Knockout Content-Rich Article Techniques For Writing Must-Read Lead Paragraphs

In article anatomy I like to teach that there are several key components. Of course these can be stretched varied and thrown out altogether, but not until you're an expert at writing content-rich articles. One key component of a clear article is, of course, the lead paragraph. Second in importance only to the headline itself, the lead graf (paragraph for short) has to be engaging, informative and lead the reader to believe you're the one with all of the great advice they've been looking for.

Write a good lead-in and your readers will be anxious to act on whatever advice you share in the article itself and if they do find value in your advice in the article – they'll be very hungry for me of your expertise. Hence, more sign-ups to your e-mail newsletter – or better yet, more sales of your products and services.

So here are a few ideas for writing engaging lead paragraphs for your target audience:

A problem: Try to identify with a huge challenge or issue your audience is facing. Most likely you're facing it too. So expose your experiences with this problem. You'll endear yourself to your audience, cementing your status as the authority in your industry. Here's an example of a problem lead:

Mistakes. We all make them and no one wants to admit to them. We're all faced with the question, how do we recover after we make the occasional slip-up? When it comes to e-mail marketing there's a huge debate over whether to 'fess up or to make like an ostrich and stick our heads in the sand. I'll offer my solution in four words: Own up to it.

A statistic: You'll have to check your specific industry publications for these stats. Even if you see something in the mainstream news, you can always put a twist on it that relates specifically to your industry. Here's an example of this kind of lead/identifier paragraph:

What's that sound? You know - that slipping sound you keep hearing. If you're still writing your marketing pieces in-house, you're hearing the sound of market share slowly slipping away from your business. Here's why: A recent survey shows 72% of your col leagues outsource so that they can focus on serving their customers and reducing costs.

The news: You can tailor national and even international news to meet your needs with your identifier paragraph. For instance, I just used the SARS epidemic to display the benefits of tele-seminars. Too much of a stretch? You be the judge:

Picture this: The task of setting up a conference has fallen to two marketing managers in Beijing. One tests the market and discovers his company's client base is ready for tele-seminars. Our other marketing manager decides to follow the same road as the many managers before her and sets up a live conference at a hotel in downtown Beijing. The story of the SARS epidemic breaks just days before their events. Which manager gets to keep his or her job?

Note: In the example above I also used another extremely effective writing technique called "painting the picture." This is used throughout writing whether it's commercial or creative. Setting a scene for your readers is a wonderful tool for persuasion. You're in control, you can paint the option most beneficial to you as the best option and the one that isn't so beneficial as the worst option.

Your readers will think you're great because you're not telling them what to do, you're just presenting them with information they can use. But in the end you've persuaded them to use your products or services - if you paint the picture correctly.



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Effective Article Writing And Marketing

it brings- it is one of the best ways to increase traffic, search engine attention and returning visitors. When your article is published on a website, a link back to your website can be included. This link is valued highly by search engines- it is a one-way link, it is one of the few links on a page and the page has unique content on it. Because of this, many people have found that by regularly publishing articles (once a week, once a fortnight) their page rank has jumped up. This increases your search engine rank, which naturally increases your visit. It doesn’t take a genius to work out that more visitors equals more revenue!

This greatly benefits the author, but many people don’t realize that it also is very beneficial to publishers too. Search engines like sites that are constantly updated, as it shows that the website is active and widely used, and also like sites with content as it shows they are a valuable website, and not a link farm. Similarly to the benefits authors experience, publishers find their website increases in search engine rank, and so traffic and profits. It also has the added bonus to providing something new to users, who will regularly return to your site.

However, they are a few vital rules that authors should follow to make their article widely used. A badly written, un-punctuated article is not going to be looked twice at by any good webmaster.

Perhaps the most important rule in article writing is to properly punctuate your article, and to check it for spelling and grammatical mistakes. This will make it more enjoyable for readers to read, (and so it will be used more), and will make you, and your website, more professional.

Content is obviously the most important thing in any article. So, quite obviously, you have to know what you are talking about, otherwise no one will take you or your article seriously. Remember, your article will top up what people know, not introduce them to the subject. It is therefore helpful to specialize in a couple of subjects, or in a broad area. However, remember not to assume your audience are stupid, or be big-headed.

Your article should be helpful to webmasters. To be this, give examples of what you are explaining. It makes complicated things easier to understand, splits up an article to make it readable, and can give the reader ideas on how to achieve what you have just explained. Similarly, give links to sites which may help your readers achieve what you have just explained. It makes it easier for them.

The last thing you should think about is the tone your article is written in. It is much easier and pleasanter for the reader if your tone is a friendly one. Also, remember to use words that are easy to read- for example, instead of ‘Furthermore, it has been discovered that by authoring articles writer’s have been advantaged due to their website being recipient to escalated search engine attention’ simply say what you mean- ‘By writing articles you will receive more search engine traffic’ (OK, so maybe it won’t be that extreme!).

The most important thing in your article from your point of view is what you put in the ‘About the Author’ box. This is your chance to shine, and is what you have written the article for. Whatever you write you will still receive the search engine benefits, however you will not receive the extra traffic from readers if you do not write it correctly. It should be formal but friendly, short, and sweet- it will only be glanced at so it has to grab the readers’ attention in a short amount of time. It should follow the structure of ‘A bit about the author, then tell the audience what you want them to do’. You should promote your website, but not advertise it too much.

For example, a bad information box would be ‘Visit the great website of the king of search engine optimizers, who will regularly update you with fantastic tips and priceless advice three times a week. He is a leader in his field and has had many years of experience with thousands of satisfied customers who describe him as the Internet equivalent to Jesus!’. Instead, write ‘Joe Bloggs has had many years experience in SEO, and is well known for his useful advice. Visit his website today to get great SEO tips three times a week’ (Again, this is exaggerated but you get the idea!).

The final part to writing an article is marketing it. This is relatively easy to do- submit to some article directories, and include it in your newsletter (or ask another website to include it in theirs). Some websites to help you submit it are:

www.articlewow.com, www.articledepot.co.uk, www.article99.com.

Follow these tips and you will get a great traffic boost. Write some articles, and then write one on your tips that you have discovered from your own experience!



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Article Submission Software - Should We Submit Articles With Software?

Article submission software ? people always ask if they are really useful in article marketing. To paraphrase that, what online marketers really want to know is whether there truly are merits in using them to submit articles. The truth is there are two schools of thinking about using article submission software. As usual, there are those who do not believe it works while another group can vouch to its effectiveness. Why don?t we have a quick look at the workings of the article submission software before we decide if we should submit articles with them?

Article submission software in recent years have been emerging as a tool to replace manual submission. When I first started online marketing, I wrote articles and submit manually to these article directories like GoArticles, HotLib and a few other popular article directories. It often takes me more than a few hours to submit to more than a dozen article directories. There was the log in, followed by sieving through the article submission form, copying and pasting my article title, article body, article summary, relevant keywords and author resource boxes. Every article directory has a different interface, and very often I have to customize and twitch a little bit here and there. Trust me and those who have experienced all these, it is tough job and sweat. Okay, so here I have an article ready to be published after one day?s hard work including the writing. This is manual article submission done all without article submission software.

That was a typical scenario most early day article marketers and authors have to face just a couple of years back. Today, the landscape has changed with the emergence of article submission software. The great thing about the functions of article submission software is it makes the log in and article formatting for each individual article directory so fast and so easy. Some article submission software are semi-automatic which requires you to click from one article directory to another to post. Others which are more advanced requires just the click of a button and off it goes to different article directories to post. In terms of speed and efficiency, such article submission software definitely makes the submission a breeze. As a result, we have more time to write quality articles.

If we can stick to writing an article and posting it to 100 article directories a day manually without article submissions software, we can really gain a great deal of exposure for our websites be it a business or hobby site. With so many submissions, we are putting our content before hundreds to thousands of eyeballs everyday. But the problem is we only have 24 hours and taking away time for sleep, meals and breaks, there are only a few hours to do that. We are limited in our time. With article submission software, it allows people to write more and post more each day. Instead of one article to 100 directories manually, we are talking about potentially, several articles to few 100s of article directories.

There is another twist to using article submission software. Search engines like Google, Yahoo and MSN are constantly ranking websites or for accuracy purpose, web pages according to link popularity. Article directories are high Page Rank sites and links from these directories count as powerful one-way links. So how do we get these article directories to link to our websites? The answer is to submit articles! Articles are contextual content relevant to our websites and links from these articles to our websites are valuable because of the anchor text keywords we are targeting to rank high in the search engines. Article submission software can submit to many article directories and in just a few days, the number of high PR links to your site would increase.

There are alternatives to using article submission software such as using article submission services like Article Marketer, iSnare and others to submit articles. But they charge you either monthly or for per article submitted. Unless you have a huge advertising budget or enough money to pour into these services, buying an article submission software would be a wiser choice since the payment is one-time. Typically, quality article submission software would cost around $99 onwards.

From the look of it, it does make sense to submit articles with article submission software. Many article marketers including myself have reaped in thousands of dollars from sales by using such software. Read a review of several popular article submission software marketers have in their marketing arsenal.



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Adsense And Article Marketing

You’ve heard about the Adsense craze and decided that you are going to get your share of Adsense cash cow. You’ve either built a website or purchased one, and now you’re ready to rock! You submit it to every search engine and directory that you can think of, dreaming of thousands of surfers coming in from every engine on the planet. All begging to click your Adsense links and make you rich.

Then you sit back and wait. And wait. And wait some more. Checking your stats daily hoping to see the rush of traffic pouring in. But for some reason it just doesn’t come.

The days of the above business plan working are long over. It might have worked in 1996, but in 2006 you’re going to have to do a lot more to promote your new website. There are still free traffic sources out there, but they want something in return to link to your new site. Content.

This is where article marketing comes in. The concept is simple. You write an article that’s relevant to your sites topic, inserting a link or two within the article or the articles footer, linking back to your website. Then you submit it to article directories. They in turn publish your article, giving you a RELEVANT link back to your site and possibly sending you some of their traffic.

Many of the article directories out there have a lot of good traffic to share. They also can really help your Google Page Rank when it comes time for Google to rank your site. Google wants to see INBOUND links to your site from other sites with similar content. So the links these article directories can give you are crucial to the weight of your website in the long run.

But the article directories are just the first stop for your article. Almost all of the article directories encourage other webmasters to republish your content on their own sites with similar topics. So one article can really turn into literally thousands of inbound links over the months ahead. This snowball effect is exactly what we are looking for with each article we write.

Article marketing is only as powerful as your commitment to it though. To really build your site’s traffic and page rank you are going to need thousands, if not ten’s of thousands of inbound links. One or two articles is not going to do this for you. It’s going to take a daily time commitment on your part. As the owner of two different article directories ( http://www.articles.pn and http://www.articlescience.com/ ) , I can tell you that there are many article marketers out there submitting as many as ten articles a day in an effort to promote their websites. They obviously see the value of article marketing and they don’t intend to do the job halfway.

“But Chuck! I can’t write an article!” I hear this all the time from my customers. Frankly, it’s an easy copout. What you’re really saying to me is that you don’t WANT to write articles. You don’t have to be an ex journalism major to write a short article to promote your website. Heck, you don’t even need to be a high school graduate. All you need to do is to be able to read and write. If you can’t read and write then you probably don’t need to be the owner of a website.

It’s very simple. Sit down and write about the topic of your website. Hopefully when you built or purchased your website you picked a topic that you’re at least interested in. It doesn’t have to be a topic that you’re familiar with, just something that interests you. If you’re website’s topic is something you know nothing about, do some research! Write an article sharing what you learned with other readers. You can start as simply as “I didn’t know this, and you may not either….”

If you’re suffering from severe writer’s block, try using a tape recorder. Dictate things you would like to say about your site or your site’s topic and then transcribe what you recorded later. You can take the recording and edit it in writing and come up with a good article.

The bottom line is this. If you want to promote your new website without spending thousands of dollars, you must integrate article writing into your promotion plan. Without it, your road to success is going to be a lot more bumpy.

Till next time,
Chuck Crawford
http://www.affiliatewebdesign.com






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Best Tips For Writing A Great How-To Article

If you are using articles to help drive traffic to your website you will need to come up with ideas for articles that people will want to read and publish. 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.



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Free Content Articles: How To Optimize Your Free-Reprint Article

I have been around the internet for quite sometime — offering outsourced services and software products. I see a lot of internet marketing techniques on how to get more traffic and attract more paying customers, but only one technique seemed to work for me considering my tight budget.

So what is this technique?

This technique is called free content article marketing or free-reprint article marketing. It is basically writing an article with topics covering your products/services. The main idea of this is to keep your article ratio at 70% quality and useful information/tips to 30% advertisement. The 30% advertisement refers to your bylines or the resource box at the end of each article.

Your bylines or “about the author” content is the key to article marketing. This is the part where you can make yourself as an expert in your field, the part where you can ask readers to visit your site and the part where you can mention what you offer and do.

I already wrote an article, what now?

Is your article optimized?

Optimizing your article is always the first thing to remember. There are lots of ways to optimize an article, but let me share to you mine.

Before writing an article think of a keyword, be sure to include that keyword in your title. Make those search engines love your article by first optimizing your title.

Do not quote your title! Search engines will not like it, for example, “Five Ways to Effectively Market your Product”. Get rid of the quotes!

If possible put the keyword first in your title, for example, European Cruise – You Deserve Only the Best.

When your title is ready, try to spread your keyword several times all over your article. Try to keep a decent keyword density and do not try to spam the search engines.

Do not sacrifice your credibility for optimization. Some authors are fond of inserting dots between words that are considered as spam. Just like the word “free”. If you are trying to sell a product or service make yourself credible and your articles professional.

Ok I’m set! Now what?

Submit your article to article directories and article announcement lists. There are hundreds, if not thousands of article announcement lists and article directories. Article directories is where you can let your articles reside and Article Announcement lists announce your articles to a variety of targeted audience.

Here are a few article directories you can use:

http://www.isnare.com
http://ezinearticles.com
http://articlecity.com
http://ideamarketers.com

There are thousands of article announcement list, is there a site to do the submissions for me?

Yes, indeed there are sites that do the submissions for you, but there is a payment for each article you send or if not, a monthly payment.

Try checking these sites for Article Announcement offers:

http://www.isnare.com/pbenefits.php - Distribute as many articles as you can for $35/month with an option to request for proofreading before distributing your article.
http://thephantomwriters.com – Amount depends on the number of articles you distribute
http://www.ezineannouncer.com – I haven’t looked at this one yet
http://www.articlesubmissionsites.com/ - $49.00 introductory six month renewable membership



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