How to Write a ‘Useful’ Article

Firstly, let’s dispel an article myth. It can be called an ‘article’ if it’s under 200 words. Many copywriters would disagree with this statement. If you can say all you need to say in 200 words and convince the reader that the article is useful then hats off to you! However, most copywriting experts would recommend that an article should be 300+ words. 

What makes an article useful?

Simple, an article is deemed useful if the audience can glean information from it and make use of that information in a practical way. The most common articles circulating the web are often ‘How to’ articles, ‘Tip Sheet’ articles and ‘Factual’ articles. Why? They’re informative, they’re engaging and, perhaps not surprisingly, they’re more useful than opinion pieces.

3 top tips for writing a useful article

1. Write for the audience not the search engines – Skilled copywriters are able to strike a balance between engaging the audience and satisfying the criteria for search engine prominence. However, priority importance should be given to the reader.

Flooding your article with keywords in order to enhance your search engine ranking puts readers off. They do notice I assure you, and they quickly realise that your agenda is search engine ranking, rather than article quality. Readers do not engage with your article as they deem it useless to them. That may seem harsh, but that’s the stark reality.

During my early years as a copywriter I had to learn the hard way. Yes my articles ranked highly on Google however, dig deeper into the data, only 10 or so people were reading them, it left me disappointed.

Tip 1 summary – ‘ETA’ people… Engage The Audience – Remember the reason you took up writing in the first place, so people would read your stuff.

2. Pursue the unique – Don’t rehash and repackage content on a subject that has been covered to the point where people are bored of it. The most useful articles are those that are ‘unique’ and not reinvented from other material.

A recent client of mine asked me to produce an article on ‘donkeys’. I must confess this was going to be a test of my skill; after all I had very little knowledge of donkeys. However, rather than doing a generic article I was bold and wrote from a different perspective. I went to a farm and sat with a donkey ‘expert’ in the presence of a donkey and I asked the expert to tell me 10 obscure facts that people wouldn't know about donkeys.

Needless to say the client ‘loved’ the article; they found it engaging and useful, but more importantly, they said that they could not wait for their audience to read it – You want to know an interesting fact about donkeys now don’t you?

Well, did you know? Donkeys seek shelter when it rains because they do not have natural ‘waterproof’ coats like horses and so need access to shelter.

Tip 2 summary – Unique is useful. It requires much more work and research, but the labour for your efforts will be rewarded.

3. Research what’s trending - You can write a useful article and relate it to a trending news story. For instance, the big news in the UK at present is the birth of the ‘royal baby’, George Alexander Louis. If you’re a parent you could do a feature article on parenting based on your own experiences. The article offers a genuine perspective on parenting, rather than what parents have to read in books, which seem to give the perception that parenting has a formula.

Following the birth of my first son I wrote an article after about 6 months of being a parent describing my experiences. Before I sent it for widespread publication I sent it to an online forum for parents and asked this question, would you read this? The response from the group alone was overwhelming.

Why did it work? Parenting is always trending. Why? People becomes parents everyday it’s a 24/7 operation, therefore it’s a topic that will always be covered. Going back to point two, what makes a parenting article unique, that you've written as a parent, is that your experiences will relate to the experience of other parents.

Your tips may help other parents out who think ‘I haven’t tried that’. Therefore, your article has done its job, not only is it engaging it has become useful. Furthermore, parenting is a topic that can be followed up on with another unique article. For me, the birth of my second son inspired me to write an article on my experience of having two children.

Tip 3 summary – Relating an article to a topic that’s trending gives an article wider exposure.

Many other tips exist for writing a useful article and useful articles are what audiences crave. What’s my proof you ask? Well, the emergence of sites such as eHow.com and About.com are just two examples of content sites dedicated to providing their audiences with informative, useful content.

What’s interesting about them is that they rely on freelance copywriters to contribute content and this content is supplied to hungry consumers all over the world. Thus, proving that useful articles are of more importance to your audience than sales orientated SEO articles.

The question now is, did you find this article useful?

Has the Art of Copywriting been Devalued? Write House Founder Daniel Waldron Investigates

If you are a professional copywriter, and I use the term professional in the sense that it’s meant to be used in, which is highly-skilled and passionate about your work, with your primary focus being to deliver exceptionally high standards of customer service, then you will no doubt be as depressed as me about how undervalued the skill of copywriting has become.

Words, not even my beloved words, can express the utter derision I feel every time I go onto a freelance jobs board and scroll through the writing projects on offer, displaying what can only be described as shed loads of work with employers offering a pittance in return.

Posts such as this… (**** inserted for the purposes of anonymity. Highlighted words are the mistake of the client) – Client expected to pay £8.00 per 550 word article.

“Top **** **** is an online bingo comparison website for UK bingo players looking for the next best bingo site to play on.

Now in its third year, I am looking to maximise its potential and grow the site three fold over the next 3 months. Crucial to achieving this will be increasing our reach online.

I am therefore looking for a reliable freelance copyrighter to compose around 5 articles a week and distribute these articles via guest blogging.

If you have an interest and/or experience in writing articles for the online bingo / gambling sector then this job may be for you!

You must have perfect written English and an ability to make articles useful and engaging to the reader. Being UK based would also be an advantage.

Contacts within online bingo / gambling sector would be an advantage, but not essential. As long as you're happy to establish them!

I am looking to pay £8 per 550 word article successfully submitted as a guest blog post.”

Source: peopleperhour.com

…are a prime example of what employers expect from copywriters in return for peanuts and a few magic beans, both of which are great food sources, but wouldn’t nourish the common rat, let alone a family for which my income has to support.

‘They are ruining the industry, I hear you cry.’ Well actually they’re not, they’re enhancing it. Go with me on this. Much of the work I see advertised on these sites, around 75% of the time, goes to the lowest bidder, usually a ‘copy righter’ pun intended, from a country with no grasp of the English language, weather (again pun intended) it be spelling, grammar or sentence structure.

The reason I say that such posts are enhancing the industry is for this reason only. Does the term ‘buy it cheap, buy it twice’ resonate with you?

In conducting an experiment of my own across a number of freelance writing job boards I discovered that, no sooner had the lowest bidder completed the project requested of them, 68% of those who had commissioned the work had re-posted the job at a higher rate, within 7 days, in order for a pro-writer to undo the mess the previous contractor had made.

Whilst I still cringe at the site of people offering $2 for a project that can be classed as ‘technical copywriting’, with the employer expecting a professional copywriter, to produce a 500+, well written and researched article, I say carry on.

For those business owners and individuals who make the mistake of hiring a writer, for a pittance, and continue to post jobs offering pathetic rates, they will soon discover the error of their ways once their business brand, reputation and image suffers as a consequence of poor copy that I know my 3 year old son could have written ‘much more better’.

Plagiarism: The Scourge of the Copywriter

As a copywriter nothing is more frustrating than producing a unique, well written article only to discover that it has been copied and pasted and placed on another website under a different author name.

Hours of research and writing are all undone by what can only be described as lazy writers and ‘freelance’ copywriters that take on bulk projects and are unable to hit specified deadlines, therefore resorting to ‘copy theft’ in order to meet the requirements of those they exploit.

A minority of individuals take the profession of ‘copywriter’ quite literally. Simply they copy the work of honest, legitimate writers and pass it off as their own. The problem has become so widespread that websites now exist that monitor the uniqueness of content in order to stamp 

out copy plagiarising.

The World Wide Web is a awash with content and, due to the substantial amount of written content that is uploaded on a daily basis, there is a high percentage chance that content will be copied and re-submitted under another author name.

Some would argue that there is no harm in such a practice, after all much of the news content on the web is often regurgitated and presented in a different way. Whilst this is a true statement, the negative impact that it has on writers that create the original content can be quite costly.

The largest culprit for copied content are freelance sites, whereby certain individuals, describing themselves as copywriters, take on small, medium or massive writing projects advertised by businesses all over the world, yet these so called ‘writers’ have absolutely no writing experience at all.

Such ‘writers’ resort to scouring the internet to trace content worthy of piecing together an article for unsuspecting clients that will meet approval and often that content is plagiarised from the work of other writers.

Whilst the content is ‘well written’, a closer look will reveal that because the content has often been sourced from several different sources, a tactic used to try and hide the fact that content is copied, it often does not flow, make sense or remain on topic.

Therefore, it could be argued that not only does plagiarism devalue the work of the original writer; it means that the recipients of copied content often end up with a disjointed article that is nonsensical, of poor quality and completely substandard for the intention it was purposed for.

Unfortunately, the problem continues to escalate, despite the introduction of websites put in place (e.g. Copyscape) to monitor and penalise those that simply plagiarise another writer’s work.

The continued problem has a derogatory impact on genuine copywriters looking to make an honest living. Trust in the freelance market has also suffered in terms of the quality that freelance service users can expect. However, the use of freelance writers has increased due to economic recession and businesses looking to cut back on costs.

However, although the use of freelancer writers has increased, this has also opened the door for rogue copywriters to exploit unsuspecting customers all in the interests of making quick money.

The key piece of advice that Write House can give is that ‘cheaper is not always the solution’. Common sense should prevail and those seeking the services of a copywriter should do their research, check credentials and references and finally, if you’re serious about using the services of a top copywriter or copywriting service you have to be prepared to pay the going rate.

In this instance, the term ‘you get what you pay for’ could not be more accurate.

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