Most web-marketing experts tout the power of articles for their ability to create inbound links and enhanced website credibility. But what they don t tell you is... how the heck do you write an article?

You need two important elements for a great article: something to say and the means to say it. First lets discuss "something to say", otherwise known as content.

Developing Content Through Your Experiences

It is impossible to write something interesting without good, meaty content. Content comes from your interests and experiences. To generate content, look at yourself and your life in a new way. Find situations in your day which somehow "hit home".

If you are intrigued, frustrated, thrilled, challenged or otherwise awakened, you have probably found a good topic. Pursue the subject in greater depth.

 
Become The Observer

As you work and play, cultivate an extra mental circuit running in the background, which observes you as you go about your life. Lets pretend this circuit is a separate person, the Observer. When you go along your way, occasionally become the Observer and try to develop a new point of view.

The Observer is not mired in your day-to-day struggles. Instead, the Observer watches you struggling, with clear unemotional vision yet with humor and an interest in patterns and themes.

Becoming the Observer will help you discover interesting parts of your life which you can then bring to your reader. You can develop your golden nuggets of experience further by expressing them aloud to others (or even just to yourself). Through verbalization, you will find additional points of view and experiences of others to enrich your topic.

Research Your Article Topic

Research your topic by word-searching on your favorite search engine, visiting the library, visiting locations pertinent to your article, or by interviewing people involved in your topic.

Your Unique Position or Solution

Eventually a theme or pattern will emerge. Go a step further and try to create a solution, position or attitude with regard to the theme. This will become your unique "take" on the subject.

Example: A while ago a consultant hired by one of my customers was irritating me by getting visibly excited whenever a small problem or issue appeared on our mutual project. I developed this into a more universal theme and wrote "Beware the Chicken Little Consultant".

The theme is consultants who use fear tactics. The position taken in the article is that such consultants should be dismissed and their users should educate themselves from less emotional sources.The attitude of the article is lightly humorous and mocking. Calling the consultant "Chicken Little" in the title is an example of this.