How to Write an Article in 10 Easy Steps

By Heather Hart

Learning how to write an article can be a great way to grow your income as an author. Greatcontent.com says, “Article writing is the process of creating a non-fiction text about current or recent news, items of general interest or specific topics. They are published in print formats, such as newspapers and magazines, or online… Articles can also contain photographs, data, and statistics presented in different formats, as well as eyewitness accounts and interviews. Articles should be objective and only contain facts from verifiable sources.”

In other words, writing articles isn’t something you can just slap together in your spare time. Articles take work. They’re an investment. However, learning to write articles is well worth the effort. It’s a practiced skill that can be a great way to earn an income as an author.

So, just how do you learn to write an article? Let’s look at the ten-step process of writing articles.

How To Write An Article

Organizing Your Notes

Before you begin, select a method for organizing your notes. In school, most teachers instruct students to use notecards to outline and take notes for writing assignments. In the digital age, many writers use mind mapping, while other writers simply keep a running Word document they continually add information to.

Another option is to keep a notebook for your articles. Write the topic of the article at the top of a page and then add post-it notes with possible headings, facts, quotes, etc. to it as you go. Once you’re ready to start writing your article, you can transfer all your notes to the computer.

Having them on sticky notes allows you to rearrange your thoughts and organize them. It also allows you to keep them all on one page in a notebook, instead of running over onto multiple pages of handwritten notes. Once you transfer them to the computer, you can fill in any gaps you find by doing further research.

It doesn’t matter how you organize your thoughts, only that you do. But let’s back up a moment and start from the beginning…

Step 1. Select Your Topic

Choosing what to write about is the obvious first step towards writing an article. Most writers choose one niche they like to write in.

For instance, you may write articles about the writing industry. Whether that’s writing, publishing, or marketing. Those are areas in the same industry. Those areas would take less research because you would already be familiar with them. However, if you were to take a job writing an article about real estate in Manhattan, you might not know where to start.

On the other hand, if you are a travel writer, you could know quite a bit about what goes on in Manhattan. Yet if you were asked to write an article about how to market a book you might be clueless. Finding a niche and sticking with it can save you a ton of time when it comes to research.

Once you know what niche you want to write in, you can brainstorm topics within your niche. It’s a good idea to create a list of topics you’d like to cover in the future, so you have an idea pool to pull from. You can add to it as you come up with new ideas, and cross ideas off as you write about them. And in some cases, you may have the topic of your article assigned if you are working for a website, client, or publisher.

Step 2. Identify Your Audience

Once you know the topic of your article, the next step is to identify your target audience. Who’s going to be reading your article? Where will it be published?

If you know where your article will be published, you can check out some of the other articles they have previously published. This will give you an idea of the writing style the publication expects. While you’re there, you can also identify the audience you’ll be writing to as it can affect the way you write. Writing an article about bird migration patterns for the National Geographic would be very different than writing an article about that same topic for Highlights for Kids.

When identifying your audience, the three factors you want to look for are:

📖 Reading level

📖 How the topic will affect them

📖 Content presentation (what they are accustomed to)

One other factor you should identify at this point is how long your article needs to be. Don’t worry too much about it at this point. Just make a note somewhere of the acceptable word count. Is there a minimum/maximum or a range you need to stay within? Save this information for later.

Step 3. Outline Your Article

After identifying your topic and your audience, you’re ready to start outlining your article.

Start with what you know about the topic of your article and create a rough outline. It’s okay if this changes as you go, it’s just a starting point; a springboard if you will.

Step 4. Research Your Subject

Once you have your outline, it’s time to start doing some research. Based on the outline you made, you should know where you need to fill in some gaps.

Step 5. Write Your Rough Draft

Armed with your outline and research, you should be ready to start writing the rough draft of your article. Articles should be written in an easy to read font like Arial or Times New Roman. If you are working for a client, website, or publisher, you should check their submission guidelines to see if they have any formatting notes they want you to follow. If they want you to use a specific font or format bullet points a certain way, it’s best to know that from the beginning.

Next, create a new outline based on your original outline and your research. This will be the bones of your article. Then start filling it in. It is okay if you don’t write this from top to bottom. For instance, you might write step eight of an article before step five. It doesn’t matter what order you write the rough draft of an article in, just that it gets written.

The rough draft of an article should include three main parts:

📖 Introduction -- The introduction should tell the readers what’s coming. E.g., “Below, you’ll learn about the different types of phishing attacks and how you can use Office 365 phishing protection to ward them off.”

📖 Body -- The body is the meat of the article.

Use Short Paragraphs & Headings

The main text of a rough draft is called the body. It should be broken up into sections with headings and subheadings. Make sure to use short paragraphs. This will help your articles be easy to read and help readers quickly skim to find the section they need if they’re short on time.

Back Up Your Facts Without Plagiarizing

Make sure your writing is original and backed up with facts. You don’t want to use someone else’s words or outline for your article. That’s plagiarism.

Merriam Webster defines Plagiarism as “to steal and pass off (the ideas or words of another) as one's own: use (another's production) without crediting the source.”

You’ll notice this article was opened with a quote from another website and, in the last paragraph, there was a definition of plagiarism from Merriam Webster. Both of those uses are okay because they were credited to the source.

The Fair Use Law

You’ll also notice that in both instances mentioned above, only a small portion of their text was used. There is another law called the Fair Use Law that allows you to share small sections of copyrighted material in articles. Here’s that definition for you: “Fair Use is a legally permissible use of copyrighted material for specific purposes such as commentary, criticism, news reporting, research, teaching or scholarship.”

If you copy a definition without putting them in quotation marks and crediting the source, that would be plagiarism no matter how much or how little you share.

The Fair Use Law only allows you to share small portions of text when attributing it to the source of the information. You can’t, however, copy an entire article, or a large portion of an article, under the Fair Use Law.

It’s also plagiarism to find someone else’s article on a topic and copy their outline, as that’s stealing their idea. You can use their posts for research and fill the gaps in your own outline, but you should never copy someone else’s article. Nor their outline.

📖 Conclusion -- The conclusion of your article is what will bring it to a close. You may want to summarize or recap what you’ve covered in the article to reinforce what it said.

Your conclusion should also include a strong call to action. A call to action is defined by MarketingTerms.com as, “The part of a marketing message that attempts to persuade a person to perform a desired action.”

You might ask readers to read another post to learn more or subscribe to your newsletter to get updates about new articles. Maybe you want them to share the article with their friends or colleagues. If you’re promoting an affiliate product, maybe want them to buy something, or click through to another page. Whatever it is, having a strong call to action will keep readers from simply clicking off your website when they finish reading the article. It tells them what to do next.

If you’re publishing your article on a website that allows comments, including a question in your conclusion will help increase interaction on your post.

Do they have any thoughts or comments about the topic? Any tips of their own they could share or any questions they need to have answered? The comments section can be a great place for getting ideas for additional articles.

Remember that word count we took note of earlier? Now is when that comes in. Once you have your rough draft finished, you’ll want to make sure it’s within (or close to) your word count boundaries. If the article needs to be at least 1,000 words and it’s only 500, you need to do some more work on your rough draft before moving on. If you have a 1,000-word limit and it’s pushing 2,000, you probably want to go ahead and cut it back.

Step 6.) Do Keyword Research

Once you’ve finished the rough draft, it’s best to set it aside and work on something else for a little while. This is a great time for keyword research as the topic is still fresh in your mind. A keyword/phrase is what your reader would type into the search bar when looking for your post.

Since you’ve just done a ton of research for writing the article, you probably have a good idea of where to start. You can use a keyword tool like Google’s Keyword Planner to do some keyword research.

You can learn more about doing keyword research in our post on SEO here.

For every article you write, you’ll want to choose one focus keyword or phrase. This is something you’ll use whether you are publishing the article online or off. In addition to your focus keyword/phrase, you’ll also want to identify some secondary keywords (also known as LSI keywords) to use when publishing the article online. These will help search engines correctly identify the article.

Step 7.) Edit and Update

After you’ve performed your keyword research, you’ll be ready to come back to the article and begin editing and updating it. You’ll want to make sure you use your focus keyword or phrase in the introduction and in one of the subheadings that break up your text.

Here is what a sample editing checklist could look like:

✏️ Run a spell check

✏️ Use your focus keyword/phrase in the introduction

✏️ Use your focus keyword/phrase in a subheading

✏️ Kick the filler words

We all use them: “That,” “thing,” “very,” and “really.” If you have any other pet words you know you overuse, go ahead and search for them as well. I overuse “but” and “and.” All writers have something they struggle with, knowing your weakness is a strength. Instead of trying to fight it when writing your rough draft, you can correct it when editing and make your writing shine.

✏️ Get rid of weakly written modifiers.

Cut out words ending in -ly and use strong language. Instead of weakly written adverbs, you want bold modifiers.

✏️ Check for spiders

Spider words are prepositions. They are known as spider words because they describe where spiders can crawl (in, to, out, over, etc.). Grammar Revolution defines Prepositions as “words that show the relationship between a noun or pronoun and some other word or element in the rest of the sentence.” Because prepositions cannot stand on their own, they can make your articles wordy. Reducing the number of prepositions will make your article succinct.

✏️ Run another spell check

After editing your article, it is possible you have just created errors. It happens to the best authors. Thus, running another quick spell check is a must. You might also consider running another program such as Grammarly or Scribens to check your grammar.

Step 8.) Craft Your Headline

Once your article’s written and polished, you’re ready to craft your headline. The reason you’re doing this so late in the game is that you want to make sure your headline fits your article. When crafting your headline, you’ll want to make sure it includes your focus keyword or phrase, preferably near the beginning.

A good headline…

📖 Elicits Emotion

📖 Captures Attention

📖 Makes A Promise

📖 Stays Succinct

📖 Contains Keywords

If you’re writing an article for a travel website. Instead of titling your article, “A Trip To Amsterdam,” a better title would be “10 Experiences You'll Want To Take Time For In Amsterdam.” The first falls flat, while the second promises adventure. Ask yourself this, if you were planning a trip to Amsterdam, which article would you rather read?

To come up with that second title, I used the Coschedule Headline Analyzer. It’s a free tool that can help you craft a headline for your article that will resonate with your readers. While sometimes you can break the rules of writing good headlines, most of your headlines should follow the above rules and score well with the Coschedule Headline Analyzer.

Step 9.) Take A Break

Taking a break and stepping away from your writing is an important step in the writing process.

This helps you come back with fresh eyes and catch mistakes you would’ve overlooked beforehand. Seriously, don’t skip this.

Step away from your computer altogether. Get outside for a bit, stretch your legs. When you come back in, check your email, maybe start writing something else or do some research for another project. Put as much distance between you and the article you’ve just written as possible.

Step 10.) Read & Revise

After you’ve taken a break and you’re ready to come back with a fresh mind, start by reading your article aloud to yourself. Continue reading it aloud and making revisions until you feel it is finished. If you work on it for more than 30 minutes. Go back to step nine. The last thing you want to do is send in an article because you’re tired of looking at it.

Also, remember you’re harder on your writing than anyone else will be and it’s possible to do too much editing.

Step 11.) Celebrate

While this was supposed to be ten steps to writing your article, step eleven is just as important as the rest. As a writer, you should always take time to celebrate your accomplishments. Writing articles takes a lot of brain power. Sitting in your chair and staring at your computer is hard on your body. Every time you finish an article, book, blog post, or whatever it is you’ve been working so hard on, count the win. You’re an awesome writer, and finishing this article proves it.

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Heather Hart — Author Coach

Heather has a passion for helping other writers make their dreams come true. With well over a dozen books in print, she has been working as an author coach for close to a decade.

https://www.facebook.com/authorheatherhart/