One of the things I always suggest that people do to promote themselves and their website is to write articles. Preferably quality articles that have some substance and that actually offer readers good quality information.

Admittedly, that kind of article does take time to write but it needn’t take forever if you follow these simple tips.

Outline your article

A brief outline – in your head or on screen or on paper – makes all the difference.

When you’re starting out, jot your outline down (even a few lines in Notepad will work OK). Once you’re used to writing articles then you may be able to “wing” it more and just let the words flow from your head onto the screen.

Don’t spend forever deciding which is the best way – try them out over the next few articles you write and it will soon become apparent which is your preferred method even if you can’t decide otherwise.

Do research if necessary

The biggest trick I know with writing is to know enough about your subject to be able to write without having to go away and check everything all the time.

It’s counter-productive.

And it’s also a sign that you don’t really know what you’re talking (writing) about.

On occasion I’ll check a fact but – most of the time – if I’m writing about a subject then it’s one that I know more than enough about to be able to write somewhere between 500 and 2,000 words straight away with no further research.

If that thought scares you, you’ll need to question why you are thinking of writing about the subject in the first place (unless this is for an essay at school or college, but those are a different subject).

And if you thought “only 2,000 words?” then you should have no problem writing quality articles.

Start writing

Yes, I know that step should be obvious but if you’re one of those people who are going to start writing “tomorrow” then you’ll know who this advice is aimed at.

If you’ve done an outline, simply write a paragraph or two (or three) about each of the points in your outline. Much like I’ve done for this article.

For most people, it’s an order of magnitude easier to write a handful of paragraphs than it is to write a few pages at once.

This does mean that you could split up your writing into several sessions but, whilst that’s OK for reports and books, it defeats the object of writing an article quickly.

It’s far better to write the complete article in one session. Two sessions at a stretch but that should be the exception, not the rule.

Press publish!

The web is great.

If you get something wrong, you can go straight in and correct it.

You don’t need to carve out a new piece of granite or recall thousands of printed pieces.

So press publish and then – if you feel it’s needed – read through the published article. You can make a few final adjustments if you need to but chances are that if you’ve followed the steps above, that won’t be necessary.

If you’re publishing your articles on a WordPress site, you can also do like I often do and encourage people to comment on them. That can help to keep your articles alive and can bring out ideas for new articles as they spring out of the questions.

Which leads on neatly to that very suggestion: if you’d like to comment on this article, please do so!