A Successful Article Writing Formula
Posted by Rhiannon Louise on June 02, 2007
Filed Under Writing for the Web
I’m sure many of you who’ve dived in to read this report will instantly be coming from the point of view of questioning the headline of the article – i.e., is there such a thing as a successful article writing formula - surely creativity cannot be formulaic, right?
Well, I’ve read many sites, articles and even whole books dedicated to the theme of writing successfully for the internet and I’ve written thousands of articles and reports for the web myself and I actually believe that there is such a thing as a successful article writing formula. If you’re just getting started, you’re looking for tips or you struggle with writing web and reader friendly content then you can use my formula to help you develop your own natural writing style.
Over the years I have honed and adapted my writing style, I have taken on board others’ opinions and I have tried to keep up to date with the most informed opinions in the industry and I believe I have created – or at least adopted - a successful article writing formula.
The truth is I don’t always use it (!) – but in this article I’ll lay it out for you to use at least as a basic framework for your first few posts so that you can get started and develop your own unique way of writing successfully for the internet.
1) Instantly capture your readership with your headline – you’ve probably heard or read all about writing killer headlines and winning titles for your articles that capture your audience through fear, with a call to action, with comedy or just by touching a nerve?
Well, the best person to have written about this in my opinion is Brian Clark from copyblogger.com and I have personally learnt much from this internet marketing strategist and content developer.
To capture the essence of what he and many others like him say – you need to grab the attention of your readership with your article’s title…so instead of writing “How to Write Nice Titles for your Article” try “10 Sure-Fire Headline Formulas That WORK!” (Thanks Brian!)
2) Succinctly introduce the theme of the article within the first two or three paragraphs - I used to have an amazing English teacher and she taught me that because teachers and examiners are busy people they don’t want to have to read an entire essay or dissertation to know what you’re writing about.
She went on to say that you need to quickly lay out not only the theme for your written work, but also the points that you are going to be discussing and making or proving and disproving in your work within the introduction to your essay.
To this day I apply this technique to my web content – after all it’s a fact that we are far less patient when reading online – so I make sure I always introduce at least the entire theme of article within the first two paragraphs, if not the main points that I am going to be making.
If you do the same then your readers can skim the rest of the article picking up the points they are interested in and what’s more, they know immediately what you’re going to be taking up their time with - they haven’t got to read the whole article to figure out what you’re going on about if they don’t want or need to.
3) For a search engines’ sake - clearly state the point of the article! - Personally I’m not a search engine optimiser but I’m sure those of you who are will now castigate me for saying this but – surely if you want a search engine’s robot to read, assimilate and correctly place your content when people search for a theme directly related to it, it is really going to help if you make it fairly clear within the content what it is that you’re writing about?
So, if you’re writing about toilet training dogs why not use the term ‘how to toilet train a dog’ within your headline/introduction and/or main content body rather than ‘showing Fido where to poop’ for example?!
Seriously, I think it makes sense to be fairly direct with your choice of words without going over the top so that a search engine has a chance of figuring out what you’re writing about…these are robots not humans, I don’t think they get subtlety or irony.
4) Keep your paragraphs short and skim-able - cut your points up into bite sized pieces because a mass of words on the online page is SO off-putting don’t you think?
Pithy, punchy paragraphs work.
5) Make clever and creative use of punctuation, grammar and your vocabulary to make your writing flow - unless you’re a lawyer and are therefore paid to – if you read a report that uses millions of complicated words and terms, long rambling sentences and absolutely precise grammar and punctuation you’re going to get sick of the thing before you reach the conclusion.
Nowhere is this truer than on the internet – the internet is a dip in, dip out, skim and surf type environment where we largely want instant answers, quick references and straightforward solutions.
So – don’t be tempted to get the thesaurus out and wow your readership with your ability to find a million different ways to say the simplest of things – just say ‘the simplest of things.’
Don’t feel you have to write out words in full - use apostrophes and hyphens and use punctuation and even alliteration to make your content flow.
6) And finally, draw it all together in a concluding couple of paragraphs. The conclusion is the mirror of the introduction – in the introductory two paragraphs you introduced the theme, in the concluding two paragraphs you should tie up the article’s loose ends and close off the theme.
Basically you should use the conclusion to state the findings of the article.
These tips and techniques have helped me get a thousand points made in a thousand different articles because although WHAT you have to say is far more important than HOW you say it, you do need to find a quick, literate, comprehensible and efficient way of getting your point across..
Feel free to use any of the points made or indeed this entire successful article writing formula when you’re writing your beautiful content for the internet.
