2 More Neat Tricks I Use to Write 7 Minute Articles

2 More Neat Tricks I Use to Write 7 Minute Articles

Sometimes I won't have enough information from my research
to write an article that's 400 or 500 words. Other times, I will be
given a bunch of keywords or topics that are similar in nature,
and I have to come up with unique articles for each keyword.
What do you do when these situations arise? I use “crutches”
.
The story is a great way to capture attention, get your point
across and fill out the article. Let's say you're writing about
stock market investment mistakes. You could say, “Diversify
your investments.” Or you could say the following:

“One day John came home from work. He did what he did every
day after coming home from work – he logged in to his online
portfolio to check his investments. Lately, he'd been making a
killing. He had taken all his money, and put it into companies all
belonging to the same industry. This industry had been hot, too!
Stocks were rising like crazy, and everyone was getting in.

Then one day the bubble didn't just burst – it exploded! John –
and many other investors – were the vicitm of dot-com stocks.
John lost everything. This could've been avoided if only he
diversified his investments.”

Creating a story is easy, and it doesn't take much research to do
it. All I needed here was a tip – diversify your funds – and an
example – the dotcom bubble burst. From those two pieces of
information, I was able to come up with 107 words!

Stories are one of the most effective ways to turn a 300 word
article into a 500 word article, or to make your subject matters
fresh and unique. As a bonus, when done properly, they will
engage the reader even more than your general articles would
have.

Another great way to write fast articles, is to use an example.
Let's say you're writing an article about how to compare
different credit card merchants. In your article, you mention the
fact that each merchant charges a percentage fee for each
transaction that is made, making it an important factor to
consider when choosing between different merchants. You can
stop there, and go on to the next point or you can provide an
example. You could write:

“I want you to imagine for a moment the potential impact of
this. Let's say this year you process $100,000 in credit card
orders. Let's say your merchant charges 2% for each transaction
-- that means you end up paying a fee of $2000.

Later you find another merchant would have only charged you
1% on each transaction. Simply by choosing a different
merchant service provider, you could save a thousand dollars. It
would have been $10,000 if you had processed $1 million in
credit card orders.”

To recap, the example and the story are two perfect tools to use
when you need to write quick articles with little research time.
In fact, just imagine if you started the article about credit card
merchants with a story about a business owner who had trouble
with processing credit card orders. Then you segued it into the
example above. Your article would practically be finished.
If you're writing an article that already had a nice entry for it in
Wikipedia, then here is a trick to get the outline for your article
in less than 15 seconds. Let's say you're writing an article on
“colon cancer”. Find the entry in Wikipedia. Within the entry,
there will be a small section titled “contents”.

Here you will find all your main research points documented for
you. For the first article, you could write about the symptoms,
risk factors, and diagnosis methods. Or, you could write an
article on the 7 treatments for colon cancer, which are listed
right there on the content page.

In fact, almost each of the main points can be broken down into
its own article. You can write an article on just the symptoms,
then one on just the risk factors and so on. Just go to each
section, find three main points you can expand on, then quickly
research them.