Smart Articles

When running an online business it can be hard to convince potential clients of your expertise, especially if you lack formal, provable qualifications from an internationally recognised body.

If a client doesn't believe in your abilities they will not believe in your company and if they do not believe in your company, you are in trouble! There is, however, an effective way of exhibiting your expertise. Article writing helps raise customer confidence and can indeed generate leads. Many article submission sites also reward your submission with a free link to your website, this will boost your search engine rankings. Put simply, it is win, win.

So writing articles is a great idea, but how exactly do you go about it? Well, selecting a topic would be a good start. Pick a topic related to the field that you work in, you might find an article about your favourite television program very interesting but it is unlikely to increase customer confidence in you and your brand (unless the program and the service/product you sell are related). Selecting a subject that you already have expertise in will also mean you won't have to do so much research.

Okay, you have a topic, now what? I find it helps to split the topic up into a number of sections, at least 3, no more than 5. Each section will make up a segment of your article. Give each section a subheading and brain storm around the subheading. How are you going to incorporate that section into your article? Where will that section come in your article? How long will that section be? Six hundred words is about the average length of a web article. This does not mean that if you have 3 sections each section should be 200 words long, some sections will invariably demand greater depth than others.

Typically, the first section of your article should be used to introduce your article. This can be done in a number of ways:

1) Explain your motivations for writing the article. Are you answering a predetermined question? Are you exploring a topic area that is of interest? Are you presenting a new take on a popular theme? etc.

2) Explore the wider subject area from which you have selected your topic. For example an article about gaining links might start by exploring search engine optimization and the different factors involved i.e. content and in bound links.

3) This is my least favourite form, but is commonly used. You could list the range of issues you are going to raise. e.g. In this article I am going to...

It is impossible to give a generic structure for the middle section of your article as every article is (or at least should be) different. However, here are some tips on article writing more generally:

1) Your smart article should have a coherent structure and each paragraph or segment should follow logically from the previous one and link seemlessly onto the following segment.

2) Your smart article should get to the point. Try not to repeat yourself. To reiterate, try not to repeat yourself!

3) Do not try to use your article as a blatent advert. Your goal should be to share information (article writing is afterall the propagation of memes) and expertise with the reader, do not try to sell, sell, sell or they will close, close, close.

4) Try to stay focused. Don't wonder too wildly off topic. This will simply show you to be undisciplined. It is okay to explore incidental points, as long as you link them back to the main topic.

5) Don't use too much jargon. Unless you are specifically targeting your article to a bleeding-edge readership try to steer clear of industry specific names, they will simply serve to turn off the reader. You may feel it necessary to use some jargon, to show you know what you are talking about, (though I would argue that if you know what you are talking about then you can explain your meaning to a wider audience) in such case it cannot hurt give a definition of the term you are using.

Okay, now for the final section of your smart article. You have a gripping introduction, a coherent, concise, jargon-free middle and now you just have to end it. How? Well, there are a number of approaches. If your article has explored a specific question try to draw a conclusion, which satisfactorily answers the question you set yourself. If the question has no definitive answer, explain why. Do not simply present the reader with a mass of information and expect them to draw their own picture, such laziness will destroy a potentially fantastic article. Another way to end an article is to invite the user to ponder more questions related to the central theme, expand the original topic and leave the reader with some answers but wanting to know more. This can be very effective. Moreover, such an ending allows you to link to any other related articles you have written. If you do this and follow the other tips and tricks given in this article about articles, then you will surely maximise your exposure.

There is yet another way to end a smart article and that is to wish the reader good luck.

Good luck!