Always take the time to harvest the fruits of your labor…

Let me begin by saying writing articles is a fantastic way to get your name on the Internet as an authority in your field – it is also a wonderful way to gain exposure for your website, blog or e-zine. I would go so far as to claim it is one of the best ways to build your online database… But (and there is always a but!) You need to do it the right way or all your time and effort will be wasted, you will be one of the nay Sayers going around whining “I have tried it, it doesn't work”. Sometimes we have to step back take a deep breath and look at what we are doing and most of all how we are doing it. I have learned over the years that everything has its price. We all have to go through the process and do things right – when we take short cuts things don't work. And then one has to start the process all over again… This is true with everything in life, creating articles and using them for marketing is no different. I recently started consulting with a company, helping them put together a marketing strategy that would work for them. They eventually want to write articles to be posted to an article distribution websites, are so busy at this time it is next to impossible. We decided in the initial phase of the marketing plan we would work to get a blog up and all the SEO (search engine optimization) done correctly so that we have a solid foundation. The decision was also made to go out and get some free articles to place on the blog’s we are creating. In researching and pulling articles I begin to discover that the articles I found and liked had a resource box at the end they did not have a link back to their website! I was totally astounded - did they really think that a link was not important? You must must make it easy for someone to access information about you and your business – a link is like the key to unlock your store… Did they really think that anyone would take the time to find them through researching information in the byline? Hardly... I as a consumer would click on a link but would probably in all honesty not go to the trouble of finding them any other way. Even more astounding – I went a step further - I really like a few of these articles, I thought it would be great to be able to look at a website they had or some information they may give me. I decided to e-mail them through the article submission website. I e-mail about 6 individuals that had taken the time to write these articles and submit them (not always an easy task). I did not hear back from any of them, not one!! Amazing… Lesson to take from this: Please make sure you pay attention to details that could (will) cost you business… Please make sure and follow up with all emails What can we learn from this? Always take the time to harvest the fruits of your labor… After all if you were a farmer would you go to all the painstaking trouble to plow the orchard – plant the seeds, pamper the trees to maturity – fertilize and spray so the bugs don’t eat the buds and destroy your fruit. Then when the fruit is beautiful, ripe and ready to be consumed you let it fall to the ground and rot… Isn’t that exactly what is happening in the above scenario?