How To Write an Article

CopyPress

April 27, 2022 (Updated: May 4, 2023)

Depending on the industry of your business, it’s possible you might benefit from creating quality content like blogs and articles. Well-written content can help you attract an audience to your brand by providing them with helpful and insightful information. In turn, this helps your company build audience loyalty and satisfaction, which you can use to turn your readers into paying customers. So, let’s dive into what you need to know on how to write an article. In this article, we discuss:

What Is an Article?
How Do Articles Work With Content Marketing?
What Is the Format of an Article?
How To Write Articles for Your Business
Tips for Using Articles In Content Marketing

What Is an Article?

Image via Unsplash by @nickmorrison

An article is a piece of informative content that people research, write, and distribute to readers. You can write articles for different mediums such as newspapers, magazines, and websites. Companies, however, most often write and use articles as part of their content marketing strategy. This provides readers and potential customers with information that’s valuable and helpful. This helps motivate them to interact with the company further, such as more articles, signing up for a newsletter, or making a purchase.

Read more about it: All About Content Writing: Your Definitive Guide

How Do Articles Work With Content Marketing?

When companies perform content marketing with well-written resource articles, they often develop a lot of content at once. To start this, businesses research specific keywords that their website and content should target. These keywords are often relevant to the business’s industry or field. For instance, let’s say your company helps new authors self-publish their works. Some of the articles you write might include “how to self-publish your book,” “tips for a first-time publisher,” and “how to tell an engaging story.”

Each one of these articles might attract a specific audience to your website. Then, using well-placed calls-to-action, you can entice your visitors to interact with your company further. This can include scheduling a call, downloading content, or reading more articles on your site.

What Is the Format of an Article?

Here are some steps to help you format your articles and improve their readability:

1. Add a Title

Your title defines the article’s topic and gives readers a preview of what they expect to read. When writing your title, it’s important to keep it between 50 and 60 characters. This will help ensure that Google and other search engines show the entire title on the search engine results page (SERP). It’s also helpful to make sure it’s enticing. Consider using different techniques, like adding numbers or promising the answer to a question. For example, “Marketing: A Definitive Guide” or “12 Tips For Changing Your Fashion Style” are both examples of eye-catching titles.

Looking for more tips on title creation? Check out our free eBook on how to create effective titles and headlines.

2. Include Your Name

Adding a name or author information to your article can help humanize your brand. This can allow you to build better relationships with readers and develop a community around your content. If you have a content team, have them take turns publishing posts with their own bylines and a bio at the end of the article. This might even encourage some of your readers to comment on your articles and start a conversation with the writer by asking them questions or voicing concerns about the material. This also gives your team the opportunity to showcase their expertise in a particular topic.

3. Write the Introduction

Your introduction tells your audience what the article is about and explains to them why they might find the information interesting. Often, an article’s introduction can mean the difference between someone continuing to read or immediately clicking away. Use strategies to catch your audience’s attention, like captivating narratives that outline a problem your target audience faces with the promise of demonstrating how to solve it.

Here are additional tips to improve your article’s introduction:

Keep introductions short and concise: Write three to four sentences for your introduction to inform the audience about what they can expect to read. Use writing techniques to generate suspense for the reader and enhance their curiosity about the article’s topic.
Shorten the length of sentences: Write shorter sentences so the reader can easily understand what you’re writing. Write in the present, active tense and remove filler words like “that,” “just,” “even,” and “seem” to strengthen the quality of your content.
Write the body first: Write the rest of your content before writing your intro paragraph to give you options on how to present your story. You may try to add the introduction with placeholder text and complete it once you write the rest of the article.
Deliver on promises: Only introduce topics your article will explain further. This approach builds trust with a reader because they want to read about what attracted them to your article.

4. Insert Your Body

The body of your article should include different headings that relate to the topic. For example, let’s say you’re writing an article on “how to change a tire.” Your headings might include “why is it important to know how to change a tire?,” “tips for changing a tire on a highway,” and “steps for changing your tire.” Under each of these headings, you can write short paragraphs that deliver unique information to the reader based on the subject of the heading.

Though the number of headings in an article may vary, it’s beneficial to have at least two. This can help break up the information and improve the readability of your piece. If you’re writing listicles or how-to articles, you can also create sub-headings for each of the steps or list items. Improving readability can ensure that your potential customers read your content for a longer period of time, which can reduce its bounce rate and increase its conversion rate.

5. Write a Conclusion

The conclusion restates the main point of your article. It gives the reader a clear picture of the lesson they should learn after reading the article’s content and how the main points connect with the purpose of the article. Conclusions should include a call-to-action, which gives the reader an action to perform once they finish reading your article. Explain the value of your call-to-action to give the reader an incentive to act on it once you present it to them.

These calls to action can include phrases like:

Sign Up Now
Schedule a Call
Download Today
Contact Us

Your calls to action can vary between articles or landing pages of your website depending on any ongoing marketing campaign or if there’s a subset of your target audience who will be visiting your content.

How To Write An Article For Your Business

Here are some steps to help you write a quality article for your business’s marketing efforts:

1. Define Your Topics

Pick a topic that can entice your target audience to read about your company or your client’s company. Write a list of engaging topics and evaluate how they’re relevant to your target audience. If you need to expand your list, conduct keyword research to find the highest-ranking articles on search engines. You might need to narrow down your list of topics based on their relevance and the difficulty of the keyword.

Once you have your keywords and topics, create a content schedule. This can help you develop deadlines for each article you write and ensure you’re posting consistently. When you post content consistently, it can help increase your audience’s loyalty and help them know when new content might be available.

2. Perform Research

Once you have the topics ready to go, it’s imperative that you perform research. This research can help you deliver quality and accurate information to your readers. It can also help you understand the most popular headings other businesses use for their topics. For instance, let’s say you’re writing an article on “how to write a book.” When you search that keyword into Google, take a look at the top-ranking articles. Do any of them have similar headings? What kind of information do they cover beside the main topic? Use this information and bring it to your own audience.

If you need to perform additional research on content, look at different types of evidence to support the main points of your article. Some data you may find for your article includes:

Statistics
Quotes relevant to your topic
Definitions of industry-specific words (if applicable)
Current events on industry topics
Facts from national and local news outlets
Company data separate from what’s available on SERPs

2. Write a Draft Without Editing It

Write a rough draft to structure the ideas you’re communicating to your target audience. This can give you more freedom to write your ideas and thoughts about the direction of your article. The ideas and thoughts you write lay the foundation for your article and present the work you need to complete during the editing process. Keep your research in one folder or document so you can note the data you found and reference it in your content.

Relevant: 9 Simple Ways to Improve Your Writing

3. Read Your Draft Out Loud

Once you’re finished with your rough draft, read your article out loud from start to finish. Refer back to your research to identify if your rough draft matches the tone and messaging of your company or what your client requested. For example, you might note that you need to elaborate on the year-round benefit of travel if you’re working on an article for a client in the tourism industry.

Find any errors and fix them and pay attention to sentence flow and structure. The notes you make when reading out loud help you humanize your content and keep readers engaged until the end of your article. If your target audience stays on the page long enough to read the article, it increases their chances of performing the call-to-action. For example, if a reader clicks on a link in your article’s call-to-action, it may influence them to buy more products and services or give feedback on their experience with your company.

Ask an editor or friend to read over your article to make additional edits. They might provide insight on what you need to add to improve your article’s quality, such as adding information to give readers more clarity.

4. Make Final Edits

Read your article out loud one more time after you make all edits to ensure that you’re confident of its quality. If you have a style guide, read it over again to make sure your content aligns with their specifications, then submit.

Tips for Using Articles In Content Marketing

Here are tips to help you write an engaging article:

Target the rich snippet: Rich snippets show up at the top of the first page of search results and give a brief view of what the article includes. If you find searchable keywords for your article, use the content in the rich snippet as a framework for the type of content you’ll write.
Add photos and video: Adding photos and videos gives your readers another reason to engage with your article. Images and videos can provide more information, add context on existing information, or break up information to enhance the content’s clarity.
Develop personas: Personas are fictional representations of your target audience. These help you figure out the style and tone of your article, and ensure your writing attracts the right people.
Repurpose your content: After you write an article, consider using that information and content for different parts of your website. Use your research to develop a podcast, white paper, or eBook.

At CopyPress, we can help you with all the above. We’ll work with you to create a living style guide that describes your content’s purpose, target audience, competitors, and brand voice and tone, as well as any stylistic details you want our content team to keep in mind. Then, we’ll write content that both search engines and your target audience will notice. With the right content in place, have our content team repurpose your top-performing articles into an eBook or white paper.

Feel confident with our team of expert writers, editors, and quality assurance specialists who can help you create high-quality, engaging articles for your website. Schedule a call with us today to see how we can help you boost your content marketing efforts.