Here are ten easy article formats that will help you boost your output. Because they are easy, you can find yourself writing more and possibly turning out as much as ten quality articles every day.
- List articles (like this one) are one of the easiest, fastest and most widely read article formats. Simply write out five, seven, ten or more key points related to your topic. Begin each item with a strong action verb and then write two or three more sentences of explanation. And before you know it, your article is done.
- Frequently Asked Questions, or FAQ articles are also very easy to write. Jot down the questions clients ask you about your field, or create your own questions and then write short or long answers, depending on how much of a response the question warrants.
- Brain Dump. This is a quick way to get a lot of articles written in a single day. Just freewrite everything you can think of on your topic and keep writing for ten or fifteen minutes. Take a break and come back to summarize what you have written and let your mind keep churning out new material. When you are done, you should have several pages and maybe 1500 to 3000 words worth of material. Then you just edit the material down into smaller articles. The great news is that your original 1500 word brain dump, will produce more than five 300 word articles because often you will use the same introductory material with each one.
- Reviews. Have you recently read a book related to your topic or used a product that fits into what you want to write about? Then write a review. Tell readers what you liked, what disappointed you, who you would recommend it to, what its strengths and weaknesses were, and how they might benefit from this book or product.
- Solve a problem. Chances are, people read article is your field in order to solve a problem. Identify those problems and come up with solutions. No you don't have to go on and on at length about how to solve it, just enough for them to want to contact you for more information (that is why you are writing this article in the first place, isn't it?)
- Create a change. A companion topic to solving problems is to look at what changes people want to achieve. Show them how to bring about a desired change and your article will be very popular.
- Pros and Cons. Discuss a topic and show readers both the positives and negatives of the topic. Don't be afraid to give your opinion. But also, it is ok to straddle the fence a little bit if you feel that a balanced analysis is in order.
- Latest developments. This just might be the easiest article of all. Simply subscribe to Google news feeds on keywords related to your topic and you will get daily email updates on this topic. Each update may have five or six new items just hitting the web that day for you to write about. Just be a news reporter and give your readers up to date information on this topic.
- Ask questions. This is not the same as the FAQ article mentioned earlier, but a way to move your article along. Just start jotting down all the questions you can think of and keep your fingers moving. These questions may be the first sentence of a new paragraph or they may just propel you along and provide you with new ideas to keep writing.
- Cut your articles into smaller articles. In most cases, five 300 word articles will create much more traffic to your site than a single 1500 word article. As we've already discussed in the "Brain Dump" article, get in the habit of chopping your 700 word article into two 350 word articles; and your 900 word article into three 300 word articles. As I've also mentioned, the math will always work in your favor because you will probably find that that 900 word article can actually become FOUR 300 word articles because some of he sentences will have to overlap in order to make your point clear.
Article marketing is all about building traffic to your website. Nothing can do this faster than writing a lot of fresh, high quality articles. Use these formats and you WILL see your output climb through the roof.
COPYRIGHT © 2007, Charles Brown
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COPYRIGHT © 2009, Charles Brown
2 comments:
Great stuff! I forget about the FAQ and those are soooo easy to write. Another thing I've been doing is write one article with 5 bullet points and then turn each bullet point into an article for the next 5 issues of my ezine. It allows me to go deeper and deeper into my subject.
My best,Donna
http://mybigbusinesscard.com
Yes it does, Donna. Bullet point articles are easy to write, easy to read and, as you just saID, are easy to expand into future articles.
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