Craigslist - Winning Posts for Business Owners & Article Writers

For the professional who writes articles, Craigslist provides and excellent opportunity to build your business. This is not an article about submitting numerous posts to Craigslist in hopes of driving business your way. Post spamming works to some degree, however, I am not a fan of it, and it makes you extremely unpopular in the Craigslist community. As a practicing attorney, who adheres to strict ethical standards, I am professionally opposed to spamming.

I have successfully used Craigslist to both promote my law firm and my articles. In fact, article submissions and promoting your business on Craigslist go hand-in-hand. Craigslist provides two distinct opportunities for promoting your business or services, but for the sake of this article, I will focus on how to effectively use the Services posting section to maximize your client base and article writing popularity.

Craigslist makes promoting your business or service in a specific region extremely easy. The site conveniently has market share in many of the more popular cities and regions across the globe. The Services section allows users to post ads related to their particular area of service or interest. For the sake of my law practice, I most commonly place my ad under the "legal" category. Simply posting an ad is not the key to driving in customers who want your service or product. The magic happens when you couple your ad with your well-written article.

How it Works

1) Develop an eye-catching title for your post.

Use terms that will help users sift through the numerous posts and select your ad. For instance, I sometimes use titles similar to, "Get Divorce & Family Law Help" or "Custody & Child Support help for Dads". Avoid using titles that make promises you cannot keep. For example, it would be unwise and unethical for me to label a post, "We Help You Win Custody". Website visitors considering services, see through false promises. Do not use all caps, but use capitalization effectively. If offering free consultations, use capitalization to highlight the word "FREE".

2) Post with substance.

One misguided notion in Craigslist posting is that more frequent posts will yield more frequent results. There may be some truth to this notion, but too many frequent posts will backfire. Smart users will reason that if you have enough time to post frequently, then the service you provide is not valuable enough to keep you busy. Picture a real estate agent who posts daily ads for his/her services on Craigslist. It would only be reasonable to assume that he/she may be sub par at selling homes, because the real deal makers are too busy to post a ton of ads. For me, not more than twice a month tends to work well. The content of the post should relate to the title, but should not be overwhelmingly filled with details and lists. The true selling of services occurs when you drive traffic to your website through an article teaser.

3) Give them an article teaser.

Coupled with a well-planned and appealing title and good substance, an article teaser is the perfect way to start closing the deal. A two to three line related article teaser will strengthen your validity as a service provider. It also gives the impression that you have more information to offer than the next or previous poster. With some basic HTML coding for placing links, you can use your article teaser to drive traffic to your more informative website, where the user can continue reading the entire article if desired. An added benefit is having a 45-day link from the Craigslist website to your own.

Conclusion

Posting ads combined with articles on Craigslist is just one way to maximize your business potential. The possibility of attracting a few paying clients is well worth a little time spent on this free service.

Alesia M. Vick is the lead attorney at the Law Offices of Alesia M. Vick in Knightdale, NC. She is a licensed and practicing attorney in North Carolina. Her practice specialty is family law - divorce, separation, child custody, and adoption. Her written article topics include "Female Divorce Attorneys - Are They Better?" and "Dads and Divorce - What Today's Fathers Need to Know Before Entering the Courtroom". More about Attorney Alesia M. Vick can be found on her firm website at http://www.VickLegal.com.