Use

Articles add weight and gravitas to a business.  Some people will read them - but many others won't - they will simply see that your company is referred to in an article in a positive way, and take this as a positive sign.  

Overall articles score in three ways.

1. They make you look important
2. They are written by someone else (even if you actually wrote it, you need to get someone else to add their name to the piece unless you are seriously recognised as an authority on the topic yourself.)
3. You can use them to say all sorts of interesting things and generate a lot of interest.  Articles can often have a long time-span, and a piece used in a magazine can later appear on your website, or be offered as a paper that can be sent out to anyone interested.

Articles can be used in two ways:

1. One as a contribution made to a magazine or newspaper – normally without any payment being made – which centres around a current issue, but which uses your company as an example.  Articles of this nature are usually best written by someone outside the company – such as the PR company.
2. The second approach involves writing an article and offering it free of charge to potential customers.  The article can’t be just about your company (why would anyone bother to ask for it or read it?) but has to offer some information and knowledge that will be of interest to potential customers.

To give an example, Hamilton House Mailings produced the article “Raising Response Rates in Direct Mail”.   It is advertised in a mailshot – anyone interested just has to email in and they get sent a copy back by email.

The piece sets out the rules for getting much higher response rates in direct mail, and gives the reader a lot of inside information – exactly as the reader anticipates when applying.  But the issues raised are complex, and although readers can settle down, follow the rules, and get higher response rates themselves, some recognise that they simply don’t have enough time, and so come back to Hamilton House to do the job.

In short Hamilton House has given inside information away, and it is doubtful that anyone who reads the article will feel they have not got what they expected.  Some will use it, but some will interpret the article as meaning, “these guys know what they are talking about – maybe they really can deliver much higher response rates” and so use the company.

Articles of this nature, offered free of charge to potential customers, need to be focussed on a piece of knowledge or information that the potential customer really needs.   For example, a furniture manufacturer who focuses on quality above cheapness might do a report on the ultimate way to save money in school furniture, and produce analyses of costs of furniture taking into account when it has to be replaced.  In other words showing that a chair that lasts ten years is cheaper than a chair that breaks every two years – even when the ten year chair is four times more expensive at the start. A company that sells science books might present some new and radically different lessons plans covering one particular part of the science curriculum.

Articles for magazines need to be offered a long way in advance of possible publication.  Remember editors are not sitting around thinking “what shall we put in this month’s edition.”   (Actually they might be, but they shouldn’t, and you shouldn’t rely on this.)

Plan ahead, and submit your offer and/or the article in writing.   Better still build up a relationship with the editor or journalist to whom you are submitting the piece.

But best of all, and to gain absolute credibility, use a professional writer and get the writer or his/her agency to submit for you.  It will make it clear from the start that this is not just going to be a promotional piece dressed up as an article.