Interactive Books Are Getting Better all the time.

Sales of eBooks, and book delivered to an e-reader like the Amazon Kindle are skyrocketing, and there is more video uploaded in the time it takes to read this short post than you could watch in a week.

Text or mostly text books will be a around for a long time to come, but why not present your information in a way that is more engaging to the reader.

Mike Matas shows off one new title for the Apple ipad in this TED Talk video.

How will you use this in your next book?

Author 101 University is a must attend event for authors who are serious about making it in publishing.

I’ve told Rick Frishman that the “101” title is misleading. This has become a networking event that we go back to again and again.

The next one is March 3-6 in LA. I’ll be shooting video segments for my TV show.

Time will be tight, so I’m giving priority to my readers. You do have to be attending Author 101. If not, we’ll have other opportunities announced here in the future.

To get on the schedule, leave a comment below and let me know you’ll be there.

Author 101 is Sold Out

Last I heard, the event is sold out. Publishers, agents, book marketing professionals and authors gathering like this has a tendency to draw a crowd fast.

If you don’t have a ticket, but want to come and be in a video. let me know. I may be able to get a ticket. (leave a comment with your and I’ll email you privately).

I still see many books for sale without a Kindle version.

And I still get asked if the author marketing suggestions I teach are good for e-books.. from people who decided not to print a book as a cost cutting idea.

Here’s the future for a reading experience. This children’s book demo is a little bit over the top in terms of style, but the technology used is here today and affecting how we’ll expect to read tomorrow.

What are you doing to adapt your story and involve your readers?

Sometimes when I’m working on my next BestSeller book, I get a bit of writer’s block, I get up from where I am writing and take a walk

Within a few minutes, I’m interrupting the walk to write down an idea.

Chris Voss show us a another alterative… Write wherever you want with these Apple iPad book writing apps.

When new authors ask me how to write a book, I start by focusing on marketing. As an author today, you need a promotion plan for yourself and your book before the writing begins. Every rich and famous author I know will tell you the same story. Book marketing and promotion sells books.

No matter where you are in the process of creating your best seller, do not put off setting up a roadmap for to market and promote.

Marketing is 90% of the business of being an author.

Goals for Your Book

Occasionally, I meet authors who enjoy a cathartic process in their writing. Some authors don’t care if anyone ever reads what they write. If that’s you, great… write your heart out.

My assumptions is that readers of a book marketing blog are interested in having readers and that usually means the more readers the better.

When setting your goals, I suggest you envision that a million people will find out about your book.

How will your book change the world?

Most new authors don’t have an answer to this simple question. It’s important… Pause right now and write down your answer.

Successful authors know why they are writing a book. Most want to get more recognition for an idea or leads for their business. Some just want to share what they’ve learned. You will discover that as you define your goal clearly you can easily create a book and promotion plan that leads to that goal.

What is your goal? Who do you want as a reader? And most of all… What do you want them to do after reading your book?

Answer Your Reader’s Questions

Once you know your goal, and the outcomes you can promise your readers, there is one other step that will do the most to enhance your chances to create a best seller

Create an outline before you start to write.

It’s just like you were taught in school. A simple outline is your roadmap to writing a book that will lead to you goals, fulfill it’s promise to readers, and become a best seller.

Start by asking “What are the basic questions someone would ask about the topic?”  List these questions. The answers will become the chapters for your book. Add a few key points that you need to make on each of, and you soon have the framework for an entire book.

If you have a step by step approach to get the results or outcome your book promises, you can use each of these steps as a chapter, or arrange the questions you answer to lead through your process.

Using the answers and the step by step approaches together get you a list of chapters. Edit that list to just the ones you want to cover and you will have most of the outline.

Add an introduction, a narrative of your own story (how you got to the point of writing this book) to make it personal and interesting. I usually save this writing for last, but put it at the start of the book.

The Fast Way to Write is Not to Writing

I create most of my content with a computer and keyboard. Works great for many people, but there is a faster way to write (also the easiest): talk your book

Once you have an outline of chapters and key points, you can create the chapters in any order.. just by taking your book. As an expert on your topic, you likely get asked questions about your topic every day. In the course of a week, you will probably produce more than enough information to fill a book.

The trick is to record yourself as your focus on one of chapter.  Using your outline, you can quickly cover the topic and key points for that chapter. When that’s recorded and transcribed you’ll have a rough draft in no time.

Speaking into a recorder can be intimidating. Try one of these instead:

• Hire an editor or writer to work as your co-author. Once they become familiar with you and your outline of chapters, set up a phone conference line with recording and have them ask the questions and keep you on focused as you provide answers, stories, explanations and comments. You’ll find that having a listener on the line makes it easier, and using your editor will allow them insight and input during the process.
• Use what you already have. If you’ve been a guest on a teleseminar or radio program, given a speech on your topic or written articles, you likely have more material than you think… ready to add to your book. We start most projects by taking an inventory of these assets and our authors are surprised when they see the list.  A good editor can place your existing content into chapters in your outline much quicker than you thought possible.
• Blog your book content. If you don’t have content, start creating it in pieces. Many a book has started as a series of blog posts. I used some posts to start Twitter Revolution as the first step in that book. We added a polls and questions (on Twitter of course) and invited other experts on a radio program that we transcribed. We had hundreds of contributors and a rough draft in just a few weeks with hundreds of pages more than we needed. We edited it down to the best, and got the first book out about Twitter.
• Sell Your Information First. Information marketers know that the content of a book is more than enough material to create a seminar. The reverse it also true. Teach a course in person, in training classes, on the phone or on a webinar. Most of the material created for the course will be useful for your book. Make sure it’s recorded and transcribed.

Successful books today are usually not the result of years of research annotated with mounds of footnotes and strict academic standards. The writing style of college and universities is not going away, but most non fiction books, especially the best sellers, don’t use this strict style.

For most readers, the quality of a book comes from finding a connection with the author and actionable advise that gets them closer to their own goals… or leads them to a next step you can provide. Writing a book that focuses on the reader’s goals will create a best seller and let you reach your goals.

Quality writing, editing, proofreading and production for your book is important. Fortunately, there are professionals to help you produce this quality. Your job is expert content; you can hire others to polish your writing, fact check, edit and proofread your book.

What Sells Books

As a reader and author, I care about the quality of the books I read. I wish I could tell you that a well written book is what sells best.

Quality matters. Without good content, your book won’t achieve your goals, and could hurt your reputation… However, 95% of what sells a book is outside of what is written on the pages.

Here’s why:

1. Most of the readers looking for a book will miss your book. Even an International Best Seller is never seen by the majority of the population. My friend Mark Victor Hansen has sold 200 million books, but still introduces himself as “Co-creator of the Chicken Soup for the Soul series”. When Mark told me that he does this because he is often not recognized, I started asking people I meet.. amazed how often someone replied “Mark who?”  If they don’t see your book, the won’t buy it and will never read it
2. Most of the books purchased are not read. I’ve seen surveys of book buyers where 90% admitted that they wanted to read a important title, but after 2 years had not got past the first few pages. You can do a lot of good for the people that finish reading your book, but to reach them, you’ll need to also market to the many who want what you offer, but never read or even purchase a copy.
3. It’s highly unlikely that the person buying your book has already read your book. While you can assume that your good book will be recommended by those who read it, the decision to buy is most likely made by someone who hasn’t read your book. A reader has to buy your book before they get a chance to find out how good it really is.

This is not an excuse to ease up on the quality. It is a good reason to follow this advice:

You can’t judge a book by it’s cover… but you will sell more with a good cover

The buying process for a book is typical of what you do in a bookstore (A similar process happens online).

First, you pick up a book that gets your attention, you read the cover, then flip to the back cover, and then open the book to look at the dust jacket copy, the front matter (title page, reviews, table of contents) and maybe the forward, preface and first chapter.

Any of these steps can be the trigger that causes a reader to buy your book. Endorsements, reviews, and a well written synopsis will increase your sales.

If you are following my advice and marketing yourself, cross promoting with other authors, and building a network in your niche, you can count on reciprocity from these authors when the time comes from them to review your draft and give you a blurb.

Think about how many books you buy on the recommendation of someone… The selling power of trusted recommendation is so important that I counsel authors to start building a network before they start writing their book, continue networking during the writing process, and include your network with interviews, updates on your blog and regular communication.

One of the common requests I get when consulting authors on marketing and launch promotion campaigns is in gathering endorsements. I reach out to my network for clients and find that most authors want to help, especially if they have a sense of reciprocity coming from the author or me. Building real relationships is time consuming, but a key factor in getting your book accepted and shared by thought leaders.

A recommendation from a trusted thought leader to their followers becomes a leverage point in your marketing campaign. Technology makes this possible for any author. Social media tools help to create real relationships.

Writing a Book As Your Marketing Strategy

Whether you write a book to share your message, or develop leads for your business, the creation process is an amazing opportunity to market yourself.

Waiting till the book is finished to market will waste a huge opportunity. Now is the time to start building your network, connecting with thought leaders and positioning yourself as the expert author who will write a book. We’ve learned that laying out a roadmap first gets to your real goal for the book and will allow many times as many opportunities for growth, income and help creating the content of the book.

No matter where you are in the process today, use this process to get your book out faster, with quality content, positioned to reach the market. You will reach your goals and have more fun in the process.

Thousands of Online Marketers came to Las Vegas last week for PUBCON. An conference for webmasters, SEO (Search Engine Optimization), Social Media and Internet businesses.

Many of the sessions were about Twitter and Social Media.. and how to make them work for business. In one session, “Latest Trends on Twitter,” I shared my thoughts about what make Twitter work so well in the new world of marketing and a step by step approach to getting your message out today.

I told them about Edward Bernays, the greatest marketer of the 20th Century and the 3 steps for making a message spread.

Bernays is the guy who invented Public Relations. Before Bernays, we called it propaganda. Propaganda wasn’t a negative term until much later. In fact, Bernays wrote a book Propaganda in 1928 long before the Nazi’s gave the word a bad name.

Bernays was an expert as determining the desires of the public, then crafting his messages into short, memorable ideas that people would want to share. Today, we these memes.. the smallest unit of an idea, Or the more popular term for a short repeatable message: sound byte

Bernay’s worked for pork producers. They wanted to sell more bacon. After researching how people thought about bacon and breakfast, Bernays decided to tie bacon to the more popular dish of eggs and created the phrase you likely use today: “bacon and eggs”

In 1929, Bernays placed article in newspapers from his Middle America Information Bureau featuring quotes such as “Doctors recommend that Americans start the day with a hearty breakfast such as bacon and eggs.” Before that, this popular phrase didn’t exist.

Today, one might question the health benefits of that statement, we won’t discuss that here. What’s important to our study of marketing messages is that the simple idea of attaching bacon to the more popular eggs and creating a short, memorable, easily repeatable phrase has worked over an over again.

Twentieth Century media was broadcast. Companies with money to buy enough advertising would use it to create the popular slogans and products we talked about. In the Twenty-first Century, we’ve got a fragmentation of the old media and many channels that connect person to person without a centralized middleman (ie the publisher or broadcaster) and everyone can create and choose their own messages. It’s much, much more expensive to try to buy your way into popular culture, which makes crafting your sound byte more important.

Today, more than ever, it’s vital that you distill your message into a short meme that can be shared. A sound byte version that is consistent and repeatable.

Once you have a sound byte, you next work on finding groups of people who are already having a conversation about your topic. In the past 15 years, millions of web sites, special interest forums, niche blogs and personal web sites have been created and recently, Facebook and other social media have allowed anyone with any interest to connect and identify themselves. The cost of connecting is essentially zero, so there is no longer a need to trust a centralize authority (big media) to decide what message gets spread.

You can create your own community from scratch, but the leverage of connecting with thousands of existing groups and communities will work faster. Their structure will be stronger and is now the best means to share your sound byte.

Once you have a sound byte and engage with the conversations online, the third step is one that often frustrates marketers trained in the 20th Century… you must count on serendipity to succeed.

Serendipity is not “wishing for good results”… rather, it is the essence of tapping into the market power of trillions of individual conversations going on right now.

The science of chaos theory tells us that random events are extremely difficult to predict on an individual basis, but very dependable when grouped together.

You use serendipity every day.

One example of our dependence on chaos and serendipity is a water faucet. It would be impossible to predict the flow of one drop of water from the faucet into your glass (will this be the drop that splashes onto the counter top?) but you can count on the majority of the drops winding up in your glass.

Thanks to the extremely low costs of producing and sharing media today, you can share your meme (sound byte) over and over, through text, video, audio on blogs, social networks and media sharing sites where conversations are already happening.

When your message resonates with the reader, they can easily share it with others in that group, and groups that you don’t even know about. While you can’t predict which message unit will resonate with any of the groups, once you build relationships with these groups and learn their desires, you will begin to improve your odds of resonating and serendipity will kick in.. bringing you success well beyond anything you could have predicted for one campaign.

There are still many opportunities to buy your way into a conversation. Advertising a meme that resonates will speed up the chance that it will succeed. (advertising a message that does not resonate will not. It just adds to the noise at best and could even create an backlash).

The work of Edward Bernays shows us that the principles of marketing that work best are not new. The media has changed, and the days of multi-million dollar launches over loading us to break into the conversation are pretty much over. The playing field is a level as it’s ever been.

Use this simple three step process in any media for effective promotion:

1. Distill your message into a sound byte
2. Join the conversations. Add value while using your sound byte
3. Expect serendipity

My own sound byte version of today’s marketing is “Listen and Love” When I speak about marketing, I tell businesses that the conversation is already going on, then encourage them to listen. Once they really listen to people, they find things they can do to add value and do it (the “love”).

Using this approach to creating a meme, then sharing it, is “Listen and Love” on steroids. Once you begin to see the value of listening and responding as you would to help a friend, you will find your sound byte gets picked up and repeated. People don’t want to be sold. They do want to do business with someone they know, like and trust. You can build this trust with an authentic sound byte you spread while you listen and love.

The story of bacon and eggs is just one of many case studies from the work of Edward Bernays that we’ll be sharing in a book soon. Let me know if you see value it this method, or would like to know more about marketing this way.

I suspect you’ll think of Edward Bernays next time you order bacon and eggs.

No matter what topic you write about, putting it in terms that your readers want to hear will always have more appeal.

These three are strong buying motives. When you talk about your book, write descriptions, advertising copy or get interviewed about your book, keep in mind that potential readers are more interested in the outcome they can get from reading than the contents of your book.

When you speak in terms of a positive outcome for them, you’ll be much more likely to get attention, interest and sales from the conversation. Putting your best foot forward is stating benefits in the way your reader wants to hear.

Make sure you state the benefits in a way that covers one of these three whenever you can

Make Money

Can your readers or clients get more money if they follow your advice?  Tell them.

Don’t assume they know this… spell it out.

“reading this blog will give you specific advise to sell more books, and convert readers into buyers”

Be as specific as you can. Tell the story of a successful outcome of a past reader or client.

“One author I worked with used his book to land a million dollar consulting contract”

Most everyone wants more money. If you have a business topic, this is obvious, but you might also show the dollars and cents someone can get from better health or habits, that they get from reading your book.

Save Money

Making money is attractive. Saving money can be nearly as powerful.

“Using my promotion strategy, one author cut his publicity budget by 65% while landing on a national best seller list and getting three times as many leads in a month”

Again, be as specific as possible. You can make saving money the focus of your book, like Brandi Funk did with “Cut Your Health Care Cost Now” where she sites examples of people getting massive discounts on hospital bills, and provides resources for any family wanting quality health care at an affordable price.

You can use save money in many ways. Staying fit reduces medical costs. Motivation make you more productive, saving time and money.

Better Life

Regardless of how much money someone can make or save, the outcome from reading your book, or busying your services will no doubt help someone have a better life.

This is where every author can add value to their books, products or other services.

Once again, don’t assume that people know this. I’ve talked to hundreds of authors who decide to write a book to share their story, give back to the world, or share an important message. When you live the topic, you know how important it can be.. but most of your readers will be buying your book without that experience. Very seldom that someone will purchase thinking they know as much as  you

Spell it out. Make sure your readers know how reading your book or engaging your business will positively affect their lives.

When they know, they’ll be more apt to buy. It’s as simple as that.

I’ve been reading the work of JD Lasica and came across a link to Digital Storytelling: A Tutorial in 10 Steps

The whole piece is good, but step one is a great place to start for any author who wants to share stories:

Step 1: Decide on the Story You Want to Tell

You probably already have a person or subject in mind. Think small. Focus. Don’t get caught up trying to convey all the aspects of someone’s life — you’re not writing the great American novel, you’re creating what will optimally be a three- to five-minute work that recounts a personal tale and reveals a small truth.

What form should your story take? In their decade of leading workshops, Lambert and Mullen list these main varieties of digital stories:

• The story about someone important. Character stories center on a person who’s touched you in a deep way. Often, these stories reveal as much about the narrator as about the subject of the piece. Memorial stories pay tribute to someone who passed on but left a lasting impression.
• The story about an event in your life. Travel stories — stories about a personal journey or passage — can be effective if they result in the narrator being transformed by the experience in some way. Accomplishment stories about achieving a goal, graduating from school, or winning an honor can easily fit into the framework of the desire-struggle-realization structure of a classic story.
• The story about a place in your life. Our sense of place serves as the focal point of a great many profound stories.
• The story about what I do. People find value in their work, hobbies, or social commitments and can weave wonderful stories from their experiences in each.
• Recovery stories. Sharing the experience of overcoming a tragedy, challenge, or personal obstacle is an archetype that always has the potential to move audiences.
• Love stories. We all want to know how someone proposed, met a spouse, experienced the birth of a first child, or came to terms with a parent. Exploring these kinds of relationships helps affirm our own.
• Discovery stories. These stories probe how we uncovered a truth or learned how to do something.

Now, choose one type of story that appeals to you.

We talk often about social networking and social media to market your book.

Sometimes, I think authors suppose that these are good for promotion, and something that you switch on after your book is released. That may have been possible in the past, but is not the smart move today.

Not only do I strongly recommend that you start building relationship and your brand online today.. there is research out that show you’ll have a better book with better ideas, a richer experience and more fun.

Steve Johnson has great ideas.

He has been working on ideas and innovation for the past few years and now has a book Where Good Ideas Come From: The Natural History of Innovation 

I hold that the connectivity that has increased in our capacity to generate new ideas at a faster rate than ever before. While there is still much benefit from closeting yourself off to contemplate, I suggest you find a balance where you use the power of collaboration in all you do.

Collaboration and networking are a part of every Best Seller Roadmap I do. Start building relationships, your online network and marketing team the minute you decide to write a book.

What are you doing right now to collaborate more?

Every time I see a site that will analyze my writing style, tell me how search engine friend I write or judge my vocabulary level, I get mixed emotions.

A bit scared that I’ll be found out.. my skills put down by a machine that tells me I don’t measure up in some way. :)

But MOSTLY excited… I love getting tips to write better.

I Write Like told me that a recent blog post was like Dan Brown.

I don’t quite get it.. but it was 30 seconds of fun.

I think Mrs.. Preston, my 4th grade teacher nailed it best. I once told her that I couldn’t write. She kept me in from recess, made me do the assignment and told me “you can write.. you’re just lazy”

Guest Post by Alan R. Bechtold

The best way to create and publish anything worth sharing — whether you’re writing a book or yakking on the social networks — is to focus on your ideal audience. Someone you can relate to. Someone eager to hear what you have to share.

In marketing, everything begins with focusing on your target market. Publishers and authors often forget this, simply publishing what they figure people who will be interested in and hoping they find it, one way or the other.

Is THIS woman your target audience?

That’s a great way to be a starving artist, but if you also keep a marketing eye toward what you’re doing, you can easily turn every tweet, every Facebook post, every email and every blog post you put out into hard-edged highly effective marketing that pulls people toward you.

This is a central key in moving from the starving artist column over to the successful creative entrepreneur.

I suggested in my best-selling book, Will Work for Fun, that you make yourself your target audience. Focus on a niche that truly interests you. Better still, it should FASCINATE you to the point that you are as voracious about gathering data and information about the subject as anyone on the planet.

Do this correctly, follow the steps I outline in my book, and you can easily do all the marketing research you ever need by simply looking in the mirror now and then.

Your readers and followers will naturally need whatever it is you need, too.

Here’s another tactic that works equally well, ripped straight out of creating characters for fiction:

Find a photo…in a magazine or newspaper, or on a blog or Website…of someone who absolutely LOOKS the part of your ideal targeted reader or follower.

Give the person in your photo a name — preferably one that someone who reads your work or follows you WOULD have (note — children’s names run in historical cycles…Elmer isn’t so popular any more, Heather once was. What was popular for YOUR character when he or she was born?

The more authentic and real your character feels, the more effective this technique is.

Now list your character’s hobbies or interests OUTSIDE of your chosen niche — especially those that would be directly related. Make sure these interests match your target audience’s general tendencies for interests they would list in the "other" column, as well.

Next — stare at the photo a bit and imagine the typical life history and current life situation of your ideal audience member. Build out the background details about the person in your photo.

Use whatever data you can to fill in the details — personal experience, research results, conversations with your current readers — whatever it is you know about your target audience. The character you are creating for the person in the photo you’ve selected should be someone you honestly would enjoy being with and spending time with. You should find yourself wishing you had 10,000 more like him or her reading what you put together. 10 million would be ideal!

Then, before you write or start gathering materials to publish ANYTHING, sit down and stare at the photo for a few minutes. Five maximum. Get to know this person you’ve created — this character who matches your ideal audience so perfectly.

Run all the details about this person’s life and history through your mind while you look deeply into the picture. Imagine his or her wants, desires and needs RIGHT NOW.

Then — write or gather information that fulfills those needs.

You can even write whatever it is you have to say TO this fictional person. Address it like a letter to a very dear friend and SHARE like you would with someone you know and love.

This works very well even if you’re NOT deeply affiliate with the niche you’re reaching out to at the time. The photo with this post, for example — she could be ANYONE’s target audience, depending on the background and life you give her.

As you search for information to gather and bring to this person, keep in mind what he or she would want to know right now. Also remember what he or she would most definitely NOT want to hear at this point.

Then get writing or gathering.

In this age of social publishing, you’ll miss the boat more often than not if you just put your tweets and posts out there with no real clear-cut idea of who you’re trying to please.

When you focus on WHO you are writing to this way, your writing will shift totally way from the "me" focus we so often see in blogging today, to a "YOU" focus that targets exactly your ideal prospect. You’ll also find that writing directly to the person you created will make your writing more appealing.

You’ll definitely find yourself "delivering the goods" more often and you’ll grow a devout following that wants whatever it is you have to offer!

I help authors sell books, build a business and take their messages to the world.

We do that in two ways here.. a lot of free information on the web, and high paid clients. Unless I get a crazy idea to test new software and give away the paid consulting.

I am trying out a new webinar system for my private coaching sessions. So you get this same ME, hopefully a great show, and the fun of watching me bumble through with new technology (OK.. you can get that anytime)

The only catch.. I’m just doing this ONCE.. it will NOT BE RECORDED (no evidence if I screw up) and it is on SHORT NOTICE.

Friday at Noon Eastern (9am Pacific) on July 16th (yes, that is tomorrow.. I did say SHORT NOTICE)

Grab a slot here –> Warren’s free coaching session

I’m going to share some new tests from what is working on FACEBOOK, how partners are getting 10x the publicity on the MEGA SUCCESS DAY promo for next week and other freebinarific advice. I may talk about Twitter if you twist my arm.

I will answer ANY question… show any secret site.

You can still ask your question in a comment, on Twitter or whatever.. but you won’t get the real live me with a mouse in my hand showing you exactly what YOU need to succeed unless you register here

Talking to thousands of authors, I’ve learned that a primary motivation is to share a message with the world. That is, if you could wave a magic wand, have every person on the planet get the message, the business, marketing, and even wealth would be your second wish.

Most of us don’t have magic wands… So we look for ways to amplify our ability to share a message. We construct a plan to get income, invest in publicity, promotion and marketing to make it happen.

The following video show how one artist did this in a simple form. His creative output was not a message, but his method teach us.

If your goal is bigger than you imagine,  you may just have the right goal.

I don’t know any of the back story on this.. let’s assume that the artist could not have got this done without the backing of DHL. In fact, I suspect he created this with DHL in mind.

Does that make it any less creative?

Think about your own dream project. How might you get it to 100 or 1000 times as many people, help more, change lives and have more fun?

What other ideas did you get from watching?

Some have said “The world does not need another book”..

This is somewhat true, as we already have more books than any one person could ever read.

However, the world does need to know what’s unique about YOU.

GetPublished.tv talks about finding your unique selling point

Guest Post by Dr. Daisy Sutherland

I chose Dr. Sutherland from the authors visiting this blog as my Blog Reader of the Day. After visiting her web site, YouTube channel and Facebook page, I just had to share some of her writing with you.

Now that I have your attention, I must confess that a PERFECT article does not exist, but I will share tips that will make your articles more enticing and enjoyable.

If the articles you are developing are meant for marketing of your business it is important that they are informative and of the highest quality.  Remember the articles you produce will be a reflection of your business and service or product that you provide, so let’s keep the following tips in mind:

• Share your knowledge: Write about what you know, the article will flow nicely and will be easier to write.  If you are writing on a topic you are unfamiliar with, be sure to research, and write the article when you are confident on the topic.
• Make an outline: When developing an article it is important to plan, and write an outline first.  Doing this will ensure that your article flows nicely and will keep the reader enticed and motivated to continue reading. Nothing is more annoying than reading an article that is scattered without a flow that is necessary, it is not only confusing, but it will more than likely not get read and your goal is to have your articles read, right?
• Be informative: Many articles are meant to share information whether it is teaching, how-to or inspiration. When sharing information, share examples that the reader can associate with. This can be in the form of stories.  Think back to the text books you read in school; sure they were informative, but they were also very BORING.  Be witty in your articles and your readers will crave more.
• Avoid sales pitches: No one wants to read an article that has a sales pitch through out its content.  If you must add a link, add it to the end or add a resource box or area.  The resource area can include your name, title, as well as website information.

Writing a perfect article will not be difficult if you put some effort into it, and simply let it flow.