5 Steps to Write Effective Articles in Less Time

Do you sit in front of computer for a long time to create a single blog post or article? Does it take too much thinking for you to come up with an effective article? If your answer was ‘yes’ to any of these questions, you should continue to read the post. Whether you are a blogger or a freelance writer or an article marketer, you need to write effective articles quickly. If you are doing one of those as a full time job, you must really use your time properly and try to write more articles in less time. Here are few things you should do when you sit to write an article or blog post.
1. Close Every Other Application
Ever installed any software? Few of them ask you to close other applications when installing it. The same should be followed when you sit to write an article. Close the chat client first. This is probably the one which eats up most of your time. Next, close your email client. Don’t have any other application open, other than your writing software. You should not open any of the applications when you are writing the article. You can open your browser when you want to look for some reference, but close it again as soon as you are done. Don’t check your blog traffic stats, AdSense earnings or anything else as well.
2. Do Research Before Writing
It is always better to do a little research before writing the article. This will help you to write an effective article. The quality of the article will show clearly that you have researched. Almost every blog post that hits the front page of social bookmarking sites is well researched and structured. By doing research, you also make your article longer and in depth.
3. Prepare a Schedule
Preparing a schedule will help you in saving time. Set a time for each and everything you do for the article. You can allocate 30 minutes or whatever you are comfortable with, for writing the article itself. Set 5 minutes for selecting an image. Also have 10-15 minutes for collecting references and coming up with a catchy headline. Within an hour, you should be able to create some top notch content.
4. Proof Read At Least Once
This is very important and most people skip this due to lack of time (or patience). This will prove to be costly when you are writing for some other person or for a client. Once you finish writing the post, read it once. If you have written many articles and don’t have time to proof read all of them, hire a person to do the work for you.
5. Do the Editing Till You Are Satisfied
Once you have completed writing the article, do the formatting works. Place the image at the right place. Give credit to the image author if needed. Preview the article. If it is what you wanted, publish the article. If not, continue with your editing and formatting. Add quotes to the post to make it more effective. Tie any loose ends.

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Use These 10 Tips to Write Your Most Popular Post Ever

One popular post can bring your more traffic and links than a month’s worth of your usual content.
In this post, I want to set you a challenge with the potential to launch your blog into the stratosphere.
Make the next post you write your most popular post ever.
The following ten tips form my key advice for tackling this task. I used all of them when hitting the Digg front page for the first time. There’s no blueprint you can follow to write an incredibly popular post, but you won’t have a chance unless you try. I’m confident these tips will give you a good shot at success.
1. Time is more important than talent. Work on something for eight hours and you can bet it will be good. You don’t need to spend that long, however (though that’s how long it took me to craft the first post I wrote that hit the Digg front page). More time means you can refine, format and fill your post with plenty of value. Take the time to really craft your content. It will show in the finished product.
2. Use your best idea. A post will never become wildly popular unless it fulfills a need, and does so emphatically. What’s something your niche wants but hasn’t got yet? Can you assemble a whole lot of really awesome (targeted) resources in one place? The more your posts helps people, the better it will do.
3. Use formatting to your advantage. These days, social media is key when it comes to launching your posts into the stratosphere. Social media users are notoriously spoiled for choice, however. Use formatting to emphasize the best aspects of your post. Hone in on your funniest lines, your most profound bits of advice, your best resources. Make them stand out.
4. Brainstorm headlines. There are probably one or two bloggers who’ve completely mastered the art of writing headlines for social media (you’ll know who they are). The rest of us haven’t been blessed with such skills. When you see a great headline, chances are it’s option #12 of a dozen choices. Few of us can think of a great headline straight away. Spend ten minutes brainstorming and you’re bound to stumble across something that works. A weak headline will cripple your post’s chances of success. It’s essential that you put a lot of work into getting it right.
5. Invest plenty of value in your post. Ever bookmarked or voted for something without completely reading it? We’ve all done it. It’s because of the ‘Wow’ factor — the presence of enough promised value in one place gets the reader enthusiastic about the post straight away. Instead of 5 tips, why not share 50? Instead of 9 resources, why not 40 or more?
7. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. If your post looks good, it will draw readers in. Take the time to add images, thumbnails and formatting to what you create. Make your post a visual feast. With so much web content presented in a bland way, your post is guaranteed to stand out.
8. Tell them what you’re going to tell them. Readers will skip your waffly introduction. You can say the same in less words, particularly when you’re writing for an impatient reader: someone who wants to get straight into your tips/resources/opinions. Use your introduction to highlight why the reader should stick with your post. There’s a reason my post introductions mainly consist of: “In this post, I’m going to do this, this and that.” It’s what people really want to know: what am I getting in exchange for my attention?
9. Send messages with links. The best way to get a blogger to investigate your blog is by linking to them. We’ve got a natural desire to know what’s being said about us. If your post becomes really popular, each link inside it should send enough traffic outwards to be worth investigating. Be generous with your outbound links when writing your most popular post. It gives other bloggers an incentive to link to you, because it’s ultimately more promotion for them.
10. Utilize your network. If you want people to Digg, Stumble or Reddit your post, there’s no reason why you need to sit back with fingers crossed and hope it happens. Ask them. Your loyal readers like you. You entertain them, or teach them, or help them. If voting is a simple matter of clicking a link they’ll be more than happy to do so. Ask for votes in your post and email readers and social media influencers. In most cases you will need to get the snowball rolling. After that, others will do most of the work for you.
Bonus tip:
11. Examine what worked before. Study your most popular posts so far. What’s common about them? Why did they work? What needs did they address? In creating your most popular post, it’s important to learn by example and build on what has worked for your blog in the past. Another good idea is to analyze the most popular posts on other blogs in your niche. Why did they work? What’s remarkable about them? You can transfer those qualities over into what you write.

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3 Reasons Why You Should Use Storytelling

If I tell you that you should post at least once a day, and that posting frequency is extremely important for a successful blog, what will be your reaction? Probably a modest “OK.”

What if, instead, I tell you the story about when I increased the posting frequency on my own blog, illustrating what motivated me to do so, how I implemented the new strategy and the wonderful results I got out of it. Maybe this time you will say, “Interesting, I should try that.”
What is the difference between the two approaches? The first one is stating a cold opinion. The second one, on the other hand, is telling a story that the reader can relate to. If used correctly, storytelling can be a very powerful communication tool, and here is why:
1. Stories are authentic. Stories come from personal experiences (well, some are invented, but you know what I mean…). It makes a big difference if you are reading about something that the author thinks it might be true compared to something that he actually experienced in the first place.
2. Stories create a connection. Ever caught yourself reading or listening to a story and thinking, “Yeah, I know what you mean!”? That is because you can related to the story somehow, maybe you experienced something similar in the past, for instance. Once you get that connection in place it is much easier to deliver a message, and it is also easier to call people to action.
3. Stories are easy to remember. I bet you have been to a couple of conferences or seminars before. There is always this guy that cranks up dozens of Powerpoint slides and slams you down with numbers, statistics, facts and the like. Guess what, half an hour after he is finished with his presentation you will not remember a single thing. People that instead go on stage with an interesting and engaging story are the most effective ones. You just get it, and when you are back home you will even repeat the story to friends and relatives.
As you can see, storytelling is a very efficient communication technique. While it does not belong in every post, it can certainly add some salt to specific ones. Good luck with your next stories!

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12 Writing Tips from George Orwell

George Orwell has arguably written some of the best essays of the 20th century. He is also famous for his novels, including Animal Farm and Nineteen Eighty-Four. Apart from reading his works you can also improve your own writing by following 12 tips that he wrote on the essay “Politics and the English Language”, check it out:
When writing a sentence you should always ask yourself those questions:
1. What am I trying to say?
2. What words will express it?
3. What image or idiom will make it clearer?
4. Is this image fresh enough to have an effect?
5. Could I put it more shortly?
6. Have I said anything that is avoidably ugly?
When choosing words, follow those rules:
7. Never use a metaphor, simile, or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print.
8. Never use a long word where a short one will do.
9. If it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out.
10. Never use the passive where you can use the active.
11. Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word, or a jargon word if you can think of an everyday English equivalent.
12. Break any of these rules sooner than say anything outright barbarous.
Via: WritingLessons.com
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3 Rules for Writing Effective Titles

In the age of blogs, wikis, RSS feeds and social bookmarking sites it is not rare to get overloaded with information. Technology makes it incredibly easy to produce content, whether we talk about text, audio or video. As a consequence people’s attention span is getting shorter and shorter.
On average I would say that you have a couple of seconds to capture the attention of the reader, and in those two seconds he will hardly read further than the title. That is why the title is so important, it can make the difference between people skipping your posts or reading and getting engaged by them. Below you will find 3 rules for writing effective titles:
1. It must grab the attention: if there is one place where the first impressions counts that place is the post title or headline. The title of your articles must immediately communicate why the reader should go on and read the rest of the content. Copywriters say that if you spent one hour writing the article you should spend just as much thinking about the headline. If you are looking for inspiration check out “10 Sure-Fire Headline Formulas That Work”.
2. It must reflect what is in the content: it certainly would grab the reader’s attention if your post had a headline like “The Ultimate Guide to Generating Website Traffic”, even if the post itself was just a couple of tips to generate traffic. The problem with this title is that it does not reflect the content, more specifically it overhypes the post. While you want your headlines to be as catchy as possible you also want to make sure that the reader will get what the title promises, else it will harm your credibility.
3. It must be search engine friendly: always write the headlines for humans and not for search engine robots. That being said often times it is possible to tweak the keywords that you use without reducing the quality of the title. It is a good idea to use a keyword suggestion tool to include terms that people are searching for (i.e. should you use “funny pictures” or “funny images”?). Like it or not most people find information through search engines.

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