Here’s the 7th secret to making article marketing pay off for you, I call it Targeting the Buzz.

This technique requires you to make regular visits to the forums where your target market hangs out. The problem with that is it can become a real time sink — there are thousands of people who spend so much time interacting in the forums that they never actually build their internet marketing business.

Targeting the Buzz is a great technique, but be aware of that potential problem so you can avoid it.

No matter whether you’re hanging out in marketing forums, racing forums, or dog training forums, certain topics of conversation kind of take on a life of their own. Some new strategy comes along and it seems that’s all people are talking about for weeks or even month at a time.

Eventually it kind of dies down, often because some other topic is taking it’s place and becoming all everybody talks about.

Here’s the Secret

Whatever the buzz is that’s happening in a forum, that’s what you target with a new set of articles.

Then when someone asks a question that’s answered in one of your articles, mention that you’ve written an article that answers that and provide a link to the article.

At the bottom of the article you can either have a pitch for your product, or an opt-in page. I think this technique is actually better suited to build your list rather than sell a product, but either one will work.

If your article answered their question, offer 3 or 4 more articles that give more information on that topic if they opt in to your list. You’ll find the opt-in rate in a situation like this is far above what you’d normally get.

And, once they’re on your list then you can pitch a product that’s in line with the topic. If you go straight for the sale you won’t have any way to follow up with them afterward.

More Than A List Builder

There’s another benefit with this technique than just building your list — although that’s a gold mine right there. Since you’re an active participant in the forum, and you continually provide the members with good, free content in the form of articles, you’re going to gain a reputation that will serve you well in the future.

Start testing this technique right away — in the forum where you usually hang out, is there some topic of interest that’s been building? Does it seem like everyone’s talking about it? Sit down and write a few articles giving some good, detailed answers to the most frequently asked questions. Then, watch for people asking questions that — at least mostly — are answered in your article and post a link!

You may be thinking that the questions being asked have already been answered and so there’s no desire for an article. However, if you notice, new people come in and ask the same questions over and over again — someone has to answer them, so it may as well be you.

Plus, most posts written in forums aren’t as thorough as an article, so your “version” of the answer has some good value added built in.

Give it a shot — start targeting the buzz and see how that type of article marketing can really help build your list.