Essay Online

Thousands of articles are being churned out everyday but how many of these are ever read. If your articles are not going to be read then you are not going to reap the benefits of writing your articles.

Webmasters and others visit article directories, article banks and article announcement sites mainly for two reasons. Firstly to read articles written by experts to learn from them about business strategies, article writing tips and other useful Tips and Ideas so that can adopt and implement them. Secondly to obtain useful topic related good content for their websites.

Why should the reader choose to read your article in preference to several others?

It is here that these three article writing tips if properly implemented, will have a tremendous impact on the reader and compel him to read your article.

Title:

Visitors to article directories have numerous articles to choose from. They will scroll down, stop and click on the title that grabs their attention. Grabbing the visitors’ attention should be your main goal. If you miss out on this then you have missed your opportunity. It must now be obvious that the Key to open the door to your article is your Title.

Much time and thought should be spent in constructing a Striking, Powerful and Compelling Title that will grab the reader’s attention, stop his scrolling and compel him to click on the link and see how good and useful the article is.

If you succeed in this then you have set the ball rolling. It is very important that the title should never be misleading. The principle to follow should be “Be smart but don’t mislead.” A few misleading titles from you and soon you will be dumped by the readers.

Introduction:

The reader will next want to have a quick glimpse at your introductory passage.

Many authors do not place sufficient emphasis on this aspect. Their perception is that if the article is of quality and educative, people are bound to read them. This is true in the case of articles written by outstanding authors and experts and if their name are displayed alongside. Again how will a newbie ever recognize the names? Hence an impressive paragraph is important. The reader should with the help of these few sentences get a quick glimpse and visualize the quality and what this whole article is about. Here too the author should give a true picture of what is in store for the reader. The introduction should never mislead the reader.

Resource Box:

Having read the article and if the reader is captivated by the content and your expertise, his natural tendency will be to know more about you, your products and possibly read more articles written by you.

To begin with he will go to the Resource Box and gather more information about you. The resource box should display your name, a brief glimpse of your profession or expertise that can attract him and the URL of your website. How well you display your resource box will impress the reader further to click on your URL to visit your website. The main objective of writing articles and attracting maximum readership is to lead the reader to visit your website and promote your business.

Conclusion:

Writing articles with proper keyword placement, optimizing for the search engines and submitting them to article directories is one thing but getting the audience to read the articles is a different kettle of fish altogether. You have got to grab him and get him to read your article. The rest will follow. Successful implementation of these three article writing tips will result in an explosion in your article readership statistics, visitors to your website and increased sales.

In article anatomy I like to teach that there are several key components. Of course these can be stretched varied and thrown out altogether, but not until you’re an expert at writing content-rich articles. One key component of a clear article is, of course, the lead paragraph. Second in importance only to the headline itself, the lead graf (paragraph for short) has to be engaging, informative and lead the reader to believe you’re the one with all of the great advice they’ve been looking for.

Write a good lead-in and your readers will be anxious to act on whatever advice you share in the article itself and if they do find value in your advice in the article &ndash they’ll be very hungry for me of your expertise. Hence, more sign-ups to your e-mail newsletter &ndash or better yet, more sales of your products and services.

So here are a few ideas for writing engaging lead paragraphs for your target audience:

A problem: Try to identify with a huge challenge or issue your audience is facing. Most likely you’re facing it too. So expose your experiences with this problem. You’ll endear yourself to your audience, cementing your status as the authority in your industry. Here’s an example of a problem lead:

Mistakes. We all make them and no one wants to admit to them. We’re all faced with the question, how do we recover after we make the occasional slip-up? When it comes to e-mail marketing there’s a huge debate over whether to ‘fess up or to make like an ostrich and stick our heads in the sand. I’ll offer my solution in four words: Own up to it.

A statistic: You’ll have to check your specific industry publications for these stats. Even if you see something in the mainstream news, you can always put a twist on it that relates specifically to your industry. Here’s an example of this kind of lead/identifier paragraph:

What’s that sound? You know - that slipping sound you keep hearing. If you’re still writing your marketing pieces in-house, you’re hearing the sound of market share slowly slipping away from your business. Here’s why: A recent survey shows 72% of your col leagues outsource so that they can focus on serving their customers and reducing costs.

The news: You can tailor national and even international news to meet your needs with your identifier paragraph. For instance, I just used the SARS epidemic to display the benefits of teleseminars. Too much of a stretch? You be the judge:

Picture this: The task of setting up a conference has fallen to two marketing managers in Beijing. One tests the market and discovers his company’s client base is ready for teleseminars. Our other marketing manager decides to follow the same road as the many managers before her and sets up a live conference at a hotel in downtown Beijing. The story of the SARS epidemic breaks just days before their events. Which manager gets to keep his or her job?

Note: In the example above I also used another extremely effective writing technique called “painting the picture.” This is used throughout writing whether it’s commercial or creative. Setting a scene for your readers is a wonderful tool for persuasion. You’re in control, you can paint the option most beneficial to you as the best option and the one that isn’t so beneficial as the worst option.

Your readers will think you’re great because you’re not telling them what to do, you’re just presenting them with information they can use. But in the end you’ve persuaded them to use your products or services - if you paint the picture correctly.

Writing Articles and submitting them to article directories have become extremely popular in recent times.

The question that is uppermost in the mind of an author is “Will my article be picked up by other webmasters and published in their website?” “Will the readers click the link in the resource box and visit my website?” If this does not materialize then the time and energy spent on writing articles will be in vain.

On the other hand if your article had the right recipe to attract huge numbers of visitors to your website then you have certainly succeeded in your exercise and the benefits will be tremendous.

Here we are not talking about Keywords and Search Engine Optimization but just “what is it in an article that will attract the audience to your website?”

1. Captivating and Catchy Title:

The most important thing in the article that can immediately grab the attention and imagination of the audience is without doubt your title. The title should be such that it must compel the reader to stop for a moment and have a quick glance at your article. If you can succeed and you must, then the major part of your battle is over.

2. Excellent Content:

Now that the title has played its role it is the content that has to retain the attention of the reader. While writing articles the title should not by any means mislead the reader of the article because this will mean that he will loose faith in you, your website and your products. Writing excellent content displaying your knowledge and expertise is the best way to retain the attention of the reader. Having read an informative and interesting article his curiosity will naturally be aroused and he is bound to click through to your website. He will want to know more about you, your website and your product and services.

3. Sub Titles and Bullet Points:

Sub Titles are a great way to help the visitors to identify at a glance the important aspects of your article. This makes it easy for the visitor to know the author’s perspective regarding the article. It has to be handled well to retain his interest further.

Bullet points and numbers make your article stand out even more thus helping the visitor to enjoy reading the article.

4. Sincerity of Purpose:

In today’s context when many articles are written purely to obtain high link popularity, your article should stand out as one written sincerely with the sole purpose of educating the audience. This will no doubt add much value to your article. Writing articles sincerely from the heart has its rewards. You automatically connect with the audience thereby hitting two birds with one stone. The audience not only appreciates the article but also the person behind the article. Your reputation will soon grow as a trusted author with a dependable website and products thus bringing in more customers and sales.

5. Simple Language:

When writing articles the best way to connect with the audience is to use simple words with an easy flowing style which the vast majority of them will be able to understand. It will be wise to keep the technical jargon to a bare minimum and use them only when necessary. Articles with grammatical errors and spelling mistakes will downgrade your article and confuse the audience who will want to click off as fast as they clicked in.

Conclusion:

Writing articles is considered to be one of the best ways to get targeted visitors to your website. An interesting and informative article sincerely written will induce the reader to click on your link in the resource box and land in your website, to be your guest the very next moment. The visitor is a very important guest, so treat him as such and it is up to you to provide him what he is searching for.

Keep in mind there may be a good A recent chat with a friend reminded me of a copywriting lesson I learned long ago in a place far-far way (Philly): Never insult your audience. Easier said than done? Maybe. But we know there’s a fine line between insulting your audience and completely alienating them. Thank God there’s a solution:

Give your copy the “moron” test. I learned this during my days at a large business-to-business newsletter publishing company. We’d give our headlines a test to see if we could put an insulting name at the end of them - in turn killing off the headline.

Here’s an example:

Have You Complied with HR 1091?

Try adding “moron” to the end of that question. Flows pretty nicely doesn’t it? It’s almost like you’re a school teacher with a ruler standing over the reader.

You can change it to:

HR 1091 Requires Compliance by Jan. 1

Using this fact-based approach lets the reader ask his or her own compliance questions. Give the information or the germ of an idea and allow the reader to follow up on his or her own. We want to inspire thought and then subtly direct action.

Though I gave a headline as an example, you can apply the “moron” test to any part of your copy, especially the questions.

What’s the difference between an insult and a gentle nudge in your product or service’s direction? I’ve seen a few campaigns (via e-mail) where it’s obvious the goal is to shame the reader into action. An e-mail I recently received from expert e-mail marketer Stephen Pierce of the Whole Truth read, “Have you done this yet?”

Moron could easily be added to the end of that question. And though he didn’t want to insult, he did want to get the reader’s attention - and that’s just what he did. The well-written letter that accompanied that subject line was a gem - no doubt winning Stephen tons of sign-ups for his teleseminar.

The Bottom Line

With the prevalence of books from the “For Dummies” series you’ll have to weigh whether your audience has no qualms about being called a moron (or a dummy as the case may be). So measure your audience’s reaction to different tones of voice and approaches. Use these steps to create a test group of subscribers to try out your more creative e-mail newsletters and campaigns:

1. Randomly gather 15 to 20 names from your list and only send them your more alternative campaigns while sending the rest of your list more traditional information.

2. Ask you test group for feedback on the campaigns.

3. Monitor the group’s actions. Do they unsubscribe, click through or just open your e-mails?

4. Integrate some of your more successful ideas into the traditional information you give the rest of your list.

This way you have a relatively safe place to test out your tones of voice. With this technique you can find out whether your list loves - or hates - the whole moron/dummy approach to marketing.