Little Advices for Writing Great Articles
Build detailed guidelines
You can make the difference by providing a detailed material on every subject you treat. Wizard-like step by step guides are very popular among the social networks and many blogs have succeeded by applying this model to their publications. You have to think of concise yet very smart titles also, it is not the same to publish “Booting problems” than “10 tips to diagnose a booting problem”.
Innovate
If you do not feel like a “natural writer”, remember that long articles are not meant to be successful by nature. The secret key is innovation, something new or remarkable, a revolutionary concept you can crystallize in your readers’ minds.
Make a difference
Turn yourself into a brand. Create sticky titles and develop cutting-edge concepts. Never plague your contents with references to other articles or websites, many bloggers just ignore quotes and references and want to go straight to the point in a concrete and easy to understand, manner.
Become an expert
You must dominate the field you are blogging about. People will read and write comments into your blog, if you pretend to know what you indeed ignore, they will let you know what a fool you are (in the best of scenarios… most of the time they just run away).
Be careful and methodic
Always check spelling and grammar, delete unnecessary words and let the concept flow easily. You do not need to sound like an expert, you need to get others to understand what you are transmitting. Simplicity works well and summarizing skills are highly valuable while composing.
Find sources of inspiration
Never limit yourself to a single RSS feed. Find some ideas in other blogs and other related subjects. Lateral thinking can help you a lot, you can find ways to entertain and make your readers relax by posting funny stuff related to your main subject: “How to destroy your hard drive efficiently: The perfect excuse to make your wife approve buying a new computer”. You can also improve, summarize or extend others’ ideas in your blog, as well as provide a contundent reply to another post (and start a blog’s war). Whatever you do, think of your readers and take their interests and needs into account.
Never give up
If you do not succeed at first, try again. Never assume you will succeed with the first shot, this hardly ever happens. The more you practice, the better you write. Never get dissapointed if the feedback is poor, sometimes you will have no good ideas for writting, sometimes innovative ideas take more time to be digested (think about the history of inventors and scientists, Edison had to throw out many prototypes before finally inventing the light bulb).
