If you've spent any time online trying to promote your Web site or online business, you must have very likely realised that one of the most effective ways to augment your credibility, authority, visibility, prestige and reach on a long term basis is to write your own research articles and freely distribute them to independent publishers, newsletter editors and major Web sites along with your one paragraph bio/credit line and a clear link back to your Web site.
The reasons why this free sharing marketing strategy is so effective include the following:
a) "Rich and relevant content" is the most important asset to cultivate and nurture in order to build an online presence capable of sustaining itself through the provision of valuable info to its readers.
b) Rich and relevant content is the one secret asset most small online business and virtual entrepreneurs keep hiding. By exposing the best and most unique and relevant content to your potential customers, even your small organisation can increase its marketing thrust, prestige and credibility enormously.
c) The so-called knowledge economy is driven by information and solution-providers not by mere distributors of physical goods.
d) Information wants to be free. On the Web, people expect to be able to read, consult and use what you have to offer without paying for it. While this may be offered only up to a certain extent you must bow to the ruling paradigm: share before you sell.
e) Prospective customers are actively seeking for solutions to their problems and to their communication and learning needs. By providing rich and valuable content online your company can gain prospective customer loyalty even before selling products or services to them, while significantly increasing its credibility and competence in the field.
f) It's totally FREE.
g) It does increase your ranking inside search engines and it can significantly raise your Google PageRank (a popularity and authority indicator that can be gauged by installing the Google toolbar in your browser).
One absolutely critical factor in best leveraging the potential of this increased distribution and of the growing number of links pointing to your Web site from elsewhere is the ability to provide a link back to your web site, embedded in the credit line of your articles, which utilizes the CORE KEYWORDS OF YOUR MARKET SPECIALIZATION as the actual link words pointing to your site. That means that if you are an independent publisher specializing in live e-learning courses the words that link from your credit line to your Web site should be "live e-learning courses".
This facilitates Google task of categorizing your online resource as a relevant one for that very specific category, as confirmed and corroborated by the Web sites linking to you through the use of that very set of keywords.
When people see your name and Web site/company in the by-lines of the articles on an increasing number of different sites, you will naturally increase your brand name and your ability to be perceived as an "expert" in that field.
This increases your credibility and makes it more likely that your visitors will take your recommendations more seriously.
It is for the above reasons that I would like to share here a humble list of mixed-quality resources that I have collected over time and which maybe very useful for the ones of you taking the initial steps in your journey toward independent publishing, online reporting and running a full business online.
Treat the following list only as a starting point, and consider that the resources I have listed here are of the generic kind. That is, you can submit to them articles and essays on a very broad range of subjects.
Of course, once your specialty know-how is well developed in a specific direction you may want to consider sector or industry-specific outlets, which may bring a much higher, and more targeted flow of interested readers and potential customers to your own online resources.
