How To Write Articles Quickly

Yuck, it's that time again, newsletter time. Are you stuck in front of a blank page or computer screen? Do you struggle each time you have to write? People seem to find all other tasks preferable to writing an article. We have a friend who finds himself washing out socks instead of writing. There's a term for it: "shaving the yak."

Originally coined by Seth Godin, marketer and author extraordinaire, "shaving the yak" means that when faced with writing, some people find themselves doing any other chore they can think of, eventually finding themselves down at the zoo, shaving yaks.

Writing can be painful to many people. It doesn't have to be. Here's a basic outline of how to write an article quickly and without the painful struggle.

1. Pick a topic that appeals to your readers. This may not be what you think they want, so you need a way to ask, or find out what they want to know. Either ask them directly, or use keyword search tools to find out the most popular requests on the web in your field.

2. Write to appeal to basic human emotions. While you may know a lot about software engineering, or whatever your field, you have to hit readers where it hurts, where they feel, rather than appeal to their brains. So even if your article is about finding a computer networking solution, base your article on the pain that readers encounter with this problem.

3. Get to the point quickly in the first paragraph, using the key words you know people are looking for on Google. State the problem on an emotional level, then make a bold statement to indicate you have a solution.

4. Exaggerate the problem and the pain. Give some real-world examples of how it manifests in your readers' lives, affecting their work, play, family, physical and mental well-being. Use emotional words that resonate with readers, appealing to universal human dilemmas.

5. Next, suggest three ways to solve the problem. The brain finds it easy to think in threes. Limiting your solutions to three points makes it easier for readers to digest your ideas. It also makes it a whole lot easier and faster to complete your article.

6. Summarize the problem with the three solutions. Be sure to repeat your key words used in your first paragraph.

7. Finally, go back and write your title. This is the most important step of all, because your title provides two important keys:

a. It ensures readers will open and read it when they see the title.
b. It ensures that readers will find your article on the web when they search for solutions on Google or their favorite search engine.

8. Write an effective resource box, with your name, website and blog URLs, your credentials (what makes you an expert), and how and why people should contact you or use your services. Offer them a free report or white paper on your website to entice them to visit and leave their email address with you, and make sure you offer something compelling.

Now, if I had followed my own advice, I would have given you only 3 steps. You see, I struggle with brevity myself, having been cursed with an over-active brain and too much education.

Here's what you can do right now to solve your writing woes: Write down your topic (a painful problem), tell your readers how bad it is, and then give them 3 solutions they can take to rectify the problem. Open up a new document in Word and start now!

That's how you can write articles quickly and easily, without having to wash your socks or go down to the zoo to help shave the yaks.

The Benefits Of Article Marketing

There are many ways to get ahead in the cut throat world of internet marketing, but very few of them are easy and not all are ethical. The number of choices can be mind boggling at times. Ezines, newsletters, RSS feeds, Web 2.0 marketing and many more can all be effective, depending on your situation. However, very few offer all of the benefits that you get from article marketing. Read on to find out more.

Internet marketing is all about getting the best results for the least possible investment of your time and money. By writing good articles and submitting them to article directories you can drive significant traffic to your website. It is not the only way to do this, but few of the alternatives have so many benefits.

Search engine optimization

There is no better way to drive traffic to your website than by appearing at the top of the search engine rankings. While many internet users will ignore advertisements they will happily click through to search engine results. Advertising campaigns can of course be very effective, but they can be prohibitively expensive.

When you submit articles to article directories you will create backlinks to your website. The search engines will award you for these and you will will get a higher page ranking. Be careful though. Search engines can now recognize duplicate content so a unique version of each article article must be submitted to each directory for your campaign to be effective. Article submission alone may not help you to get to the very top of the search pages, but it will certainly increase your ranking.

Create direct traffic

By submitting articles to article directories you are giving websites free license to publish your articles. If you can produce quality articles that people want to publish and read you could find them appearing on hundreds, if not thousands, of websites. Each time a reader reads one of your articles there is a chance they will click through to your website through the resource box link, thus increasing traffic and sales.

You can make a name for yourself

The most successful internet marketers are well known in their field, or across the web in general. As an internet and article marketer you want to do the same. Try to become an authority on your niche subject and get your name known. If you are successful with this you will find that website owners will actively seek out your articles and be more than happy to publish them, rather than stumbling upon them by chance.

By submitting articles to directories you are already getting your name out there. However, you should back this up with other methods. Become involved in the online community relating to your field. Post helpful replies on forums, or comment on articles in blogs. You may find an opportunity to include a link to your site while doing this, but only do so if it is helpful, relevant and acceptable for that website. On the subject of blogs, you should set up your own. You are already writing articles so these can go in your blog, and you can also add posts including your thoughts, comments or smaller snippets of news when you want. If you engage with the online community in this way you will increase traffic to your website.

Long term gains

Once you have submitted an article to a directory it stays there, and if it is not time-specific it will be published again and again in the future. Bear this in mind when writing articles. Sometimes a newsy, topical article can be a good idea but often it is best to write articles that will have a long shelf life so they remain relevant in the future.

Your article can set up the sale

If a web user happens upon your website through a search engine link or an external link they may not be ready to make a purchase. With article marketing you can use your article to set up the sale. For example, if your article is giving advice on something you can give basic advice in the article while subtly giving the reader the impression that your product or service will provide the ultimate solution to their problem.

Article marketing is cheap

When compared to advertising or even to other marketing strategies, article marketing is very cost effective. It can be done for free if you make all of the submissions yourself by hand. However, even using a service or software to make articles unique and submit them to directories need not cost a lot.

So, if you are not already using article marketing to drive traffic to your website you should start now.

The Secrets Of Effective Article Posting

Submitting articles to article directories is a proven way to attract more visitors to your website, give you a higher search engine rankings and, ultimately, make you more money. However, search engines and article directories are getting tougher on the articles you submit and how you submit them. In this article we give you some tips on how to submit articles to directories successfully.

Changes in the way search engines and article directories work in recent times mean that article marketers need to be a bit more savvy about how they go about submitting their articles. There was a time when you could write a good article, submit it to hundreds, if not thousands, of directories and watch your profits grow. These days it is not quite so simple.

The easiest way to get your article published on a lot of directories quickly is to use an article submission service. It is possible to do it by hand but this is a laborious and tedious task, unless you submit to just a small number of directories.

There are many article submission services available online, both free and paid, or you can invest in software that will do the job for you. These can be effective but there is a danger that article directories will reject your content if they suspect you are using an automated submission method. In a worst case scenario you could be banned from submitting to the directory again.

So, if you are using an article submission service check that their methods will not cause you problems with the directories. If you are submitting articles yourself, do not submit too many articles to any one directory at the same time.

Duplicate content

An even bigger problem for article marketers is that the major engines now penalize duplicate content. In the past you could submit an article to 100 article directories and the likes of Google and Yahoo! would award you for having 100 backlinks to your website. You would also be awarded when the article was picked up and used by other websites. However, this has changed.

The search engines can now recognize duplicate content. So, even if your article appears on 1,000 different websites you will still only be awarded for one backlink. You will of course gain traffic that accesses your website directly through the link provided with your article. However, this makes it much more difficult to use article submissions as a search engine optimization tool.

The only way to get around this is to submit a unique version of each article you write to each article directory. Again, if you only submit articles to a small number of directories you could tweak each article yourself so you have a number of different versions. However, if you are submitting to hundreds of directories this is out of the question.

It is not really known just how much an article needs to be changed to become unique. Some argue simply switching paragraphs within an article is enough, while others think that the text within the paragraphs needs to be changed too.

There are a number of possible solutions to this problem. Many article submission services have been quick to move to address this issue. As well as submitting your articles to multiple article directories they will also create different versions of each article for you or provide you with a tool for doing so yourself.

Alternatively, you could invest in some software that helps with the re-writing of articles. These are also known as article spinners and will automatically replace words with other words of a similar meaning. For example, the word 'small' might be changed with the word 'little' and so on. However, the software needs to be configured to do so manually. Others will simply change the order of paragraphs in articles. This can also be very time consuming and may not do enough to make the different versions unique in the eyes of the search engines.

One final option could be to get outside help. There are many websites such as elance.com and getafreelancer.com where you can post rewriting projects for professional writers. The quality of the work will vary but rates can be quite cheap.

It may be a good idea to try out these methods and see how they work for you. You will have to invest some money but it will be worth it if you find a workable solution to duplicate content.

Writing articles and submitting them to article directories can be as beneficial a marketing and SEO tool as it has ever been. However, doing it successfully is a little trickier than it was before. We hope the advice in this article helps you build a successful article marketing campaign.

Top Tips For Writing A Great How-To Article

If you are using article marketing to help drive traffic to your website you will need to come up with ideas for articles that people will want to publish and read. The quality of articles found on article directories can vary significantly so it is important that yours are among the best available for your article marketing campaign to be successful.

There is no end to the subjects you can write about and you can use any style you wish. However, it has to be something that people will want to read. "How to" articles are very popular with both website owners and readers and can be a great way to get your article marketing campaign underway. Basically, the purpose of a 'how to' article is to explain to a reader how to do something.

Of course, you will have to have a good knowledge of how to do the task yourself before you can think about instructing anyone else how to do it, so stick to what you know. There are many possibilities. If you have experience in networking you could write a 'how to' article on how to set up a router at home, or if you love cars you could write an article on 'how to service your car'. There are endless possibilities for 'how to' articles, in fact you are reading one right now.

So let's get started. When you are writing a "how to" article remember that you are the teacher so write in an authoritative tone. You are sharing your expertise with someone who may have little knowledge of the subject at hand. So keep your writing style simple and your instructions clear.

At the beginning of your article tell your reader what their goal is and summarize how it is going to be achieved. This will prepare them for the task ahead. You should also inform them of what, if anything, they will need to have to hand to complete the task. Going back to the setting up a router example, you would need to tell them that they will need their computer, router, instruction booklet and perhaps and ethernet cable to complete the task.

Also, you must start at the beginning and work through the task step by step. Sometimes it may be beneficial to use bullet points to help give the impression that it is a step by step process. Alternatively you can link the steps with words like 'next', 'and then' or 'now'. If you are new to writing the bullet points option might be best for you as it keeps things simple, and helps you avoid complex grammatical structures.

As you write, re-read your text every few paragraphs, and try to read it from the reader's point of view, assuming they know nothing about the task at hand. As an expert on the subject it can be too easy to make things over-complex because the task is second nature to you. Try to imagine you are doing it for the first time and instruct the reader accordingly. Going back to our previous example, will the reader actually know what an ethernet cable is, or what a router is for that matter?

If a particular stage in the task is complex you may want to repeat the instruction, or ask the reader to check their progress so they are sure they have followed your instructions successfully.

With longer articles it is important to do this regularly so the reader does not lose track. Summarize what they have done so far, tell them what should have already been achieved and ask them to check that everything is as it should be. If a reader finds that the project does not look like what you have described, they can then retrace the last few steps and see where they went wrong.

If you work through your article in this manner you should be left with a clear, concise 'how to' article that takes the reader through each step of the project to completion. Read it again, at least twice, to make sure that it is well written and that instructions are clear. Wrap up with a concluding paragraph congratulating the reader for a job well done.

And finally, the icing on the cake, the headline. This does not necessarily have to be done at the end. It can be done before you write the article but you may find that headline ideas will come to you as you write your content. Be sure to spend some time perfecting your headline as this can be the difference between the success and failure of your article.

So that's it. If you have already written your first 'how to' article, well done. If not, try it now while the information is fresh in your mind.