Adventures in Finding Free Advertising on the Internet
I am fascinated by the life of an idea or thought on the web. The idea that anyone could be declared an expert. Thoughts spread around the world, while others are stopped in their tracks. On the morning news, I heard that Pakistan has banned YouTube for inappropriate content, but I am sure that the young of that country will find a way to view the site, or to create a new site for themselves. Blogs are certainly a great way to disseminate ideas, or to promote our work, but there are many ways to showcase our profession on the web. If you have been surfing around the web at all, you will probably have come across electronic newsletters or magazines, usually called ezines.
If you are new to this format, I thought that I could introduce you to this method of SEO and advertising. You may be creating material for a blog, and this may get you noticed, but if you want others to recognize this work, you have to promote it. By submitting a post to an ezine, your article could be picked up by any number of sources for quite some time. You have created a link back to your site for readers to follow if they like the writing, and that is where the SEO strategy comes into play. In our mobile society, you may just find that someone in Canada who read your post will be moving into your community, so they want to use your service after reading your words of wisdom.
By submitting your writing to a site for these ezines, you are agreeing to allow that your work could be distributed by those who agree to the terms of the provider. Part of those terms is that you will always be credited. If you are looking for an article on a particular topic for your blog, you can access the material on these sites, as long as you follow the rules. This may be good if you want a specific view of a topic that you do not have. You can also generate your own ezine through this material for your clients, so you do not have to write all of the content.
Articles that I wrote last summer still are floating around the net, and it caused an unusual SEO benefit. An editor for a topic on Wikipedia has referenced one of my posts for a subject on that site. Now the elusive Wikipedia link that I was contemplating has fallen into my lap. It took awhile, but now I have that link. The most unusual link was from a site called Thaicock. I thought this might be an inappropriate site, but I discovered that it is a website for the construction industry in Thailand (with a questionable name).
If you so desire, your article could simply be an ad for your business, and these sites will accept such a submission, but not always. Most sites will allow you so many free submissions (typically around ten), which you can get around by producing material that is not specifically an ad. Create an article that highlights your type service, or a market report, which has useful information. As long as it is perceived as useful the submission sites will continue to accept these articles for no charge. I know of one site, E-zine Articles, that will send you e-mails discussing how to write your articles to improve your exposure to the world wide web.
Here
are the three links to try out:
http://ezinearticles.com/
Ten free articles, but then free if informational
http://www.propertymagnate.com/articles/
Articles specifically for real estate
http://www.articledashboard.com/
And if you have press releases, maybe this site will
be good for you:
http://www.free-press-release.com/
Happy hunting for that client! There are many other
sites like this, so go ahead and explore.
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