We’re doing quite a lot of Article Marketing for clients at the moment, which we love, but it’s clear that when clients come to us they’re not sure what they want to achieve.

So we’ve developed a set of questions to help us to write the best articles for our clients, and I thought these might help some of you out there writing your own articles.

What is the aim of the article?

It’s important to know what you want to achieve with your article. Is it aimed at promoting one of your services? A general overview of your industry? Setting you out as an expert? Encouraging newsletter signups? People want articles for all sorts of reasons. The important thing in article marketing is to realise that an article needs to be educational and informative, not purely self promotional, but know what end result you want rom it helps you to form the structure in the first place.

What essential information must be included in the article?

It’s probable that you have something you REALLY want to say. It may be about some legislation, it might be about some recent research, maybe even just some stats you’ve foud – remember to include it by writing it down, and expanding from there.

What information/perspective should be excluded from the article?

If there’s info out there that you DON’T want in the article, or a perspective you DON’T want to address, then it’s worth making a note of it. This relates more to articles you’re getting other people to write, but it’s a good question to think about.

What are the key ‘terms’ or phrases that you would like included in the article?

If you’re writing articles to help get good backlinks or help SEO, then it’s worth doing a little bit of keyphrase research before starting. Which phrases do you need to include – and which ones do you want to exclude?

What action would you now like the reader to take?

When the reader has finished reading your article, what do you want them to do now? What’s the ‘call to action’? Do you want them to click to a certain page on your site, download a demo, sign up for your newsletter, pick up the phone, send you an email, find out more infor about you – what? Deciding on this can help you to close your article with a strong call to action and ensure you’re more likely to get the result you want.

Are there any good resources that you would like the writer to use when creating this document?

If you want to refer to stats or surveys, other websites or resources, make a note of them so you (or we) remember to include links to them. Quoting stats but not linking to the original source leaves you open to people not believing you, as well as making your article less powerful overall.

What is the TITLE of the article?

Once all the above steps are taken, choosing the title should be pretty easy. In some cases you’ll have decided the title ahead of time, but either way, it’s a pretty important part of the process

Hopefully the above questions that we ask our article marketing clients will help you to get started on your article – if you’re still stuck, there’s always our Article Writing special offer until the end of January!
photo credit: MagdaMontemor