Priya Shah writes:

Completely agree! Shorter articles are not only easier to read online and more digestible but they are excellent teasers to get traffic to your site, which is the purpose of writing them in the first place.

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Patsi Krakoff writes:

Agree. Many consultants, especially those with the Ph.D.s, have a tendency to over-deliver information in their newsletters and articles. This is where academic training goes contrary to internet marketing savvy. Smart writing means being savvy to the readers and their needs.

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Denise O'Berry writes:

Right on Chris! Since I’m a “sound bite” kind of person, the fact that this is the best way to write articles works really well for me.

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Benjamin Lynch writes:

Awesome tip! Thank you!

I am one of those PhD guys so I do over-deliver – now I know not to in this instance…oops

Ill apply that today and see what happens…

Best
Ben

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Dina Giolitto writes:

Chris,

You have a talent for explaining things in a very simple and effective way. Makes me want to slap myself silly sometimes.

It’s a huge challenge for new article marketers to think of web articles as an appetite-whetter. They’re really a FREE WEB MARKETING TOOL/traffic generator, as opposed to a cover story. (The word article throws everyone off.)

But yes, you’re so right. And in your other post, you look like you could lay down some awesome tracks too! (Was that proper audio-speak?)

Dina

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Lance Winslow writes:

It is interesting that you bring up this point. Scientifically speaking when you write an article in order to draw interest to your website you pick a title which brings the viewer to the article, due to their interests. Once they read the article you should be wetting their appetite and initiating their N400 brain wave and thus their own innate curiosity instructs them to find out more.

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Chris Knight writes:

Lance,

Well, it’s good that we have you here to teach us what the heck the “N400 Brainwave” is:
http://ezinearticles.com/?N400-Brain-Wave-to-Assist-in-Learning-and-in-Performance&id=25620

You mentioned in your article that you thought the N400 brain wave triggers “curiosity”…but you mention examples of a brain doing what I call, “mismatching identification”… meaning, looking for what is out of order or out of place or wrong against norms.

One of the Wikipedia entries on brain fingerprinting said that N400 is triggered during semantic processing by inappropriate words or strange grammar structures. Sounds like this would be a good trait for an editor to have. :)

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Lance Winslow writes:

Indeed a great trait for an editor. When someone is presented with something they do not know it insights curiosity. If you can couple that with something, which they had not considered because it does not fit into their particular belief system, it wakes up the additional N400 brain wave as a Double Whammy! This is because when you present information that to them appears out of place in the formatting and imprintations of their previous memory of experiences and observations, they say ‚¬“What? Huh, hmm?‚¬

Had they already known this information it would not trigger it as hard. So, if curiosity killed the cat, because now they just have to know, wet their appetite with a little more, a taste of something new, but out of time or place. Ironic facts are a ‚¬“killer‚¬ draw for interest in the human mind.

I would say if you really want to hook, line and sinker people into click thrus to your website from an article, you should incorporate new information, which is shocking and startling because it is not what one would suspect. I recommend that authors use this technique to gain interest along with and in addition too curiosity to drive traffic, which seems to be the goal of article writing in this venue.

Works for me, I use this technique in many of my articles, today I have: 1,127,064 Article Views listed on this site alone; estimate 10 million with all the articles, which have been picked up all over the Internet now; my website Traffic counter thru the roof.

It is amazing to me that people on the Internet resort to fraudulent enticement, when all they have to do is work with the reader to draw interest, insight curiosity and induce the N400 brainwave. I think that is why I like EzineArticles.com so much, this is where the ethical article writers hang out.

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