article writing examples

article writing examples

Effective Techniques for Writing Compelling and Engaging Articles

1. Introduction to Article Writing

Articles are not simple informative printed works. Of course, they must be informative in concept, but there is much more to consider in terms of how to write an article. To be honest, they are a compelling form owing to their quite impressive and varied approaches. They better engage the reader, take up many forms, and share their valuable methods, mysteries, motivations, wisdom, warnings, and rewards, with the greatest depth and breadth. Articles can be of different types; for example, feature articles have personality and charisma along with fun elements. Academic articles provide factual information along with research work, methodology, and statistics. Newspaper articles are straight to the point, with the text usually being crisp and tight, like in a piece of music.

While there is no single formula for writing a good article, it is important to begin with understanding the purpose, role, and importance of articles in all kinds of publishing. Article writing is the process of creating a non-fiction text about current news, issues, events, or topics of interest. The medium of publication can be a newspaper, a magazine, a website, a blog, and so on. For example, an article can be an editorial, review, feature, academic paper, etc. Articles are written to discuss different subjects or topics. Articles included in publications usually contain information on current issues or events happening around the area of the writer or the publication. Writers present their ideas using different types of articles.

2. Structuring Your Article for Maximum Impact

Inside this document, I will present seven separate techniques that you can use to improve your sales success. Each technique has two main facets: A ‘How It Works’ section that describes the topic, and a ‘Why?’ section that explains how and why that technique works. At the end of the document, I present a discussion of ways to measure your improvement.

A powerful tool for creating story impact is the setting of expectations. By teaching the reader to expect certain things, in one stroke you are providing a roadmap of what will be included in the remainder of the article, and by implication, what will not. The incomplete portion acts like an itch that readers must scratch by reading more, thereby increasing their involvement. And by specifically identifying the areas of understanding that will be covered, you can actually teach the reader what they will learn.

Small, neutral, relatable, truthful stories interspersed throughout the proposal go a long way to increasing reader involvement, and improving the customer’s satisfaction with the sales process.

The essential function of a story is to build the trust and empathy with the reader that allows the buyer to view the seller’s product from a neutral, trustworthy perspective. Since dealing with trust issues with your own buyer is a difficult hurdle to overcome, telling a story that contains within it the very same trust that the buyer wants to achieve helps break the logjam and move the buying process along. And the more intrinsic the story (‘since we’ve gone through everything else together, let’s push through the rest together’), the more impact you will have.

Create impact with every word. In creating articles designed to drive action, always start at the end. Define exactly the action you want your readers to perform after they are done. Then build your article to serve as a delivery system for a compelling story that drives that action.

In this second article in the series of five on writing effective marketing communications, I will discuss the structure that I have found is the most effective approach for creating impactful articles—those that engage readers fully and generate the action you seek. The structure is deceptively simple.

Creating a compelling article requires a mix of both art and science in order to dependably get the desired result. While many would argue that articles are like most creative works—substantially subjective—my experience at ClickZ, and hundreds of discussions with clients about whether an article had significant impact or not, has given me a framework that reliably and predictably delivers compelling content and engages users fully. I will share that framework with you here.

3. Crafting Captivating Introductions and Conclusions

The importance of style: The more care or passion you put into your article, the more care and passion your readers will get out of it.

Conciseness: It follows that you must cut superfluous words. Eliminate every redundant word. Eliminate clutter. Every learned idea from good journalism can upgrade the quality of your writing. To put it another way, deduct needless expositions, avoid circumlocutions, and eschew obfuscation. Omit needless emphasis, too.

Topic Sentences: For each paragraph, begin with a sentence that defines the specific topic and the thought-object relationship. It should make the reader more interested in further reading. It should be no longer than one clear sentence. The emphasis, of course, should be on what you intend to accomplish with the article, not on the words you use to achieve that end.

All the same rules of compelling body copy don’t apply. It’s essential to take the same care in crafting a captivating intro and summary. For the opening, make sure to immediately communicate your subject, audience, and goals. In one or two sentences, tell an engaging story to introduce the problems that led to your work. Then clearly mark the beginning of the actual work with a new sentence. The summary should reiterate your subject, results, and goals, and restate your plan. The objectives you stress in the paper should be stated in the summary.

4. Utilizing Persuasive Language and Tone

Using these tactics in your articles will make the reader more confident and engaged with the information presented, as it will have both research data and personal stories about the subject matter. This combination will make the article appear more credible and accurate.

5. Conforming to reader expectations: Balance your readers’ expectations to assure their willingness to accept your point of view and to not confuse or alienate their expectations. Satisfy the reader’s interests, needs, or desires with the message content.

4. Establishing common ground: Establish common ground with your readers, such as shared values, perceptions, and self-awareness. Use questions and statements to involve the readers and resonate with your audience.

3. Using the right words: Use terms and phrases that carry feelings of conviction and sincerity, excitement, urgency, and necessity. Use sharp, concise, and streamlined wording with a strong presence to maximize emphasis and interest.

2. Building emotion: Inspire readers’ emotions to capture and hold attention, and to build and sustain enthusiasm for your argument. Use personal stories and readers’ comments to build reader identification and interest.

1. Obtaining reliability: Cite experts and claims from other sources to build your case and inspire confidence in your readers. You can do this by using secondary research data or testimony from qualified experts.

Another tactic that can help to improve the persuasiveness of your article is to utilize persuasive language and tone throughout your write-up. There are five major tactics used in writing to create a believable tone and style in your article. These are as follows:

5. Editing and Polishing Your Article for Publication

The body of the article includes the various articles that support and explain your premises and conclusions. Each sub-premise or conclusion should have its own articles that support and explain it. Articles can include reasons, facts, examples, experiences, or other means of support. The articles should be well supported and well presented. Your audience needs to believe and accept them. Clear, informative, and supportive articles are essential in a successful article. Whether you are describing, explaining, informing, criticizing, or persuading, your article needs to be strong enough to support your premises and conclusions.

The article introduction can be the first paragraph, the first few paragraphs, or the first page. The purpose of the introduction is to present the subject to the reader, to gain the reader’s interest, and to tell the reader what the article is about. The introduction should be appealing and attention-grabbing, in addition to motivating the reader to continue reading the article.

An article lead-in is the most important part of your article since it decides if the reader will buy or not buy your article. The reader generally starts reading from the first word of the article, reads the introduction (could be first paragraph or possibly first few paragraphs), then looks at the conclusion (usually the last paragraph) before deciding if he or she will purchase the article or continue reading. While spelling and grammatical errors might be forgiven by an attentive reader, introduction and conclusion defects almost surely will not.

An enduring article must include an expected article lead-in, an effective article body, and a strong article ending.

2.1. Polish The Article Parts

(h) To really fine tune your article for publication, let it sit for a week, then come back at least a day later to reread and re-edit it.

(g) Recheck spelling and grammar to fix what the spell-check plus grammar-check didn’t catch.

(f) Rewrite to improve clarity, sentence style, flow, synchronization, transitions and writing style.

(e) Use your word processor’s thesaurus or a thesaurus you like to identify the best word to describe what you want to convey. Only use longer words or unusual words if simpler or more common words are unavailable or do not adequately describe what you want to say.

(d) Include subheadings as necessary to enhance readability of your article.

(c) Be sure that any capitalization is consistent in your article.

(b) Eliminate wordiness by using active voice rather than passive voice, by replacing phrases with single words or short phrases, by getting rid of any unnecessary words, by combining sentences for easy understanding, by getting rid of redundancies, and by avoiding cliches and buzzwords.

(a) Spell-check and grammar-check your article so that these elements are corrected before you waste your time on other problems.

Editing and proofreading your article can be quite challenging because it is so difficult to detach yourself from your own work. With the strategic approach to editing and polishing suggested here, you should be able to improve your article considerably while maintaining the original “voice”.