If you’re submitting articles for online publications, don’t make the mistake of thinking you should follow the same rules you follow for getting articles published offline. Or you’ll blow your chances of ever getting them distributed on the Internet.
Here are three major differences:
–If you want something published in a print publication, you should usually pitch your idea first. Then if the editor says yes, send the article according to the number of words the editor wants. Not so when you submit articles to online portals. Because you don’t know which editors are searching through the portals, you simply submit your article, then wait to see who bites.
–When writing headlines for articles that will be used in print publications, or for news releases, longer headlines can be very effective because you can give editors more information about what the story is about. Sometimes you can even use a subhead just under the main headline. But headlines for online publications must be no longer than just a few words.
–Follow-up is critical when you’re dealing with editors of print publications. But if you submit an article to a portal, then follow up, you’ll be viewed as a pest.
Small business marketing expert Sharron Senter, who gets as many as 100 sales leads a month from her online articles, shared those three tips during a teleseminar called “How to Submit Online Articles That Pull Traffic to Your Website.”
If you market on the Internet, you can learn tips like these and many more by becoming a member of the Internet Association of Information Marketers.