For the average Joe article writer
I am a professional writer and have seven books published and distributed. When I learned that one crucial way a marketer can be successful online is by writing, I thought he had it done. I thought that if I could write a 60,000 word book, it would be very easy to write 40-50 articles. Well, it wasn’t that easy. I discovered that writing articles is very different from writing books. How, you ask?
1) When it comes to online articles, shorter is often better. While a typical magazine article might be 1,000-1,200 words long, the ideal web article is likely to be 500-700 words. Longer articles may not grab readers’ attention unless the content is absolutely riveting.
2) Article titles should be catchy enough to grab the attention of “non-readers”, ie people who don’t even like to read. How To…, numbered pointers, secrets to learn, invaluable advice, routes to success, etc. These are the type of article topics that tend to attract a lot of readers.
3) Windier is usually better. Magazine readers are sometimes content to curl up on the couch and read a heavy and rather complex article, but online readers tend to be looking for something light, perhaps a little fun and very casual in tone.
4) The reader should see some reward for reading the article. They can simply be the secrets, the answers, the solutions or the plans that the author presents. However, it can be a free ebook, a piece of software, a website that helps the reader. Maybe online readers are a bit spoiled, but they expect something in the article or in the resource box after the article that really helps them in practice.
5) The more articles you put on the web, the more you should start appearing to readers as the expert in a particular field they are interested in. If you repeat the same message or give them information that they could have found in a dozen other places, then they won’t necessarily respect your articles or look for more of your stuff. Also, if you choose a niche, ideally you should try to saturate that niche. This means that every time Internet users search for information on that topic, there is a good chance that they will come across one of your articles.
6) Well, look for niches that are quite narrow. If you write some articles about the best dog food brands, I can guarantee you that you will have some amazing competition on the net. Literally millions of articles will be ahead of yours in the search engines. However, while you may feel like there isn’t enough interest, you may find that most healthy foods/nutrients for German Shepherd puppies will rank you high on Google and gain you more readers.
7) If you want, when you have a group of, say, around 20-30 solid gold information articles, it’s not a bad idea to consider putting it all together in an e-book and giving it away for free as premium goodwill or selling it for a small add people looking for invaluable information, all in one convenient pdf file.
So I’m no longer the cocky professional writer strutting around the Internet. I’m just another average Joe trying to succeed in online promotion. I’m just another guy trying to get people’s attention so I can give them something that I’ve researched and really feel can help them in some area that’s important in their lives. And so help me God, I’m going to try to drive value with articles that don’t have people snoring in the first 20 seconds.
