Top tips for writing articles to submit to directories

It is easy for anyone to write an effective, informative and interesting article if you just follow these basic steps.

WHAT TO WRITE ABOUT

It really could be anything, but what people are most interested in is the knowledge and experiences of other people who have already tackled the problems or challenges they face. They get support from knowing that they are not the only one and they can save time by choosing the best approaches or information sources that have worked for other people.

A lot of web articles start by state a problem, such as "how do you write a good article for the web", and then explain how the article is going to solve the problem by showing a simple step-by-step approach to article writing.

Another great area is your own experiences - what happened to you while you were at school and how you got around it, discussions you have had with your child's teacher or school, why that right-handed chainsaw was downright dangerous and how you made it safer, or where you found a left-handed version!

HOW TO WRITE YOUR ARTICLE

1. Make your title snappy and descriptive - it is what people will see in the article listings and search results and what will attract them to click on your items to see the full article.

2. The same goes for the article summary. If appropriate, you could just copy and paste the first paragraph of your article as the summary

3. Organize your material into the main points first. Before you begin writing think of the main areas that your article is going to cover. You may not necessarily show the points in the final version, as I am doing in this article, however, for your own outline of the article you should know what you are going to say before you begin writing. Write down these points and then make sure you include them as you begin the writing process.

4. Put the reader at ease. You are not writing for a scientific or literary community or to win any prizes, but to your peers on the internet. Write in a simple style and if you introduce new terms, define them for your readers.

5. Explain your points in short paragraphs. Short paragraphs are easier for the reader to follow. No one likes to look at a long block of solid text. Three, four or five sentences are usually enough for one paragraph.

6. Don't be afraid to spill all the beans! Tell your trade secrets! No, i am not crazy, the more you tell, the more people will be interested in what you are writing. If you give more information, people will understand that you really are an authority on the subject that you are writing about.

7. Give real examples and personal experiences to support your points. Tell people how you faced a problem and how you solved it. Or give hypothetical examples that demonstrate the problem and your solutions to it.

8. If you have your own webs site selling your products or services, you can include some benefits but keep the "sell" very low key. You can use the resource box at the bottom of your article to make a pitch and give links to your web site.

9. Give links and resource information to your readers. Give the addresses of websites where your readers can get more information on the subject that you are talking about. These may be your own websites or they can be other resources.

10. Get a second opinion on your article. Show it to your family, friends or colleagues, and don’t worry if they criticise you, it is better that your friends find the mistakes than people you don't;t know or, worse, possible clients or customers. A good editor is a writer's best friend

11. Keep the most important information near the beginning of the article and summarize what you want to say at the end. If an article is too long, directory editors usually cut things near the end, so keep your most important points and ideas in the beginning of the article. At the very end of the article you can summarize what you set out to accomplish in your opening paragraph.

12. Make the most of the Resource box and author profile to give information about yourself, your websites or blogs and any products or services you are marketing

13. Before you submit, check your spelling and formatting carefully - a lot of articles get rejected because of poor presentation as the directory editors do not have time to go through submitted articles correcting spelling, language and formatting. If your does get rejected for any reason, don't take it personally, just edit to it to make it acceptable and re-submit!

14. Do check on the way the directory you are submitting to needs to have the links in your resource box formatted. Most just want you to put in the full web address (url) beginning with the "http://" and they will automatically format it for you. Some need you to put it in with the full html for the link or to avoid characters like a period "." immediately after the address.

HOW TO ACTUALLY CREATE YOUR ARTICLE

It is best to use a text editor on your own computer to create your article and then cut-and-paste it into the article submission screen. There is nothing worse than spending ages typing up an article into a website form only to find that when you submit it your connection crashes or your login has timed-out and you lose all your work!

Make sure you use a simple text editor that does not put loads of formatting into your text. Most directories will only allow you to use very simple formatting like Bold and Italic and you will need to enter it as html code like this for bold < b >Bold text< /b > and this for italic < i >Italic text< /i > (I have put some spaces in to show how it works rather than just converting the text, if you use this in your article, leave out the spaces).

You can use the Windows Notepad editor or whatever is supplied with your computer but it is better to use something that has slightly more functionality. Also, Notepad does some strange things with line breaks and when you paste what looks like a perfectly well formatted article into the web submission form it all comes out double-spaced and with breaks in the wrong places that you then have to delete manually. A good alternative is the free program NotepadSX that also allows you to edit multiple documents in a tabbed interface - search for it to find a free download site.

Some directories have spell checkers that check your article when you preview it and for others you will need to do it yourself. If so, you could paste your article (including title, summary, resource box) into a word processing program like MS Word and use the spell-checker there. Or there is a great facility online at http://www.microspell.com that allows you to paste your article text into a window and have it checked. This is a really good interface for making changes. They also do a desktop application that allows you to check multiple documents and have a lot more flexibility.

If you have the Google Toolbar (http://www.toolbar.google.com) you can paste the article into the directory submission form then click the spell-check button to check and edit it "in situ". Whichever way you do it, make sure you keep a copy of the final clean version as a text file on you own computer so you can make changes to it later or re-submit it elsewhere if you want to.

Article Source: http://www.lefthandworld.com

Keith Milsom is the owner of www.anythingleft-handed.co.uk , the specialist online shop and website for left-handers and runs the left-handed article directory at www.lefthandworld.com . His wife and son are also left-handed and he has run numerous surveys among the more than 50,000 members of their Left-Handers Club. He also runs specialist websites for left handers at www.lefthandedchildren.org and www.lefthandersday.com

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