Interview: Chris Knight of EzineArticles.com on Article Writing & Marketing

I've been involved in this industry long before it was called Article Marketing. In the 1990s it was more about the content exchange between expert authors and ezine publishers. Essentially, that is what our sites original purpose and intention was set out to solve: How to bring email newsletter publishers and expert authors together.

Even though EzineArticles.com was started in November of 1999, we rebuilt the site from scratch in August of 2004 and we consider that one of our defining milestones that brought us to where we are at today.

2. What's the best piece of advice you've received pertaining to article marketing?

The best advice I can offer is be consistent and go deep in your niche area of expertise. Don't settle for 10 articles when you could write 100 or 1000 or more until you are the ultimate expert for your niche.

3. How do you believe article writing and marketing can be of use to the entrepreneur?

Article writing for the purposes of syndication or distribution (marketing) is a grassroots strategy that can help average or startup entrepreneurs to compete with the big dogs without having to spend a fortune to get started.

Everyone online entrepreneur or 'netpreneur' has the same problem: How to attract massive amounts of qualified traffic back to their website. Article marketing is one of the lowest cost and highest return ways to get that done... and the effects snowball over time so you can benefit for many years to follow.

4. EzineArticles.com is one of the premier Ezine Content websites on the web. What do you believe is the biggest contributor to the popularity of EzineArticles.com?

The quality of submissions from our expert authors have everything to do with it. :)

If you're talking about what we did to make the site popular, it would come down to our obsession with the end-user experience. Almost every new feature we have innovated or introduced has come from a member or user contributed idea or suggestion.

5. What is the number one thing that you see article writers do wrong?

Many lack consistency in their submissions or they lack depth of quantity of submissions. Very few lack word-count depth, but most authors are sitting on a personal goldmine of original quality content they have already produced that could be easily repackaged into articles available for syndication... that is just waiting to be tapped and turned into traffic back to their website.

In terms of article mechanics, most authors could see a higher ROI from their article writing & marketing if they:

1) Expanded the length of their article title by another 20-40%

2) Ensured that the resource box has a benefit driven reason for the reader to surf or visit their website, join their free ezine or download a free report.

3) Did some level of keyword research to better understand what the market is trying to learn or understand relating to their niche topic or expertise.

6. For me, the hardest part of article writing is coming up with a topic that will be of interest to my readers. Do you have any tips to make picking a topic easier?

Sure, and this is a biggie: Stop trying to think you know what the market wants to read.

Instead, do keyword researches via any of the major keyword research tools (GoodKeywords, Overture, Google Suggest, WordTracker, etc) around your area of expertise.

Your objective is to write articles ONLY on topics the market is searching for or wants to read and not what you think the market wants to read.

Beyond keyword research, in my Article Production Strategies product, I cover many article topical idea generation ideas. One of them includes simply tracking what your competition writes about and then writing your own spin or take on the topics your competition has already decided to write about. Another idea is to invite your audience to send you questions (such as how I do here: http://AskChristopherKnight.com/ ) and your audience will give you endless suggestions in most cases about what they want to read about.

7. For the purpose of marketing, do you think it's best for a writer to stick to one general theme for their articles or to write on various topics? (For example, should candle makers only write about things relating to candles or should they write about anything that interests them)

I recommend that you only write about one area of expertise per unique author name and that your resource box should always be unified in the same topic of your article so that you never present a mixed message.

Most authors or experts write about many different areas of expertise and this is a great idea... just be sure to not mix topics within any single article as that will dilute your credibility.