Traffic Generation Tactic - Writing Article Resources Boxes That Get Clicks
Whether for gaming, business, fun or anything else the internet has provided us with information that has proved to be very beneficial.
Through the recent years many people have learned the secrets of Search Engine Optimization. More and more sites have seen the effects articles have done for the traffic of their sites. Some have even created sites devoted entirely to providing articles that could be read by their website visitors and have links that could lead to many sites that are related to the topics and subjects of the articles.
For example, the sites may feature many articles about a whole lot of topics. As a website visitor reads the articles they have searched for, they can find at the end of the article a resource box that can be clicked on to link them to the site that has submitted the article. Of course the article would be in relation to the site. Lets say if the article is about rotating the tires, the resource box may lead to a link to a site that sells tires or car parts.
A resource box is what you usually find at the end of an article. They will contain the name of the author, a brief description of the author, a brief description of the sponsoring site and a link. If a reader likes what they read, they would have the tendency to find out where the article came from to read more. The resource bow will be their link to the source of the article and this will entice them to go to the site and do some more reading or research for the subject or topic they are interested in.
But like the article itself, the resource box must also be eye-catching to demand the attention and interest of the reader. While the resource bow encompasses only a small space, providing the right keywords and content for your resource box will provide more prodding for the reader to go to your site.
Now we know what resource boxes are, what are the benefits of having a good resource box?
Mainly its driving traffic to your site.
Many sites would allow articles to be placed in their sites because they can make use of the articles to fill their pages. They also get affiliation with other sites that can be beneficial for them as well. For the sponsoring site, when you get people to click on your resource box, you generate traffic that can be counted upon as potential customers.
So what would be a good content for your resource box?
Basically it is keywords, learning about the proper keywords that people are mainly searching for. There are many tools you can find in the Internet that can help you in determining what keywords to use.
Resource boxes can also make use of all the creativity it can get. You only get a small space for your resource box so you better make the most of it. Try to catch the attention of your reader with resource box content that can make them give a second look. Unlike TV ads, you don’t have visual aids to drive your point in. But you do have the power of imagination of a reader. With the right content, you can make them think and intrigued.
Another tip is to use keywords that should be related to your site. Do not mislead your potential website visitors. Build your credibility so that more people would get enticed to visit your site and browse what you have to offer. Make the people click your resource box by providing resource box content that makes a lasting impression. You only get one chance to wow them and hundreds of chances to repulse them.
Never underestimate the power of the resource box. It may be small in size but they will provide a significant aid in driving traffic to your site. A boring resource box will never get a job done. Be fun and creative but at the same time show that you have a great deal to offer, too much to ask for something that couldn’t fit a paragraph? Yes and no, there are many tips and guides that can help you in doing this, the first step is realizing how important a resource box could be in making people click your link and be directed to your site.
Jo Han Mok is a #1 bestselling author and frequent featured speaker at Internet Marketing bootcamps and conferences. Visit his website for a simple step-by-step traffic generation plan to profit online and become the next big internet success story! http://www.InternetMillionaireCode.com
How To Be Different When Writing Articles
If you read these lines you already know that article writing is one of the best ways to increase your traffic and get more visitors. It is now a major weapon in search engine optimization. Everybody knows that and each day hundreds of new articles are being submitted to the popular article directories.
So how can you make sure to grab attention among all those thousands of articles that are around? The answer is simple: Be different.
Nowadays, I always wonder why so many times articles out there deal with a topic in such an abstract way that you get the impression the author is barely interested in the topic.
Let’s put some groove into your articles and make it different:
Your Opinion Counts
People need guidance and they love to read opinions. But too often articles don’t offer a clear view on a topic but just a digest of what everybody already knows and agrees upon.
Don’t repeat what everybody knows anyway. Often in forums or blog comments your find high-quality content from people who really know about a subject. Even if you don’t know more facts about a topic you will at least have an opinion.
You may use an article to publish your personal view of a certain topic or aspect. If you agree or disagree with a common view on a popular topic - write it down. Just be sure you explain why your view is the way it is in words people can understand.
Use Humor
Don’t be boring. Spice up your article using a nice and humorous style. Sound like a normal person having a conversation instead of professor giving a lecture. Just make sure you use common sense when judging your humor.
Consider that your articles may be read by people from different cultures and religions all over the world. What you may think to be funny could be an insult to another person. Don’t provoke intentionally or be sarcastic. Write as if you always have a little smile on your face.
In fact I have found that if you smile while you are writing. Your language will automatically get more friendly and humorous. It works.
Tell A Story
An article does not have to be an essay. Sometimes you can explain something much better by telling a story. People have been telling each other stories for centuries.
The Internet hasn’t changed that. People want to know about things that happened to you or to certain people. This way your message is much more personal than if you just write about some abstract concept or product.
Get Some Inspiration
Do a search on your topic or subtopic. Read existing articles on your topic in the major article directories. Get familiar with what other people have said about this topic. Read three or four articles then write down some more ideas and concepts that come to your mind.
Often you will find an article representing a certain view. You may use this point of view to write an anti-thesis, basically stating that you don’t agree with the author or with a certain aspect that many people agree on. This will make you different and it will make people curious about what you have to say.
Search forums on your topics and pick up some different views there. Often you will find the mainstream views in the article directories but the real insider info you get when you visit forums and read peoples posts and opinions.
To sum it up, article writing is one of the best ways to increase your traffic and get targeted visitors to our site. You just have to make sure you set yourself apart from the gray mass of boring content all around you. Show your readers that you are a human being - not a content robot and people will read your article, click on your link and republish your article on their websites.
If you want to know more about writing profitable articles easily, get all the secrets that I have put together for you in this free report here:
http://freereport.contentinsane.com
Hiring a Freelancer For Your Article Campaign
As a graphic designer, I have found the need to hire freelance writers on more than one occasion. When I’m designing an ad campaign or helping flesh out a client’s website, one of the most important things to remember is that words must go with the images in order to make them make sense. I sometimes have to be reminded of this myself!
I always recommend that my clients take advantage of article marketing — no matter what their business is about. Distributing their content (even if it’s ghost-written) across the Web drives traffic to their sites, increases their sales and gives them greater name-recognition. Like me, lots of my clients don’t really want to take the time to write — not even about themselves!
Here’s what I tell them about hiring a freelancer:
1) Good ghostwriters cost money. Their services aren’t usually prohibitive, but like all things in life it seems you get what you pay for. You should expect to pay between $30 and $100 for a good, solid article. And when you look back and see how much that investment has increased traffic to your site, it will seem like small potatoes.
2) Inform yourself. Many freelance hub sites out there (which we’ll cover shortly) provide services from writers around the globe. It can be difficult working with a writer who has learned English as a second language. If it’s important to you that your content is written by a native speaker (or simply someone who has a really great grasp of English) you’ll want to make it clear up front when you post your project.
3) Form a relationship. You might only have one project right now, but if you find a good ghostwriter, keep their contact information handy. You never know when your site will need updating, and odds are good that the freelancer will be thrilled that you came back for more work.
4) Hire more than one person. One really great way to get the best value out of your project, if it’s big enough, is to hire two, three or even more professionals. You can have phone conferences and exchange e-mail to get the voice and tone just right, and it’s nice to have a little variety in your site’s content.
Besides, the more writers you hire, the more articles you can distribute — and that translates into money in your bank account.
The first thing you can do is enter a search for “hire freelance writer” or something similar using your favorite search engine (Google’s mine). You’ll come up with thousands of websites run by professionals selling their services. If you find one you like, and the price is right, magic can happen.
There are also some really great one-stop shops for employers looking to hook up with freelancers. Some of the ones I’ve used are Guru, E-Lance and craigslist.
Guru is great because it’s free for employers. All you have to do is post your project and then freelance writers submit bids for each posting. Your contact information remains anonymous, and you get to see the professional’s resume, reviews by other employers and any writing samples they’ve submitted. Guru has enlisted thousands of professionals, in the U.S. and abroad, who specialize in everything from Web design to ghost-writing science fiction novels. The employer review system is also helpful, giving you a sense of who you might be working with before you sign any contracts.
E-lance has much of the same thing going on. Employers can post their projects or invite particular professionals to bid on them for free, and then pick and choose from selected candidates based on past performance reviews. They offer professional services from graphic design to programming to article writing. They also offer a safe-payment method and a 1099 tax service that makes your life sooo much easier.
Craigslist is always a good standby to turn to for professional writing services. Simply choose the geographical area you want to search and look up “writing” under the “services” tab. You’ll get a wide variety of results, from people offering tutoring and academic services locally to freelancers looking for work all over the country. There is no built-in feedback system on craigslist, so caution is advised, but you can find great local writers using this service.
The thing to remember is: Once you hire your ghostwriter and he or she begins producing content for you, you’ll want to get it out there right away to as many places as possible. This is when Internet marketing really gets exciting — when you start to see a concrete response to your content in the form of increased traffic and sales. There’s a reason they say article marketing is the wave of the future. And if you’ve gotten to the end of this article, there’s proof that it’s working!
Dana Davalos, graphic designer and online biz kid, shares her thoughts on internet marketing, design and life in general at http://www.groovygraphix.blogspot.com. Learn more about her recommended marketing ideas at http://www.articlemarketer.com.
How to “Write” When You’re Not a “Writer”
I’m not a writer — I’ll tell you that right up front. But I can give you some hints and tips that will make your article marketing campaign much easier if you’re like me and you want to make money fast and easy. Find and hire a good ghostwriter. You won’t be sorry you did.
You can find writers simply by doing a Web search for “ghostwriter,” “ghostwriting services,” or “writing services.” You’ll need to look over their website and make sure they offer the service you’re looking for, then contact them with your proposal. Most independent ghostwriters list their e-mail address or have a “contact me” link on their site, and many of them will get back to you that same day.
Don’t be shy. Talk to several different writers until you find someone that you can communicate with. I probably e-mailed 15 people before I found my girl, and she is great!
I’ve had her ghostwrite articles for me on several topics, including my drywall business in the real world when I needed a press release. She did all her own research and even wrote in a style that my customers and contractors could identify with. I ended up paying her $100 for the piece, and I keep coming back to her with more projects. Heck, she could be writing this article! You’ll never know!
The thing about ghostwriters is: You do have to pay them. Like everything else in life, quality costs $$. You can expect to pay anywhere from $20-$50 per article for a good, well-researched piece, but here’s what you have to ask yourself: Would you rather do it yourself or pay somebody else to do all the grunt work?
When I put it in that context for my business, paying a little money seemed like nothing, especially given the response that press release generated. Plus, when I read her final product, I upped her pay to $100 bucks. And it paid off for me: Suddenly people were coming out of the woodwork with holes in their ceiling for my crew to fix. Insert bad joke here.
There are also some really good places where writers come together in a group and you can pick and choose between them. Before I hooked up with my favorite ghostwriter, I hired people off of Guru and Craigslist. Some people also use Monster. Guru is free for employers (that’s us), which is really nice of them I think!
1) Guru: Free for employers; employees pay a fee to search projects. Guru gives you all the info on people who bid on your project including resume, references and ratings by past employers. That way you can choose the best one for your job.
2) Craigslist: Free for everybody. You choose your geographical area and then you can search postings by people looking for writing work or post your own project. You can go outside your area if you don’t care that they work offsite.
3) Monster: Free for job-seekers, so employers pay a fee to purchase job postings. It costs $475 for one posting up to about $13 grand for 100 postings. I found this a little steep, but some people really trust Monster a lot more because of name recognition and the fact it’s been around so long. It’s up to you!
The best part about ghostwriters is they agree that you will own the copyright for any material they write for you. You’ll probably want to make that clear in your initial agreement, but that’s what the term “GHOSTwriter” means. They get the money you agree to pay. You get your articles. You drive traffic to your website, in turn driving sales, which makes you more money. Everybody’s happy.
Roger Haumann owns a drywall contracting business by day and runs the blog www.getarush.blogspot.com by night. Roger is also a frequent contributor to http://www.articlemarketer.com, an online article distribution service.
You Know It, You Love It — Write About It!
One of the hardest things new marketers face is figuring out what to write about. You stare at the blank screen watching the cursor tick away while you start to doubt yourself. Maybe a bead of sweat rolls down your forehead. You start thinking, “Man, is it really worth this much pressure?”
It doesn’t have to be like that. You really can write, even if you don’t think you’re a writer. All you have to do is write about something you know and love. Maybe you’re a dog trainer: Write about the best method of house-training a puppy! Do you love to ski? Write about your beginning experiences with tips about how to stay in the game.
Personally, I love performing and music, so I often write about those experiences. When you write about something you know well and love to do, it automatically becomes interesting to others because you write it with ease and it just seems to flow.
I do have a really good tip for those of you who are still sitting there watching that cursor. Have you ever written a FAQ? It’s actually surprisingly easy. Small business owners (and even people who work for larger corporations) tend to answer the same 10 to 12 questions all the time. Different people ask them, and they don’t answer all 12 every day, but if you think about it, you probably have some pretty stock answers that you give over and over again.
What does that mean exactly? Well, for one thing, it means that people generally want to know the same things about what you’re doing. If people in real life want answers to these questions, you can bet that people are asking them out in cyberspace as well.
So here’s the idea: Write down as many of those questions as you can. I did mine in a numbered list format. Then it’s easy to just go back and simply answer them one-by-one. I almost felt like I was back in high school taking an essay test — only this time I KNEW all the answers!
Once you’ve written and answered your list of Frequently Asked Questions, write an introductory paragraph or two. Ideally, you’ll explain your business and let the reader know exactly what you’re doing. You could say, “I run a website selling surveying equipment. These are questions I get asked all the time in my line of work, and I thought it would be helpful to write an article answering them once and for all.”
You can go into as much or as little detail as you want in these intro paragraphs — remember, no one is actually grading this paper! You just need to give your reader something that shows you’re a person and an idea about what you’re trying to accomplish in your article.
Last, give it a read-through and spell-check and you’re done! Then you can submit said article via your favorite article submission service and you’ll be well on your way to fame and fortune. See how easy that was? Stop fretting and write your FAQ today. You never know how many hits your website might get as a result of that little bit of effort.
For more ideas on writing great articles, visit www.articlemarketer.com/d/writingtipsforwriters.php. Johnny Albertson is a musician, blogger and writer. You can visit his blog, www.beatintheblues.blogspot.com for more insights and pearls of wisdom.
http://www.articlemarketer.com
Freelance Online Writing: The 3 Absolute Must Do’s You Need To Succeed
The fact that the Internet is a medium that relies on fresh and relevant content to keep people coming back has seen the creation of a secondary market which is solely about the creation of new content. The explosive growth of the Internet and the attendant growth of Internet related commerce have created an unprecedented demand for written content. It is rare for webmasters to go about each day creating this content themselves; they simply don’t have the time. What you will find is that they source the content from elsewhere and are happy to pay for it.
Like the stock exchange which facilitates transaction between buyers and sellers of shares, similar types of exchanges are now coming into vogue for the online content market. Webmasters know that they can go to a central resource, create a job description, and then have freelance writers bid to do that work. It works like a dutch auction with the lowest bidder usually, though not always, winning the bid and securing the job.
The two major outsourcing online auction sites are:
elance.com and
guru.com
The buyers at these auction sites aren’t really after top quality writing (except in the case of copy for web sales pages). They want fast content and they want to procure it as cheaply as possible. This can sometimes make for a low priced and unpredictable market.
There are therefore a few rules that you need to observe to ensure that you can consistently profit from your writing:
1. Keep it simple
To be self sufficient as an online freelance writer you need to develop a system of getting buyers in your virtual door and out as fast as possible. This means belonging to one auction bidding site (either Elance or Guru) to keep life streamlined and simple. The great thing about doing this is all your accounts, job records, customers emails and work history are stored in a central location. This removes a lot of administrative overhead from your operation and allows you to concentrate on bidding and creating content.
2. Be consistent and relatively fast
You need to process books and articles as fast as you can and keep your practices to a single standard that your customers can recognise and come back for again and again.
3. Always raise your prices a little bit over time
NEVER give return customers discounts. You also need to be able to ask them for more money than they are willing to pay you if they ask for a second draft.
The writing market is slanted in favour of the buyer so you need to give yourself every edge at your disposal.
Scott is a successful freelance writer who makes the bulk of his income by writing online. To learn how you can create a secondary income through online freelance writing go to http://www.writingforincome.com
Get Ready, Get Set, Get Writing!
While article marketing is truly an inexpensive and effective way to market your business, you know that time is money. An article marketing campaign quickly loses its tremendous value if you spend too much time toiling over every single word you write. Learning how to write effective articles quickly will help you expand your marketing efforts. These quick tips will help.
Identifying Your Target Market
The first step is to identify your target customers. Research your audience. In general, try to identify their ages, occupations, financial statuses, and educational backgrounds. This will help you establish a specific tone and set of language in which to speak to your customers.
How does this help? Once you have a voice and style for your articles, you’ll be able to just let the ideas flow and speak to your customers in a friendly, natural style.
An article about a new kind of retirement fund could be pertinent to old and young readers alike. The language used in the article signals which group the company is attempting to reach. Consumers want to be spoken to directly, to help them understand that certain products and services are meant for them. Since the same article may be perceived differently by two different groups you’ll want to know who will be reading it.
Doing this has a second advantage. Take that article about retirement planning, for example. Write it first for one target market, your older readers who will be retiring in the next few years. Then, you can quickly write another version of this article targeted at a younger crowd who are just starting to plan for their golden years. Much of the facts will stay the same; how you communicate those ideas will vary based on what they need to hear.
Coming Up With A Plan
Once you’ve identified your audience, map out a general plan for your articles. What do you want to write about? How many articles do you want to write? When do you want to submit them? By determining a plan, you will be able to more easily focus on the individual articles as you write them.
You will probably come up with new article ideas as you begin writing your articles. Jot these down as you go along and put them in your schedule wherever you think they fit best.
Whether you plan on writing ten articles or ten thousand, organization is the key to article marketing success. An organized article marketing plan will help your ideas remain clear and focused, and let you concentrate on giving good, clear information as you write. Mapping out future articles can also make the task seem less stressful, which means you will be in a better frame of mind to write.
Once you’ve established a plan, along with a tone of voice and type of language to use in your writing, just start writing! You will be surprised by how quickly the information will flow onto the page. Remember, you are the expert. You have an endless source of information when it comes to your business and the industry that surrounds it.
Frustrated by those first few articles? Like anything, the writing will get easier the more you do it. As you gain a rhythm, you’ll find yourself creating articles in a fraction of the time. You will also find motivation in results.
And with the increase in traffic from your first few articles, your incentive for creative compelling articles will continue to grow. Write with confidence and purpose and you will hit the mark every time.
Nancy Amada helps small businesses find success. Read more at www.nancyamada.blogspot.com.
For more great tips for article writers, visit www.articlemarketer.com, a highly popular article distribution service.
http://www.articlemarketer.com
Article Writing: Keeping Your Article On Track
Whilst article writing is a recognised means of promoting a product or service, your article must remain on target or you are just wasting your time. This article gives a few pointers to make sure this staying on target happens!
As an article directory editor (amongst other things!) I find it interesting to watch the ‘ebb and flow’ of article content, usually dependent on what the likes of Clickbank have on their books as a ‘hot property’. Not too long ago it was acne, then online dating became the rage. I await developments on the next Big Thing! This ‘following the hot leads’ type of reaction isn’t a problem in itself but can lead to big problems indeed.
There are four main failings that I have observed when viewing the hundreds of submissions I have received. The first is trying to cover too wide a subject; the second is writing an article that has little or no relevance to the contents of the ‘resource box’, where the author can put their links for readers; the third is physical article length and the fourth is relevance to the resource box. Let’s look at these issues one at a time:
I regularly get articles that try to cover far, far too much ground than is possible in a 4,000 word magazine article, let alone a 700-word web article. Examples (fictitious) are things like ‘A History Of The USA’ or ‘Everything You Need To Know About AdSense’. Promising titles, if they delivered! However, the reality is that any article could only scratch the surface of such huge subjects. The effect is that the reader is left disappointed and exasperated - ‘another shallow bit of writing!’ is the usual response.
An article written for the web should be informative and hold the reader’s attention. To do this it should be relevant to the title, well written and contain at least some information not readily available to the reader, or some personal insights into the subject being written about. To suggest that you can give a complete history of the USA in 700 words is ludicrous - you couldn’t give a complete history of anything in that space!
The result is the thinnest type of writing possible, a ’skimming’ of a subject that should either be examined in more depth, possibly over a number of articles, or abandoned entirely in favour of something more easily encompassed.
Another trend is towards shorter and shorter articles, the object of which is painfully obvious: churning out as many ‘resource boxes’ with ‘articles’ attached as possible. Less wordage equals more speed equals more articles but content suffers to the point where it is of little or no interest to anyone, with articles re-hashing the same (thin) subject matter time after time. No-one wants to read them because they have little to say so their purpose is nullified - that of promoting the product or website the ‘resource box’ contains.
This seems to go hand-in-hand with a peculiar phenomenon - that of article content having no connection to the links in the ‘resource box’. If anything is a waste of time, this is surely it! Given that the whole point of writing the article is to pique the readers’ curiosity to the extent that they will investigate the matter further (vis the resource box), this approach fails utterly. There is faint hope of anyone reading an article about gardening clicking-through to links about AdSense passive income (and yes I have seen this!). I don’t know if this is being done by authors new to article writing or simply by people who couldn’t care less what they write about as long as it means another resource box in a directory somewhere.
The result of all this has led me to a decision. If any article submitted to my directories in the future contains any of the above faults it will simply be deleted. I’m upping my minimum wordage from 400 (always far too low anyway) to 600. This may sound harsh but I honestly feel it is the only way to put a stop to the downward spiral in terms of general quality of web articles in general.
And if I don’t get any articles submitted? That would be a blow but somehow I don’t think it will happen. What I do think will happen is that submitters will polish up their writing skills and come to realise that quality is preferable to quantity anytime. I truly believe that this is the only way forward for article writing if it is to remain a significant tool in the internet marketer’s armoury.
Steve Dempster would love to see your quality articles in his article directory http://www.articlemetropolis.com
To Write Or Not To Write
She was sitting inside a public transportation; then, all of the sudden, thoughts suddenly seem to swirl inside her head and she ached to be with a notepad and pen so she could write them all down. She finds a notepad and a pen, she is lucky and the thoughts became words. She does not find them, she gets upset as the thoughts she was nursing so tenderly like a baby dissipated like dust into the winds.
That is how writers go about in their daily lives. There are moments when they could think of nothing to write at all and times when they are bombarded with so many ideas that their hands could not keep up or the inks of their pens would run out, whatever comes first.
But there is always a question that bugs every writer, and that is, To write or not to write? When they are faced with the opportunity of writing about something that is not their forte, would they or would they rather not write about it?
Writers who desperately need to earn a living will have no other choice but to go on and write anything that will get in the bucks. But, comes the mental block, how will they go about writing about something that they are not even passionate about? How could a poet write about the technical aspects of a car? How could a literary writer do a news article on something as horrid as a vehicular accident?
Here are tips on how to be a flexible writer:
Research, research, research.
If a writer, especially one who is just starting out and still trying to learn the ropes of being flexible, gets assigned to write a topic that he or she knows nothing about, he or she will not go amiss with lots and lots of research. There are a lot of sites on the net that offers sample articles on just about any topic under the sun. Through research, the writer will be able to get an idea on where she or he has to do and what she or he still needs to look up to be able to come up with the facts needed in her or his article.
Read.
Aside from getting facts from the net for a story or an article, a writer will also do well by reading a lot of materials like newspapers, magazines, manuals or books that will help in constructing the pieces that she or he needs to come up with.
Use the radio and TV as your eyes and ears.
A writer’s ears and eyes are also very important in coming up with a piece that she or he does not know much about. If she or he is told to write about current events, then she could use radio and television as sources of information as to what is happening around. From news reports or documentaries, she or he could get a lot of information for the piece she or he is working on.
Be always ready.
So as not to miss out on any tidbit of information, a writer must have a pen and notepad with her or him wherever she or he goes. A writer never knows when an occasion or happening presents itself that she or he could produce into an article that is worth a reader’s while.
Nothing is a waste for a writer.
When an idea presents itself to a writer, whether it be for money or for no reason at all, she or he jots it down. Writers never waste something that could get her or him writing. An idea, no matter how bad or juvenile, is an idea that could be worked on when the tough gets going.
So to write or not to write? If one is a real writer, one writes no matter what. Because when we get down to it, a writer is not just born but also made. With a lot of hard work and perseverance, a writer becomes outstanding when she or he could take on any topic and write something about it that will not only be just readable but a success.
Talkinmince article directory, to find more articles and resources on To Write or Not to Write go to http://www.talkinmince.com/Top10/ and our weblog http://www.talkinmince.com/tmblog/ for more information.
How To Write A Feature
She was sixteen when she met handsome Romeo, who is ten years older than she was and a seafarer. They fell in love and became lovers. Two years later, she found out that she had AIDS in its early stage and Romeo was dying from the disease himself.
Romeo died after two months. She lived to be fifty-five and even had a kid, who she also lost to the disease. She was the only one who lived to tell the tale because of a miracle cure.
If this had any truth in it, this would have made a wonderful feature article because a feature story delves behind what goes on behind the news and having AIDS and still living because of a cure is news. A feature story also gets into peoples lives.
It tells of the story behind their triumphs and aims to inspire those who are less fortunate. It tries to explain how a trend took on, it gives out information to people in a way that is lighter to read than the news. It makes you aware of how an event came to be and who were really responsible for it happening.
There are really no restrictions when it comes to making feature articles because unlike news stories, you have no length requirement to think about. It basically is a journalists equivalent to an essay. When writing a feature, you just have to base your story on some simple guidelines.
You choose a theme and start with it, then present information and insights to validate the point that you want to get across, and last, draw a conclusion that would bring your reader to a level of realization that is most imperative at the end of the story.
Here some of the type of feature stories that one could write:
The Story Behind the News Story
While the news story tells the people about what transpired, the feature story will tell of how it happened. It will explain why it happened the way it did and tell of the reactions and the feelings of the people involved.
It will try to elucidate the various decisions that people made because of what happened and what impact these decisions have on the other people around them. The feature behind the news story will give the readers an in-depth look of what really happened behind the goriest of murders or an atomic blast and should get them thinking about their own mortality.
Profile of a Personality
There always exists a person in your community or even elsewhere who is bound to pique the curiosity of everyone. Satisfy their curiosity by giving out a story on how this personality became to be. Though you could also write about somebody who is a virtual unknown but who has done something so remarkable that he will surely impress if not inspire readers.
Give the readers facts about the persons life at the same time infusing color and details that make this person stand out from all the rest, making him worthy of a story. It is also a plus factor to be able to interview the person himself so you could get some piece of information that only he could provide, making the story even more interesting to read.
Feature Writing Tips
Guidelines to writing a feature story is basically the same as that of any other story but if you really want to capture the readers attention even after a thousand words, then your writing must be lively and engaging with specific and clear details.
First, you have to start out with a strong lead that would immediately make the reader want to read the rest of your story. It could be an anecdote that came up during an interview of what transpired or a principle that your subject lives by. It could be a description of the person that you are writing about that you are sure would hold a readers attention.
Move on with your story by telling them of descriptions of the persons involved or how they came to be. You might want to put in direct quotes from an interview that you had with your subject.
Explain and present everything in the main part of the story in such a way that the reader will want to go through it until the very end, where you also finish with an explosive closing line.
Your conclusion should make an impact on your readers. It could either be a powerful quote or an encapsulation of what the subject could inspire the community or even the nation into doing after knowing of what he has done.
Always make a reader put down what he is reading with a sigh of contentment or a smile of pure delight.
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