Welcome to the latest edition of my new weekly blog series, “Free Marketing Ideas”. Each week I will identify and explain a simple marketing idea that you can employ at low or no cost. Last week’s topic was Free Advertising Offers.

This Week’s Topic = Write Articles

Writing articles does not sound like a marketing plan to anyone. But it fits nicely into our free marketing ideas blog series. And that is because it is both free and effective.

When you write an article on a subject related to your business, you are engaging in content marketing. You can submit that article to free article posting sites like ehow, ezinearticles, Technorati, etc. Or you can post the article on your own website and share it across the various social networks that you use, such as Twitter and Facebook. You can even submit it to bloggers as a guest blog.

Here is what publishing an article does for you. First, any inbound links from that article (or to that article if it is posted on your own site) will help your SEO. It will help people find you when they are looking for you. Second, it will help identify you or your company as an expert on a given topic. This adds credibility to your brand that you cannot get through advertising.

When you make writing articles a regular part of your marketing, you are growing your brand’s reach. And all it takes is the time to write the articles. If you don’t have the time, hire a writer and pay per article. Of course this makes it less of a “free” marketing idea, but it is still an inexpensive way to boost your SEO and build your brand online.

The power of the internet and social media is that anyone with something to say has a way to say it. And your brand has something to say. So say it.

Share your thoughts on this idea, and other free marketing ideas in the comments section below and keep the conversation going!