Do you realize that first quarter is gone? Did you achieve your goals for article writing? If not, it’s time to get smart with article distribution. How do we do that, though? Let’s take a look.

First of all, it’s a good idea to implement an overall action plan for your writing. Write down your goals for 2nd quarter, if you haven’t already done so. You don’t want to lose any more time than you already have. Then get busy writing.

Once a virtual assistant has the articles written, what is the best way to distribute them far and wide on the Internet. My recommendation would be to use a proven model for your article distribution. This model should be comprehensive, as well as being easy to use. The one that I’ve recently read about that I really like is the SmartDistribution PlatformTM that has been developed by Distribute Your Articles (DYA).

DYA has developed a model that incorporates all the finer points of ensuring that virtual assistants get smart with article distribution. Below I’m going to break it down for you.

To Spin or Not To Spin

Now before you bring up that I said before that spinning was not a good thing to do, I’ve since found out that spinning can actually have its uses — if you do it the right way. If you use the SmartDistribution Platform™, then you will have just the tool you need to spin your articles effectively. The beauty of SmartSpin™ is that you make the decision on whether to use it or not, depending on how comfortable you are with it. You hold the power to spin or not to spin.

Preparation Tools

There are many things we should do to make sure we not only get smart with article distribution, but also stay smart. One way we can do that is by careful preparation. Now DYA provides resources to you to do this in three different ways:

1) SmartFlow™ – When do you want your content to be distributed?

2) SmartCheck™ – It never hurts to be extra careful that your content is fit for publishing. Have it checked against a series of ad/spam filters, format checkers, link tests, and thin-content detectors.

3) SmartMatch™ – Have your content compared against the overwhelming sea of content out there on the Internet and evaluated for relevancy.

Distribution and Reporting

What wouldn’t we all give to have our articles show up as a feature article on well-known sites. Don’t think it’s possible? I can attest that it is possible with SmartFlow™. This happens with continuity in bite-size morsels – a little bit at a time.

But wait; what good is all this if a virtual assistant can’t determine the success rate of their article campaigns? Distribute Your Articles has taken care of that, as well. Called SmartTrack™, VAs can get all the information they need to know where the articles have been distributed, as well as when remaining articles are still left in the queue awaiting distribution.

Good Matches Yield Superior Results

SmartMatch™ is the very essence of SmartDistribution. Beyond a simple article marketing system, SmartMatch™ organizes your content into precise, individually- owned niche sites over time. With Google and other search engines tightening up their relevance requirements, it only makes sense to include this into your arsenal of article-writing tools.

Good article distribution can drive traffic to your website or blog site. Now more than ever, virtual assistants need to get smart with article distribution and implement a well-thought-out plan of action to get the best results. This process within this article is just one way. Whatever method you use, you need to start now. What are you waiting for?

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Pam Lokker is a skillful writer and proficient virtual assistant. She is co-owner of Borlok Virtual Assistants, the place to get global expert VA services with quality and on-time delivery.

Improve your chances of having your articles receive the recognition they deserve. Maximize!

An article writer has many tricks of the trade that they use to entice their readers into reading their good quality content. But do you know where they get their research from?

While we wish it were so, we’re not all able to have the gift of gab and be able to write an article or blog post on a whisper of a prayer and have it sound right. Most writers need to do some degree of research before sitting down and putting good quality content to a word processor or text editor. So here are 4 sources for research I use as an article writer.

Wikipedia

I consider Wikipedia to be my best friend. You see, I usually start with this resource first. Why? Wikipedia is my stepping stone to gain an understanding on a particular subject. It’s never my plan to rely wholly on this online encyclopedia. I can still remember my English teacher telling me never, ever use just one resource when writing. You need to make sure that your facts are accurate.

From within a particular Wiki page, I can usually gain valuable insight into locations, meaning, history and trends, all wrapped into one neat little package. After I pick and choose the information that I want to use for my notes, then I’m ready to proceed to another source to either back up or argue the points I might wish to emphasize in my article. But hmmm, what’s a good direction to go from here? Oh, I know. I can go to the web search engines.

Web Search Engines

You’re probably all familiar with the most familiar web search engine of Google, but did you know that there can be lots? For example, just from doing research for this article, I found a brand new site How Many Are There. To my amazement, just written and posted today was an article that seemed to be very apropos for what I’m writing to you about now. The name of the article is How Many Search Engines Are There? According to this article, there are over 30! Listed among them were some of my old familiar friends amongst a wide array of new ones that I had never heard of.

Since it’s never wise to rely just on one source of information, I will be checking out other sources on the Internet as well to make sure that I’m not printing information that will misguide my readers. Remember, I alluded to the fact that I want to write good quality content.

YouTube

YouTube is a resource that I have just started using. While I’ve noticed that not all videos are good quality, I have found some that can be used to substantiate a ‘how to’ process to make it easier for me to explain the different steps to my readers. A word of caution I might add here is Do Not Plagiarize. Give credit where credit is due.

Social Media Sites

Now some of you might be saying, “I can’t believe you are going to recommend using social media as resources for information. Let me explain. Especially with the social media sites like Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn, you can gain some valuable insight into corporate profiles, websites, missions and goals and new quality content that they are posting to their pages. In addition, you can get a sense of upcoming events that might be useful for what you are writing on.

Now I’m not suggesting that everyone use the same 4 sources of information for research in order to write good quality content. What I am saying is that these resources work for me and give me a sense of organization that I can use for gaining good quality information that I can write about. After all, I really don’t know everything there is to know about every subject. Everyone can use a little help somewhere.
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Pam Lokker is a skillful writer and proficient virtual assistant. She is co-owner of Borlok Virtual Assistants, the place to get global expert VA services with quality and on-time delivery.

A new SmartDistribution Model is here! It’s now possible to increase your brand visibility, increase SEO and increase the potential for higher sales and sign ups through your website. Check it out now!

Virtual Assistants can find themselves in a bind and not be able to find the time for writing articles due to their clients’ demand on the VA’s time. Do you know any other ways to post quality content to the Web? I do. Let’s check it out.

I’m sure you have all heard me lament that I just don’t have the time to write articles anymore. You see, as a virtual assistant, my clients are my priority. With working from dawn to late in the evenings, there just aren’t extra minutes in the day for personal writing. I had to find 3 things I can do to post quality content to the Web and do it fast!

Share

Did you just read an article on the Web and really, really like it and you think your clients or colleagues might enjoy it? Share it through one of the popular bookmarking and sharing services that you can find on the Internet. There are some that you can get a share button to add to your popular Web browsers like Firefox, Internet Explorer, Google Chrome or Safari. Reading an article pertaining to your niche? Share it!

Talk it up in social media

Okay, so maybe you don’t have a lot of time to write an article. But, if you can take five minutes out of your day, you can post to LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, or some of your other favorite social networking sites. Here are a couple of benefits for doing that:

1. Increase your brand image:

It stands to reason that the more you post, the more chances you will have of having your logo, photo, business, etc. visible in the eyes of the public. Seeing can lead to their talking YOU up (watch out; it can work in reverse also) and spreading their feedback.

2. Become more widely known as an expert in your field

If you continuously offer valuable input on Facebook Pages or to your social media in response to questions pertaining to your niche, the chances are very strong that they will look to you to solve their needs in the future. You will gradually be recognized as a go to person for help in solving issues.

Offer input in forums

In my opinion virtual assistants or anyone that has a niche that they write about should have at least one forum that they are a member of. Why? Here are just three benefits of becoming part of a niche forum:

• Sharing opportunities

After all, if you like horseback riding (yup, that’s me), then you want to be able to talk with other people that have the same interests and get new content for writing blog posts or articles when you get more time.

• Brainstorming opportunities

If you have an idea, you can bounce that idea of another member or even all members of the forum and ask for advice on what the members think. It’s a great way to receive, give, exchange, recommend (I’m sure there are more words I could think of to describe this if I thought about it, but let’s go on.)

• Networking opportunities – The more people you know and like you and hear of your virtual assistant services, the more they will spread the word to their business associates. Who knows? You could gain some new clients yourself in the process as their business associates come to you for services you offer.

A virtual assistant has to be alert to new opportunities to take advantage of managing their time. There are several ways you can post quality content to the Web, even though you may not be actively writing articles or blog posting. Some of those methods can take as little as five minutes. Good luck!
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Pam Lokker is a skillful writer and proficient virtual assistant. She is co-owner of Borlok Virtual Assistants, the place to get global expert VA services with quality and on-time delivery.

A new SmartDistribution Model is here! It’s now possible to increase your brand visibility, increase SEO and increase the potential for higher sales and sign ups through your website. Check it out now!

Any virtual assistant that pursues the art of article writing and article marketing knows the importance of getting good backlinks to their website or their blog. There’s an easy way to do it without doing the laborious, time-consuming effort of submitting articles to many, many article submission sites manually.

Oftentimes success with article writing is as simple as choosing the best article distribution service to blast your articles out to hungry publishers and content site owners globally. Let’s see what you should look for in choosing a good service.

Choose a well-known article distribution service.

Your articles are a critical piece of your marketing campaigns. It’s up to you to promote them in the best light so they receive the recognition they deserve. There are many article distribution services out there. You will want to check Alexa and Google page rank and choose one that is most talked about on the Web and maintains high rankings.

Ideally, you want to be comfortable with the content distribution service that you choose. Research thoroughly and don’t make hasty decisions.

Choose a service that has an up-to-date distribution list.

There’s nothing more frustrating than to sign up with a marketing service that claims to have lots and lots (and lots) of publishers on their distribution list and the links don’t work or there’s no such publisher.

Check out multiple places on the list to ensure the service you’re considering is keeping their list current.

Check to see if they offer review services.

Even the best of writers needs a fresh set of eyes to go over their articles to make sure that their articles will pass the rigorous requirements that publishers and content site owners have in place. When submitting manually to sites, it’s next to impossible to keep all the guidelines straight. A good service that serves as those extra pair of eyes will prove to be invaluable.

I, for one, appreciate the extra help from a reviewer that lets me know that I’m doing too much advertising in my article or I’m using a particular word(s) too many times.

Can you distribute your articles on your own schedule to coincide with your article marketing campaigns?

A good service is going to provide you with options that fit your needs — not their needs. The ideal service will let you set a schedule in advance, in some cases even up to a year.

Sounds good, doesn’t it?

Is the service you’re looking at affordable and offer a variety of different price plans?

With the economy the way it is, everyone tends to watch their expenses a lot more closely. Having different price plans that can be monthly, quarterly, annually, or even lifetime is important. Your potential candidate needs to offer variety.

While there may be free services out there, I guarantee your articles probably won’t receive the recognition they deserve.

What type of article syndication plans does your potential service have for the future?

While it’s important to get your article out to article directories, you will want to consider going with a business that will take it one step further and send out your article to sites owned and managed by internet marketers. Why? They take great care to bring new visitors to their sites in order to create profits. Going with an article marketing service can open new opportunities for you that maybe you haven’t even dreamt of yet.

There are many more features that one company might offer over another. It’s up to you to do the legwork and find the very best article marketing distribution service that will meet YOUR needs. Choose wisely so that your articles will receive the recognition they deserve. Now, get out there and start researching.

*****

Pam Lokker is a skillful writer and proficient virtual assistant. She is co-owner of Borlok Virtual Assistants,  the place to get global expert VA services with quality and on-time delivery.

Sshhh, I have a secret. Do you know what Distribute Your Articles has in store for the future in article syndication?

You’re probably thinking “what is search engine optimization?” Here’s the official answer according to Wikipedia: “Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process of improving the visibility of a web site or a web page in search engines via the “natural” or un-paid (“organic” or “algorithmic”) search results.” Say what!

Here is my definition of what these words mean: maximize your search engine ranking. That’s it. That wasn’t hard, was it? Let’s take it out a little further. You want to have your blog site or website appear first when someone searches for you. It doesn’t have to be just Google; it can be Bing, Yahoo!, Ask, etc. You want to become so popular that your site(s) appear at the head of the list.

Now there are different ways that you can maximize your search engine ranking, but one of the ones that I would recommend for virtual assistants is by writing. There are many types of writing that you can do to increase your visibility. Pick one type or several; I’ll leave that to you. Let’s take a look at some areas that you can write while bringing new clients to your sites.

Articles

Articles are an excellent area to focus on. You don’t have to be an accomplished writer. Just write what you consider yourself to be an expert in. Then take those articles and submit them to article distribution sites that will send out your content to hungry publishers and content site owners.

Blogs

Here is where you can write content in your specific niche. Before you know it, readers will begin to recognize you as someone they can refer to if they have questions they need answers to. Your blog does not have to be some big, elaborate blog site, and you don’t need to know programming in order to have a blog. There are several free ones out there like Blogger or WordPress that will do just fine. Once you get going with your posts, you can become a member of blog directories.

Forums

Do you feel you have important information that you feel you could share? Do you like to take part in discussions? Then joining forums are an excellent way for you to do this. If you’re a virtual assistant like I am, you have a wide arena of topics that you can contribute worthwhile information; I can even point people to articles that I’ve written on my website or blog site. Hmmm…traffic – yummy delicious. I’m sure I see my ratings go up.

Press Releases

Do you have a newsworthy event happening at your virtual assistant business? Or perhaps you’ve reached a major milestone. Write about it and submit it to press release directories and help to increase your search engine visibility and ranking. Not only can you reach people globally, but you’ll be doing it through SEO.

Social Networking

Social media networking allows you to interact or socialize with lots of other people who share the same interests and activities as you. Consider being a member of a social network as being part of a close-knit community that you can share information with.

There are many places out there that allow you to socialize comfortably while maximizing your ranking on the Internet. Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, and MySpace are just a few of the more popular ones.

I’ve only touched the tip of the iceberg for ways that you can write to increase your visibility. As a virtual assistant, you need to seize the opportunity to become well-known in the business and become more visible on the Internet. While you’re looking into the ways that I’ve mentioned in this article, keep your eyes open for other effective methods that you can increase the traffic to your sites, as well as maximize your search engine ranking. Good luck; I know you can do it.

One of most critical strategies to increase your article marketing for your own business, as well as your clients’ businesses is to expand your search engine visibility. Through trial and error, I have found the following techniques to be very beneficial.

Write articles

It’s not hard to write articles. You don’t have to be a certified writer or publisher. As long as you follow good down-to-earth grammar, punctuation, and spelling guidelines, you CAN write your own articles and not have to pay someone else to write them for you.

Have Your Articles Distributed Far and Wide

Choose a good content distribution service where you can submit your articles and let them do all the leg work for you in getting your articles out to the hungry publishers and content site owners. Once such site that I use is Content Crooner. They have over 2,000 sites that they distribute articles to.

Socialize

The advantages of belonging to social networking sites are multiple. Using social media can increase your visibility in search engines. Setting up profiles, commenting, adding friends – this can all contribute to raising your status as an expert in the search engines. By adding links to your comments and profile pages, you will eventually begin to see increased traffic to your website or blog. The increased traffic will, in turn, raise your page rank scores.

Contribute

Contribute what, you might ask. Contribute by commenting on other people’s blogs, commenting in forums, sharing articles on your website, and making helpful comments on other articles you read, if the site owner allows comments. By making positive, helpful comments, you are going to be recognized as an expert in your particular niche.  By doing so, people are going to want to learn more about you. They’re going to search you out in Google, Bing, Yahoo!, and other search engines.

Blog

You don’t have to have a blog that a developer creates for you that costs you a lot of money. You can create your own blog on websites such as wordpress.com or blogspot.com. When writing on your blog, you are using a journalistic mind frame – write from the heart while utilizing research material and/or personal experience to keep your reader’s interest up.

Promote

Here’s where a quality content distribution service like Content Crooner comes into play. You will want to take advantage of special features that the service might offer. For example, perhaps you can take advantage of special sharing options that a service might have or special partnerships in order to obtain prominent position on one or several top article marketing directories.

A virtual assistant needs to do multiple article marketing strategies in order to increase search engine visibility — not only for in order to become successful for your own company, but also for your clients. Now is the time to learn the techniques I’ve mentioned above and increase your value and your potential for success. Don’t wait; do it now!

About the author:

Pam Lokker is a skillful writer and proficient virtual assistant. Borlok Virtual Assistants is the place to get global expert VA services with quality and on-time delivery.

Stop! Click Here! to read more about Content Crooner.

There are quite a few article distribution sites out there that will allow you to submit your articles, and they will send your articles out wide and far. What are some questions you should ask yourself prior to signing up and entrusting your valuable written content to them?

Who will your articles be sent to?

One of the first things you want to know is what type of a publisher list they have. Do they have many, many publishers that they will send your articles out to, or just a few? Do their publishers have good Alexa or Google pagerank? It would be wise to check out some of the sites to ensure your articles will be sent to reputable, well-known companies.

What type of membership plans do they have?

Prior to becoming a member of an article distribution company, do a little homework and see what type of memberships or subscription plans they have. Do they have free memberships? If so, what type of benefits does a free membership entail you? Be sure to read the terms of agreement to see how they will bill you if you have to pay for a subscription. Many of them will use a specific payment processor, and the billing will be on recurring billing. Be sure you understand the terms of agreement; then print it and keep it.

What kind of distribution plan do they have?

Are your articles going to be distributed for a long time, or short spurts? Does the company you decide on allow your articles to be sent to new publishers as they sign on, or are they going to be sent to a static, non-changing list? The ideal solution would be to have your content go out to new publishers and content site owners as they sign up.

Will your articles be reviewed prior to being sent out?

Should you be fortunate enough to find a website that has live human review of articles once you submit them, I highly recommend utilizing this valuable feature. A major disadvantage of trying to manually submit articles to a wide variety of article submission places is trying to keep all of their requirements and guidelines straight in your head. A company that has reviewers spot check your articles for you will know all the guidelines and be able to give you professional feedback on how to improve your articles so they speed through the review process.

Can you schedule your articles to be sent out at a specific time?

Wouldn’t it be a blessing if you could write and submit your articles ahead of time and then be able to schedule their distribution for a certain day? There are content distribution places out there that will allow you to do this. Check this option out; it’s well worth being able to advance schedule.

Whatever website you decide to go with, make sure you do your homework in checking out the company with BBB and other consumer sites that will rate companies based on their service level, integrity, and other measures prior to making that all important leap, especially if you are going to get a paid subscription.

Is there a content distribution marketing company that I use that I would recommend? Yes, I personally use Content Crooner, and am very happy with them. They have excellent customer service, economical paid subscriptions, an extensive distribution list of publishers, and a knowledgeable review staff. Don’t just take my word for it, however. Do your own research and feel comfortable with your decision.

It’s possible not all virtual assistants out there had an opportunity to get their hands on my previous post on why a virtual assistant should take up article marketing, so let me do a brief recap here:

* Article writing can establish an author as a subject matter expert.
* Writing articles is economical; you don’t have to dole out a lot of cash
* Article site directories are eager to get their sites loaded up with new, fresh content.
* You can include links that will direct your readers back to your own website.
* You have a wealth of information that you can use over and over again.
* You can actually win some new clients from their reading your content.

So now that we know what the benefits are for article marketing, what is a good way to have our articles be shown on the Internet? In other words, how do we vamp up our article marketing? Let’s take a look at some different methods you can use.

Methods for Getting Articles Distributed

Manual Submission

In my mind, there are three ways that you could vamp up your article marketing and increase your Internet exposure. The first way we’ll look at is by manual entering — that is taking your article and manually entering it into an article submission site like EzineArticles, or GoArticles, just to name a couple. These both rate high in Google pagerank and have free membership plans.

You can also submit your articles manually to online magazine publishers that give users the user-friendly ability to build interactive “wikizines”, or web magazines. One such site is Zimbio.

Article Marketing Software

Another method is to use article marketing software. Some people have a lot of success using article marketing software. There is even software out there that will combine article spinning with article submission. Personally, I’m not even interested in using article spinning software at all. When you use the software, you are just regurgitating the same content over and over and over in slightly different ways using a variety of synonyms that can drastically alter the meaning of the written word. So my advice is to stay away from article spinners.

Article Marketing Distribution Company

The third way that a virtual assistant can vamp up their article marketing is by using a company like Content Crooner, a first-rate article distribution company. Content Crooner has a comprehensive list of publishers and content site owners that they will distribute your articles to. What this means is that you have the ease of submitting your article to Content Crooner and they take care of all the legwork of distributing your content wide and far.

What are some benefits of using Content Crooner in addition to an expansive publisher list? Take a look at some of the features as to why I choose them for all my article marketing campaigns.

• Unlimited article distribution
• Distribution that takes place 24/7, 365 days a year
• Experienced reviewers that will check your article over for you to ensure your articles will be readily accepted by publishers
• The ability to schedule when you want your articles to go out
• Multiple pricing plans to fit your needs with a 30-day money-back guarantee

No matter which method you opt for, you should understand that as a virtual assistant, you really should take advantage of article marketing. Just by learning the ins and outs of article marketing for yourself, look at the increased opportunities you would have if a client came to you and asked if you offered article marketing as one of your services. Now is the time to get into this ever-growing field. Don’t hesitate; increase your Internet exposure now and get out there and start article marketing!

A virtual assistant is frequently asked to write or rewrite all kinds of material – anything from a letter on up to a book. Using the right tools can ensure that your material is content rich; one of those tools is a thesaurus. Learn firsthand what a thesaurus is and what it’s used for.

If you are a virtual assistant, undoubtedly you will eventually have a client that wishes you to rewrite something he or she may have penned or typed. It’s not always an easy task to find just the right words to capture the essence of what is being said in an interesting and accurate manner. Now is the time to make your articles rich in content by using a thesaurus.

What is it you might ask? A thesaurus is just the tool you need; it’s a book that has a classified
list of synonyms. You remember what a synonym is from your days in English class at school, right? According to the Encarta English Dictionary (provided in Microsoft Word 2007), a synonym is a word that means the same, or almost the same, as another word in the same language, either in all of its uses or in a specific context. Examples of synonyms in this sense are “environment” and “surroundings” and the verbs “tear” and “rip.”

So why is a thesaurus useful in making your content rich when you write or rewrite articles? For one thing, if you replace words with synonyms, your content might just grab and keep the reader’s interest that much longer. You’ve all heard that you only have thirty seconds to stimulate a reader’s natural curiosity so they dive deeper into your article.

What are some good thesaurus’s out there that I can use online? I will discuss three here. Don’t take my word as gospel, however; do a search in your favorite search engine under “thesaurus.” I want you to have the freedom to make up your own mind as to which one will work the best for you.

Unless I’m working on a laptop, the very first thesaurus that I use all the time is WordWeb. WordWeb is a free English thesaurus and dictionary software download for Windows. Why do I like it? Just check out some of the things it can help you with:

* Definitions and synonyms
* Proper nouns
* Related words
* Pronunciations
* 150 000 root words
* 120 000 synonym sets
* Looks up words in almost any program

What makes Word Web so useful is that you have the ability to use a combination of the Ctrl + Alt + the W keys on your computer keyboard to have the program open on your desktop. This saves immeasurable time and is even faster than the next program I am going to talk about.

Remember I mentioned that I work on a laptop? One of the disadvantages of doing so is that a laptop will not have as much memory as a desktop so I do not tend to download a lot of software. What I have discovered is that Microsoft Office Word 2007 has a built-in thesaurus. How do you kick it into gear? To give you a simple explanation, say I want to change the word gear in my previous sentence to something else. I would right click on the word gear and scroll down to Look Up, left click with your mouse on the words Look Up and voilà! It will automatically default to All Reference Books, but that is easy to change. Just click on the down arrow next to All Reference Books and change it to Thesaurus: English (You can also choose French or Spanish).

A virtual assistant has to be thrifty in their use of time, as well as being the best of the best. Oftentimes, there will be resources available to us that we don’t even know that can save us an immense amount of work. One of those resources is a good thesaurus. A good thesaurus can not only save us time, it can provide us with synonyms that will help us write and rewrite articles, blogs, press releases, eBooks, etc., that are award-winning. Not only that, a thesaurus can help us make our material rich in content.