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The answer to this dilemma is surprisingly simple. The first thing you need to do is
write your article. It's an amazing concept, because Internet "experts" will tell
you otherwise. They will tell you that you need to spend most of your time figuring
out how to market your article, and then write it. Well, how's that supposed to
work? How can you do something that you have no talent in, while waiting to do
something that you do have talent in? It doesn't even make sense.
Well, I'm here to tell you that your article is key, not the marketing behind it.
Write a good article, and believe it or not, there are some simple steps you can
take to let people know it's out there. Whether you are writing it to make money
(maybe by placing some advertising on the page) or you are writing it to simply
share your vast knowledge on a particular subject, it makes no difference. I'm here
to tell you that you should indeed write your article first. Maybe you've even
written it already. There are plenty of models out there of how to write an article,
but if you need help with this, one of the simplest methods is the one I shunned in
high school: make an outline. Perhaps you shunned this idea yourself. Perhaps you
even did what I did and created the required outline after you wrote your paper.
Shame on you. And shame on me.
OK. How do you write an outline? Let's do it right here and now. Here's mine for this
article:
As you can see, the outline is pretty basic. You could apply it to a half million
things, which is why it's useful. All you need to do now is flesh out your article.
So, let's pretend that you are going to write an article about how to write an
article. What a novel idea!
OK, ask yourself, who is my audience? Who are you speaking to? Well, in this case,
you are speaking to people who want to write an article. If you were writing an
article about how to draw a portrait using one curvy line with a pencil without
picking up the point of the pencil from the sheet of paper until you were done, then
your audience would be people who like to learn silly parlor tricks in order to
entertain other people who like silly parlor tricks. If you are writing about how to
give a dog a bath, your audience is people who own dogs. You get the idea. It's
pretty easy to figure out who your audience is.
Now you need to ask the question, what do I want to tell my audience? You have a
vast storehouse of information on the topic in your brain, so you most likely
already know the answer to this question. In my case, I want to tell people how to
write an article for the Internet. In your case, if your audience is dog owners and
you want to tell them the easiest way to give a dog a bath, then that's the answer
to your question. Get it? It's real easy. So far so good.
Your audience is going to start wondering why they are reading your article. What
makes you such an expert in giving a dog a bath or writing articles on the Internet?
Well, if you're a dog owner, tell them it's because you're a dog owner. You've owned
a dog for x number of years, and through those years, you've refined your approach
to bathing your dog. It's become a sort of rocket science for you, and whenever
friends come over and witness it, they are in utter awe. They are seeing something
that is genuinely amazing. For me, I've been working with the Internet just about
since it started to become popular, somewhere in the 1990s. I've also worked for
numerous technology companies, helped write technical books, have my name listed in
the Amazon catalog of books, and have several blogs I maintain and am webmaster for
several other websites. I don't know much about html or coding, but I do know a bit
about writing, so that's where my focus is.
OK, your audience is interested. Now is the time to tell them the basic steps to
achieve the goal you've set out in your article, whether it be bathe a dog or write
an article. For bathing a dog, you probably have steps involving the bathroom,
water, soap, extra hands, maybe even a restraint system. For my article writing
article, it's all about figuring out what your good at and coming up with a simple
step-by-step approach to dealing with it. If you are preparing food, you follow a
recipe. Even if you know how to prepare something by rote, you're still following a
recipe in your head. There are always certain steps you are going to follow, and
with your information, the same will be true. Just try to simplify the approach to
solving the problem at hand, whether it be washing a dog or preparing a cake from
scratch. Whatever you prepare here is going to be the bulk of the information you
are going to deliver. Make it as long as necessary, but as to-the-point as you can.
If you want to throw in an anectdote, do it, but have some restraint.
Most projects can be started just about anytime. However, what you write about might
need to be done at a specific time. Maybe you need to start washing the dog when
you've had a good night's rest and lots of energy, not when you've just come home
from work, and you're as hungry as heck. You start making a cake when you have all
the ingredients in one place. Your start creating that perfect skirt from that
well-known pattern once you've picked out the material and have purchased enough of
it. You plant the tree once you've weeded the area and tilled the soil. Or whatever
it is you do when you plant a tree.
Once you've given them all you know about a subject, tell them where to get more.
This is usually called a bibliography, but you can call it anything you like. Give
them links to other similar articles. Give them a few ideas about how they can use
this information in other ways. Maybe they can wash a horse or car or baby in the
same way as a dog. Maybe not. Maybe you've had better luck with certain shampoos.
Maybe a special brand of flour works better than others when you bake a cake. Maybe
a shot of strong whiskey before preparing to bake the cake helps calm the nerves.
Whatever it is, give them whatever information you think might be important or might
help with the project at hand.
Now, it's time to let everyone know about your article. The easiest way is to let
Google know about it by visiting Add your
URL to Google. If you do this, Google will know to index your web site the next
time it crawls the web. No one really knows how often they do this, but it's
probably about every three weeks or so. But before you do the Google thing, read the
15 Minute SEO List, which
will give you some quick and easy ways to optimize your web page and make sure it
has the best chance of being found.
I hope you've enjoyed this article. It's short and to the point. To see an example
of how it was used to write an article, view Promote Yourself on Google. It's a
similar article and will give you an idea of how your very own article might look.
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