Posted by Stacy Karacostas

Time is precious. Money is precious.Especially when it comes to marketing and growing your small business.You simply can’t afford to keep running new ads, creating fresh promotions and reinventing the wheel.

Instead, you have to do more with less. Luckily there’s lots of ways you can reduce, reuse and recycle your marketing materials to get more bang for your marketing buck.

One of my favorites is by writing articles.

Whether you write them yourself, or have someone edit or ghostwrite them for you, a well-written article is the ultimate low-cost, multi-purpose marketing tool.

Articles can promote your products or services, drive traffic to your Website, and increase your search engine rankings. They can highlight your knowledge and expertise, and help you become more well-known. You can use articles to stay in touch with your clients, or attract new ones.

The list goes on and on.

The key is that if you really want articles work for you, each one needs to be informative, well-written and carefully targeted to your audience. And you’re going to need to write more than one.

Here are ten different ways you can put one single article to work for you:

1. Post your article to your blog.

2. Publish your article in your own print or email newsletter.

3. Other businesses are often looking for content, so offer to let them publish your article in their newsletter or on their blog.

4. Put it on your Website. The more fresh, relevant content you have on your site, the higher it ranks in the search engines.

5. Submit your article to free, online article databases like http://www.ezinearticles.com/ <http://www.ezinearticles.com/> or on social networking sites like www.biznik.com <http://www.biznik.com/> . This creates incoming links pointing to your Website, gives others the opportunity to use your article and spread your name and links, and also drives people directly to your Website.

6. Give your helpful article away as a handout at networking events.

7. Mail a copy of your article to clients, contacts or prospects.

8. Build your list by offering your article for free on your Website in exchange for reader’s names and email addresses.

9. Include an article (or two) with any promotional packets you send out to prospects.

10. Expand upon one article, or combine several, to create an e-book to sell or give away.

Just remember, while you can always include a link or two in your bio, or even a call to action, don’t be overtly salesy in your article. Just make sure it’s easy to read and packed with useful info and people will want to know more.

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This entry was posted on Tuesday, December 9th, 2008 at 2:57 pm and is filed under Marketing, Newsletters, Recession, Tools. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

About the Author: Practical Marketing Expert Stacy Karacostas, founder of SuccessStream Sales & Marketing Solutions, specializes in taking the stress, struggle and confusion out of growing your small business. She's the author of the 2-page marketing plan workbook Putting Your Business on the Road to Success, and The Small Business Website Bible. Stacy also writes the fun and informative Marketing Junkie blog and Bright Ideas weekly newsletter. For more practical, business-building wisdom help yourself to a copy of her free report The 7 Deadliest Small Business Marketing Sins... Are You Guilty?