Shorter Newsletters, Still Better

Christopher Knight from EzineArticles.com gave a free teleseminar Tuesday night on writing articles. Christopher heads up one of the largest article directories and knows something about what makes for a popular article, one that gets picked up and redistributed by others.

Here are a few tips from this teleseminar:

Write articles in sets, creating 2-3 or more, instead of just one. It is easier to break them down into sub-topics this way, and have shorter articles.

Best articles are now only 250-400 words long, maybe up to 600 words, and never more than 750.

His best format? An introduction, 7 bulleted tips, and a conclusion.

Always use your keywords in the title

Christopher Knight intends to give a value-packed course on article writing in 2006, stay tuned, and read his blog for great writing tips.

Comments

[Annie]

Because online article redistribution is part of my marketing plan, I attended the teleseminar. And, I came away with a lot of useful information!

I found it especially interesting how Chris told us NOT to get so emotionally attached to our articles. Still thinking about that one...

Annie

[Patsi Krakoff]

I hadn't paid much attention to that, maybe because after years of writing articles for other people (www.customizednewsletters.com) I am used to adopting my articles out after birth. But you raise a good point, Annie, and it connects with the whole idea of bringing yourself into the article writing by sharing personal stories (see previous post on Creative Nonfiction). You can't share personal stories easily (I can't) and then just let them fly out into cyberspace without some anxiety. I think Christopher's point is that this can precisely get you into writer's no-no land, where you become so attached to everything you write that it blocks you and stops you from being prolific.