I do a lot of article marketing for my sites. I enjoy it and get decent results for my efforts. But it’s sometimes hard to decide whether an article belongs on my blog or being distributed as an article for other sites to use.

Sometimes I do both. A few edits and it’s not the same article on my site as it is on others. But other times I can’t imagine doing that to a good article… err, blog post.

How to Decide Which to Do

Picking which way I go can be a bit of a pain. Sometimes an article that starts out as something I mean for article marketing ends up being something I would far rather have on my blog. There’s a difference that can be hard to explain. I guess you could say blog articles tend to be a bit more personal for me. Not too significantly, but there are some elements I can picture better on my own site than someone else’s.

And sometimes that means I need a new idea for the article site. It might be a twist on the now blog post. It might be an abbreviated version of the post.

Either way, a decision must be made. It’s almost a whim, no hard and fast rule. Just the feeling that the style or how personal I get goes better one way or the other.

Editing for Article Sites

If I choose to just edit it, there are a few ways to go about it. I don’t worry much about duplicate content issues. I don’t particularly want an article site outranking my site with one of my own articles, but it can happen. Even if the article is more thoroughly rewritten it can happen. After all, how many people are going to search for your article by quoting from its text?

I do prefer to keep the most thorough version for my own site. What goes to article sites should still be a good article, but mine should go one better.

Release Schedule

Of course, anything on my own site gets published first, by several days at least. It’s always good to have the content on your own site have first shot at being discovered by the search engines. A couple weeks is better yet in my opinion, but I’m not always writing far enough ahead to manage that.

Are They Really So Different?

Depending on your style, blogging and article marketing don’t have to be all that different. But they can be. I see my blogs as something more personal than what I want to send off to article sites. They need to have more of my personality.

Articles still need some of that personality, but I prefer to count on the information bringing people in through my article links. A hint of personality combined with good information strikes me as a good combination to bring someone to a blog where you continue with the good information and more personality.