Progress not perfection.

While I was a copywriter at J Walter Thompson and Young & Rubicam in New York, we creatives would get literally drained by the amount of times we would have to present our ideas. Internally and to the all mighty clients who pay all the bills. Present to this person, present to that person. Get on a plane to Atlanta, present. Go to focus groups, present.

One of the tricks that we came up with during all of that tedium was a game where we would try and insert a phrase into meetings with the head clients. Simple phrase...were totally unique but also HAD NOTHING AT ALL TO DO WITH WHAT WE WERE TRYING TO SELL THEM.

The 'game' part of it was to see who could most creatively insert the phrase!

For instance, before we got into the conference room with the client, the creatives would agree on the phrase, and the more ridiculous the better. So if I was selling ideas to The Bronx Zoo (which I continually did), the phrase might have been something outrageous like having to say "albino criminals" or "why LAWN FURNITURE IS SEXY.' And who ever could do it WITHOUT calling attention to how RIDICULOUS it sounded...won!

Bear with me here, I'm turning the corner.

Well what I didn't know at the time, but do very well know now is that what we were actually accomplishing with this little creative 'phrase game' was that we were inserting unique KEYWORDS into the meeting. We were, in fact, 'cloaking our keywords.'

That's right...KEYWORDS.

Now, here's why you should be playing this not so little game...

By finding VERY SMART ways to insert unique phrases into your articles THAT HAVE NOTHING TO DO WITH THE TOPIC OF YOUR ARTICLES, you will be able to track them as they fly around the net.

You'll be able to do natural searches for your own CRAZY keywords and see which webmasters have picked up your content. Because of the uniqueness of your keywords, they will completely be your own. No one else should have ever used these words in combination...that's your tracking key.

Again, it is very important that you DON'T use a crazy keyword (which can be more than one word, don't forget) that will pull your readers off course. It can't be disruptive. So finding clever ways of putting them in there is important to the natural flow.

Try it with one article.

Watch as your work ends up in countries you've never even heard of before.

It's as wild as...let me think...as wild as albino criminals I suppose.

Enjoy!

Kevin Browne is a former Creative Director and Senior Copywriter at agencies including J Walter Thompson, McCann Erickson and Young and Rubicam. Kevin now runs TABinteractive where he shows web owners how to FINALLY make ridiculous, and consistent online sales at http://www.tabinteractive.net

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