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Aleksander Janicki
Table of contents:
- What is a sponsored article?
- Advantages of sponsored articles over traditional banner ads.
- How to write sponsored articles?
- What to avoid when writing sponsored articles?
- Experienced company that will write a sponsored article for you.
- How much does a sponsored article cost?
- Summary - the checklist.
What is a sponsored article?
Sponsored articles are primarily a good way to engage users with your product. They are typically primarily informational in nature but contain links to the product page you are interested in selling.
Sponsored articles are placed on external websites, whether local or themed. If a user is interested in, for example, down jackets, allergy medications, or any other specific service or product, and they Google it, they may come across a sponsored article.
A well-written sponsored article can work wonders thanks to good positioning on Google. The second important element is choosing the right website to publish this material. But we’ll come back to these issues later in this article.
A sponsored article is engaging because the user familiarizes themselves with useful information on a topic that interests them. While reading a sponsored article, they form an idea of what product would interest them. And it is precisely when they feel they already know enough to make a sensible purchase decision that they come across a link that helps them make that decision.
Advantages of sponsored articles over traditional banner ads
After years of browsing the internet for several hours a day, users have become sensitive to ads. Or perhaps, on the contrary, they have become completely desensitized.
They close pop-up ad windows without blinking an eye, and banner ads no longer grab their attention at all. Even more modern forms of advertising, like TikToks or Instagram Reels, are recognized as ads within a fraction of a second and quickly scrolled past.
Another obstacle for advertisers is browser extensions that block ads, known as AdBlock. More and more users are installing them, which means that ads don’t even appear to them.
In this regard, sponsored articles perform better because they are less intrusive. Although they are essentially advertisements, they are difficult to recognize at first glance. This is because they are high-quality content with high information values (or, at least, they should always be).
Since they are not immediately identified as ads, users are more willing to engage with them. When they realize that they are dealing with an advertisement, it doesn’t bother them because they have gained something from the transaction as well-knowledge.
That is the essence of this form of promotion. Readers don’t need to be persuaded to make a purchase; they should naturally want to buy the product after reading a well-written sponsored article.
How to write sponsored articles?
First of all, it is important to determine which product we want to advertise. Analyzing trends can be helpful in making this choice.
If consumers are currently showing a particular interest in a specific type of product that you have in your range, promoting that product may be a good idea because it will naturally reach a larger number of potential customers.
When writing a sponsored article, attention should be paid to its structure. It should include:
- a title,
- a lead, which serves as an introduction to the topic,
- a body,
- and finally, a summary and conclusion.
When choosing which information to include in which part of the article, it is worth following the so-called inverted pyramid principle, which states that the most important content should be placed at the beginning of the article, and as you move towards the end, the content should become more supplementary in nature.
A sponsored article must have a well-thought-out structure that ties everything together.
Structure
The lead should, to some extent, develop the idea contained in the title, but without revealing all the cards. It should be intriguing, posing questions that you will answer later in the material.
In the introduction, you can explain in a few sentences what the article is really about.
The answers to the questions asked can be provided in the body section, which is the most concrete and important part of the article in terms of content. It is a good idea to include a link to the advertised content here.
In the summary you can once again emphasize the answers given to the questions posed at the beginning of the text.
The conclusion should encourage the user to interact. If comments can be left under the article, and their number could positively affect its reach, you can ask for the reader’s thoughts. Otherwise, the best solution would be a call to action, suggesting subtly exploring the products listed under the link.
Readability
The readability of an article is just as important as its structure. Readability consists of:
- language,
- clarity,
- sentence length,
- aids such as graphics or bullet points.
A sponsored article should be written in simple language that is understandable by everyone. Of course, for products targeting a specific niche audience, it is impossible (and even undesirable) to avoid technical language. Nevertheless, it should be written in an accessible way.
Another important linguistic aspect is the overall writing style. It is better to use positive sentences that put the product in a good light. For example, instead of writing “the product is NOT expensive,’’ it is better to write “the product is affordable.”
At the same time, you must keep in mind that a sponsored article cannot be explicitly promotional. It must maintain an informative character; therefore, objectivity is crucial, and options should not be presented as facts.
Language is not everything; sentence length is also important. Avoid complex, multi-clause sentences that stretch across lines. Sometimes, it is better to use periods instead of commas.
Dividing the text into many paragraphs increases its clarity; a wall of text makes reading difficult and can even discourage readers from engaging with the content. This point is also connected with small aids that catch the eye and naturally break into more elements, such as photos, infographics, or bullet points. Highlighting the most important elements of the text can also be a good approach.
Content
A key element of any good sponsored article is writing it in an engaging way.
Today’s reader is more likely to scan the text rather than read it thoroughly. To encourage them to delve deeper into the text, you need to intrigue them, and once you have their attention, you must be able to maintain it.
Therefore, a good strategy is to start the text with a question that the reader would like to know the answers to. You will provide these answers in the subsequent section of the article. How to choose the right question for the text?
To find this out, you can use SEO tools such as Surfer SEO, Ahrefs, Answer The Public, or Semstorm. With their help, you can discover the search volume of specific keywords and what similar keywords interest internet users. By generously including them in your text, you will increase its organic reach.
What exactly does this mean?
In short, when a specific phrase is entered into Google, millions of results appear in a fraction of a second. But only a dozen or so appear on the first page. You can make sure your article appears there (and thus generates significantly more page visits, which could ultimately translate into increased sales). By writing articles in a specific way, considering SEO principles, you can reach a wider audience.
Knowing the questions that interest your readers allows you to provide answers to them. Including these questions in the subheadings and the text itself will increase its reach.
And how long should a sponsored article be? Traditionally, it is assumed that the minimum length of such an article is 2000-2500 characters. However, it is worth analyzing the competition’s website and checking the length of their texts. If you can write a slightly longer text than your competitors and enrich it with something new, unique, and more current - you are on the right track.
Link Building
An additional advantage of sponsored articles is the so-called link building for your domain. In short, if links from many trusted sites (such as the websites where sponsored articles are placed) lead to your site, its ranking on Google improves.
As for the linking itself, it is good to hide the links under the so-called anchor, which is a keyword phrase. After discovering the keyword related to your product that has the highest search volume, you can consider it a “keyword phrase” and hide the link under it.
This link can lead to the brand’s main page or to a subpage where specific products are offered; it all depends on which part of your domain you want to build better visibility for in the search engine.
What to avoid when writing sponsored articles?
As mentioned above, the language must be accessible and simple. At the same time, it should not be too casual, let alone “crude”. Above all, it must be interesting to maintain the reader’s attention.
Another thing to avoid is overly aggressive advertising. The strength of sponsored articles lies in the fact that they do not appear as advertisements at first glance. Such content can easily discourage users, who will not read the article to the end and will not click on the link (and thus will not buy your product or service).
It is worth noting that, under the Act on Combating Unfair Competition, all sponsored content should be properly labeled. This can be done in the footer of the article so as not to diminish its advantage of concealing the advertisement at the outset. However, this information should be included in the article. Nevertheless, the obligation generally falls on the website where the content will be published rather than on its author.
It is important to consider where you decide to place your sponsored articles. For example, if you are selling fishing equipment, placing a sponsored article on a website related to cosmetics and beauty is unlikely to achieve the desired effect.
This is because such sites are typically visited by young women rather than fishing enthusiasts. Therefore, it would be money wasted. Placing such an article on a site visited mainly by middle-aged men, such as a tool-related site, increases your chances of reaching a potential customer base.
A drawback of this form of marketing is that one sponsored article should appear on only one site. If the same content is published on multiple websites, Google may consider it plagiarism rather than valuable content and lower the ranking of these articles.
Therefore, each website where you want to place an article should have only one unique article.
ChatGPT or a company to write sponsored articles for you?
As you can see, writing a good sponsored article that attracts new visitors from Google and guarantees a high number of clicks on the link is not easy.
That’s why more and more websites worldwide are flooded with texts created using generative artificial intelligence, such as ChatGPT, Gemini, or Copilot.
The problem is that the vast majority of AI-generated articles are low-quality content that offers nothing new, repeats the same information, and even contains errors.
Of course, AI can be extremely helpful in writing articles, but only if you provide it with the right information in the prompt beforehand. The same rule applies here as with “normal” writing: garbage in, garbage out.
For this reason, it is sometimes better to entrust this task to an external advertising or copywriting company. Especially if you want to publish articles on multiple websites simultaneously (and therefore need many unique pieces of content, multiple versions of the same article).
One such company is 4media, which has been operating as a publisher for nearly 9 years. The brand collaborates with over 800 publishers from six countries and acts as an intermediary between online websites and advertisers. They employ experienced copywriters and journalists who create quality content on various topics. You can place orders for article writing while searching for valuable websites where you want to publish your texts. For more information, visit ads4media.online/advertiser.
How much does a sponsored article cost?
The price of sponsored articles vary significantly, much like everything else. The cost is often calculated per 1000 characters with spaces.
However, it is difficult to expect high-quality content that genuinely encourages someone to learn about the product, let alone purchase it. Often, these can be mass-produced by artificial intelligence, and although they may seem high-quality to the untrained eye, they are not.
Content promoting a specific brand also serves as its business card, so it is worth investing in quality. This is somewhat more expensive, as depending on the company receiving the order, 1000 characters cost between 5$ and 25$. In the mentioned 4media, the cost starts at 15$.
Summary - the checklist
Sponsored articles are an effective way to reach potential customers with your product or service.
To ensure these marketing efforts achieve the desired effect, numerous rules must me followed:
- the article should be informational,
- the article should not overtly promote the product or brand,
- when choosing topics, consider current trends,
- the article should be at least 2000-2500 characters with spaces,
- the article should be saturated with keywords, and a link should be hidden under one of them,
- the link should lead to a product subpage or the main page of your website,
- the article should be written in an accessible language,
- follow the inverted pyramid principle when writing,
- the article should be readable, divided into paragraphs and contain subheadings, images, and bullet points,
- the article should have a structure: title, lead, introduction, body, summary, conclusion,
- publish the article on a website whose theme is somehow related to the content (or shares the target audience),
- each article should be unique and published on only one website,
- links from multiple websites increase your website’s popularity, so it is worth collaborating with multiple brands (remembering one article=one website),
- it may be a good idea to outsource the writing of articles to a professional company.
Now you know everything necessary to write a good sponsored article. Good luck!
