Article marketing is a common traffic strategy most blogger used. Basically, it’s about writing an article and submit it to article directories. When people read your article and click on the link to your blog, you get traffic! However, this traffic strategy looks like a lot of work needed. Some bloggers need hours to write an article and submit to the article directories.

So, is it worth the effort and time?

Yes, it does. Article marketing are not just another traffic strategy for bloggers. It provides the following bonus benefits to blogger:

1.Contents for blog. After writing an article, you can rewrite it in a conversational style for your blog. Contents are very valuable. Instead of creating content for traffic, edit a bit and you’ll provide values to your blog readers as well.
2.Search engine optimization (SEO). Most of you might already know that blogs have extra advantages when it comes to ranking in the search engines. Google love blogs because it provides lots of fresh content to its users. With article marketing, you can easily create lots of high quality one-way backlinks too. SEO is a good source for automated traffic.
3.Passive traffic ’streams’. Most bloggers don’t know that article marketing could be used to get passive traffic over a long time. When you submit your articles to popular article directories, your article will not viewed by others only on the day it is published. Even your articles are few months old, people could search your articles from the search engines. If you have submitted 100 articles, you might be getting traffic everyday on autopilot.

And the best thing to know is that you don’t need hours to come out with an article. It might probably take you 30 minutes. And I know there’re some professional article marketers who are only spending 7 minutes per article. Let’s start with getting it done in 30 minutes first.

1. Understanding

The first step is to understand who are the visitors and what they want to read first. “What kind of visitors would you want to have at your blog?”, “What are they interested to know and read?” These are very important information before you start writing. With these information, you could easily attract the visitors you want. You could also create compelling titles and pull out content easily.

2. Writing

After knowing what your targeted visitors want to read, pick one of it. Create a compelling title with words such as “How to”, “Secrets” or “Tips”. Type “Opening”, “Point 1″, “Point 2″ until “Point X” and “Closing” at different paragraphs in your writing software. Lastly, write the an opening that is a summary of the whole article without the points. Write the points and explain it with more sentences or with examples. Remember to finish your closing by calling them into action.

3. Submitting

Submit it to the top article directories which is EzineArticles.com. You might heard of article auto submission services and software and you heard that it can submit to hundreds of article directories. If you are interested in getting traffic for long term, I believe it is enough for just one of it. If you are just interested in to build hundreds of backlinks for SEO, using those service is a good option.

If you use this method and continue improving your skill for months, you’ll be getting lots of traffic for your blog and able to create more articles in a shorter period of time. To improve your traffic from articles, always track how much traffic you are getting from each articles. EzineArticles.com do provide you such information for each of their authors. Remember, never forget to read more about writing better articles.

I believe that you have read lots of different blog traffic strategies if you have been blogging for some time. So, which one is the best method? Is it search engine optimization or pay-per-click? Is it the free ones or the paying ones?

The answer is…

It depends on your blog topic. As a blogger, you should choose which traffic strategies fit your blog instead of trying to figure out which one is the best. The magic question you should ask yourself to get the answer is “What visitors I want and where they usually go?”

After testing more than 10 different traffic strategies for my blogs, my results shows me the there are 3 sources of traffic every blogger should get is:

1. Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

You might already heard SEO. And would probably love to get traffic from Google. However, you are also convinced that it is hard and complicated. Well, blogs have lots of advantages in SEO. Google love blogs because blogs always provide fresh and lots of content. I rank high for many keywords with blogs easily. All you need to do is learn and apply the SEO basics. The first step is to optimize my blog for SEO. Next, I’ll start writing original and valuable blog post consistently. Finally, I’ll build backlinks by submitting articles and web directories. This is not hard but it takes time to reach. Probably 2-3 months.

2. Blog Commenting

Give valuable comments to other blogs which are related to your blog. The purpose of this is not to get readers to click on your link to your blog. Of course, it will be some bonus traffic. However, the main objective is to make new friends who share the same passion- blogging and talking about the same topic. When you have more blogging friends, all of you could help each other. They could recommend your blog to their readers if you write something good. You can do the same to provide more value to your readers too.

3. Word Of Mouth

Believe it or not, blogs are very powerful at word of mouth. Since the day I’ve learn about blog, I shared many blogs to all of my friends. I didn’t share that for some ‘Good Blogger’s Practice’. I shared them because I love those blogs. Their content helps me and I think it will help my friends. My friends thank me for sharing with them and I bring traffic to those blogs. If you are interested in people spreading the word for you, always remember this: ‘Provide Valuable Content’. Write contents or put up your own video that provide values to others.

4. Article Marketing

This is my favorite. This traffic strategy doesn’t takes months. You could start getting traffic from Article Marketing within days. All you need to do is write articles your targeted visitors want to read. Submit those articles you wrote to 5 popular article directories. You could start getting some traffic within a week and automated traffic over years. However, it is important to write a lot and not just few. Another benefit from using article marketing is that you can simply rewrite them in an informal style and post it on your blog. Both articles have similar contents but looks different. With this method, you are able to get traffic and update fresh content for your blog as well.

5. Forum Marketing

Forum marketing is fun and easy to many blogging beginners because all you need to do is chat in an online forum. Register an account and include a link to your blog in your signature. You might get some traffic if you reply often to the members’ post. But if you are interested in more traffic, learn to start a new topic. Start an interesting topic with an attractive title. If your topic draws people’s attention and replies, people would like to check out your blog to see anything more from you.

These are the 5 traffic strategies I recommend all beginners should start with. Although all of them take time to grow, it will grow into huge traffic streams and it is effortless to maintain.

Starting a corporate blog is definitely a very powerful choice to grow a business. Blogs are very good tools when it comes to word-of-mouth marketing, effective communication with market, following up, branding, creating customer loyalty and others. However, there’re some 7 crucial points you need to take note for a successful corporate blog.

1. Objectives

What are the objectives for the blog? Is it marketing, communicate tightly with the market, announcing products or events, building relationship with customers. If corporate bloggers are blogging just for the sake to join the corporate blogging trend, the blog will loses its attractiveness. I used to own a blog and advertise it heavily. I couldn’t understand why visitors are not staying until I realize my blog have no objectives and people don’t find it attractive.

2. Readers

Who will read your blog? Who are you targeting? You can write your blog for the market you are in and the customer who you want to follow up with. However, you need to make it clear because your blog will filter readers who are targeted. If you are writing to your customers, customers would find the blog attractive because the blog looks like specially made for them. Besides knowing you are writing for customers or the market, you need to understand your readers. When you blog about your readers problems, pain and questions, they will find the blog even more attractive.

3. Who Is Writing

You need to show your readers clearly about who is writing the blog. What is his position in the company? Clearly defines what will he writes about the company. Don’t use the word ‘admin’ to write blogs. It doesn’t sound personal but too official.

4. Design

How your blog is designed is very important. Besides making the blog easy to read, navigate and beautiful, you need to create a unique design that explains to readers what is the blog about. People judge a blog with their feel and experience. Before they start reading, they will look at the design first. If they find the design is bad, they will judge the contents are low quality before reading. Since most internet users surf many websites everyday. So if the design tells them this is not what they are looking for, they will just leave. Your blog’s design tells everything about your blog.

5. Writing style

Some corporate would still prefer to make each blog post official to announce events and new products. That’s fine. Writing in a conversational style with some personality makes readers feel listening to someone talking rather than reading a newspaper. Conversational style allows you to build strong relationship with your readers. However, make sure your writing style is consistent. Don’t switch your writing style. I read many blogs which announce new products and events. They are doing fine.

6. Follow Up

Make sure there’s a method to follow up your readers. Encourage them to sign up RSS. RSS is a tool to follow blog readers. You could use autoresponder services too. Every time you update your blog, use the ‘broadcast’ function to tell your readers you updated your blog and remind them to come and read. This helps building strong relationship with your readers.

7. Comment Policy

Blogs are allowed to comment on. Your readers can give you their comment about your blog and blog post. However, there’re people who intent to destroy your blog or people who want to advertise their services. They will give bad comments that impact your blog and readers negatively. Set a policy for your comments. Make sure you delete those harmful comments and reply to comments that contribute to your blog.

Hope you get a big picture about the key points to have a successful corporate blog and start enjoy blogging.