Hope Writes

My Latest Hub Pages

Posted by Hope

I thought I’d post a quick list of some of my latest Hub Pages. (FYI: If you haven’t already noticed, I keep a running list of them in the sidebar.)

• Warning Signs Of Childhood Depression
• Stop Stress Dead in its Tracks
• Some Signs of Poor Self-Esteem
• A Quick Guide to Meditation in the Workplace
• Ways Stress Hurts You
• Ways to Spend More Quality Time With Your Family
• Blog About Your Weight Loss

Popularity: 14% [?]

New eBook In The Works

Posted by Hope

So I decided to put the classes here on hold for now while I work on a new eBook. Based on one of my online classes, it is tentatively titled Article Marketing For Writers.

While some writers understand the basics of article marketing and how it can be hugely beneficial to your writing career, many writers have never even heard of this concept. I decided to compile my thoughts and experience into an eBook that will (hopefully) help other writers learn more about article marketing and how to use it to build their writing career.

Be sure to subscribe to my free newsletter, as I’ll be sending updates while I work on this book.

Popularity: 38% [?]

How to Write a Quiz in 6 Easy Steps - Part 2

Posted by Hope

Miss Part 1 of this article? Click here to read it!

In Part 1 of this article, I showed you the first three steps to writing a great quiz. First, you chose the topic of your quiz. Next, you determined the reason for the quiz. Last, you decided what kind of quiz to write.

Now comes the fun part…writing your quiz. Ready? Let’s get started! Here are the final steps to writing your quiz.

Step 4: Write the questions.

Keeping the purpose of your quiz in mind, you will now write questions for your quiz. This is often the part where writers freeze up and quit. Don’t stop now!

Let’s say the topic of your quiz is house plants, and the purpose of the quiz is to determine whether or not your quizzer has a green thumb. Keeping this in mind, you might write questions like:

1. How often should you water an ivy?
2. Where is the best spot to place a potted plant?

TIP: If you are writing a True or False quiz, remember to write questions that have an affirmative answer (yes or no).

Step 5: Fill in the rest of the quiz.

After you’ve written all the questions for your quiz, you’ll need to go back fill it in. For example, if you are writing a multiple choice quiz, write 3-5 possible answers, making one of those the correct answer. If you are writing a quiz that will require the test-taker to score points, write statements that result in yes or no answers.

Using the example above, let’s plug multiple choice answers into one of the questions:

1. How often should you water an ivy?
1. Every week.
2. Every day.
3. Every hour.
4. Every three months.

TIP: Keep it simple, sweetie.

Step 6: Write the summary.

The end of your quiz should contain two parts: the results of the quiz and the call to action (the purpose of your quiz).

First, explain to the quizzer how to tally their results. Then give them the findings of their results. The final part of your summary should also contain a call to action. Now that they’ve taken the quiz and learned the results, what should they do now? Give your reader specific direction that they can take away from the quiz.

Using the house plant quiz sample above, the end of your quiz might contain the following results for quizzers:

If you answered mostly A’s, you have a green thumb. In fact, you probably have a house full of beautiful, blooming plants right now. Keep up the good job!

If you answered mostly B’s, you have a good chance of growing indoor plants. Sometimes you might forget to water your plants, but overall you’re able to maintain pretty plants. Remember to feed and water your plants regularly and your plants will love you forever.

If you answered mostly C’s, you should stay away from plants altogether. You’re most likely to neglect or kill even the toughest of greenery. Opt for live-like silk plants instead.

TIP: Keep your quiz fun and light. If your quiz is on a more serious topic, you might want to include some background research information in your summary.

Popularity: 25% [?]

How to Write a Quiz in 6 Easy Steps - Part 1

Posted by Hope

So you want to write a quiz, but you aren’t sure how or where to begin? No problem! I’m going to show you a step-by-step formula that will make writing quizzes as easy as pie.

Step 1: Choose your topic.

Before you begin writing a quiz, you need to settle on a topic. What will be the subject of your quiz? You can write quizzes on just about anything. But you should never start until you know what your topic will be.

Got your hot topic? Good, let’s move on to the next step.

TIP: Choose a topic that is "hot" and you’ll generate lots of immediate interest.

Step 2: Determine the purpose.

Now that you know what you’re going to write a quiz about, it’s time to decide what the point of your quiz will be. What purpose will the quiz have? Is it to test the quizzer’s knowledge about a certain subject? Will you help the quizzer determine if they are ready for something in particular?

Every quiz should have a purpose. If yours doesn’t, then maybe you should start back at the beginning and choose a different topic. Do not move to the third step until you have a topic and purpose.

TIP: The purpose of your quiz should be to answer a specific question that your reader has.

Step 3: Decide what type of quiz to write.

As you already know, there are a variety of quizzes. Do you want to write a multiple choice quiz? Or maybe you want to write a True or False quiz. How about a quiz that allows the reader to answer on a sliding scale?

In addition to deciding what type of quiz you’ll write, you need to determine how many questions your quiz should have. Most quizzes contain 5, 7, or 10 questions. If you’re new at writing quizzes and still unsure, start with a 5-question quiz.

TIP: What type of quiz do you enjoy taking? Write that kind of quiz first.

Popularity: 29% [?]

You Don’t Have to be an Expert to Write Good Articles

Posted by Hope

Have you been putting off writing articles because you don’t think you have anything to say? I have seen way too many people discount their knowledge and article writing ability, just because they think they have to be an "expert" to write articles. This simply isn’t true.

You really don’t have to be an expert to write articles. In reality, everyone is an expert…even if you don’t realize it. Even more so, just about anyone can turn out a good article with some amount of effort. Here are some quick tips to help you write a good article, even if you don’t think you can:

• Be yourself. Don’t try to write in a scholarly tone of voice. Write just like you talk. Pretend you’re writing a letter to a good friend. What would you say? What kind of advice would you give? Just be yourself.

• Write clearly. Be sure what you write makes sense. Re-read each sentence to ensure they each make a clear point. Does each paragraph contribute to your main idea? Will readers be able to easily follow your train of thought?

• Use an outline. A lot of people get hung up on the idea of outlining because they think of those rigid outlines from high school. An outline can be as simple as a few sentences, phrases, or even single words describing each part of your article.

• Write a rough draft first. When I write, my first draft is always an outline. If you don’t like to outline, quickly write a first draft from start to finish without stopping to edit. Once you have the basic idea on paper, then you can go back and flesh it out and edit it for clarity.

• Proofread. Before you send your article off, don’t forget to proofread it. A lot of writers tend to skip this step, but it’s very important.

• Edit. Even if you’ve already edited your article, go back after you proofread and edit it again. Be sure your thoughts are clear and your words are concise. Say what you can in as few words as possible.

• Publish. By now, you have a polished piece of work that is ready to be published. Send your article off and reap the rewards of comments from happy readers.

Popularity: 30% [?]

How To Write A Meaty Article

Posted by Hope

I got a little sidetracked yesterday, but I felt that post was important in laying a foundation to this series. Today I’m going to take an example (article) from the first part of this series and develop it even further. I want to walk through the process of creating a meatier article with you, so you can see how it’s done. Hopefully we’ll all learn something from this lesson together. (It’s just as much for me, as it is for you.)

Valerie commented on the first post:

“One of my frustrations is not being about to produce articles as quickly as I want to, and it’s becuase I’m a perfectionist, and I’m always shooting for around 500 words - hopefully quality words.”

I know exactly what you mean, Valerie, because I’m the same way. I tend to watch my word count ticker in the bottom left corner when I write. The only thing that does is succeed in driving me nuts when the numbers don’t rise as quickly as I’d like them to. Although I’m a pretty quick writer, I do tend to obsess over things like word count and quality.

3-Step Article Writing Process

First, I’m going to do a quick run-through of the 3-step article writing process I use.

Start From Scratch

The first thing I recommend you do before you start an article is to think about what you’re going to say before you actually do the writing. Gather your thoughts for a few moments. Figure out what questions you want to answer with your article. Or what information you will impart with your readers.

Starting from scratch is often scary, with the empty white page and cursor blinking back at you. But you can lay a foundation in the beginning that will help you produce a quality article in the end.

Create An Outline

Once I determine what I’m going to write about, I almost always begin my writing with an outline, as I’ve already shared here. During this part of the writing stage, I like to write by hand away from the computer, preferably outside.

Outlining is simple, so don’t make a big deal of it. Just grab a pen and notebook, write your tentative article title at the top of the page, then jot ideas as they come to you. After you lay out several ideas on paper, you can quickly and easily re-organize them as necessary, then compile the first draft of the article.

Spit-Shine

After the article has been double-checked for errors and mistakes, read through it one last time to make sure there aren’t any more boo-boo’s hiding. Rewrite your final copy and you’re good to go. You should have a nice article, ready to use.

Meatballs, Anyone?

Okay, so we’ve covered the basics of writing a simple article. So now the proof is in the pudding. What if, after all that, your article is still short and just doesn’t quite cut it? What then? Then it’s time to take a closer look at it and figure out why there’s not enough substance to it.

• Is your idea fully developed?
• Is the topic clear enough?
• Did you expand on each idea within the article?
• Did you rush to finish writing it?
• Did you cut sentences and paragraphs because you felt like you were too windy?

Since I’m my own worst critic, I’m going to take one of my own short articles and beef it up to show you how it can be done. We’ll use the article I referred to earlier: Writing Articles - You Can Write Articles With Great Speed And Ease. If you click on that link it will open in a new window for you. Reduce both windows, if you like, so you can follow along with each article as I rewrite it and make it a meatier article.

Let’s go…

Write Articles At The Speed Of Light With Article Templates (I didn’t like the original title, so this is the new one)

Do you freeze up every time you sit down to write an article? I used to. I’d sit down to write an article or two and suddenly every wonderful article idea I’d had throughout the day would disappear. Then I discovered article templates. These are great little gems that help you when you feel a case of writer’s block coming on.

Article templates are fill-in-the-blank snippets. They give you a jumping point for writing when you’ve lost all inspiration. If you’ve never used templates to help you write an article, but frequently struggle when you get ready to write, you are going to love this! Here are just a few ways that article templates make your life a lot easier:

1. You don’t have to think about a layout for your ideas. With article templates, all you have to do is pull one out and use it to create a new article. You don’t have to contemplate thirty minutes over how the article will be written. You simply write. For example, a how-to article template might spark an idea like: How To Learn Bird Calls in 30 Minutes or Less Likewise, a Top 10 Lists article template could prompt you to write an article about the top ten ways to tell your mother you’re pregnant.

2. All you have to do is fill in the blanks. When you use article templates, it really is as simple as filling in the blanks. There’s no more guesswork to writing. Example: 10 Ways to ___________ Your _____________ or 4 Reasons Why You’ll Never _________________.

3. Article templates spur more article ideas. The wonderful thing about using article templates is that once you sit down and write an article or two, you can’t help but think of a few more articles. It’s the inevitable with templates. They act as a springing board for even more ideas.

For example, if you use a writing template to create an article about the tropical rainforest, you might end up with several other articles based on the same topic, but written with different templates, like:

• 3 Worst Months For Animals in the Rainforest
• How to Save the Rainforest
• Tips on Raising Money to Donate to the Rainforest
• Rainforest Quiz: Which Rainforest Animal Are You?

4. Article templates save you a ton of writing time. Who wants to sit for hours at the computer working on the same article? You’ll end up frustrated and angry and want to send the article to your recycle bin. Right? When you use article templates, you cut out all those wasted hours. Article templates can literally reduce your writing time by half, or more.

ORIGINAL WORD COUNT: 250
REWRITTEN WORD COUNT: 467

It’s still not the best article in the world, but you can see how easily I tweaked and added to the article to give it a bit more substance. For the most part, I simply added in a few examples to demonstrate the power of using article templates. By doing those simple things, I nearly doubled the word count on this article.

The next time you draft an article, stop and take a look at it. Does it look “bony?” Find the weak spots and add more meat to those bones.

Popularity: 35% [?]

Put Some Meat On Those Bones - Part 1

Posted by Hope

I have noticed something lately that is interesting, but a little disheartening. I wanted to write about this, but wasn’t sure exactly how to approach the topic. Then my title came to me this morning, so I knew it was time to talk about it.

Here’s what is bothering me…choppy, seemingly incomplete articles. I see this a lot, and I’m not referring to blogs. What I’m talking about is in the article directories and on websites.

If you have ever taken part of article marketing, you already know the process. Sign up at an article directory, then write and submit articles in an effort to gain backlinks and, hopefully in time, more attention to your website. (That’s the short of it.)

Many of the larger article directories take their job very seriously and refuse articles that aren’t of the highest quality. This is a good thing. But what about articles that don’t really say anything?

I’ve read quite a few articles that contain the bare essential (250 words at many directories) word count, and yet seem to be just a rambling thought and not really a complete article. I make it a special point to visit certain authors’ pages just because I like their writing style and I (usually) enjoy reading their articles. But it’s getting to the point that I’m left feeling let down…like there was something more that I could have or should have learned from the article, but didn’t.

So what makes a good article then?

If you look back at some of my articles at Ezine Articles, you’ll notice that there are several in there that meet the minimum requirements, too. I’m not saying I’ve never done this myself. However, regardless of my word count, I try to make sure that each article I write and submit contains something of value to my readers.

For example, let’s take a look at one of my articles that contain exactly 250 words, which is the minimum requirement for Ezine Articles. The title is: Writing Articles - You Can Write Articles With Great Speed And Ease. I look at that article and I know that I can do much better than that. I probably could have expanded that one to at least 500 words, if not more. However this article, as is, has received 197 views (to date).

Now let’s take a look at another article that’s just a little bit meatier: Top 7 Topics People Love To Read About. This article contains 343 words (okay, but again, I probably could have written a few more words on that one, too) and has been viewed 307 times (to date).

The first article is just a general overview of article templates and how they can help you write quicker. To add more meat to the bones of this one, I could have added a sample article template at the end. To take it even one step further, I could have included an article sample from the sample article template.

In the second article, even though the article itself contains some really great information, I could have expanded it by listing a few topic ideas below each hot topic.

One of the things article marketers always say is, “Don’t give away the kitchen.” Meaning, don’t give everything away in your article. Leave your reader wanting more so they’ll click on your link at the end of the article. I do believe in doing this, but I also think we can/should provide our readers with a greater reason to want to click our link.

More on this tomorrow…

Popularity: 40% [?]

Flying By The Seat Of Your Pants

Posted by Hope

This blog post at Performancing.com got my wheels to turning. I’ve been thinking a lot lately about doing more in-depth planning for a couple of my sites in particular.

I’m a fly-by-the-seat-of-my-pants kind of gal. But that’s not always a good thing. I also tend to get lots of ideas. I’ve long since learned to keep a notebook handy to jot down these ideas. I’ve always had a tendancy to jump on every idea I had. Problem with that was they almost always flopped because rather than plan and think things through to the end, I just jumped on the idea and ran with it.

This post talks about doing things like researching up-and-coming trends. If you are a niche marketer, this is an excellent tip because you can get a leg up on the competition. It also recommends weaving in holiday-related stuff and writing ahead.

There’s one thing on this list that I’ve been doing for some time now, which is research your stats. This is by and far a terrific way to get into the minds of your readers. You can learn how they found you (search phrases) and where they come from (site referrals).

Something that recently caught my attention one day as I checked my stats was a graph that shows what day(s) of the week are best for traffic. This is something you should pay attention to. You can write more “meaty” posts on those day(s) of the week and do some linkbaiting in those posts as well, to attract even more traffic.

The key then, whether you’re a writer, blogger, or business-person, is to plan ahead. Don’t let unexpected surprises knock you off you’re feet. Believe it or not, these things do happen, and almost always at a time when you feel like you’re finally beginning to get somewhere.

Do you fly by the seat of your pants, or plan ahead? What are some of your tips?

Popularity: 37% [?]