Lesson 7.2: Tips on Writing Effective Articles

Here are some basic tips on writing effective blog posts (aka news articles):

• Know Your Audience - write for your audience keeping in mind the goals of your website.
• Always Save as a Draft - always save your blog posts as a draft and move onto to something else.  Come back a couple of hours later (or the next day is even better) and read what you wrote.  A little time and distance often brings out that 'what the heck was I thinking', or 'why did I write it that way'.
• Spell check your work - enough said!
  
• Focus on the First Paragraph - really focus on the wording of the first paragraph.  The reason for this is two-fold:
• Anyone who is reading the article will make a decision within the first 25-30 words if they will continue.  The first paragraph needs something compelling enough to keep them reading.
• Internet search engines will focus their searches on the first 50 - 100 words.  That means that key words that people would normally use in Google or Bing or Yahoo to search for an item of interest, must be in the first 25-30 words of the article.  In addition, when a person is looking the the search results, the first 10-20 words often appear as part of that search result.
• Keep it short - Most news type articles should be limited to 100 - 400 words (about 4 to 6 paragraphs).  If you go longer than that, make the story really compelling.
• Use Photographs - a minimum of one photograph are piece of artwork which should be placed at the top.  For longer articles (exceeding 4 paragraphs) add some additional pictures ... about one picture every third or fourth paragraph.
• Use Headings - within the article, make use of headings to break up a longer article.
• Announcements versus News - announcements should use a different visual format than normal news articles.  Announcements must focus on the who, what, where, and when.
• When in Doubt - go grab a free daily or weekly newspaper in your community and read it.  Ask yourself which article and announcements grabbed your attention and how the writer managed to do that.  Write those tricks down and use them in your writing.
• Enable Comments - your readers will often provide invaluable insight to help improve your writing.  Always ensure that you answer comments that contain a question and thank visitors for participating.