The Inside Scoop on Fast Approvals

a.k.a. How to significantly improve your articles’ chances of getting approved the first time.

As the EzineArticles Managing Editor I’m often asked, “Penny, what’s the secret to getting my articles approved fast?”

My answer is always the same, “If you’re not quite ready to invest in Premium Membership, the best way to speed up your approvals is to follow these simple guidelines:”

• Read and re-read your article. Double check for grammar and spelling errors that add time to your article review. Verify proper punctuation and read it aloud to determine if the language flows naturally.
• Deliver what you promised in the title. If your title says you’re about to give the reader (5) tips, then give them (5) clear tips which are easy to read and straight to the point.
• Don’t include more than 2 self-serving links (links that you own or have interest in) in the resource box. You want your article to look clean – webmasters and ezine publishers will value your article more when it contains fewer links.
• Don’t use the term “scam” in your article body or title. It causes confusion for both readers and article editors alike and can cause an article to be rejected.

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Add EzineArticles Cartoons to Your Website

Official EzineArticles Cartoon Archive goes live!

People love cartoons. Heck, WE love cartoons! They’re little bite-sized tidbits of humor and satire that can bring a smile or a laugh while at the same time delivering a subtle (or not-so-subtle) message.

That’s why we’ve joined up with award-winning cartoonist Jerry King to bring you an ongoing supply of EzineArticles-related cartoons.

After appearing in the EzineArticles blog and/or newsletter, each cartoon will be added to the EzineArticles Cartoon Archive page. On this page you’ll find an interactive listing of all of our previously published cartoons. Best of all, Jerry has graciously given us permission to pass these cartoons on to our members. You can add any of these cartoons to your website or blog by simply copying and pasting the supplied HTML code.

The cartoons currently in the archive are just the tip of the iceberg. We’ll be adding a few more each month, so bookmark http://ezinearticles.com/cartoons/ and check back often!

And keep your eyes open for an upcoming “Supply the Caption” contest, where you’ll have the opportunity to provide your best caption for one of our cartoons. We’ll give away some stylish EzineArticles shwag to the caption(s) that make us laugh the loudest!

Surround Yourself with Topic Inspiration

Generating fresh article ideas can be as simple as putting yourself into the right environment.

As my family and I were on a outing yesterday, I found myself admiring the interior of the large public building we were in – the beauty of its architecture, the elegance of its decor and the nature of the artwork throughout. In my mind, I started asking questions like:

• What’s the meaning of the scene in that painting?
• Is there a story behind each of those statues?
• Where do you BUY statues like that?
• How did they manage to hide the great sounding audio system?

Then like a bolt from above I realized I had today’s blog topic! To generate fresh ideas, just surround yourself in your niche environment and start asking questions.

Now my niche isn’t classical architecture or interior design, but if it was I would have just discovered (4) or more new article titles by simply looking around!

1. “Discover the Meaning of Iconic Paintings”
2. “Understanding Public Statuary”
3. “Finding the Best Deals on Large Indoor Statues”
4. “Camouflaging Your Building’s Audio System”

Based on this experience, I’d like to make these highly-unscientific suggestions for using this technique to help YOU come up with a plethora of new article ideas:
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What You’re Missing on Twitter

If you’re a Twitter user who doesn’t follow @EzineArticles, you’re missing a lot of great EzineArticles information and training! The following is a list of (20) random author tips, insider info, factoids and reminders we’ve tweeted in that last few weeks. Any one of these could have been the magic bullet to help you take your article marketing to the next level.

Just CLICK on any of the “ReTweet This” links to auto-populate your Twitter status field and retweet to your heart’s content!

• RT @PubCentral Google Analytics says twitter sends me 2x as much traffic as EzineArticles.com, but ezine traffic is twice as effective #HAHD [ReTweet This]
• Last month we delivered new article email alerts on behalf of 10,371 members who have fans subscribed to their email alerts. [ReTweet This]
• FACT: Last 30 days, only two niches had more than 800 unique authors contributing articles in: Weight Loss & Internet Marketing [ReTweet This]

EzineArticles Inside Information:

• @hfbadvertising Sorry, we have no plans to edit/improve article submissions for money. Those waters are too murky for us. [ReTweet This]
• Article Review status update: Basic level members are seeing 2 day turnarounds, Platinum, 1 day and Premium often receives intra-day review. [ReTweet This]
• All articles in the category view are sorted by 1st Published Date and not Submitted date or Most Recently Approved Date. http://blog.ezinearticles.com/2009/02/category-sort-order.html [ReTweet This]
• Anyone have any issues or concerns over our soon-to-be-default BETA article SUBMIT form? DM or @ reply us. Thanks! [ReTweet This]
• 17153 experts like yourself FOLLOW us, yet we only auto-tweet for 8500 of ya. What’s with the other 8600 of our followers? :?) Objections? [ReTweet This]
• Our Editors review your articles using dual 24″ wide monitors with 1920×1200 resolution. “Above the fold” is viewed from this perspective. [ReTweet This]

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See the World of EzineArticles!

Our recently-released map feature allows you to view new articles, their authors and the authors’ geographical locations as they’re approved!

Some of the highlights of this fascinating new feature include:

• Quasi-real-time* view of articles as they’re approved
• Author photos that link directly to the approved article
• Arrows indicating the geographical location of each author’s ISP
• Automatic map panning to the most recently approved article
• Zoom in or out to any location in the world
• A selection of the (8) most recently approved authors in the upper-right corner

The best way to experience the map is to try it for yourself at http://EzineArticles.com/map. If you’re like me, you’ll soon find yourself watching with fascination as the map zooms to a new location and shows you the picture of another Expert Author in the EzineArticles family.

Want to know the secret to seeing your face on the map? It’s simple — submit lots of articles! The more articles you submit, the more frequently your face pops up on the map. =)

IMPORTANT: You will NOT be featured on the map if you don’t have an author photo uploaded to your author bio, so now would be a great time to get it done!

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Video Archive Goes Live

Find all the EzineArticles videos in one place!

Scattered throughout EzineArticles.com are a variety of videos on an assortment of subjects. In most cases, the videos are located on the same page as the information to which they pertain.

The trouble is, what happens when you’d like to watch a certain video that you know we’ve created yet you don’t feel like digging through the site to find it? Perhaps you want to know if there’s a video on a particular subject or you’re just curious about what videos are out there.

Enter the EzineArticles Video Archive page. On this page you’ll find a listing of all of our current videos for immediate viewing or download. You’ll also find a brief description of each video and links to related pages.

This page will be continuously updated as new videos are released. So bookmark http://ezinearticles.com/video/ and check back often!

Getting Listed on Facebook.EzineArticles.com

A few weeks ago, we showed you how to get yourself added to the EzineArticles Facebook listing at http://Facebook.EzineArticles.com/ in (5) easy steps.

As it turns out, the term “easy” is a matter of opinion. Many of you let us know that it’s not nearly as easy as it first appears. If you’re one of those folks who are struggling with this procedure, check out this short video for a little additional clarity.

Downloadable Versions:
           

Here’s that (5) step process again:

1. If you haven’t already, sign up for an EzineArticles account and a Facebook account.
2. Log into the EzineArticles Members Area and edit your biography by selecting Profile Manager and Edit Author Bio from the main menu.
3. Enter your Facebook account information into the “Facebook URL” field. This should be the link you see when you view your profile on Facebook.
4. Complete any other sections of your biography you wish and click the button at the bottom of the page to save your changes.
5. Submit a quality, original article through the Members Area.

Did you notice something different about this video? It was done in totally different style than any of our previous videos. Leave a comment to let us know what you think of it – do you love it? Hate it? Don’t care? No matter how you feel, we’d like to hear from you.

Article Title Power Hour

Whenever I hear a member ask me, “But Chris, what do I write about?” …I know it’s time to encourage them to block off an hour and do NOTHING but article title writing.

That’s today’s article writing tip: Invest an hour today writing nothing but article titles for an hour. Once done, prioritize.

It’s been said that the article title determines up to 95% of the success of your article (just like the headline of an ad), yet most people give just a smidgen of attention to their article titles.

A better strategy is to invest an hour or more per month coming up with 50, 75 or even 100 high quality article titles; and you may find that the article body almost feels like it writes itself because you’ve done the heavy lifting of coming up with the highest return portion of your soon to be written sets of articles.

Sources for article title ideas?

• Using your EzineArticles Traffic Search Terms to identify how people are already finding your existing articles.
• Re-worded magazine cover story titles from your niche.
• Keyword & keyphrase research.
• Print out these “My Next 10 Article Ideas” notepads to keep track of your ideas throughout the week.
• Listen to a competitor’s webinar or teleseminar live /replay and think about how you’d spin their ideas with your unique viewpoint of your niche.
• Use our free article templates to come up with article title ideas.

Do you have a favorite article title writing system or strategy? If so, share it with us below:

Posted by Christopher M. Knight on April 20, 2009 at 6:41 am

960 views | Comments (14)

1 Million Twitter Followers

While Ashton Kutcher and Oprah are having a Twitter love fest today, (what, you didn’t hear?)…

Meanwhile you helped us reach a milestone this week:

1 MILLION aggregate Twitter followers now receive auto-tweeted updates by our team whenever you have new articles accepted on EzineArticles.com!

As of right now, we’re currently auto-tweeting for 8,541 members who have an aggregate total following of 1,060,208 friends.

On an average day, we tweet for our members about 550 times on behalf of about 350 unique twitter members. That means about 9.1% of the articles we accept each day are tweeted automatically to your followers on Twitter (and FaceBook if you’ve setup that auto-twitter-to-facebook syndication app) without you having to lift a finger.
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Posted by Christopher M. Knight on April 17, 2009 at 7:47 am

684 views | Comments (11)

Premium Membership Video

Hundreds of our members have signed up to become Premium members since we launched this level of service…

Yet many don’t fully know what specifically comes with Premium membership, the benefits of why you may want to consider it for your business and whether it’s right or not for you?

Watch this short video to determine if Premium membership is right for you now:

Downloadable Versions:
           
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Posted by Christopher M. Knight on April 16, 2009 at 2:29 pm

455 views | Comments (1)

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