Tuesday, November 27, 2007
How to Write Effective Articles and Blog Posts
In this article, I'm going to give you tips on how to write an effective article for a blog or any other web site. Not one of those I'm-all-emo and need-to-vent diary blog posts or articles, but an organized methodology you can use to quickly and effectively communicate, the type of post written by marketers who approach writing articles as a business communication.
As a military officer, I'm often called upon to write memos and briefs. Most of these memos are intended to pass important information to higher ranking officers. Here's an interesting fact about high ranking military officers (and anyone in a senior position): they are notoriously short on patience.
It's not because they are impatient, mind you, it's because, in the course of a day, they have a lot to do. The must sift through an enormous amount of information and be able to intelligently discuss that information with their bosses and make appropriate decisions. And the higher you go in the military (or any other organization), the more demands there are on the person's time and the less patience they have for unimportant information.
You can think of visitors to your blog as the people you work for. They want the important information and they want it now! If you don't give it to them, guess what? There are a gajillion other sites in the search engine results they will go back to.
So here's the secret to writing effective articles:
1. Tell the reader what you are going to tell them ("In this article, I'm going to give you tips on how to write an effective article for a blog or any other web site.")
2. Establish your expertise and justification ("As a military officer, I'm often called upon to write memos and briefs....")
3. Tell them ("So here's the secret to writing effective articles...")
4. Tell them what you just told them (coming up)
In this article, I told you about the secret to writing effective articles. I talked about why it's important to be organized and concise in your written communications by making sure you present the information using an easily understood methodology that reinforces the information.
The easier you make it for your "bosses" to understand what you're telling them, the more likely they are to return to you in the future to learn more.
As a military officer, I'm often called upon to write memos and briefs. Most of these memos are intended to pass important information to higher ranking officers. Here's an interesting fact about high ranking military officers (and anyone in a senior position): they are notoriously short on patience.
It's not because they are impatient, mind you, it's because, in the course of a day, they have a lot to do. The must sift through an enormous amount of information and be able to intelligently discuss that information with their bosses and make appropriate decisions. And the higher you go in the military (or any other organization), the more demands there are on the person's time and the less patience they have for unimportant information.
You can think of visitors to your blog as the people you work for. They want the important information and they want it now! If you don't give it to them, guess what? There are a gajillion other sites in the search engine results they will go back to.
So here's the secret to writing effective articles:
1. Tell the reader what you are going to tell them ("In this article, I'm going to give you tips on how to write an effective article for a blog or any other web site.")
2. Establish your expertise and justification ("As a military officer, I'm often called upon to write memos and briefs....")
3. Tell them ("So here's the secret to writing effective articles...")
4. Tell them what you just told them (coming up)
In this article, I told you about the secret to writing effective articles. I talked about why it's important to be organized and concise in your written communications by making sure you present the information using an easily understood methodology that reinforces the information.
The easier you make it for your "bosses" to understand what you're telling them, the more likely they are to return to you in the future to learn more.
Labels: Writing
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