As a writer, you want your article to be read. You’d love it even more if your article got shared, especially multiple times! Knowing that your article has been seen by readers is one of the best feelings a writer can experience.
It may seem easy enough to write an article, and yet you languish in despair when you don’t get the results you wanted. Is it possible to take a systematic approach to writing articles so that your pieces are read and shared?
Articles have been and will continue to be one of the best ways for people to get quality information when they go online. People want and need solutions to their pressing problems, and writing high-quality articles is one way to help your identified niche. Below are my first seven steps to writing an article that gets read and shared.
1. What will be the result of the reader?
The most vital and decisive aspect of your article is: “What will be the result of the reader?” If you can’t condense the result into an actionable sentence, the article covers too much ground. Your reader should be able to pull away from the article and know exactly what they need to do. It should only be an action that gives them a measurable result.
2. Is your article written as a “copy”?
If you’re writing an article, blog post, or email, there’s a good chance you want the reader to take an action after reading. This is called copywriting: the ability to persuade a reader to take a specific action through the written word.
While truly effective copywriting takes time and skill to master, you don’t need to have a bachelor’s degree in English or anything like that to get started. You simply need to put yourself in the shoes of your ideal reader and ask yourself the following question:
“If I were surfing the Internet looking for a solution to my problem, what kind of expert would I want to find and what would I want to read from them?”
Be honest with yourself about the nature of this question and then go write an article sticking to your answers. Now, you’re off to a fantastic start! Just write with the reader’s end goal in mind, and you’ll be writing intriguing copy before you know it.
3. What is the theme and topic of your writing?
This may sound a bit silly at first; like you already figured it out. But taking stock of the theme and topic of your article is crucial.
What do you want your reader to learn? How do you want your reader to grow in knowledge? These are essential questions to include in your writing objective mix. If your subject is becoming a better writer and your subject is overcoming common writing hurdles, you really need to provide this information in your article. No one has the time or inclination to read up on emotional fluff or filler.
4. Do you know where and how to find reliable data for your article?
The best approach to writing an impactful article is to get as much of what you already know as possible. This minimizes the time needed to research other material, choose the best you can find, synthesize it with your own understanding, and write it all down in new words.
When it is It’s time to search for new information and reliable facts, what’s the fastest way to find precisely the information you need? Answering this question and then implementing it will save you tons of time in the long run and produce a better article.
Not everyone will need the same fonts for their article. Keep in mind that you may need to go beyond the normal scope of what similar writers use for research.
5. Do you have the article’s target niche in mind? Will this article captivate the reader that it is supposed to?
Let’s go back to your ideal reader. As you write the article, think about the writing voice your reader is most likely to hear, then adjust your article accordingly.
Another critical point to keep in mind constantly is this: “Write for one person, because by doing so, you write for many people.” Tons of writers fall into two traps. They either A) think that no one will seek or enjoy their writing, or B) try to write for/please everyone, and in doing so completely ruin their chance of writing. no audience.
6. Does your article have a main idea and supporting ideas?
Every article or piece of writing needs a few components: a title, some subheadings, and snippets of the actual body of the article (and a call to action, of course). Without all of this, your article won’t read as easily and likely won’t stick in the minds and hearts of readers.
Your article should be written to benefit both readers and true readers. These days, millions of internet content readers simply skim through the body of an article to see if they think it’s actually worth reading. Readers are looking for useful and practical content that is easy to understand and that solves their problem. If you reread your article before publication and it doesn’t fit these criteria, your article needs a repeat.
7. Have you written enough material that provides readers with quality, credible information?
Here’s another much-overlooked area of writing. Sometimes people think that you can write a short and quick article just to spread the word. Others think it’s acceptable to write a massive article that doesn’t actually contain a ton of awesome content. The truth is, you should aim for both whenever possible: make your article as concise as possible while also providing a lot of quality information.