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Archive for the ‘Writing Tips’ Category

Any writer can tell you that they can start off writing one thing and then they end up with something completely off-track. Don’t worry, beginners, it is a very common problem with writers. To control this problem, what we do over here is to spend a few minutes researching the web for good content, write out in point form and then form a skeleton of the article.

The skeleton of the article will serve as a guide – like the railway tracks for a train, it keeps you from derailing and moving in the right direction.

It doesn’t take a lot of time to write out a skeleton, trust me. All it takes is a few minutes and you don’t have to spend too much time editing.

And oh, the editing process is the most hated exercise in the whole writing process.

By writing out a skeleton for your article, you know where you are going and what you are writing. When you are done with the article, you are left with a more-or-less intact one that requires little or not editing.

Some people ask, ‘Do you write the title first or write it last?’

There is no right or wrong answer but here’s what we, web content writers at www.contentmagician.com do. We…

• start out with a title,

• write the skeleton of the article,

• write the article,

• edit the article

• and then we rewrite the title.

Five simple steps to writing an article easily. The same way we are doing for this article, anyway and it took us less than ten minutes to write this.

Suggestion: give it a try now. Find a topic…OK, let me help you jumpstart this. Start writing about what you did in the morning and why you did what you did.

by Lisa Mason

When it comes to writing articles, many of us find that we need to write them faster. Whether you are a freelance writer with client work, a stay at home mom or dad looking to earn some income selling your articles online or maybe an article marketer looking to promote your business, more articles = more opportunity.

You can’t get more articles if you don’t learn to write them faster. Most of us live really busy lives already. Some of you may even have full time jobs that you have to juggle. So getting more time to write may not cut it. Instead, you need to learn how to write more articles in the time you do have. The best way to do this is by writing faster articles.

Here are 5 ways to write faster articles:

1. Use article templates. There are many available or you can create them yourself and they will dramatically shorten your writing time.

2. Plan head for your articles. When you have the extra time, plan ahead for your articles and next time you sit down to write, they will go faster.

3. Use article mapping. This is a great way to plot out what you plan to write about and you can use it to chart your progress, too.

4. Time yourself writing one article and gradually get faster with it. Egg timers or stop watches are a great way to do this. Start by shortening a minute or two off your time and keep progressing until you write faster articles of the same quality.

5. Shorten your articles to be more precise. If you tend to write long winded articles, it’s a good idea to shorter them. Stick to a tight topic and if you want to say more, use a new article to do so.

I have to create content for my clients and also marketing articles for myself that stand out from the crowd, offer something unique and valuable to the reader and that don’t get buried amongst all the other regurgitated crap out there.

I have been frustrated before to have an article that I worked hard on and that I felt was very valuable to the reader get buried below hundreds of articles on similar topics that basically all sound the same.

When I offer my advice to other article writers, I always say “write as many as you can without losing quality”. For some, that may be 100 in 100 days, for someone else that may be 30 in 100 days.

You need more articles to keep up with the people who are trying to scheme the system by rewriting the same content over and over but you need to also offer something of value so that you stand out in the sea of “authors” as a true expert in your field.

Yet we still need to find a balance in quality and quantity. When writing more, you shouldn’t get sloppy in your writing or create poor articles. With these tips, you can write faster without sacrificing quality. Happy writing!

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Lisa Mason is a freelance writer. with a specialty in Internet content and SEO articles and the author of How to Earn a Living Writing for the Internet as well as two poetry anthologies and a how-to poetry book. She has written thousands of articles, hundreds of ebooks and thousands of website pages and related content in her 10+ years as a professional writer.

Knowing the right time to use long copy or short copy will prove to be very useful if you’re looking to get the best response with your copywriting. Many people who write copy make the big mistake of using the wrong length of copy with their offers and end up getting a poor conversion rate. When you understand the best situations for long copy and short copy then you’ll effectively know when to use them.

So I encourage you to read this entire article because I’m going to reveal some special copywriting tips to help you sky rocket your response. Starting with…

1. The Advantages and Pitfalls of Long Copy

Being able to write long copy will be a skill that you’ll want to possess. Because one of the great advantages of writing long copy is with it you can command a higher price for your offer.

The more you educate your reader the more money you can demand. Also long copy has it’s uses when selling unusual or new items. You must go into detail about things your reader wouldn’t know about…

But you might ask yourself, “Who is going to read all that copy?” The answer is the people who are most likely to respond! Real prospects are hungry for information and the more you give the more likely they are to respond. But using long copy in the wrong situation can prove to be fatal to your conversion rate. There are specific mediums and marketplaces where your reader’s attention span is very short. And using long copy might bore them to death!

You can’t be boring with your marketing and copywriting. That’s another thing you should know about long copy. If you can’t keep your reader interested all the way to the bottom then your long copy will fail. Unless you’re a master at grabbing and hooking attention throughout your copy, you should stick with short copy when faced with those type of situations. Which brings us to the next powerful copywriting tip…

2. The Advantages and Pitfalls of Short Copy

The advantage with using short copy is it’s quite easy to write and it’s less imposing to your reader. Let’s face it. The majority of society cringes when they see that they have to read a lot. So when you use short copy it’s less intimidating and your reader is more at ease with reading it.

Also short copy is useful when it comes to selling an offer that’s on the low price side. Unless it’s an unusual item, a new item or you lack credibility, then you don’t have to overly inform your reader for an offer that’s pretty cheap.

Now the pitfall of using short copy is similar to long copy. Using it in the wrong medium or marketplaces will prove to leave you with a poor conversion rate. So in the end proper research must be done. You have to find out whether long copy or short copy will work best with your offer. If you do the necessary research, you should get it right most of the time.

In conclusion…

I encourage you can take these powerful copywriting tips and use them immediately towards your success! Don’t hesitate to implement what you learn right away!

About The Author

If you’d like to discover more profitable copywriting tips and how you can turn any idea into major profits then I encourage you to check out my blog here copywriting blog. Also if you’re looking to build a highly profitable online business, where you can bypass all the struggles of trial and error, and watch money steadily flow into your bank account, then I encourage you to check my services (initial consultation is FREE!) available here Profit-Pulling Copy.

Author: Dmytro Fodoreyev

Article marketing is one of the most powerful tools used for product/website promotions. This technique attracts many new readers to your blog/website and definitely it increases your sales as well. Article marketing is one of the best strategies to make money online. Read the following paragraph to know more about article marketing and get some tips as well.

The basic thing for article marketing is to have an article. You must have a strong knowledge in English to write an article or you can also outsource the job. Submit the article to article directories which have high page rank. Some of the best directories are ezine, articlesbase, articledashboard etc. The editors of these sites will review your article and if it meets their editorial guidelines then your article will be published in these sites. The first and best thing about article marketing is that it gives you one-way backlinks. These one-way backlinks gives your blog/website a better page rank and good search engine positions as well.

· Do not promote anything inside the article as this may reduce the chances of approval in the directories.

· Give only the factual information in your article as this may help in attracting readers.

· Always do more research for the content and do not just rewrite the things.

· Give an eye catching title to your articles as this helps in attracting readers

· Make short and sweet sentences.

· Insert your keywords inside the body at appropriate places and do not stuff it.

· Use bulleted points and make the article neat.

· Always have a very good resource box when you are submitting and add your URL for your keyword.

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About The Author
http://www.articleSubmitedge.com offers you complete article submission service. Using our article submit, you can boost your link popularity and get top ranking. Article submission is a powerful service for website promotion.

Author: Marsha Maung

Written the wrong article. And with a looming deadline too. Nothing could be worse. Things are bad. This could be the end of everything. I am going to have to burn a few midnight oils for this mistake.

Nah. Don’t have to. You see, here I am writing this article for myself after all. Want to know how it was done? Repurposing the article, of course! This is a learned art that one can only make use of through experience. You know, come to think of it, even if you don’t have the experience of writing tons and tons of articles every day, you can do it if you put your mind to it because it is nothing miraculous. You don’t need to know Karate to know how to whack this out.

Here’s what repurposing an article mean. It means saving the article from going completely into the waste bin, that’s what. As mentioned, I wrote the wrong article…two, in fact (yes, yes, as stupid as it sounds) and I need to save both. Here’s what needs to be done. I need to either find a new twist to it and fit it into a new genre or save some, lose some, add more. You know what you have written in your article, so you are in the best position to decide what stays so, give the article a quick scan and see what you can save from the whole thing and still present it to your client without having to rewrite the entire piece.

Admittedly, you probably can’t keep everything in there if it is a completely different topic altogether, so, you compile the information you need to ‘thrash’ and save it for later use. You can expand that into another article for another client later on. Then scan the web for new information that you can insert to ‘fill in the blanks’ for the current article. Find them and write them.

Most of the time, we write multiple articles for the same client so you must have written a fair amount in the past for this client. Re-use the previous information for this article and write it in a new way.

Switch on your torch lights and look inside your head to see if you have further information that you can INSTANTLY add from a previous article that you have written for another client too If you have it, add a few words in there. One of the biggest tool for a freelance writer is to know how to find multiple angles to write about the same thing. If you’re writing about wine bar, can you write it from a kid’s point of view (not the kids drinking but the how to make wine bars kid-friendly)? Can you write it from the wine maker’s point of view? Can you write it from a collector’s point of view? There are so many ways to write on one topic.

This, fellow writers, is called repurposing (I call it rescuing for very obvious reasons – for me, at least) the article so that you can maximize your income writing on the same topic. For some of us, it comes in handy when we stupidly write the wrong topic for the wrong client looking at the wrong deadline.

If you have anything to add to this, please comment. I am sure I could use another few tricks up my sleeves. We, freelance writers, are a pretty friendly bunch of people, aren’t we?

I tried to write like Enid Blyton once because I love Enid Blyton books….I love them when I was five and I still love them today. There’s something very endearing about gnomes, pixies, brownies (I thought they were the edible kind at first) and also those naughty little boys having their faces frozen mid-scowl when the wind blew – mind-blowing. You remember that one? Yeah, it’s fantastic and out of this world. The world could end and Enid Blyton books would still be selling like mad cakes out of the oven.

I also tried to write like John Grisham because he’s really up there and I am a law graduate. I understood (sort of) all the procedures and lingos that he was using in all his books. I got all of those stuff covered. And then when I do that, I sound like a half-baked college student trying to impress her teachers and school mates and the next door neighbor’s dog.

Avid readers of love stories would definitely, positively try to write a romance novel. Those Mills and Boons stuff? Yeah, you’ve got to try writing them….but after a while, you’re afraid that you don’t know enough about all those ‘stuff’ to write them and when you try to get it published, people will laugh their faces off.

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It can be a tough trying to come up with dynamic blog posts that readers will find interesting and useful. Here are a few brainstorming ideas that may help you develop dynamic content that will add variety and personality to your blog while also inviting visitors to be interactive.

1. Post Other People’s Articles

You can find many interesting articles written by other authors and they are a great resource for generating blog content.  I will say that posting your own articles is ideal but in a pinch posting articles from other writers can add variety, particularly if it’s an article from an author with a creative writing style. Of course posting other people’s articles requires including their resource box with a link to the author’s website. If this concerns you here’s a suggestion.

Post articles that are useful to your readers but not in direct competition.  For example, a website about dating might post an article from a ‘money tips’ website that lists ways to save money on a date.   The article is useful to your dating readers but may not necessarily draw them to the money tips website as your reader is focused more on dating.

If you are posting articles from other authors be sure to preface the article with an introduction paragraph on why you like the article and why your viewers should read it.

Then follow the article with a personal comment and invite your viewers to offer their opinions and ideas as well.

2. Attend Webinars, Workshops or Live Seminars

Not everyone has the time or the cash to attend live Seminars or workshops, but if you do, they are well worth it when it comes to learning strategies and getting ideas for content.  In fact I’ll guarantee your head will be swimming with ideas and useful information when it’s over.

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If you want to become a really good technical writer then you must be good at research. In most cases, the quality of your documents will be directly proportional to the time you invest researching the project. Being a good researcher is an acquired skill. And like all skills, you have to practice it to become good at it.

Research is an often overlooked component of technical writing. Generally, job descriptions for technical writers will not have “must be good at research” as a required skill. You may not be asked about your research abilities at job interviews. In reality, you might spend 50 to 70 percent of your time researching the project.

I remember my initiation into the world of research. It was my first day on the job in a major Fortune 500 company. The tech support guy was setting up my computer when my manager, Frank S, summoned me to his office.

“Here’s your first project,” he told me. He handed me a small piece of paper with the words “IPC Training” scrawled on it. “What do you want me to do?” I asked him. “Write a training program,” he replied. With that, he picked up his briefcase and went off to a meeting. I was confused and had no clue what to do. The words “IPC Training” meant nothing to me. Being timid, I was afraid to ask my manager for details. And I had heard that he had a short temper. So I grabbed a notepad and a pen and went off to get some answers to the thousands of questions I had swirling in my head.

Research Tip # 1 - Ask Questions

Don’t be shy when asking questions. The more you ask, the more facts you will uncover. You’ll find that your target audience, subject matter experts and those you interview will be happy to answer your questions. A good habit to develop is to make a list of questions before you interview someone. This saves time for both parties.

Research Tip # 2 - Read Existing Documents

That’s the second step I took in my IPC Training project. I read everything I could get my hands on about the subject. This may get tedious and boring, especially when you are digging through technical and engineering documents. One way to reduce the boredom is to write down the key points of your research. You could also set aside a certain part of your work day for research. Doing this will give you a goal to aim for as opposed to long day of research drudgery.

Research Tip # 3 - Keep a Separate Research Folder

Maintain a research folder to organize the information you collect. This could mean creating two folders - one for paper documents and the other for digital files. Being organized will help you retrieve information in the future without wasting time.

Research Tip # 4 - Think Like a Detective

Cover all angles when researching a project. Writing a user manual for a toaster oven may seem easy at first. But what about the safety and hazards involved? You’ll also have to write about cleaning, storage and maintenance.

Research Tip # 6 - Tap into the Internet

The internet has made it relatively easy to widen your research web. Google Scholar is a new tool by Google that helps you search thousands of books, abstracts, articles, academic publications, universities and professional societies.

Looking back on that first technical writing project - IPC Training - it was the best thing my manager could do for me. Later on, I asked him about why he gave me the project topic without any details. He told me that since it was first my project, he wanted to give me the freedom to learn every aspect of the business. He was right.

You may find that a lion’s share of your project time will be consumed by research. I like to think of is as the fun part of every project. It’s by researching you get to meet new people and find out how things work. You expand your knowledge and your mind.

If you can write a simple sentence and organize your thoughts then technical writing may be a rewarding field. Become a tech writer and quickly start an extra income stream.

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About The Author
To learn more go to http://www.techwritingcourse.com/bright_future

Can you think of one instance whereby you’re just staring at the keyboard and willing yourself to type something….ANYTHING out?! You’re just staring at it and wishing that there was something you could do about that empty page on the computer.

I know. It’s horrible, that feeling.

But here’s the secret to writing even when you’re stuck…just write anyway. Anything that comes to mind. Just think about a recent movie you’ve seen, the cup of coffee in front of you, your favorite actress, a man standing at the altar being abandoned by his bride-not-to-be….etc. The obstacle is you. You can’t get started because you’re facing something writers are most afraid of….writer’s block! Oh, how I hate that word too!

Over the years of being able to write despite facing devastating and career-destroying mind blocks, I’ll share something with you and that is to get yourself chugging anyway.

You know, November is my favorite month of the year because that’s the month whereby I have to force myself to write despite not knowing what to write. I participate in something called the National Novel Writing Month….in short, it’s affectionately called Nanowrimo. It’s an incredible process, I’m telling ya!!

The purpose is to force yourself to write a novel (or a really long short story – haha) of at least 50,000 words within that month. The reward….nothing. Yeah, you don’t anything from completing the process but you know what? That’s not true. At the end of the month, when you’ve finally succeeded in writing those 50,000 words, you’ve got half a novel finished and a story.

Sometimes the story is good, sometimes they suck – but you’ve got material to work on now, don’t you?

So, the essence of what I am trying to say today is this. Even if you’re stuck there staring at your keyboard, write anyway. Write about how you hate your hand lotion, how much laundry you have to do, write about world war II….just keep at it until the engine chugs to life.

Good luck!

p.s. If you’re still stuck, head on over here for some REALLY NEAT writing prompts! Have fun. No, seriously, HAVE FUN!!!

Here’s a note for a crazy Thursday. Tomorrow is Labor’s Day and I ain’t giving myself a holiday. I know I am such a hard-assed boss!In order to determine whether an article is a good one or not, let’s take a look at it from the reader’s point of view.

For future reference, it’s always a ’step-into-the-readers’-shoes’ tactic that works best. It works in a website, it works in a blog and it works in article directories.I am assuming you’ve heard about how contributing articles to web content sites or article directories for promotional purposes.

If you’ve not, head over to www.ezinearticles.com, www.goarticles.com and www.articlesdashboard.com for more information. They should have sufficient information in there to help you understand what that is all about. 

Anyway, the point of writing this note here today is to ask you a question. When you’re writing your article marketing articles, if you were another website or blog owner, do you think you will publish those articles? I’ve seen some really FANTASTIC ones in there but I just can’t help but keep reminding all of you out there that the articles need to be publish-worthy! 

Otherwise, you’re not maximizing on the potential result of those articles.Write useful (amusing, if possible) articles that makes others want to publish it. Not just whack out a few words with a link at the bottom.

That’s losing the whole point of article marketing.Now, go and write a very useful article on your industry and start using article marketing as an online marketing avenue right now!