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Wednesday, January 30, 2008

Article Marketing: Turn Your Articles into Whitepapers

By Brad McGovern

You've been in business for a while and have written lots of articles. You have submitted them to article directories and use article marketing to increase visits and back links to your website. Now what? Is there anything you can do with all these articles once they've been published through an article directory?

Actually, there is something you can do. You can take your articles and turn them into a whitepaper or a report to offer for free on your squeeze pages. This will give your readers a reason to sign up for your mailing list. Once a customer signs up on your website you can send them a free PDF file of your whitepaper.

What is a Whitepaper?

A whitepaper is more like a report that an article. Typically you want to start your whitepapers by discussing a problem that your clients have. To do this you really need to know your market. You'll need to know what they want and what they need.

Just present the problem and offer solutions while keeping your focus on their customers needs. Your whitepaper must offer valuable information that helps your customers. A whitepaper is a document to provide unbiased information. Don't use it to spam your products or services. A simple link at the bottom of it to your sites will suffice.

Your goal for writing a whitepaper is to educate readers and generate leads and sales. However, a whitepaper is not a place to hard-sell your merchandise. Use whitepapers to draw potential customers to your website and educate them about your topic so they will return to your website to meet their needs.

Marketing with Whitepapers

If you're like me, you're no stranger to article marketing. The concept has been around for a while now and it is one of the best ways to spread the word about your business. Now I use whitepapers in the same way. I turn older articles and diverse material into whitepapers by changing the focus and writing in a clear concise way. A whitepaper is more like a technical document and includes factual information. When I'm done writing a whitepaper, I submit them to directories just like I do with my articles. Submit whitepapers to directories for possible inclusion in e-zines and newsletters.

The side benefit of writing a whitepaper on your niche topic is that it helps establish you as a credible source. By offering a high quality whitepaper or report for, you will gain your customers' trust and become noticed as an expert on your topic.

Outsourcing Whitepapers

Turning an article into a whitepaper could become a time-consuming project for someone who isn't skilled at this type of writing. Does that mean you should skip this valuable article marketing option? Not at all.

Use an article writing service to transform your articles into whitepapers. The cost of hiring a team of professionals is worth it to have a well-written document to offer your customers. You can also submit whitepapers to directories for possible inclusion in e-zines and newsletters.

Article Source: http://www.articlehighlight.com

Brad McGovern is the Marketing Manager at Article Marketer, and offers advice and news of note to article marketers. Watch for more from Brad in the coming days!