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Writing Articles - 5 Key Principles To Write A Kickass Article And Maximise Qualified Traffic To Your Website

Posted on 12. Jan, 2009 by Derrick.

Not sure where to start to write your own article?
Don’t know what to write about?
Have no idea how to write a good article?
Or maybe you’re just looking for some extra article writing tips to confirm you’re on the right track?

Wherever you are, I’m glad you’ve come to this article, because the goal of this article is to simplify and demystify the art and science of article writing for the web. However, before we look at the “How to write an article” its important to know the “Why Of Writing Articles“.

Here are my three reasons:

You want to share valuable information.
You want to increase your exposure, build your credibility and your brand
And you want to drive qualified traffic to your website

Article writing has long been recognized as a great way to drive not only traffic to your website - but qualified traffic. This means rather than your visitor clicking to your website from reading a short advertisement, or some other less meaningful link, they click through, from your article. This means they have had to read through your whole article to get to your link at the bottom - so they must be interested in who you are, and what you have to say. Because they are more qualified, they are more likely to surf around on your site, give you their email address or even buy from you. And of course the big kicker for articles is that it costs you nothing! The downside is - you do need to spend time and effort in writing your articles - though you do get better and more efficient as you practice more

But where do people find your articles? There are hundreds of article directories on the Internet like www.ezinearticles.com, which gather and organize millions of articles written by millions of authors. By submitting your articles to these sites you get your articles out there, plus you also give the right for others to reprint / republish your work on their sites, so effectively increase your reach!

Ok, now we’re ready for the How -

My 5 Key Principles for Article Writing:

1. Choose Your Area Of Specialty

- Ideally you want to pick an area you are passionate about, as your passion and enthusiasm for the subject will shine through otherwise just pick an area that you know, or at the very least are prepared to research well. You need to sound like you know what you are talking about, and your information needs to be true, otherwise, you will shoot your credibility and destroy the brand you’re trying to create.

Once you have selected an area, you need to hone in on a specific problem or issue, so you can address it with your solution. For example, let say your area is Televisions. There are so many different types of LCD and plasma TVs these days, an obvious initial choice for topic would be how to choose the right TV for you.

2. Know Your Audience -

Your ability to develop rapport and connect with your reader is directly related to how well you know your audience. By knowing who your target audience is, you can connect with them based on their problems, their desires, their likes, dislikes and their language level.

In this example I could write the article for mums and dads - i.e. not a teenager or a geek. So therefore I write the article with very simple terms, and if I were to use any jargon, I would make sure I explain it. Also I need to consider what issues they may have - such as having legacy hardware like old school VCR’s and so one of the areas I could cover is how they could check for compatibility with their older equipment

3. Come Up With A Title -

The title is considered one of the most important aspects of an article (besides the article itself:) Often it is the power of the title that will draw the reader into the article, so you must have an attention grabbing title. There are 3 Aspects you need to consider when creating your title:

1. Ensure title is Keyword rich - for people to find your article it needs to contain the keywords people would be searching for. So you need to do a little research on keywords (you can use Google’s Keyword tool which is free).

In this example I would do a search for LCD and Plasma TV - and look at what keywords show up, and target the more common ones - after doing a quick search I discovered that LCD HDTV scored over 4 million searches, as compared to LCD HD TV which only got 135,000 and PLASMA HDTV just over 1 Million - so Now I know what I should definitely use and not use in my title. Note also that keywords in the body of your article are also important and will help keep your article highly ranked within articles for the topic.

2. Get Creative and Make Your Title Attention Grabbing - you need to stand out from all the articles that cover the same kind of information, so you need a title that has the x-factor - Think about all those gossip magazines, that try and grab your attention at the supermarket

It would be easy just to write: How to Choose your next widescreen LCD or Plasma TV which is ok, but not the best - after doing the keyword research above, I would probably go with something more like: PLASMA or LCD HDTV? 5 Questions You MUST Ask before Buying your Next Widescreen TV. Ask yourself if you were given the choice of these two titles, which would you more likely click through to read?

3. Check your title is unique - the main reason for this is so you can keep a track of your article - by doing a search for the complete title of your article in a search engine, you can see how many copies of it are being distributed around the web. If other people have the same title, you won’t know at a glance which are yours or theirs, making it more difficult to assess the distribution and reach of your written article.

(You can check this by typing the complete article title in the search engine with quotation marks at the beginning and the end - that way the search engine searches for those words in that exact order and sequence. Typing my title above, I confirmed it was unique (at the time of writing:)

4. Write the Article -

If you’ve never written before, don’t worry. These days most people write as they speak, so don’t be too concerned that you need to write something at a scholarly level, you don’t. In fact most people prefer to read articles that are more conversational, informal and light hearted. The key point is that you are providing value in your article. Here are few tips to writing your article

1. Know what you want to share with your audience - what is the point of your article and what are the key ideas? - Scribble these down on paper

2. Brainstorm - What questions do you have yourself about the topic - do some research if needed

3. Organize the key ideas into some logical structure

4. Fill out the ideas with examples, stories, analogies, metaphors and quotations to help illustrate the points you are making

5. Write the article - remember people are time poor these days, so the more concise and succinct your article the better - (It is recommended to keep under 750 words) Make it easy to ready by clearly breaking up the paragraphs and using bullet points and numbering.

6. Read and Revise - I recommend printing your article out to read out aloud - I find it gives you a better overall view of your piece, and I think its easier and faster to make notes, revisions and formatting changes. Also by reading out aloud, you will be able to judge the sense and flow of your article much better. Once you are happy, just spend a few minutes making adjustments to the final typed draft.

7. Proof & Publish - Finally reprint the final draft and do a final proof read for spelling, grammatical and logical sense. (Also, it’s always good to get the feedback from people whose opinions you value:).

Once you are satisfied - Publish your article to an article directory! - You can also use programs like article submitter which will simultaneously publish your article to hundreds of article directory sites saving you hours of time and effort.

5. Call To Action -

Don’t forget one of the key reasons you are publishing is to get people to visit your site. So insert your link at the end of your article!

Thats it, What do you think? Are there any other points you feel I left out?

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Gravatars - Setting Up Gravatar Plugin for extra features for Wordpress 2.7

Posted on 04. Jan, 2009 by Derrick.

Please note that wordpress 2.7 already has the gravatar function (I found this out after I did this video), however this plugin, provides more functionality (will detail these in later post). To customise and adjust settings for using the standard Gravatar in wordpress 2.7 , go to settings > discussion and scroll down to find the Gravatar settings.

Just click play to watch the video below

Gravatars - How to Install Gravatar Plugin for Wordpress 2.7 (For enhanced functionality)

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Get Recognised, Build Your Identity - Get A Gravatar!

Posted on 02. Jan, 2009 by Derrick.

Just made my second How-To video, This time on Gravatars, part one explains what they are and why you should get one and part two shows you how to set one up and get it working.

Please note I had some audio sync issues with a new piece of software I’ve been using, so please excuse this until I get it sorted

Update 3/1/09 - Reuploaded 2nd Video - Audio sync problems have been fixed

Enjoy, and don’t forget if there is something you’d like to know how to do, please leave a comment, and I’ll do my best to answer,

Derrick

Gravatars - What are they and why you should get one:

Gravatars - How to set one up and get it working

NEW! - 3/1/09

Gravatars - How to Install Gravatar Plugin for Wordpress 2.7 (For enhanced functionality)

Please note that wordpress 2.7 already has gravatar function (I found this out after I did this video), however this plugin, provides more functionality (will detail these in later post). To customise and adjust settings for using standard Gravatar wordpress 2.7 interface, go to settings > discussion and scroll down to find the Gravatar settings.

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Twitter - Free Video On How To Add 100’s of New Twitter Friends Quickly & Easily

Posted on 01. Jan, 2009 by Derrick.

Happy New Year Everyone!

Just watched the first sunrise of 2009, had a snooze, and thought I’d post my first Video of the year. I had a question from Mark Luciano about how to add poeple to twitter, so I thought the easiest way to show how I did it, was to make a short video. I only had about 20+ people following me, about 24 hours ago, but after discovering this method, have already increased my followers to 300+. . So here’s my video showing exactly what I did!

Off to a New Years BBQ now. . enjoy. and please leave comments, and feedback below, and of course any thing you would like me to do a video on!

Derrick
Click Here To Follow Me On Twitter
http://twitter.com/Derrick_Siu

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The 3 Steps To Making Money Online - The Road Ahead. . .

Posted on 27. Dec, 2008 by Derrick.

Ok, I have to admit its been difficult to get to the blog this week, with Christmas and all, and right now I’m also doing a bit of spring cleaning, and getting ready for 2009. Anyways, before I review and summarise the Key Traffic Generating ideas I’ll be deploying. . I thought I would quickly outline the business model of making money online as I understand it and the considerations one needs to take into account before embarking on this worthy venture Here are the THREE Stages as I see it:

A Web presence - so this basically involves getting yourself some cyberspace. some web real estate. And just like buying real estate, it can seem very complicated and can be time consuming if you don’t know what you are doing. I plan to put a guide together of all the steps you need to take to get some of this cyberspace for your very own: Here is a basic outline below:
1. Come up with a domain name and buy it
2. Subscribe to some ’server space’ to host your website / blog. This is essentially a computer that has some of its hard drive allocated for your website / blog and is ALWAYS connected to the internet, so that anyone can access your website/blog at anytime
3. Create your website / blog using the relevant software
4. Customise the look and feel of your website & Optimise the functionality (eg having an area to display your 5 most recent posts)
5. Create original and informative / entertaining content that people want to read and learn about.
Drive Targeted Traffic to your website
1. This will be the subject of my next post - I’ll be discussing what are some of the most effective ways of driving quality targeted traffic to your website.
Monetize Your Traffic
1. This means you need to have products and services that you can either sell, or recommend relating to the main subject of your website / blog.
2. If do intend to sell your own products, you need to have a platform / system in place to accept orders and payments and fulfillment of your products / services.

And that’s it!. . As a concept quite simple, but in practice? well, we shall see! In my next post I’ll be sharing the key points from Alex Jeffreys‘ last Module : Social Media Money - which covered the role of new social media like Facebook, myspace and twitter in the world of ecommerce / internet marketing.

Dont’ forget, if there’s anything particular you have a question about, or want to know, please leave a comment below, so I can make sure (or at least attempt) to give or find the answers for you!

Stay Tuned!

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