This is a 2000 words guide with 15 steps to help you writing articles with real added value for your readers.

1. Plan What You Want to Achieve with an Article

This point is essential.

Planning is very important not only in your daily or business life. Before you start writing you have to know what you want.

So, ask yourself some questions:

• Should it be a promotional article?
• Or maybe you want to share your experience about something?
• Is it a simple story for your readers?
• Do you want to make them cry? Or laugh?
• Or maybe you want to arouse interest about something?
• You should answer these questions before you start writing your article.

Answers to these questions will give you an idea, what is the goal of your article.

And having a goal is a must, even in copywriting.

2. Plan Some Time Free of Distractions

There are a lot of things which may distract you from work.

Especially freelancers (bloggers, online marketers, SEO specialists) who spend most of their work in front of the screen, are in danger.

So it’s very important, before you start writing, to finish all of your other tasks, clean up the desk and switch off your mobile phone.

With a little effort, you are free from incoming emails, social media, and other online temptations.

These are the most common distractions as a blogger or writer:

• Emails
• Cellular phone
• Social Media
• Family and Coworkers
• Noisy environment
• Mess on Your Desk
• Online Games
• Laziness

Must Read: Top 10 Distractions in Online Business – How to Operate With Them

3. Do Some Quick Research On Your Topic

I assume that you know the subject matter of your article.

But even if you are an expert, it’s worth to do some research about it. You should check in your favorite search engine what’s hot, and what’s not.

You can do it also on blogs you are following via RSS.

Below you can find some resources which I use to find hot topics.

• Google
• Google alerts
• Other blogs which I follow
• Amazon Best Sellers
• Social networks
• Newsletters (like Forbes, groups on LinkedIn, Axandra Search Engine Facts)

4. Use PROPER Keywords in Your Article

If you want to write your article not only for readers, but also for search engines, you must think about proper best keywords for your article.

And best keyword for me means that there are a lot of searches for that keyword, and competition with the keyword is not too high.

There is a lot of tools, you can use it. Some of them are free, and some aren’t.

Most famous free tool for researching keywords is Google Keyword Tool.

This tool is ok for me for three reasons – it’s free, it’s simple and you can use this tool on each computer, which has access to Internet.

For some time I have used a paid tool, Market Samurai. It’s not free (it costs 149$) but there are discounts and it can cost you only 97$.

What’s more, you can download your free trial version here.

Must Read: How to Find Best Keywords

5. Great Headline is a Key!

The headline of your article must attract internet users to click it. There are tons of blogs, portals, and article hubs.

What is the most important thing in choosing what to read (except author’s name) is the headline.

It’s similar to first impression – you can like the title or not (if you don’t like the title, you won’t read it).

Title of your article should not only arouse interest to your readers – it should be also SEO friendly.

Your headline may be controversial, with a question, provoking your readers to answer – almost everything is acceptable here.

Below you can find some irresistible examples of titles:

• Devil’s Guide to Online Marketing
• 10 Tips Which Bloggers Didn’t Tell You about Blogging
• Blogger – Naked from Nature
• How to Get 500 Likes on Facebook in 2 Days
• How to Get 100k Visitors in 3 Months

Also, this is a funny and nice working title generator (from SeoPressor):

6. Consider Making Your Article as Point List

People love to read lists.

Even going shopping they prepare a list of goods to buy. So why not make them happy?

Besides, posts written as a list are easier to read.

Even preparing a great headline for a list is very easy.

• How to Write an Article in Less Than One Hour – 10 Useful Tips
• Top 100 Websites For Bloggers
• 12 Action Steps To Build A Profitable Email List From Scratch
• 10 Article Writing Tips, How To Write Killer Articles

So, how you can prepare your list?

Find three to ten important points you want to raise in your article.

If you find more – it’s okay, but your article will be longer and probably will take you a lot of time (but maybe it will be a killer article?).

Write down these points and fill them with content.

7. Use (12+2)*3 Technique

This technique is very simple – write for twelve minutes, take a two-minute break, and repeat it three times.

If you need less or more time for writing an article – you should repeat the process less or more times.

But remember – for 12 minutes you should write and only write, without exceptions.

After that, you will get a two-minute break, when you can do something else (but I recommend you to stay on the computer).

For counting minutes, you can use a timer on your clock or smart phone.

Even a kitchen timer may be good for this technique.

8. Write for Your Readers

You may think – are you joking? Of course, I’m writing for them.

Are you  sure?

Maybe  you are writing for your blog, for Google or for yourself?

After reading this tip, you may be a little bit confused.

In the 4th point of this guide I wrote that you should write not only for readers, but also for Search Engines.

It’s true as long as you remember that writing for your readers is in the first place!

9. Mix Content in Your Blog

I’ll tell you one secret – writing killer articles is not enough today.

It’s especially important these days – we have a lot of bloggers and tons of blogs, which compete with others for the audience.

So, what shall I do? – you may ask me.

You should arouse interest in your readers!

Each blogger must decide how he or she wants to charm their visitors.

If you don’t have any idea – below you can find some tips, how you can attract readers to your posts (you can find more tips at this link).

Of course, you can choose only one or few of them.

• Text
• Videos
• Pictures, photos
• Lists
• Graphs and tables
• Podcasts
• Infographics
• Slideshows
• Interviews
• Mind maps

Must Read: How To Attract Your Blog Posts – 20 Tips For Normal People

10. Don’t Waffle

You should write your articles as good as possible.

I’m telling you this second time: there are so many other sites and blogs on the web, that it’s not enough for your article to be the killer one!

So you should save time of your readers if you are writing about something, but you don’t have time to explain it in details – refer to it by linking to the proper source.

If you don’t know where it is, you should find it and share this knowledge with your readers.

On the other hand – respect the time of your readers.

So be clear about your ideas, construct simple sentences and don’t repeat over and over again. In a few words: Don’t waffle!

11. Place “Call to Action” in Your Article

As I mentioned in the first point of this guide, each article should have a goal.

Placing call to action will give you an opportunity to ask the readers about fulfilling your needs.

Simple “call to action” may help you in:

• Getting more comments below your posts
• Getting “likes” for your Facebook page
• Getting new subscribers on your email list
• Getting sells of your products

Even if you don’t know what you want from your readers, you should familiarize them with a call to action – maybe in the future it will help you in your business?

Some examples of call to action:

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Please share your experience below in the comments

12. Read Carefully and Correct All Your Bug(s) or Misspellings

If you don’t want to lose your readers, subscribers or potential customers you must write without bugs and misspellings.

So  now  it’s  time  to  check  your  post. You should read your article at least once  and  mark all  errors  or misspellings.

Next you should check it in your dictionary (or in Google), and correct all.

If you have some time, you can read it once more.

Tip: I use Grammarly, to double check for writing errors.

Must Read: List of 10 Common Spelling, Grammar and Punctuation Mistakes

13. Make Some break – Get Tea or Coffee

Even a short break is really important for your mind. So, stand up and go to the coffee room or to the kitchen.

If possible, you can even talk with somebody – but remember your goal – you need to write an article.

So set a time limit for your break – five minutes should be enough for it!

14. Publish Your Article

Your article is almost ready to publish.

Now it’s time for improvements and for formatting your post.

Your article should be readable – think about it as a brochure – is it easy to read, understand and find the main points?

There are only some little steps to take before sharing your ideas with your audience.

Below you can find them all:

• Put your article into WordPress (or another publishing platform)
• Add some related images, photos or videos to your article.
• Link up to other articles or resources
• Format your article – make points, paragraphs, etc.
• It’s time for final reading
• Publish or schedule your post for publishing

15. Promote Your Post

OK, your post is published.

But you need a lot of visitors, who will read your content. Unless you are an A-List Blogger, you must promote your blog and articles by yourself.

Below I list most important traffic tips for your blog

• Make comments on other blogs from your niche
• Make social media your friend (Twitter,  Facebook, LinkedIn, Pinterest)
• Add shares buttons on your blog
• Send info about your post to your subscribers from your email list
• Participate in Social Platforms (Triberr)
• Use Blogging Communities
• Write Guest Posts on other blogs
• Use  SEO tools for analyzing your blog and competition

Must Read:

8 Helpful Tips, How to Promote Your Blog

10 Ways to Increase Traffic to Your Blog

Boost Your Traffic and Increase Your Authority with Viral Content Buzz

Final Words

Now you are ready to create great and engaging content for your blog.

Do you like this post?

If yes, you can share it with your friends or followers.

Also, be sure to say “Hello” on NPI Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/NoPassiveIncome

Thanks to Chris Madej, previous owner of this blog, for this fantastic content.

Article will be divided into four short parts:

What works for me?

What doesn’t work for me?

What should work for me in the future?

Your recommendations about social network sites

Let’s start with it:

What works for me?

Below there are the most important social networks which drive traffic to my blog.

Triberr.com

At this moment it’s the best social network (in my opinion it’s not a tool, but exactly SOCIAL NETWORK). There are a lot of bloggers, internet marketers, SEO and social media specialists which share their content (blog posts) on Twitter, Facebook and other social platforms. I spend about 15- 20 minutes a day to check what’s interesting and what I want to share with my followers.

You may be interested in reading: How to Use Triberr – Best Social Network for Bloggers?

Twitter

I get most traffic (except direct traffic and organic traffic from Google) from Twitter. Unfortunately visitors bounce rate is the highest and time spent by them on my website is almost the shortest…

You may be interested in reading: How to Use Twitter?

Facebook

Traffic from Facebook is very interesting. Amount of visitors from Facebook isn’t impressive (in last 30 days it was 148 visitors from Facebook), but average time which they spend on my site is the longest (6 minutes 17 seconds)

You may be interested in reading: How to Get More Likes on Facebook?

Bloggers.com

Bloggers.com is a network of bloggers. You can get a lot of traffic from this source but you must be active on this platform. Especially when you will be one of three bloggers of the day (when I was featured I got 52 direct visits from this site only in two days) you can get some related traffic. What’s more, bounce rate is the smallest…

StumbleUpon

StumbleUpon also drive some traffic to my blog. But this traffic, IMHO, is not very good – visitors spend about 0 minutes and 6 seconds on my site on average and it’s about 63 times less than visitors from bloggers.com

There are also some “sharing” services which I didn’t try at all, but they sent some traffic to my site and I want to mention them below:

http://inbound.org/

http://hootsuite.com/

http://www.scoop.it/

http://paper.li/

BizSugar

Some of my articles got many votes on this community and it’s driving traffic to NoPassiveIncome. There are some popular bloggers using this site and I definetely suggest you to try it.

This article is hot on BizSugar, see here.

What doesn’t work for me?

I don’t want to describe why it doesn’t work for me. Maybe it’s a problem of topics on my blog, maybe I don’t know how to use it. In any case – I tried following sites without effect for my site. Maybe you have other experience? If yes you can share it in comments at the end of this post.

Reddit

I got some traffic from this site. But it’s not so easy and in most cases they prefer videos, pictures or topics not related with blogging…

LinkReferral

I spent some time on visiting and even reviewing some sites they recommend. Unfortunately without any result… What’s more, I don’t want to link directly to this site because there are some links (a few, but there are) which neighborhood may be treated as bad…

Pinterest

Pinterest is only one site from this list which I want to give another chance. But at this moment I get only few visits a month from it…

What should work for me in the future?

In this year I plan to check how following social networks work (for traffic purpose). But you can connect with me even now (if you want of course )

Slideshare

I plan to be really active here. My goal is to create at least five presentations till the end of this year. So you can connect with me on Slideshare to see my results

LinkedIn

I suppose links from LinkedIn are good not only for SEO purposes, but also for direct traffic and social proof. So don’t hesitate and connect with me on LinkedIn too.

Google+

I started to connect with some of my friends on G+ but unfortunately Google banned my personal account. I don’t know why and I’m still waiting for reconsideration. But you can connect with my website on Google+

You Tube

The last one network I plan to check this year is You Tube. At this moment I don’t know how I will find some time for creating videos, but I know that I must.

What is your recommendation about social network sites?

Okey, now it’s your turn. What works for you and what doesn’t work for you?

And what do you think about following social networks:

Blogengage

and

NetworkedBlogs

Please share your social network experience in comments below.

Each blogger has his or her own reason or reasons for doing it, but a common point for them: they want to have more quality visitors on their blog!

Here are eight tips for promoting your blog:

1)      Focus on Quality Content on Your Site

It’s the first and most important thing. Write an article for readers, not for uou or for Google or other search engines. Focus on high quality content of your post, including grammar, spelling and punctuation. The topic should be interesting and encourage your visitors to read your articles.

2)      Say Hello! to Your Blogosphere

But say it not on the first week of your blogging adventure, but after you’ve posted at least 10-15 high quality articles to your blog. After (or before) it, please prepare a list of 50-200 blogs from your niche. And don’t be shy – write a personal email to each blog owner. In 3-5 sentences describe who are you, what your blog is about and the reason(s), why he or she should read your blog. At the end of your email, you can gently ask for subscribing your blog (via RSS or e-mail list) or following you on Twitter

3)      Make Comments on Other Blogs From Your Niche

Find five to 10 blogs about your topic and try to comment each new article on them for at least 1 month. Try to be first with your comment, or at least between first 10 persons commenting the post. And remember – commenting isn’t spamming, but adding something into the discussion (do you like comments like: ”Thank you for nice post, greetings!” ? – I don’t like it).

4)      Prepare Free Ebook or Short “How to” Guide

After preparing your “golden egg” ask other bloggers to review it or comment on their blogs. But ask bloggers not from A-list (they probably will not have time for you), but bloggers from growing blogs, with comparable audience to yours. Please ask no more than 10 bloggers in one week, and not less than five . For one ebook or guide, if you are a beginner blogger, you should do it repeatedly for one or two months.

Examples of some “How to” articles are below:

How to Write an Article in Less Than One Hour – 10 Useful Tips

How To Attract Your Blog Posts – 20 Tips For Normal People

5)      Write Guest Posts on Other Blogs

A lot of bloggers are waiting for your post… Really! Guest blogging has only advantages for you because you have access to new readers. For blog owners – because they don’t have to write a new post, they have free content. And the advantage for readers is that, they may read something with another point of view. Before writing a guest post, you should assure, that the blog owner is “ready for guest blogging”. You should also meet requirements for guest posts, which may be different for each blog. And most important tip concerning this point – try to make your guest post related to your free ebook. It really works.

6)     Prepare “Summarizing Article”

Find 3-5 interesting articles from your Top blogger list and summarize it in your article (of course linking to the source). Now it’s time to promote it – send info about it to your email list, Tweet it, tell your Facebook friends/fans about this post. After getting some comments, please send an e-mail about it to the blogger(s) who you mention in your article. And have fun for growing audience

7)      Use Your Twitter or Facebook Power For Boosting Your Blog

Tweet each article from your blog. But this tip only works, when you have lots of followers or fans/friends. If you have a few, you may be interested in http://www.reddit.com/ Promotion on this site is very simple – write an interesting article with killing competition topic and there you are – independent of numbers of your Facebook fans or if you are famous or not, you will get a lot of readers. And if you want to get more Tweeter followers or are newbie, please read How to Use Twitter – Tutorial for Beginners

8)      Be Consistent in Your Action

That means you should promote your blog daily. And don’t be discouraged with small amount of readers at the beginning – promotion is a long term action. Make at least one step a day. And whatever you do – always end with a call to action (visit my blog, follow me on Twitter, sign in into my e-mail list, etc.).

You can also read Google Penguin attacked – 50 types of links to strengthen your website

I assure you, that if you will follow these eight tips for promoting your blog, your audience will be constantly growing! But if it’s not enough for you, feel free and sign in for my newsletter to be informed about other tips & tricks in the blog promotion area.

What do you think about this list? Do you have any more tips for promoting your blog?