I received this question recently:

One of the biggest challenges I face is how do I write content for my WordPress site and get a constant flow of new ideas for articles and products?

It’s a great question that faces many online entrepreneurs so I thought I’d share some of my best tips.

What You Should Know About Writing Articles

Ask a successful entrepreneur what helped them grow their business, establish their position as an authority in their nice and generate traffic, and many of them will cite articles as the number one tool in their online arsenal.  Articles (or blog posts) are without a doubt the backbone of an online business and many online entrepreneurs establish a strict routine of writing new articles for their audience on a weekly basis.

Before you begin writing articles for your site, let’s take a look at some key practices in writing good articles:

  • Articles should be about 500 to 800 words long.  If they’re longer, consider breaking them down into two or more smaller articles and releasing them as a series of blog posts.  That being said, I break that rule all the time – if content is good, people will make time to read it.
  • Articles should provide useful information that compels the reader to find out more about what you have to say about the topic or discover more about the services and products you offer.  When you’re first starting out, it’s tricky to find the balance that you feel comfortable with.  Sharing enough information to benefit your reader without teaching everything you have to teach about any given topic.
  • Articles should focus on a specific topic and be clearly outlined.
  • Articles should have a compelling title.

3 Tips For Writing A Good Title For Your Article

One of the first things I learned when I first started working with online entrepreneurs is that the title is the most important part of an article (or even a product or program).  The title is usually what compels your reader to read your article… or to keep on surfing.  Because the title is the most important part of an article, the following tips will serve as a guideline to help you create a good title:

  • Emphasize a benefit: Read rates increase when a title expresses a benefit that the reader gets when they read your article.  For example: “How to Write Content For Your Blog Site” highlights the benefit to the reader much more clearly than “Writing Articles.”
  • Use specific sub-titles: Article sub-titles should be specific rather than vague and can work to enhance your SEO (by using headline tags) as well as increase your read rate (by drawing your reader into the article).   For example, “3 Tips for Writing A Good Title” is more compelling than “How To Write a Good Title.”
  • Generate curiosity or controversy: Some of the best titles use shock tactics or controversy or draw the reader in by piquing their interest.  For example “How I Make Money In My Sleep.”

If you’re stuck for ideas or want to start building a swipe file, visit http://ezinearticles.com or http://ideamarketers.com and spend some time browsing through their article database.  You don’t need to read the articles for this exercise, just read the titles.  If there are any that pique your interest, copy and paste the titles into a Word document and start building a swipe file that you can reference when you’re looking for titles for your own articles.

Article Title Swipe File

To help you get your swipe file started, I’ve compiled a short file featuring some of the best titles my clients have used for their own articles over the years.  You can download your copy of the Article Title Swipe File here.

We’ll take a look at writing the body of the article itself in the next post in this series.

iChat: Do you write articles for your online business?

  • Do you write the articles yourself or do you have them ghost written for you?
  • How about a swipe file… is it a strategy you use often or only when you get stuck?
  • Feel like sharing? …

Let me know your story by posting a comment below.