An inter­est­ing ques­tion was recently asked of me in a dis­cus­sion forum: “I agree with the idea of sub­mit­ting arti­cles [in order to get] a lot of tar­geted vis­i­tors to a site, how­ever, I was won­der­ing, ‘What keeps Michel Fortin writ­ing?’ I mean, Michel, what is your 3-​​, 5– or 7-​​point for­mula to get an arti­cle on paper? What are [some of the spe­cific] steps you follow?”

Here’s my answer.

1. I’m sub­scribed to a ton of ezines and blogs.

As an “expert” (if I dare call myself that) in my field, I must keep abreast of my indus­try — so should you. But the won­der­ful byprod­uct is that some­thing I’ve read will stir a few ideas in my mind about some­thing worth writing.

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In John Reese’s Mar­ket­ing Secrets Forum, a forum in which I am the senior mod­er­a­tor, mem­ber John Jarowski posted a really impor­tant ques­tion. He asked, and I’m para­phras­ing John for the sake of brevity:

“When a new strat­egy is taught by some ‘guru’, every­body seems to copy it with­out tweak­ing it. This dilutes their effec­tive­ness and puts me off tremen­dously. I would think that using any ‘new’ mar­ket­ing strat­egy is a lot less effec­tive once it gets diluted by lazy mar­keters who want to do cookie cut­ter style marketing.”

I agree. And let me tell you why this is true, and share with you impor­tant tips on how to avoid this.

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