 Article Writing & Marketing Insights |
Write with Distribution in Mind
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Improve your articles’ chances of being ‘picked up’ by publishers!
EzineArticles alone is a great place to gain exposure for you and your business, but it also serves as a excellent stepping stone for even more exposure through online distribution. Articles you publish on EzineArticles have a good chance of being picked up and republished by a variety of online publishers.
This stroke of good fortune can significantly increase the size of your audience… provided you haven’t mistakenly done something to limit your articles’ ability to be picked up in the first place.
What to Avoid:
- Using language like “In my other articles on this site” or “here at EzineArticles…”
- Placing a reprint rights statement in your resource box which prohibits distribution. We don’t allow this and will place your article in problem status for being in violation of the reprint rights.
- Writing article parts. Article parts are not distribution friendly and may hurt your chances of being picked up by publishers. Every article should stand alone.
- Adding graphs, charts, or other formatting which are not as easy to reproduce as plain text.
- Using your first article to introduce yourself to the EzineArticles community. Do not say things like, “This is my first article. I am looking forward to writing many more. My future articles will be about…” This doesn’t make sense when published on other sites.
- Writing articles which are 1000’s of words long. Several shorter articles (400-700 words) will outperform one long article (over 1000 words), and are more likely to be picked up by publishers.
- Writing research papers which are stuffed with sources and references. Publishers are looking for you to share your own unique expertise; they may be turned off by an article which looks like it’s only appropriate for a peer-reviewed journal or academic site.
- Writing ‘time sensitive’ articles. Publishers won’t be able to update or change your content, so make sure it is “evergreen.” It should be as useful and informative today as two years from now.
Best Practices:
- Imagine your article will appear on many different sites, and realize you may not always know which sites they are. Use wording which applies to a broad context.
- Imagine your article will be reproduced in many different formats: to websites, blog posts, ezine newsletters, email alerts, or RSS feeds.
- Picture what it will be like to read your article 2 years from now. Does it still deliver the same value?
- Write in ‘plain text’. Rely only on sentences, paragraphs and lists to get your point across. Keep the format simple and make sure the article is easy to reproduce.
- Keep it short (400-700 words) and make sure YOU are the primary source of your unique ideas. Leave the research papers to college students. ;-)
- If you include a reprint rights statement, make sure it adheres to the EzineArticles TOS for Publishers.
- Put yourself in the publisher’s shoes… If you were going to reproduce someone else’s article on your site, what would turn you on/off?
Avoiding these pitfalls and following these best practices won’t guarantee your articles will get picked up by publishers. The content of your article still needs to be fresh, lively and interesting enough to appeal to a larger audience.
What optimizing your articles for republication does do is prevent an otherwise great article from being automatically disqualified before it’s ever given a chance.
Do you use other ways to optimize your articles for easier distribution? Leave a comment to share them with the rest of the EzineArticles community.
| Posted by Penny, Managing Editor on June 18, 2009 at 7:01 am | 791 views |
17 Comments »
Suggestions:
1. Make what you say “conversational” – not “writing”- as in a formal paper. In other words talk WITH your reader. Say something like: “I can almost hear you asking me…”
2. Simply write as if you were speaking with your reader in person, which, in a sense, you are.
3. State the problem. Give a solution. Call for action.
[Reply]
This is great information. I love writing exspecially articles that come from my heart. This is a great opportunity to do something I really love. I am 72 years old and legally blind and this is a way to keep me young and motivated.
Thanks for sharing and God Bless
Maggie Kress
[Reply]
Great advice! I have to admit, though, for someone coming from an academic environment, where validating ideas and concepts with references is an absolute requirement to not showing them at all is a bit of a mental leap!
I really like the conversational tone in EzineArticles, though!
[Reply]
After around 12 months and 31 Ezine articles later, we have these articles published 61 times on other websites.
This translates into even more traffic to our websites.
Thanks for the above tips, and also thanks to the other comments above – they have also contributed additional tips!
[Reply]
Great information.
It is definitely more practical to write articles that are evergreen so that readers will always learn something from the article.
This will also mean the article will be the lifetime agent that will helps to drive traffic back to the website.
Thanks for sharing :)
Zack
[Reply]
Thanks for more good tips, as always.
I love seeing where my articles get published. Sometimes I can’t figure out WHY they were chosen for certain blogs, since they don’t fit the rest of the subject matter, but I guess that’s OK.
It’s too bad those publishers don’t understand that they don’t need to alter the copy – and I wish they woudn’t when they leave my name attached.
I’m still giggling, however. One changed my resource box statement that my husband is a retired home builder to saying that he is an “old bag builder.”
Don’t know how a home became a bag, but…
Anyway, as always, I thank you for offering this resource for us to reach so many people.
[Reply]
Thanks for all the informative and useful tips.
I’ve a few articles live on EZineArticles.
See them at: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Abhijit_Kumar_Ray
Abhijit Kumar Ray – EzineArticles Expert Author
[Reply]
Over the 60-odd articles I have posted on EzineArticles.com, the ones with the highest clickthrough have the lowest publishing stats and those with the lowest clickthrough have the highest publishing stats. Go figure.
My experience so far is that when I’m writing for a market that considers itself technical (healthcare for example) I can get articles “published” or picked up by other sites by keeping them short (
[Reply]
I have just written and submitted my very first article, so I am sort of wet around the ears, you might say…..Thank you for the great tips, and I am glad to say that, although I posted my article BEFORE reading your tips, I believe to have followed most of your recommendations – gut feeling…Therefore I am confident that it will get approved and published. I cannot wait to see myself in print….Thanks again for the great tips.
[Reply]
Many thanks to all of you @ EzineArticles!
I would never have guessed that article writing would be so easy to achieve!
Your support and training are to be commended and can make anyone a success.
I am very excited to continue working with you, Thanks again :)
Grace Carlile
[Reply]
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How can you tell you have been published on other website? 61 times?
November 19, 2009 at 12:27 PMthanks.
[Reply]
The “Articles Published” statistic in your account shows how many times people have clicked on the “EzinePublisher” button on your article.
This doesn’t guarantee that they published your article, but it does indicate that they had interest in publishing your article.
There is no tracking provided for who and when your articles are republished. I would suggest possibly using Google Alerts to help identify this for you: http://Google.com/alerts/
November 20, 2009 at 12:45 PM[Reply]