Want to use article marketing but can't write? Here's the answer...

Article marketing is an excellent way to get more visitors to your site, and do better in search engines. Anyone who doesn't take advantage of online self-publishing sites is missing out on visitors and sales.

The problem is, how do you take advantage of article marketing if you can't write?

It's an interesting dilemma, and one that has a surprising solution. Write an article anyway, and don't worry about whether or not it's any good.

In fact, I'll go so far as to say that it doesn't matter whether it's well written. All that matters, is your article says something your target marketing will find...

Interesting
Useful

Want to know something else? If the article is useful, it's automatically interesting.

What about elegance? It doesn't matter. As long as your article can be understood, and is useful to its intended audience, it meets the necessary criteria for article marketing.

So let's get down to brass tacks here. If you don't have anything useful to say about your product or service, you have a problem that good marketing (article or otherwise) can't fix.

Assuming you do have something useful to say, start writing. Don't worry about whether or not you're writing well. Just write it all down. Now put it aside for 3 days. Why 3 days? This is long enough to forget what you wrote, so you can assess your work with 'fresh' (i.e. objective) eyes.

Three days later, take a look at your article and see what you think. Are some of the sentences hard to understand? Simplify them. In particular, look for long sentences with lots of commas. This is usually a sign that you needed 2 setences. Are there spelling mistakes, or grammatical errors? Correct them. Become your own editor, and rewrite until you're reasonably happy.

This approach to writing is the same approach professional authors take. According to writing coach Cynthia Dusseault, the secret to good writing is rewriting.

I'm going to add my own contribution here: A bad article is closer to being a good article, than a non-existent article is.

The plain fact is, the first thing out of your keyboard isn't ever going to be brilliant. As long as it contains the ideas you want to communicate, that's all you should require of the first draft.

Perfection can come later. And in fact, self-published online articles don't have to be perfect. But they do have to exist before they can help you market your product, service or web site.