How to Write Powerful Articles in 7 Easy Steps

You've heard how effective writing articles can be as a guerilla online marketing tool. The benefits include improved search engine rankings, more traffic to your site, credibility in yourself and your products and searches, etc., the list just goes on and on.

While writing articles is a great way to market your business on the Internet, publishing a poorly written article can send out bad vibes, the likes of which can drain your mojo! If you're going to write articles, make sure you write strong ones that garner you positive attention only.

Seven Easy Steps
All you have to do is follow our plan, laid out in the following seven easy steps. Before you know it, you won't have a blank screen in front of you, you'll have one HOT article!

* Get a Plan. You're writing an article, not a book or an encyclopedia. The best articles deal with a specific topic. Not "Condo Living" in general, but "Five Benefits to Condo Living," or "How to turn your Condo into the Home of your Dreams." Use keyword research to help you fine-tune your topics.

* Understand your Article Format. Articles fall into about two dozen categories. Don't muddy the waters! Make sure you understand what kind of article you want to write and stick with the right format. For example, How-To's are different from Personal Stories.

* Organize your Writing. It depends on what format you're writing in, but with most articles, you're going to tell them what you're going to cover, cover it, and then end with a summary. Use paragraphs and bullets liberally.

* Write with Authority. Nobody wants to read a wishy-washy article. If you don't know your topic well from personal experience, make sure you do some research. I resent reading articles where you come away not having learned much or "dumber" for having read them!

* Tighten up you writing. Strong article writing means eliminating the fluff. Get rid of the "very," "really," and other extraneous words that don't add a thing to your article. Use action verbs - take out the passive writing (replace "John was given the apple." with "John received the apple" or better yet, "Sue gave John the apple.")

* Proof before you publish - make sure you proof the article for grammar and spelling errors. Nothing spells "amateur" more.

* End with an "Oomph!" Ever notice how some songs just fade into nothing while others go out with a bang? Make sure your articles end with a bang. Call the reader into action - leave them with something to do, whether it's to visit your site for other content or to order something TODAY, or to give you a call for more information. You can't close the deal if you don't ask for it!

TIP: Don't plagiarize. It's okay if you want to reference somebody else. You just need to learn the proper way to cite sources if you want to cite their work. Don't copy somebody else's work and try to pass it along as your own. If somebody figures out you "borrowed" content, you can bet they won't trust doing business with you. Not to mention the legal woes you may face if the original owner discovers what you've done. Why go there?

Now that you've read this article, you should have a much clearer idea of how to turn your content into great articles that will hook site visitors each and every time.

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