Consider Pronouns Carefully

I didn’t think this anomaly could happen twice in one day, but it just did:

A user reports an article in our dating category as being suspect because the male author makes a statement such as “my husband and I did this or that, etc.”.

Two hours later, I’m reading one of the marriage articles randomly and I found a female author making a statement about “my wife always does this or that, etc.”.

This isn’t an example of an expert author choosing their pronouns wrongly; but rather careless article submission by a most likely non-original article writer. ie: trust & confidence destroyer. Both of these accounts were suspended.

The article writing lesson: If you’re hiring a ghost writer or if your spouse/significant other is writing articles for you, be certain to be gender-congruent with your pronouns. You’d be surprised how efficient the marketplace is at quickly identifying this blunder.

Posted by Christopher M. Knight on August 8, 2007 at 9:10 am

Views 296 | Comments (10)

Paragraph Writing 101

Once a week I do an impromptu 10 minute get together with our editors to talk about big picture things and get feedback about things on their mind. In this afternoon’s meeting I was mentioning about how you can tell when the content component of an article is bad by the first sentence if not by the first sentence of each paragraph because… the first sentence is suppose to be the point of the paragraph and each sentence that follows is suppose to support the first sentence.

One of our editors made the observation that many EzineArticles authors don’t have properly developed paragraphs…and thus today’s discussion on how to write a perfect paragraph:

1) Each paragraph in your article should only contain ONE thought, topic or central idea.

2) Your first sentence should be the most clear and easily understood by your reader.

3) Each sentence (typically 3-7 sentences per paragraph) reinforces the first sentence of the paragraph.

4) It’s not necessary in short article lengths (less than 1,000 words) to have the typical “Intro, Body, Conclusion” paragraph scheme, but it’s good to have a conclusion or summary at the end of each article to help the reader know what you just taught/shared them. Your conclusion paragraph should not exceed ~4-6 sentences.

5) Your paragraph development should have flow, continuity and some coherence…building in a progression rather than being scattered in thought.

6) When writing for a site like EzineArticles, keep your articles tight,…always looking for ways to say more with fewer words.

Posted by Christopher M. Knight on August 7, 2007 at 4:22 pm

Views 664 | Comments (39)

Karen Sessions - Author Spotlight

EzineArticles expert author and fitness body builder Karen Sessions is today’s Author Spotlight.

Why? Because of 5 main factors:

1) Consistency - Karen started posting articles July of 2005 and has consistently added new quality original articles almost every month since.
2) Original content - You can tell that Karen is a real expert author and not a pseudo expert trying to sound like an expert.
3) Perfect word count length - Her articles are around 600-750 words each and are very easy to read & digest. Great use of sub-heads.
4) Conclusions - at the end of each of her articles help wrap up and summarize the lessons she offers in her articles and makes it easier to know what she just taught us as the reader.
5) Expert author photo - her photo reinforces her expertise - adds a lot of credibility to her words.

If I were coaching Karen, I’d recommend that she expand her article title length by 20-35% longer and her resource box talks about her expertise vs. what she can do for the reader once they visit her website (ie: Write your resource box so that it’s benefit oriented). Doing so would give her the results similar to adding 2 more reps once she has reached momentary muscle failure in each set. :) ie: A higher ROI.

Posted by Christopher M. Knight on August 6, 2007 at 9:24 am

Views 388 | Comments (3)

The Case For The 500-750 Word Article

How many words should an ideal article be?

The EzineArticles system is setup to require a minimum of 250 words and a max of 5,000 words.

Why should you consider writing articles in the 500+ word range?

1. Writing less than 500 words makes it difficult to deliver on the promises you made in the article title.
2. Increases chances that your readers will have confidence in you as the genuine expert.
3. 44.9% of our members (largest single class of article submissions vs. less than 500 word count classes of article submissions) are already writing 500+ words or more. Join the majority.
4. Sometimes you never know which tip or strategy recommendation will solve your readers problem and by meeting a higher word-count, you’re able to offer more options to your reader.
5. Many writers say that it’s easier to write a higher word-count article and chopping it down to 500+ words than it is to produce a less than 500 word article that falls short on quality or impact.
6. If you struggle to produce <500 quality words/advice on a narrow topic relating to your expertise, are you really the expert?
7. Less than 500 words doesn’t always offer ezine publishers enough of an incentive to send your article to their email lists = lost promotional opportunity.

What are your reasons for writing in the 500+ word count range?

Posted by Christopher M. Knight on August 3, 2007 at 12:28 pm

Views 1,022 | Comments (51)

Articles That Promote Videos

One trend that has become increasingly popular is that EzineArticles members will use the link in their resource box to deliver one or more video’s..or a page in their website that shows videos.

As you may know, our editorial review team surfs every link in every article you submit — checking for quality, dead links, and anything that may harm or deliver our readers to an unpleasant experience.

With the length of many videos in the 4-20+ minute range each, we don’t have the resources to check every video for quality content — and therefore we’ve decided to operate on gut-feel based on our perception of the intent of the member and his or her video’s intent. This means we’ll probably make mistakes and error on the side of conservative caution when reviewing video’s.

One more word of caution when using articles to promote videos: Think very long-term. Article writing & marketing is not a short-term strategy and you should think in advance of your readership in 3-10 years from now…will they still have a positive experience when they surf your site?

Posted by Christopher M. Knight on August 3, 2007 at 10:52 am

Views 327 | Comments (10)

My Article Reports Speed Hike

About a month ago we began exploring ways to make the “My Article Reports” load faster for authors with more than 200+ articles.

We weren’t looking for a small improvement in speed, but a mind-blowing jump. To that end, we’re adding server resources and broke the project into phases, the first two of which are live right now.

Besides the server resources that are being dedicated to this speed hike, we’re no longer displaying article stats in real-time, but rather they are all 1 hour delayed. In addition, we’re only showing 250 articles per page load…so an author with 1000 articles listed with us would have to scroll through 4 pages to see all of his or her articles.

We’d like to hear what you think of this new speed hike on your article reports, especially if you were bored out of your mind previously when waiting for your article reports to load. : - )

Posted by Christopher M. Knight on August 1, 2007 at 3:21 pm

Views 415 | Comments (5)

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