I’ve been observing the Content areas of almost all forums and found a very interesting thing there both at buyers and writers’ end. A tread titled as “Looking For a Copywriter” when explored was requiring a writer to write some articles. Similarly a thread with the title “Experienced Copywriter For Hire” was telling the details of article writing services of the poster.

This is what made me curious to explore more and more, and the statistics I’ve come up with state that out of 10 threads with ‘copywriting’ in their title 9 were about content writing. I agree, most of the webmasters do not know the difference between two types of writings but why don’t such writers.

Forums’ markets for article writers is very well known for $0.01/word article and some writers even charge less than a cent. So if you’re looking for the reason why forums are such low paying writers’ markets, you won’t find a reason better than the one mentioned above.

Just curious to know, are you a content writer or a copywriter?

In order to make sure that your copy won’t be left unread, plan a killer headline and play with words. But the thing to be kept in mind here is again the ‘reader orientation’. Consider yourself as a consumer of the product or service for a moment and think what will inspire you. Outline all the slogans that may attract you and then select the best.

And at last something to ponder is to use the best words, i.e. “XYZ Company Maximizing Your Profits” (In effective), “Double Your Profits In ‘N’ Days” (effective, N can be any number of days according to your statistics)

The focus must be on highlighting features of the product, but in a way that represent the benefits to the customer. For instance, consider a mobile phone customer, what can he look for. Many features of the phone are there including color, size, memory, style, additional features, price etc, but you’ve to pick up those much sought for, i.e. memory, price, size mentioning the benefit in brief. And while doing so, do compare these benefits with those offered by some others in the market.

The findings of experts say that copy fails at very first instance if it’s not readers’ oriented. Copy is what you’re creating for the reader and if he doesn’t see anything in it what he was looking for how will it work? Absolutely not!

To let you copy work, make it the way readers think about the product or service, i.e. highlight the features reader want to know about not what you want to tell. Include ‘you’ instead of ‘I’, ‘me’ or ‘we’ and grasp the attention by ensuring the reader that you’re talking about all what he needs to know.

By keywords many think to fill the article with a specific word or a phrase and the concepts fails with letting readers uninterested and SEs suspicious. I’ve observed some webmasters demanding about thirty percent keyword density in an article, which means a standard five hundred words article should have at least one hundred and fifty keywords. This type of articles if used for submission may not result productively as a major part of readers will not be satisfied and hence the links in the context may also be ignored. On the other hand, SE’s suspicion stands sound.

The better way out of this dilemma is to determine the keyword density, i.e. how many keywords to be used in a particular article. Certainly, it depends on the length of the article and the nature to some extent as well. Generally experts agree at ten to fifteen percent density, i.e. fifty to seventy five keywords in a standard five hundred words article, as it works in two dimensions, i.e. makes the SEs spider in search of relevant terms on one hand and lets the readers enjoy on other hand.

One thing of utmost importance is not to repeat a particular word, instead using alternate words, synonyms and related terms sounds more creative at writers’, interesting at readers’ and helpful at searchers’ end.

The other thing that cannot be winked at after keywords’ density is the placement of links in the context. The idea of putting the most important or major link in the first paragraphs sounds beneficial as majority of the readers are not pro readers who will probably read the full article. But two links in one paragraph may also redeem the beauty of an article. Similarly too many links also give a spammy effect. Now the question arises, what number of links gives professional look and the productive linking? Again it depends on the length and nature of the article, but generally three links in a standard article work best.

The two points discussed above are not the whole of article marketing success secrets but the basic things where most of the people misconceive the phenomenon and start directionless article marketing. Knowing and implementing the right keyword density along with right link placement can boost your article marketing campaign to a greater extent, just give it a try and see the results.

Everyone talks about ‘good public speakers’, and I goggled for hours to identify some ‘not good speakers’, but unluckily I couldn’t find one. Does this mean that no ‘not good’ speaker exists there? Certainly not! There are people who are not that good in speaking or verbally expressing their selves. I may be wrong at discussing this aspect, but since it’s less discussed ever so I’d try to explore a bit more.

Not getting in unnecessary details, as I couldn’t find as well, I’ll sum up the things that make one a ‘not good’ speaker. Here’s the list:

• Speaking purposelessly.
• Speaking to an unprojected audience
• Long speech
• Low Vocabulary/Verbose Speech and fluency
• Lack of confidence

These are not the ‘only’ factors responsible for an imperfect speech, but a list is there, which includes socio economic statuses, situations, positions, practice etc, but some basic identifiers of malfunctioning of a speech. And of course covering these can turn a ‘not so good’ speaker to a ‘good’ speaker.

With the variation in nature, attitude, interests, areas of expertise, and experiences of different individuals, the objectives and the goals also vary. This is the reason that one freelance writer projects his future position at a level different than the other, and of course the differences in the opportunities and the situations also play a sound role determining the success or failure of the individual. Some general principles can, however, be equally important for all freelance writers who are standing at the very threshold of their career and for those as well who are in the middle. These principles are as follows:

• Be honest to your work and the skills, i.e. select the areas where you’ve good command or if not then you’re willing to opt a research-oriented approach for acquiring excellence.
• Always be open to learning and avail the learning opportunities in the form of writing courses or workshops etc.
• Practice makes a man perfect so it does to a writer. Write more and more, i.e. do not write extensive without keeping a check on the quality, instead write, check it, point out week areas and in next writing avoid those flaws.
• Develop your portfolio, so that you can show clips of your work on demand. Building portfolio is, however, not an overnight deal, it needs a sufficient time frame to get developed. Developing an impressive portfolio is to have a foot in the door of freelance writing and can be efficiently managed by participating in online communities and also by submitting some of your write ups in local magazines and newspapers Probably you won’t get paid for those, but the magic they will do gives you with increasing rate of return.
• Make best use of Internet; do not waste time chatting, but studying the field and increasing your social circle by forumming and interacting with professionals.

Tips can only serve as mere guidelines; nothing can be done until someone starts it. And no ‘someone’ will help you starting your freelance writing career but you yourself, so just do it.

Being a professional freelance writer one needs to ferret out all information about the market demands, work patterns, communication styles, building an impressive portfolio and above all representation of all these in a suitable way. Another fact that cannot be ignored is that becoming a professional freelance writer is not an overnight phenomenon: it needs parallel time and exploration of opportunities, meeting a variety of challenges and developing a unique style.

On the other hand when one needs a freelance writer, he must ensure the professionalism so that the project can be done at its best with desired results. Though it’s a bit time consuming but if one knows about the qualities of professional freelance writers, it gets quite easy to figure them out from the massive list. Let’s sum up such qualities in only five. These are as follows:

1- Professional freelance writers maintain an impressive portfolio by keeping it updated, and hence can provide sample of their previous work anytime.

2- Attitude determines the professionalism in any field so it does in freelance writing. It gives the first impression to the client.

3- It’s part of professionalism to listen to your client in order to know what he wants to get done. So listen with third ear that means reading between the lines.

4- Listening alone cannot always work, and work cannot be done professionally until all the requirements are very well known to the writer, so asking questions becomes a compulsion in this situation. And in normal context asking questions gives clear picture of the demand to the writer.

5- Everything becomes fine when you get your efforts’ worth, and of course in terms of pricing your services. Price is basically determined on the basis of quality of the work and the level of effort needed for a particular project to be done. A Professional writer may be an expensive one but will give the client an extended sales and a marketing boost in return, which as compared to the price he pays is definitely much more.

These are some basic tips one needs to follow while getting a writing project done so that the business end of freelance writing can work at its optimum for both the parties.

The common structure of all sorts of press releases is composed of some elements, i.e. headline, dateline, introduction, body, boilerplate, close and media contact information.

 In order to have a brief analysis of each element, let’s start with headline; it’s the most prominent element, which says all at once. Headline is mainly used to gimmick the readers’ attention at very first instance. In order to make the headline more attractive, it should be well summarized and the news should be wrapped in such words that make the reader to explore the text. 

The next important structural element is dateline which represents the date of the release and in most efficient manner it also contains the city whereby the release has been originated. 

Getting finished the impressive headline and the dateline, it’s time for the introductory paragraph. This part mainly consists of Ws, i.e. what, when, who, where and why. There’s no need to answer these Ws in detail here, instead being brief is recommended.  Introduction leads towards the body of the release, which contains detailed statistics of the matter with background and explanations.

The body of the release is then directly related to the boilerplate, which is a short ‘about’ of the issuing company or an individual.  Having all the details discussed, it’s now to close the release with a suitable end, i.e. “-30-“, “###”, and “ends” etc. After closing the release do not forget to mention the name, phone, and other contact details for PR or related media relation personnel.