 Article Writing & Marketing Insights |
From My Desk to Yours – 4th Edition
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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:
- 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.
- 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.
- Say the same thing, only using different words or rearranging those words. It’s not OK to submit derivative content.
- 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:
- Let’s Pretend …
- Make Your Writing New Again
- Harness the Power of Unbidden Ideas
- Surround Yourself with Topic Inspiration
- Article Topics to Get You Unstuck – Part 1 and Part 2
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 Penny, Managing Editor on November 4, 2009 at 8:23 am | 805 views |
11 Comments »
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
[Reply]
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.
[Reply]
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.
[Reply]
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.
[Reply]
Update
More words = less clicks to your links
More words = more readers leaving after clicking adsense ads
think about it
[Reply]
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[Reply]
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 =)
[Reply]
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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[Reply]