Writing An Article, Step 3: Write

Now, finally, you’re ready to write the article. There are still a few things to keep in mind, so keep reading!

Write Fresh

When you write from your plan, never copy and paste. Always write it from scratch. Even if all you’re doing is writing down the exact words as you read them, you’re forcing yourself to reconsider what you’re writing. Trust your instincts, and if you feel like something needs to be reworded, do so. As you plan, you’ll get into the rhythm of an article, and tone and flow will come naturally. Once that happens, it’ll be much easier to look at something and simply say “this doesn’t feel right.”

Grammar

Obviously. Right? We’re not going to tell you to watch your its/it’s or to make sure you know how to properly use a semicolon. You know all that. The bigger thing is consistency. Whether you’re using American, Canadian, or British spellings, stay consistent between them. Oxford commas are important, but if you’re not going to use them, then don’t use them at all. Don’t switch between different dialects or POVs. Stay consistent, even across articles.

Keep It Evergreen

Sometimes it’s inevitable, and you have to include dates in your article. Where possible, make them as easy to update as you can, or get rid of them altogether. Thanks to the internet, it’s easy to stumble across something 10 years old, so do your best to keep them age-proof.

Links

Don’t clog up your article with links! Keep them for important things, but having too many will only pull people away from your article. Try to make the majority of your links internal (links that lead to other pages on your website or brand). If you have an external link, have it open in a new tab so that people still have your page open. If you use them properly, internal links help to promote your website as a cohesive structure filled with content, and external links can be used to give your article more depth and feel more reliable. DisneyParks Blog uses internal links quite effectively, consistently offering internal links to Disney’s brand while not flooding their posts. Another thing to keep in mind (and look at DisneyParks for a good example) is other forms of media, such as youtube clips, embedded social media posts, and pictures, and how well they integrate with written content. You don’t want to flood out your writing with images, but they can help balance things out and hold a reader’s eye.

Tags

When you’ve finished writing a post, make sure to tag it. If you have a related articles section for your blog or website, proper tagging will help to keep people on your website by clicking on related posts. TMZ does this really well. Additionally, if you click a linked name on TMZ’s site, it will bring you to a page about the person, and the most recent articles mentioning them will be just below. Here’s Tom Cruise’s page as an example. This sort of intermingled web pulls people in, and before they know it, they’ve read 6-7 articles.

Title

This is pretty much the last thing you should touch. Titles can be tough to think of, but if you’ve already written the article, then it’s the last thing to do. It won’t hold you up, and you can even go do something else and come back to it later when you’re ready to revise.

If you’ve picked a title, then ask yourself, is this clickbait? Is that a good thing? All titles need to have some pull to them, or nobody will ever click on your article. Is your title representative of what you’ve written? Often, titles are misleading, and someone will read the title and assume they know what the article says. A title represents the entire article, so get creative!

Revise

Well, this is it. You’ve written your article, and all that’s left to do is read it. Seriously. Read it. Then read it again. Read it five times. Inspect every word, sentence, and paragraph to make sure it all fits together. Can something be removed? Can you switch the order around to make something flow better? Check for typos, then come back later and check it again.

And… that’s it. Congratulations! You’ve written your article. Cue applause. Are you proud of yourself? There are plenty more ahead of you. Good luck, and onwards!

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