Successful Affiliate » article writing

Article Marketing Advice: Increasing the Readability of Your Articles

Hunter Waterhouse — Sat, 28 Nov 2009 07:00:02 +0000

When it comes to writing articles to promote your online business, it’s important to consider more than just your marketing goals: it’s essential that you also focus on writing articles that people will want to read. In other words, you don’t just want to use words; and you don’t want to market and sell your business directly. Instead, you want to make an effort to be engaging and influential.

The first tip that will help you to increase the readability of your articles is to write with the reader’s concerns in mind. If you are unsure of exactly how to do that, you may want to look into article ghostwriters who understand article marketing and who only focus on writing articles for Internet audiences. When you work with article ghostwriters, you can focus more on your business and know that someone else is working hard on your behalf to write articles that will be read.

Getting The Best Results From Your Article Marketing Campaigns

Still, if you want to keep article writing within your company, rather than outsourcing it, here are some tips for getting more out of your article marketing campaigns:

1. Hook your readers from the start. Article writing is a lot more effective for marketing your business when people will actually read the articles. The best thing that you can do is to catch their interest right away. Your article title will determine if people will open your article, and the first paragraph will ensure that people keep reading the article.

2. Avoid the temptation to overwhelm your readers with a lot of information. Article writing is not about telling the reader everything that there is to know; it’s about sticking with a central focus and giving your reader an introduction or overview of the information they want and need to solve their problems. In an article that probably won’t be much more than one thousand words, you will never be able to tell the reader everything they need to know to solve a problem, but you can help put your reader on solid footing for moving forward towards a workable solution.

3. Break up information into digestible chunks. Writing articles is about expressing some key points. When it comes to writing articles for the internet, what you are going to find is that many readers skim rather than read your articles. Using numbered lists (like this one) will help you to present your information clearly, and let readers find what they are looking for quickly. Similarly, if you use bullet lists or break up your text with subheadings that are in a larger font and bolded, you can be sure that after reading your article, the article’s key points will be easily recalled.

4. When it comes to article writing, particularly when you are working to establish yourself as an expert, it’s important to show that you know what you’re talking about. A great way of doing that – and to break up the text of your article – is to include quotes from more established experts. If you are writing articles and are more established, you too should quote other sources, possible letting the readers know why you disagree with another writer.

5. Focus on spelling and grammar. Just as someone who is hiring article ghostwriters should take the time to find ghost writing services that are well versed in your point of view, it’s also important to be sure that you’re writing in the native language of your target audience. American English is different from that spoken and written in England and India. Paying attention to your spelling and grammar shows that you care about what you are saying and that you are a professional.

A good example of the difference between the usage rules in British English and American English is the story of Paul Marshall from Dallas, Texas. When Paul was running his mortgage business, he had hired some Indian writers to develop content for his website. When he received the copy from his ghostwriters, the copy used the word “mortgage scheme” in the text eleven times. Paul was pissed, as you might well imagine. In British English, “scheme” does not carry any negative connotation. Yet, as you may well realize, “scheme” in American English is one of the most negative words that can be applied to any business model. It denotes “dishonesty” and “fraud” in American English. His Indian writers could not understand his anger with their choice of words, but you can understand his anger.

Professionalism In The Article Writing Process

Professionalism, unfortunately, is frequently overlooked when it comes to article writing. Great writing flows, not just for the writer whose aim is to get the words and message out, but also for the readers who are consuming the information.

Because of this, one key element of an effective article is not the writing itself: it is the readability of that article. Take the time to look at the articles that grab your attention and jot a few notes about each of them. Specifically, focus on the following:

How did the writer grab your attention (or, if you weren’t interested in the first paragraph, what turned you off?

What sort of spacing did the writer use in the article?

What did you come away with after reading the article? In other words, what were the key points of the article?

Writing articles is neither purely science nor purely art

My Super-Effective Article Writing Formula

Willie Crawford — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 13:00:00 +0000

Here’s the formula that I use to quickly write informative articles that get results. For many of the articles that I write my goal is to get visitors to a website where they take some action related to the topic of the article. Often the action that they take is to buy some product that I recommend.

Here is the formula that I use to write articles almost in an assembly line fashion. The reason that I write so many articles is that in some niches you need dozens, even hundreds of articles, to break through the clutter.

I begin with keyword research. You want to know what keyword phrases your ideal customers are using when searching online. They come online searching for solutions to their problems, and when they come across your articles offering a solution, they become raving fans.

To do keyword research, I often use the “Google External Keyword Tool.” You can find it by googling that term. This tool shows you how many searches are made on a given term in a month, plus how many webpages there are out there already targeting that phrase. The tool also suggests related terms that you might want to target. You can use this tool to compile a list of suitable keywords and then download your research results in an Excel spreadsheet.

In looking at keywords, what you’re trying to identify, in addition to search volume, is “What problems are these searchers try to solve.” People come online looking for solutions to their problems. You identify those problems and then let them know (via your articles) that you have the perfect solution.

In crafting my article titles, I use my keywords but also work in a promised benefit. My titles promise to show them the solution to a nagging problem. When they see that title listed in the search engines, this is what entices them to click through to your target site.

In crafting the body of my articles, I use the “problem, agitate, solution” formula. I describe the problem to let the reader know that I understand their problems. I then go into excruciating details explaining the problem, and how it’s not going to get any better unless they do something about it. Finally, I point out the obvious solution, which is my recommended product.

Sometimes I only point them to a website to read more about the problem. On that website, they’ll also find my recommended solution. This is a less-threatening, soft-sell approach.

When I do my keyword research, I sometimes identify hundreds of related keywords that are being searched on a lot. At the same time, I identify several different painful problems (or variations of the same problem). This is what allows me to write articles in almost an assembly line fashion.

After the articles are written, I use an automated submission service to submit them to the top article directories. I use automated submissions because otherwise I’d spend countless hours submitting each article (not a very good use of our time).

In the resource box of these articles, I point readers to a target site. Where permitted I use anchor text in the links in these resource boxes. That anchor text is generally the keyword that I’m targeting (the same keyword that I used in my title).

I also post these articles to my blogs or maybe to a static page on one of my sites.

Since I like to leverage my time, I also turn many of my articles into videos, and podcasts. I generally create the videos by putting the main points of the articles on PowerPoint slides. Then I read the article as I go through the slides – recording then using Camtasia (screen capture software).

Alternatively, I sometimes simply turn the text of an article into a PDF. Then I scroll down my computer screen reading the article, and again, recording it using Camtasia.

To create the podcast you can use recording software probably already on your computer, or you can download one many free pieces of software such as Audacity. Simply read the article as you record it. I generally save it as an MP3.

Submit the videos to video sharing sites, and submit the audio to podcast sites. I use an automated submission service for this, submitting to numerous sites!

Here’s one final tactic that I use to get my articles to rank higher for a target keyword and get noticed more readily in the search engines. I look for ways to create external links pointing to my article in one location – generally my main blog. I do this by bookmarking the blog post that contains the article. This is perhaps the easiest way to give the article a search engine boost.

There you have it, my super-effective article writing formula. It generates a steady stream of high quality website traffic for me, and a steady stream of orders too. Feel free to use it.

Editor’s Note: This article previously published here.

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Willie Crawford has been marketing online for 13 years, and used article marketing most of that time (writing over 1500 articles). His favorite tools for automatically distributing his articles, videos, podcasts, and press releases is the automated submission site: http://EasyPushButtonTraffic.com/