Articles can be great additions to any online content creation campaign. Well written articles — hosted on your website or distributed around the web with your brand attached — can deliver information pertinent to your customers, and build your reputation as an expert source within your industry.
When writing articles, it’s important to follow a pre-determined process. This process keeps you focused and moving forward, both minimizing your time input, and improving the final quality of your articles. Though the process people follow to write articles may vary from author to author, here is the 4-step process we use:
1. Plan and construct an outline (approx. 15 min)
The structure of an article, created before you start writing, goes a long way to determine the quality of your finished product. It’s important that you define a specific subject at this point, as well as how you’re going to explore it.
We usually construct a specific outline in this step, detailing each individual section and the content it will cover, but I don’t believe one is necessary in every case. Each writer should find what system works best for them.
2. Create a first draft (approx. 30-60 min)
The next step is to create a first draft of your article. The better your planning and outline, the quicker this step will go. When writing a first draft, the goal is to get most of the article’s content onto paper. It doesn’t have to be, and probably even shouldn’t be, perfect.
While writing your first draft, try to avoid any rewriting or editing as you go, even if you make spelling errors or typos. There will be plenty of time to go back and fix them later. If you find this to be difficult, try taping a piece of blank paper over your screen.
3. Write a second draft (approx. 15-30 min)
The next step is to write a second draft of your article. View the second draft as an opportunity to revisit the content of your article, establishing and honing the ideas presented in each section, and ensuring they fit into the larger context of the piece.
Begin your second draft by reading the article straight through, from start to finish. You’ll likely see errors, typos, or sections you’d like to change, but try not to stop and edit them. Reading the article in one bite will give you a broader view of what its strengths and weaknesses are, before tackling the specifics.
After you’re done with this, you can start to make revisions. Feel free to fix any glaring typos or errors you see at this point, but try to keep focused on the ideas. Edit each section until you feel that it communicates what it needs to, and then move on. Try to stick to the approximate time limit above — you’ll get another chance to revisit everything in the third draft.
4. Write a 3rd draft (approx. 15 min)
The next step is to create a third and final draft of your article. With the format and content mostly set, the goal of this step is to create a polished and professional-quality product. The edits in the third draft should deal with elements like sentence structure, word choice, word order, punctuation, and so on.
Begin your third draft by reading the article out loud. Hearing your writing lets you experience the article as a first-time reader would, and it clearly highlights the words and sentences you need to fix. When you stumble (or cringe) on a section while reading, that’s a sure sign it needs attention.
After reading, edit your third draft paragraph-by-paragraph. Spend as long as it takes so each one sounds as you’d like, but not longer. When you feel each section, and thus the whole article is sufficiently polished, call it a final product, and walk away. There’s certainly such a thing as over editing, and going beyond a reasonable stopping point is both time-inefficient and detrimental to the quality of your writing.
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Once you have a well-planned, written, and polished article — one you’re proud to show — you can distribute it throughout your network, as well as on third-party online sites. In turn, it will become a tool to attract valuable target customers, and provide long-term benefit to your marketing plan.