Seven Easy Steps to Effective Article Writing.

There are many ways to market your new home business. There are Safelists, pay-per-click and article writing, to name a few. I have found article writing to be quite easy and very effective, because a single article can turn into many by just submitting the same article to many different article directories. By doing so, you will quickly expand your marketing horizons. If you wrote just 10 articles and placed them on 10 different search engines, you would not have 100 articles driving people to your website and money to your bank account!

Here are seven simple steps to make sure you are covering all of the bases when it comes to bringing your article to life.

Step 1: Choose a Topic

It is best to direct your article about your particular business, but that doesn't have to limit you to the same topic all of the time. Yes, you want to make yourself "the expert" on your business, but being a bit bendable and out of the box can set your creativity on fire and bring an outstanding article come to life.

And if you are into many different products, such as affiliate marketing then your topic should reflect that particular product. After all, if you were trying to sell pet products you should write your article about snoring! Your article will get indexed by its content and if your affiliate link does not associate with the topic, then you will be wasting your time in writing the article in the first place.

A good way to find topics is to listen. Listen to the questions that people may ask you that require an explanation, jot that question down and proceed to write an article to help others solve that problem. You will soon find that you have more topics than you have time to write.

Step 2: Do a Bit of Research

Don't waste too much time on this, but it if you are having trouble getting started in with your thinking process, go and read what other people are writing about this topic. Read other blog posts on the topic, check out some magazine articles or flip through some books. This will stimulate your thinking and make writing easier and quicker in the long run.

Step 3: Create an Outline or Important Bullet Points

You might want to start with deciding, "what is the most important thing I want people to know?" Then outline or bullet point how you will let people know that one thing. People like reading articles, but also like to do it quickly and creating one or two paragraphs and then bullet points to highlight what you want the reader to really grasp is very effective.

Step 5: Write Your Article

Just follow your outline and fill in the content with thoughts that pop into your mind. Your objective is to include all the important points that you want to make. A good rule of thumb is to write an intro paragraph to tell people what the article will be about. Your second paragraph could lead up to what you are about to tell them. Then you will have your bullet points and I find that three to seven is a good number to get your point across and your article substance.

Your goal is to not just give information, but to present that information in an interesting way. This is where you let your personal style shine through. Will it be conversational, "brainy" or humorous? Let your personality shine through.

After you write your first draft, you might want to walk away from it and let it set a few hours. When you come back to it and get ready to edit and post, you might see it in a different light and want to make a few changes.

Step 5: Edit and Proofread

Spelling and sentence structure errors reflect badly on your intelligence. Spell checkers do not always catch things like using the wrong word or word omissions, and they can't distinguish between to and too, or its and it's. Enlist proofreaders to catch grammar errors. Read twice, publish once.

Step 6: Decide on a Title

There are two ways you can approach this: decide on your title and write your article around it or choose your topic, write your article and then decide on your title. Choose a title that communicates the subject matter, entices people to read it and contains your key words. Remember you want your article to be found by people wanting more information on that particular topic so your key words are important.

I like to choose my topic, write my article and then decide on my title.

Step 7: Publish

There are many great article directories. In fact, you are reading this on one of them! Just do a simple search for "free article directories" and you will see plenty of them. Post to as many as you can. Remember, article submission is a quick, easy and a "very affordable" way to market your business.

Have fun and build your business with article writing.

Andrea Pekarik Welch specializes in helping people to build a business through understanding the basics of using simple and affordable marketing techniques. http://www.PremierWealthSystemsPro.com

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