You want to make sure that you are already joining the conversation that is taking place in your reader’s mind. For example, somebody who is reading your article about diabetes may have recently just been diagnosed with the disease. Put yourself in their shoes for a moment, and try to think about what would be going through a persons mind who is nervous, confused, and concerned about what their future may hold given that they have been diagnosed with this particular illness.

Please be careful, your reader is a real person, with real feelings. Assuming that you are attempting to help this person, it is important to present them with information that will subconsciously persuade them to want to visit your website by clicking on the link that you have provided in the resource box portion of your article. One strategy for doing this is to provide information that is genuinely useful, but somewhat incomplete. This will compel your reader to want to click on the link you have provided in your resource box.

Something else you can do is ask questions within your article. Make sure that the questions you are asking will prompt the reader to conclude that the answer can be found on your website. The idea here is to warm up the reader and to try to build a little bit of intellectual rapport with them so that they are more likely to not only click on the link that will lead to your website, but also follow through and take the action that you wish for them to take once they arrive at your website.

These are the key ingredients of an effective promotional article. You’ll notice that there’s very little in the way of overt promotion. You want to try to be conversational, competent, and to provide information that helps the reader but that also leaves them with questions in their mind. This will help compel them to visit your website to find the answers. Be ethical — you’ve been given a template through which you can essentially control the actions of other people without them even realizing it.