When you first sit down to write an article, it can be a daunting task. Here are Write My Site’s top tips for writing an article that grabs attention.

Make a list – Bullet point all the ideas you would ideally like to cover in your article. Do they fit together as a set? Are there any duplications? Which points are essential and which can you remove?

Take some time – Once you’ve sorted your list, take some time out. Focus on something else while the ideas germinate. When you sit down to write the article, you’ll feel calmer and more prepared.

Don’t force it – Write for as long as the words flow. If you hit a wall, don’t fight it.  Change task, maybe go for a walk - you’ll come back refreshed and ready to jump back into the fray.

Don’t censor yourself – On the first pass, don’t edit your own writing. Trust your ideas and abilities and express them in the most comfortable way to you. This will eventually lead to a more natural and personable article.

Proof read carefully – Of course the flip side of this is the need for a number of revisits to edit and correct your article. This gives you the opportunity to refine and crystallise your concepts, while ensuring you put your points across.

Talk to Write My Site if you would like to explore business blogging, article marketing or web content. All work is covered by our Quality Guarantee to ensure you’re 100% satisfied with your content.

Matt Chatterley of Mattched IT is our guest author for the first of a series of features about how businesses are using blogs as part of their marketing activities.

Once in a while, I wonder if the premise under which we run the Mattched IT Blog is good or not - then I stop procrastinating and get back to the business at hand - typically writing up another blog post.

The reason I tell you this is because our blog is distinctly different from most corporate blogs - partly because we are a small business - and partly because we want it to be different. The goal of our blog (and indeed, this meshes with our whole approach to Social Media) is to engage an audience that is wider than our immediate client base and to promote an atmosphere in which they feel comfortable communicating with us.

Of course, behind the scenes, it’s part of our marketing strategy and ultimately we have the aim of winning more business through Social Media. Instead of constant streams of “Hey, look at our Product X!” and so forth, we try to focus most of our blog posts on issues which come up in the day to day running of our business, topics which we as directors are interested in and items which we feel would be of interest to our audience. The intended results from this are a greater depth of interaction and promoting ourselves amongst said audience as a good source of information.

We recently won a good piece of business with our combined social media strategy.  A prospect got in touch through our website and mentioned they’d been referred to us on Twitter. Not recognising the name of the referrer, we were slightly confused, until upon further investigation we realised what had happened.

One of the people whom we interact quite often via Social Media had recommended us to someone they deal with regularly - because they thought we might be able to assist with an ongoing problem. Although said referree had not yet had time to get in touch, they had been asked if they could help with an upcoming project by one of their own clients. Because they were not able to - and presumably because we were fresh in their mind - they referred the client to us.

I think this is a great example of how maintaining a profile in the world of Social Media is valuable to a business (particularly if service or consultancy based) - and in my opinion, why you should seek deeper engagement than simply telling people what you’re selling. We regularly post links to our blog on Twitter, which has helped establish us as an authority source, and that’s what triggered the chain of events that led to us winning our new client.

Write My Site has today issued a press release, analysing the results of the latest studies into corporate blogging habits, namely that:

• 80% of corporate blogs are never populated with more than 5 articles; and

• 75% of European organisations have yet to add blogging into the marketing mix

Please visit our Press section to read the full release, and use the contact details in the footer for any enquiries.

Great websites are those which reflect the personalities of the people and business they represent. They don’t rely solely on facts and figures to get their point across, but dabble in emotion and anecdote. Such web content works because it creates a story for your business, reaching out to customers on a very human level and catching their interest.

Your web content needs to be compelling and memorable, and storyboarding your website can help you achieve this. We all remember the fairy tales we were told as children, but very few of us could re-sit a Science GCSE today – the facts have long since slipped away from our memories.

So how can storytelling work on your website? Anecdotes, either from yourself or as a testimonial, can provide a great structure for contextualising your content, creating an engaging story which will remain with your customer long after they log off.

Content that captures should reach clients on an emotional level, evoking a strong response through the images it creates in their minds and the concepts it expresses. Literary techniques such as analogy and metaphor are crucial here to help create a visceral content which doesn’t require pictures for the customer to see what you’re talking about.

An understanding of creative writing can be helpful here, but the real crunch test is when you read it back. How do you react? What images do the content conjure in your mind’s eye? Is this the kind of image you want to be projecting to your client? If the answer to the final question is Yes, then you’ve nailed your web content.



Talk to Write My Site if you would like to explore business blogging, article marketing or web content. All work is covered by our Quality Guarantee to ensure you’re 100% satisfied with your content.

Given that we have recently set up a group on Linkedin called ‘Content Marketing for SMEs’ it seemed an appropriate moment to explore some content marketing strategies.

Let’s start by examining what sort of content businesses can use as part of a content marketing strategy. Talks for networking events, presentations, pitches, speeches and training materials are all types of content that most businesses produce from time to time. They can be incorporated into an online content marketing strategy by:

•    Turning the material into articles for your corporate blog and announcing it on social networks such as Twitter, Linkedin and Facebook.

•    Contributing guest pieces to other corporate blogs (with a back-link to your website, of course).

•    Spinning any news-worthy angle into a press release and sending it to journalists in your industry.

•    Creating a white paper that is available for download through your website … in exchange for the recipients’ email addresses.

•    Writing articles for publication and syndication.

•    Sending a monthly e-newsletter to your database of customers and prospects containing highlights from your corporate blog and any attention-grabbing company news.

Talk to Write My Site if you would like to explore business blogging, article writing or web content. All work is covered by our Quality Guarantee to ensure you’re 100% satisfied with your content.

The main aim of a business blog is to bring customers to your website and to associate your brand with their requirements. Therefore, the more regular readers you have, the more word-of-mouth you are likely to attract and the more successful your blog will be. So how can you turn casual readers into a fan club?

One of the most crucial points of your business blog for grabbing readers is the ‘call to action’, usually a single word that inspires a reader to join your blog. The most popular term in Internet parlance is ‘subscribe’, which can cause confusion among some readers. Off-line, subscriptions usually incur a financial charge, whereas you want your readers to sign up for free. You may like to consider ‘join’ or ‘follow’ as less loaded alternatives. This will apply both within your blog and any ‘sign-up’ buttons.

As variety is the spice of life, it’s best to offer several ways to follow your business blog. RSS is a relatively new technology, popular among web-savvy clients, but not currently accepted into popular use. For clients who aren’t up to speed – you may like to offer an email subscription feed, which follows a more traditional format.

Like most aspects of creating a business blog, your two key aims are to be clear and inclusive. If you apply this to your language, your overall tone and your formatting you’ll quickly see passers-by turn into pals.

Remember Write My Site offers a full blog management service if your business wants to add blogging into the marketing mix. Tariffs start from just £150 per month.