From My Desk to Yours – 4th Edition

By: Penny, EzineArticles Managing Editor

Question: How do I crank up the word count in my articles without adding fluff, yet still deliver NEW quality content that will capture my audience?

Hmmm, seems like an easy enough question. This challenge arises when you have already delivered as much as you feel you can and your articles are starting to sound like your grandfather’s favorite old story. Over and over, the same words are flowing and you’re trying like crazy to offer something new in your market. So what do you do?

Answers:

  • Join in Conversations – Sign-up for forums and participate in blog discussions. This will help you discover what your market is looking for. When you get a nugget of wisdom, draft an article on it and submit it!

  • Ask Questions – When you feel that you have shared everything you know, go ask questions. Generate discussions on your own blog page or learn what others are talking about.

  • Review Your Already Submitted Articles – You might find that there are plenty of snippets in each that will give you new topics for future articles. You may notice that can further clarify issues or elaborate on one specific area.

  • Social Network Within Your Niche – Social networking via Facebook, Twitter, etc. creates a vast opportunity to meet others in your area of expertise. Learn from them and pass your newly-discovered knowledge on to your readers.

  • Use Article Templates – Occasionally using different article templates can force you to look at your niche differently and approach your writing from a fresh perspective.

Remember, writing is not easy and article marketing is not a fast process. To succeed, you will need to invest time in researching your topic and your market’s needs. The good news is that time changes everything – so there is always something new to write about.

4 Things to Avoid:

  1. Filling your already thin article with loose filler words just to meet the word count. These articles are spammy and do not provide a good user experience. Your readers will stop reading.

  2. Writing about newsy topics and then blatantly slapping an affiliate link in. It’s not OK to write to about Obama scholarships in hundreds of articles and then pitch an affiliate link.

  3. Say the same thing, only using different words or rearranging those words. It’s not OK to submit derivative content.

  4. Don’t write 1,000 articles that you know nothing about. This is not only unethical, it’s simply rude and offensive to the reader. It may even be downright dangerous or cause harm to others in certain circumstances. If you are going to write as an Expert Author, BE an expert author.

Here are a few other blog posts to help you find inspiration for fresh, content-rich articles:

This is by no means an exhaustive essay on how to generate a high number of longer fresh, original articles. If you have other thoughts and ideas on the subject, we’d love to hear about them. So please leave a comment.

Posted by on November 4, 2009 at 8:23 am | 3,217 views

15 Comments »


1
Chris writes:

Often an article addresses a topic with several key points.

Simply widening the scope to more key points usually gives me the extra word count needed while giving the reader more helpful and detailed information.

Chris

Comment provided November 4, 2009 at 4:23 PM

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2
Lance is in the House! writes:

All excellent tips as usual! I love your Editor Series Blog Posts. I learn quite a bit on each one.

Comment provided November 4, 2009 at 5:35 PM

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eo greensticks writes:

just found this site by a sort of synchronistic ‘accident’-after previously happening upon th idea of writing articles as a way of extending one’s field (why didn’t i think of that before?) And possibly wouldn’t have thought of ‘askin questions’ on forums etc as a way of gathering inspiration-seems so obvious now!The Socratic Method meets Google,how cool is that!-very Information Age!

November 5, 2009 at 5:37 AM

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3
Ryan Healy writes:

This point stuck out to me: “[Avoid] say[ing] the same thing, only using different words or rearranging those words.”

I remember one prolific author on EzineArticles who used to submit 3 articles for every 1 topic he wrote about it. Each article was just a variation. He found he got more traffic that way.

Anyway, I agree: It’s not really helpful to the reader… although it might be helpful for the writer.

Ryan

Comment provided November 4, 2009 at 5:36 PM

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4
Sunganani writes:

Interesting piece. I am still relatively new and learning a lot. I did one of those 4 things to avoid recently! (but I am not telling)

Here is one thing I have found: when i write from what I know or have experienced, content generation is easier.

Keep up the great work educating. I have had more training from EzineArticles than any other article directories I have signed up for.

Comment provided November 4, 2009 at 8:42 PM

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5
Geoff writes:

Totally agree about the signing up for forums part. Interacting with other people on any given topic helps to find out the current `thinking` on a subject.

Comment provided November 5, 2009 at 4:15 AM

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6
Fiona writes:

Enjoyed reading this post and followed the links to other blog posts. Great inspiration. Thanks.

I also get really turned off by people submitting masses of variations on a theme with just a few words altered each time, which they call articles. It’s great you’re keeping on top of that.

Comment provided November 5, 2009 at 6:42 AM

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7
Ursula writes:

Dear Penny,
Firstly, it’s great to read a succinct article which, secondly, is full of great advice. My “thing” is to write copy for companies, so research is vital. It’s not always easy to find all the answers, even “on the internet” and speaking to people is still my favourite way of learning, so the blogging idea is fab! Thanks!

My pet peeve, and I’m sure a lot of other very busy people – who don’t have much time to read repetition or uninteresting articles – will agree with me, that sometimes less is more and it’s the quality, not the quantity that counts.

Comment provided November 5, 2009 at 9:05 AM

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8
Amy D Pitt writes:

Update

More words = less clicks to your links

More words = more readers leaving after clicking adsense ads

think about it

Comment provided November 10, 2009 at 7:52 AM

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Christopher M. Knight writes:

You found this out how?

How many articles over what time period?

Beginning vs. ending time period?

Impact of CTR: Word count before vs. word count after?

Resource box the same in both cases?

Please show us the articles or the article ID’s so we can review your research.

November 10, 2009 at 11:44 AM

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9
Willox Perez writes:

That is a good update but Chris is write by asking those good questions. A specific and full research must be done to confirm the assumptions :) I do agree that having too much words like 500 hundred or more may border the reader. But it depends on who is reading it :)

Thanks for the advise by the way Penny =)

Comment provided November 11, 2009 at 1:34 PM

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10
caesar cunaccia writes:

I agree with Willox I have Authors write 600 word articles Here
that the general population like to read if the article is
interesting enough and keeps them in suspense.

Comment provided November 23, 2009 at 2:31 PM

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11
Aleksandrex writes:

Things to Avoid:
– Say the same thing, only using different words or rearranging those words.
——
What if I wrote an article that is similar to existing (should I learn whole Ezine’s content)?

Comment provided December 22, 2009 at 3:32 PM

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Penny, Managing Editor writes:

Aleksandrez,

I’m not sure what you are asking here. Can you rephrase this?

If you are asking what we would do with an article that is similar to a live article, we would not accept it.

December 22, 2009 at 4:26 PM

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Aleksandrex writes:

I mean that author may write similar article in other words unless he/she get to know about already published one.
Don’t pay much attention to this :)

December 23, 2009 at 1:33 AM

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