Blogging Tips

Writing Great Articles

Although there are a small percentage of people who think otherwise, article marketing has become a real pillar and Blog Marketing one of the ways that the savvy Internet business owners get the traffic they need. And they are effective in part because they are different from the other methods of advertising that have been used before the Internet became an economic force.

Consumers Looking for Useful Information

You need to remember that the consumer on the web is more apt to want information they can use. They don’t want the old school sales techniques that everyone used back in the day; rather they want to be informed and to leave the articles that you write feeling that they’ve got some valuable information they can take with them.

So, the articles that do the best today need to follow a certain formula that will entice the reader to want to learn more about what you’ve got to sell.

Start With A Great Hook

You need to catch the interest of the reader right away. In journalism terms this is called coming up with a good lead—some tidbit or anecdote that will make them want to read on. For example, if your writing about proofing your blogs you might want to start out with a funny story about what happened to a colleague who didn’t think that proofing was necessary.

Don’t Overload Your Readers

What ever it is that you’re writing bout, you will more than likely know more than your readers. So the temptation is to give them all the information that you’ve got. Unfortunately, overloading the readers will only turn them off. It’s good enough to give them an overview of the information. Highlight one or two important areas. Remember to try and focus on the big points as no article should ever be long enough to give the full picture.

Break The Article Up

You need to make sure that the text is easy on the eye as well and that general means that you’ll want to avoid long paragraphs that intimidate the reader when they first see them. Remember that many people on the Internet skim articles rather than reading them and that means that using numbered lists as well as bullet points and shorter paragraphs is the way to go to keep the reader interested. Subheads and bolded type are useful tools to draw the eyes to a specific place as well.

Written by Rob Starr from Rob Starr
Posted on July 12th, 2009 and filed under Promote your blog
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6 Responses to “Writing Great Articles”

Author comments are in a darker gray color for you to easily identify the posts author in the comments

Ricky says:

July 12, 2009 at 8:37 pm

There are many concepts you have to include in writing
a GOOD ARTICLE. You have to make sure that your readers will like the contents of it. The good quality of contents is the basis to make a successful writings.
Nicholas Z. Cardot says:

July 12, 2009 at 9:35 pm

Great tips. I’m constantly trying to write great articles and I’m always learning that it is hard work to really make it great every post. Thanks.
Charles says:

July 13, 2009 at 2:06 am

Thanks for the tips. I’d also like to add that a strong headline and stating strong opinions is a good way to attract readers and generate comments on the article.
B. Durant says:

July 13, 2009 at 12:59 pm

Strangely I’ve found the key to writing a great article lies more in things like videos and pictures than the actual written portion of the article itself. Don’t get me wrong the writing is important, but those other things are what really keeps a reader interested.
Larry says:

July 13, 2009 at 1:34 pm

Good stuff here. As someone who writes for publication frequently (magazines,newspapers, etc.), I had to learn a lesson quickly in the online articles world — they don’t care about your tricked-out writing voice. They want it solid, informative, and succinct.

A lot of buyers of this stuff (from Elance, for example) really wouldn’t know a great article from a hack job, they just want something they can use to link back to their site. That’s fine, but it means you can actually be counter-productive (and lose the gig) by infusing too much voice into your work.

It also means that you need to find another way to get something out of it for yourself. Writing clean and delivering value has its own reward, and that’s about all there is in this venue. Then again, it pays, and green is always a good thing.

Trackbacks

A blog is born « Brian Heys Creative says:

July 12, 2009 at 3:31 pm

[...] There are already lots of excellent blogs around covering those topics, including Problogger.net and BloggingTips.com, who cover topics such as how to build credibility and writing great articles. [...]