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Home::Viral Marketing
Easy Steps To Writing Articles
Author : Ivan Kelly
One of the most important skills to develop for anyone
interested in building an online business is the art of creating
a readable and interesting article. Learning to write articles
not only helps to engage your reader, it it helps to make your
name known far and wide and is a powerful tool for building
traffic to your website.
It need not be lengthy. We're not talking about "War And Peace"
here! 500 - 1,000 words is adequate for most purposes.
Let's look at an easy and productive way of writing that article.
1. Aim to be interesting, polished and informative. It isn't
necessary to aim for a Pulitzer Prize - not at this stage,
anyway. Aiming to produce competent work rather than a
masterpiece helps to lift some of the burden.
2. Remove your limits
Reduce your subject to a single core word and then brainstorm
around it. For example, if you're trying to write about "Study
Skills", expand your thinking to "School". Now jot down
everything that comes to mind when you think about School, and
when you run out of ideas start asking yourself open questions
around the subject and noting your answers.
Examples:
What did I enjoy about school? What scared me? What did I wish
I'd known from Day 1?
This will help you get back into the mindset of someone
struggling with school issues of all kinds and you'll start to
get a feel for their concerns and worries.
3. Restore your focus
Once you've started to understand the general feelings of your
readers, allow your mind to focus back on your original topic of
Study Skills. From your new perspective, what questions would
you ask? What would you want to know? Is this really a
"Studying" issue or is it more about Time Management or being
able to work without distractions or being paralyzed by the fear
of not doing well?
4. Be your audience
Write each question on a separate sheet of paper; don't stop
until you have at least ten and preferably more. Stay in the
mindset of your readers until you feel you've asked every major
question that concerns them.
5. Take a step back
Put your pile of question aside for a few hours, overnight if
possible. Don't consciously think about them; just go about your
day as usual. Give your subconscious time to process them
without any further prompting from you. If new questions come to
mind jot them down somewhere safe and then forget about them.
6. Get out your pen and write
When you're ready, sit down with your pages of questions and
simply start to answer them. Writing your answers by hand can
give you access to ideas that might be missed if you type them.
Don't edit yourself at this stage. Using Speech to Text software
or a digital recorder can also be helpful in bypassing the
internal editor.
Imagine someone sitting in front of you asking for advice and
just talk to them. Keep your tone natural and conversational and
stay with the question-and-answer format.
7. Edit lightly
Trust your first instincts. Proof-read and correct any obvious
errors, but don't do any major editing until your piece has had
time to "sit" for a while. Again, leaving it overnight will give
you a fresh perspective the next time you look at it, but even
if your deadline doesn't allow for that it's important to give
yourself a break from it.
When you're pushed for time, writing several articles at one
sitting can create enough change of focus to make you "forget"
the one you've just written.
8. Polish it up
Short articles are unlikely to need major editing if you've
written them as described here. They will flow easily and
naturally already and having each Q & A on a separate sheet
makes it easier to select only the ones you want. Your job now
is to put them in a reasonably logical sequence and make sure
they're understandable and that the reader is led smoothly from
one question and answer to the next.
9. Top and tail it
Write a brief introductory paragraph as a "teaser" for the main
article. Many article directories now put the first paragraph of
each piece into RSS feeds which are picked up by other websites,
so you'll want to make sure that your two or three major
keywords appear at least once in that first paragraph.
Write another short paragraph to summarize the major points of
the article and provide some ideas for the reader to explore the
subject further. Don't of course forget your own resource box:
use the format [a href="http://www.yourwebsite.com"]Your Website
Name[/a] (replace the square brackets with angle brackets) for
your link, so when your article is converted to html your link
will automatically be live.
10. Submit it!
This can often be the most tedious part of the exercise -
distributing your article to interested directories and special
interest groups. To do this manually can take many hours. If you
intend to do your own distribution, focus on the major article
directories to make best use of the time you have available.
Alternatively, obtain a copy of submission software, such as
Article Submitter Pro, which will partially automate the
procedure. The most cost and time effective way is probably to
use an article submission service, such as Article Marketer, who
will distribute the article for you for a small fee.
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