How do you promote this valuable community goodwill gesture? Considering that you are offering your own personal time for benefit of community, your local paper is place to start. This will help get word out that you’ll be on patrol on Halloween night. It will also identify your business as one that is concerned about child safety and portray you as a community leader. That represents excellent publicity for your company.

You could also go door to door with an inexpensive pre-printed flyer and your picture, so children will know who to look for in case of emergency. (This also helps parents to feel more comfortable with you, and certainly positions you as a community leader).

Being a local businessperson often means being a community leader and volunteering your time to worthy causes. Child safety on Halloween is a major topic each year as end of October draws near. This year, you can generate some free, highly valuable publicity for your company, and do a good deed for your neighbors, all in one evening. And that’s no trick.

Everyone and their dog wants to know "How To" do something. We want to have instructions broken down into little bite sized pieces that we can easily understand and follow. For example, if you were writing a "How To Write an Effective Auction Listing" your first step would be to explain headline and continue with as many steps as it took to complete task. Pretty easy stuff, huh??

Interview

Another good form of article and again this one which takes very little time. Write 10-15 questions on a particular topic you know is hot right now, approach an "expert" that is well known in that area and ask them if they would mind taking time to answer you questions.

For example, you have done some research and found that hottest topic online with respect to running an eBusiness is how to build traffic. You know there are a few good "experts" out there, so you design 10-15 questions and then go to one "expert" and explain what you are doing - send them questions...and Voila - it's a done deal!

If you're eBusiness happens to deal with health issues, find out what hot health issue is right now, design questions and go to "expert" in that area.

The best thing about this form of article is that all work is basically done for you. The 10-15 questions are answered by your expert and all you have to write is introduction and conclusion.

And you didn't think you could write...

Now...where does free advertising come in? It comes in form of Resource Box. A resource box is about 3-5 lines and follows your article. This little box lets people know who wrote article with a bit more info on what you do and where you can be found. That my friend, is an advertisement promoting you and your business.

After you have written your article, let it start working for you. Get it into hands of as many ezine publishers as you can. Publishers are always looking for new, quality content for their issues. Approach them with your article!

The end result?

You are building trust, creating rapport and being pegged as an "expert." Plus more exposure that article gains...the more people visit :o)

So... Are you just going to sit there "lil grasshoppa" and join those who have said they can't write?? Or are you going to try your hand at one or all of forms of articles I just showed you and get them working for you?