How to Write a Great Article

Many people believe that writing an effective article is a difficult task. They bite their fingernails and anguish over the fact that they cannot write like the “experts”. The truth is, with a little forethought and creativity, anyone can churn out a great article. All you need to do is ask and answer the following three questions:

What is the article’s purpose?

Before you write the first word, you need to figure out what you want the article to do. Do you want the article to educate your audience? Entertain them? Get them to buy something? When you know why you are writing the article, you can position the information in your article for maximum effect.

For instance, in sales letters, I believe acknowledging the problem your customer is having and then following up with how it can be solved by your product or service is an effective writing strategy. Say your customer wants to increase traffic to their website. You would start the sales letter off with something like:

‘If you are like many first time website owners, you don’t have a clue about how to get people to visit your website (the problem). Our book The Traffic Generator will provide you with the tools you need to explode traffic to your site and make you an internet superstar (the solution).’

Knowing your article’s purpose will also keep your writing focused and on track. Many potentially fantastic articles have been reduced to rubbish by irrelevant examples and meaningless tangents. An article about how to make a caramel espresso drink shouldn’t include a story about the time your child spewed milk from their nose unless it relates, in some strange and disturbing way, with the steps for making a latte.

Who is the article for?

The term “Target Audience” refers to the group of people you are directing the information in your article to. Think of it as being at a seminar. The article is the speaker and your target audience is the crowd of people sitting there listening. You need to know who these people are and tailor your writing so that it speaks to them. A twenty-two year old college girl is not going to respond the same to writing aimed at a forty-five year old married man.

Ask yourself who would be interested in reading about the topic. For example, you are writing an article about Victoria’s Secret’s new Biofit bra. The answer to this question would be women who wear bras. Depending on your article’s purpose, however, you will need to refine the answer a little because within that particular demographic are a variety of subgroups. There are women who only wear custom made bras. Some women are cheap and won’t pay more than $15 dollars for a bra. Other women think Victoria’s Secret is the epitome of all things evil. If you are writing a sales letter for this bra then your target audience is really women who wear mass market bras, will pay the ticket price and who like the store chain.

If you don’t know much about your target audience, research! Talk to people in that group. Read the books, newspaper and magazines they would. Haunt their favorite hangouts. This is also where the internet becomes your best friend. With the millions of blogs out there, the blogosphere is a wonderful resource for tapping into the mind of your audience.

What is the article’s message?

This is otherwise known as the point of the article. For example, say the purpose of the article is to convince people to buy life insurance and your target audience is people who think life insurance is a waste of money. The point of the article would be the importance of having life insurance and/or that your company offers the best coverage and terms.

To figure out your article’s message, ask the question ‘What is the article about?’ and write down what comes to mind. You may have many ideas but pick the one that can be used to accomplish the article’s mission and is of interest to your target audience. It is a waste of time and effort to write about the history of life insurance as it does very little to sell a policy just as very few in your target audience would want to know the genealogy of the company president.

Other Tips

Use examples, metaphors and similes that your target audience can understand and relate to. If you are writing an article directed at married Christian women, an example of how you found god while drunk at your local dance club is going to miss the mark completely. Likewise, using country euphemisms such as ‘lick the calf over’ will fly over the heads of your average city resident.

When formatting your article, take the medium into consideration. People do not read articles on the internet the same way they do articles in printed media. This has to do with their mindset. People have been conditioned to expect longer pieces that span multiple pages in print media. On the other hand, shorter pieces are more successful on the internet simply because people treat their computer monitor like their television set and want information in digestible chunks. Use short paragraphs and a reasonably sized font to make it easy for people to take in what you’ve written.

Mind your spelling and grammar. The best way to look like an amateur is to post an article full of typos and poorly worded sentences. While you don’t have to have a PhD in English, you should pay attention to the warning your text editor throws up when there is a typo or grammar problem. At the very least, read the article out loud. Oftentimes our ears will pick up mistakes our eyes miss.

Crafting a great article is a challenge but well worth the effort when you are rewarded with phenomenal traffic, a bigger paycheck and the status of superstar writer among your peers. Quality wins every time.