Amateur writers write for the sake of writing. While this may create copious amounts of inconsequential content or provide them personal pleasure, it does nothing to increase business prospects, improve the world, or move their audience to take action.
So what is the goal of great writing, and how can it change your presentations? Professional writers always have one main goal in mind with everything they write: to transform their audience. Great writers strive to help their audience see through different eyes, act differently, change the way they interact with the world.
Anyone can throw words together and make complete sentences (case in point: most of the blogosphere), but if you want to actually have impact through your writing, you must learn to write for transformation. It's the difference between being merely informative and being compelling and persuasive. There are three simple steps to transformational writing: 1) writing for a specific audience, 2) using the right venue, and 3) choosing and executing the right type of transformation (there are three).
1. Specific Audience
If you want to reach your audience, it’s absolutely crucial that you understand them, get out of your own perspective, and write to their perspective. One of the first things I do with every piece I write is identify my target audience, things such as age, gender, race/ethnicity, location, income level, purchasing habits, hobbies, talents, interests, etc.
When I know who I’m talking to, I’m prepared to custom tailor the message to resonate with them specifically. For example, words such as “revolutionary,” “cutting-edge,” “fresh,” or “in vogue” will more likely resonate with an 18-25 age group, whereas a 60-70 age group will probably have negative reactions to them, who prefer things that are “proven,” “safe,” and “sensible.”
2. The Right Venue
By venue I mean the medium used to convey your message, including such things as magazines, newspapers, journals, books, radio and TV ads, blogs, websites, etc. The venue you choose is, in large part, determined by your audience.
For example, if I’m writing a lengthy article on monetary policy intended for scholars and economists, the best venue is probably a scholarly journal. Few people can stand to read long blocks of meaningful text on a computer screen, I probably won’t have enough space to make my case in most magazines, etc. On the other hand, if my content is concise, simple, and intended for a broad audience, perhaps a newspaper article makes sense.
All of us are exposed to written communications that we skim or ignore, yet if that same message is presented in a venue more palatable to us, we’re much more likely to spend time reading it. Writing for transformation requires utilizing the best venue for our subject matter and audience.
3. The Right Transformation
There are three types of transformations: know, feel, and do. A know transformation seeks to give the readers new information, or old information arranged in a different way, to help them to learn and know things they didn’t know before, in such a way that changes their life and perspective. A feel transformation obviously seeks to evoke strong emotion in the audience, while a do is designed to get an audience to take very specific, immediate, and tangible action.
Amateurs look at this list and try to do all three; professionals focus on one and nail it, because doing so affects the others. How do you want people’s lives to change because they read your message? What do you want to see occur in them? Do you primarily want them to know, feel, or do something? Pick one–yes, just one–and execute it well, and the others will take care of themselves.
If you want your message to actually have impact, you must learn to write for transformation. Know who you’re writing to, use the right venue to reach them, and choose the right transformation and execute it well. After all, transformational writing is the only writing worth reading.
6 Red Hot
Tips To Get Your Articles Read
There are many people who dread having to write papers or articles. Many
just feel like it seems to be too much work and it all just goes to
waste when no one reads the. To some people, reading articles seems like
work to, especially if the article is boring and very bland. Well,
articles are supposed to be read, that’s their purpose to impart your
message and information. If it is not read then it is a waste of time
and effort.
But all the same, articles have to be written to be read. It’s just a
matter of making them good. Making a good article doesn’t have to be
strenuous and straining. There are just some points needed to be
reminded of, and some guides to follow. Once you get the hang of it,
writing articles could be fun, as well as profitable for you and your
site.
Of course, writing articles must be about something you know about,
that’s why if you own a site, you probably is knowledgeable about that
certain topic and theme. When you write about it, you won’t have a hard
time because you already know what it is and what it’s about. It’s just
a matter of making your articles creative and interesting.
To make sure that your articles get read and enjoyed, here are six red
hot tips to get your articles read. These tips will make your articles
readable and interesting.
1) Use short paragraphs. When the paragraph are very long, the words get
jumbled in the mind of the reader just looking at it It can get quite
confusing and too much of a hard work to read. The reader will just
quickly disregard the paragraph and move on to much easier reading
articles that are good to look at as well as read. Paragraphs can be a
single sentence, sometimes even a single word!
2) Make use of numbers or bullets. As each point is stressed out,
numbers and bullets can quickly make the point easy to remember and
digest. As each point, tip, guide or method is started with a bullet or
point, readers will know that this is where the tips start and getting
stressed. Format you bullets and numbers with indentations so that your4
article won’t look like a single block of square paragraphs. Add a
little bit of flair and pizzazz to your articles shape.
3) Use Sub-headings to sub-divide your paragraphs in the page. Doing
this will break each point into sections but still would be incorporated
into one whole article. It would also be easy for the reader to move on
from one point to another; the transition would be smooth and easy. You
will never lose your readers attention as well as the point and
direction to where the article is pointing.
4) Provide a good attention-grabbing title or header. If your title can
entice a person’s curiosity you’re already halfway in getting a person
to read your article. Use statements and questions that utilize keywords
that people are looking for. Provide titles or headers that describe
your articles content but should also be short and concise.
Use titles like, “Tips on making her want you more”, or “How to make her
swoon and blush” .You could also use titles that can command people, for
example, “Make her yours in six easy Ways”. These types of titles reach
out to a persons’ emotions and makes them interested.
5) Keep them interested from the start to the finish. From your opening
paragraph, use real life situations that can be adopted by the reader.
Use good descriptions and metaphors to drive in your point, just don’t
over do it. Driving your examples with graphic metaphors and similes
would make it easy for them to imagine what you are talking about.
Making the experience pleasurable and enjoyable for them.
6) Utilize figures when necessary and not just ordinary and insipid
statements. Using specific facts and figures can heighten your article
because it makes it authoritative. But do not make it too formal, it
should be light and easy in them and flow. Like a friendly teac her
having a little chat with an eager student.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
The author has a FREE CONTENT ARTICLE DIRECTORY located at http://authorarticles.com
where you can get free content for your web site, newsletter or ezine.
Additionally, If you have your own original articles you can submit them
at this site. You are allowed to place an authors resource box at the
end of your article containing a link pointing back to your web site.
This is a proven way to add more in-bound links to your web site and
improve your site's popularity.
To all writers and non-writers out there, now is the time to start digging up those creative writing skills back.
With modern communication technology comes the popularity of information-based marketing, which is one of the oldest and most effective techniques in getting targeted prospects to sites and converting them into buyers.
This is why article writing, submissions and publications are also getting popular.
There are already many tools that people can use to make the process of distributing their articles more easily. Though this is invaluable in getting the contents more exposure, which is only half of the story.
Let us take a look first at the common mistakes that some people make before submitting their contents to article directories:
1. Confusing the reason to promote the articles with the reason to write them.
In article writing, there are three key benefits why you are promoting them; branding, lead generation and promotion, which are all part of your optimization efforts.
But there is only one reason why you write an article, and that is to inform your audience. If the article is not focused on this primary and most important purpose, it will fail to achieve the three promotion benefits because no one will be interested in reading them.
You need to figure out first how to get people to read what is in your article, then make them click on your resource box. You can achieve this by producing better contents.
2. Failing to maximize the promotional opportunities of article marketing.
You may know already that your articles can help you generate additional links back to your site. But do you know that you can get more visitors and better search engine results from that same articles?
Mention keywords at strategic places. Just be sure not to overdo them. Some are even using anchor texts which is also an effective method. But it is important to know that majority of the directories are not able to support this.
Remember that is not only about the links back to your site. Part of doing well in your article marketing is getting picked up by publishers with a large number of audiences and gaining the ability of leveraging other brands because of the quality of your work. Better search engine results also are great benefits.
But these things do not put much money in your pocket. There are other factors that can turn your article marketing efforts into an opportunity that can boost your earnings. Not just increase the number of visitors to your site.
Start out with a plan and see to it that your article will serve the function that you intended it to have.
3. Publishing content that does not help your readers.
Maybe in the process of writing articles, you are thinking that all that is you wanted is links back to your site. And any visitors it can generate are fine.
Guess what? Not all article banks and directories are going to accept your content automatically. Oftentimes, they have some guidelines and specifications on the articles that they are accepting.
You can double the number of sites you can submit to by writing articles that the directories want to share with other people. All it takes is one publisher with a hundred thousand readers to increase your potential audience overnight.
Write the articles that publishers want in their publications if you want your article marketing to work the most effective way for you. This also means you have to obey the standard guidelines, spell checks, researching on a good topic and even hiring a writer to produce a good content on your behalf.
In the end, it is all really a matter of choice on your part. You can start getting a little exposure from increased links back but on a very basic level. Or enjoy massive exposure from a little extra time making quality contents.
It will be your choice. You may not be aware of the fact that an article submitted on directories is not meant to have the same level of exposure as highly-targeted content ones geared on a narrow group of people.
Learn the difference between these two and it will surely help you know what kinds of articles to write and to submit.
8 Mistakes You Should
Avoid Before Sending Article To Ezine Publishers.
Make your article published; avoid some mistakes that many article
authors did.
Sending successful article to ezine publishers could exposed your
website to thousands of subscribers even millions of readers online.
However, to do this successful, you must compete with others internet
marketers. They also send articles to the same ezine publishers like
yours.
The question is...How to make your article stand out of the crowd?
Alternatively...
Your article goes to the trash bin.
Here are common mistakes many article authors did.
Mistake #1- Wrong-targeted niche market
Many article authors sent their article to the wrong-targeted niche
market. Send your article to the targeted audience. Do not try to blast
your article to all ezine publishers. For instance, as an ezine editor I
received many articles do not related to internet marketing. Therefore,
I'm not published it.
Mistake #2- No Subject
You do not write your article headline on your subject email. Many
article authors send their article without subject line. Instead of
writing “New Article submission" "article for your publication,”
consider “New article – 6 Mistakes You Should Avoid Before Sending
Article To Ezine Publishers.”
Mistake #3- Not unique
Your article content is a blatant idea. Topic you write it like the
others publishers and not much different. Make your article fresh and
unique. Learn something new in your market. Convert what you learnt into
a unique article. You could write article on topic “how to,” “Tips” or
anything that come to your mind. Even on article, title “how to avoid
SPAM,” “how to hack hackers back.”
Mistake #4- Advertising article
Your article more on promoting your product or affiliate program you
join. Writing advertising article only will kill your business online.
Give your website info only on your resource box. Give something free
like free e-books, free report, or free download. Make your readers
visit your website to receive their free bonus.
Mistake #5- Lack of valuable information
Your article does not educate your targeted audience. People subscribe
to ezine to receive valuable information. If they receive information on
topic they do not want, not educate them at all, they will unsubscribe.
Therefore, ezine publishers will not publish your article. Many ezine
publishers provide information as best as they can to their subscribers.
Mistake #6- Spelling problem
There are too many spelling errors on your article. Sending article with
too many spelling errors only waste your time. Check, your article twice
before publishes it. You could use spell-checking software.
Go to the major search engine and type “free spell-checking.”Most word
processor today built in with spelling check. For instance, MS Office
can check the misspell words for you with underline red color.
Mistake #7- Without format
Make sure your article format 65 characters per line. Length of your
article must between 500-750 words. Formatting your article will make
for ezine publisher easy to copy and paste it. You could send your
article through MS Outlook Express.
Go to “tools” menu and click “Options.” Click “Send” tab and choose
mail-sending format to “plain text.” Then click “plain text setting”
tab, select 65 characters for automatically wrap text when sending
email.
Mistakes #8- No Personalize message
Personalize your email message with a short cover letter.
Personalization your emails are very important because many ezine
publishers receive hundreds of article submission every day. Also,
include your article information in your personalize message.
Avoiding those mistakes above will make your article successful
published by many ezine publishers on the net. Good luck.
