Freelance Writing & Business Communication

Guest Post: Brainstorming and Writing Brief Articles

If you start browsing the Internet for any length of time, you will come across hundreds of thousands of brief articles. These articles are generally 350-500 words in length and take a very short time to read. Web surfers seem to love these short pieces on a variety of topics because they can quickly read the information, get what they need out of it, and move on without wasting too much time.

Writing these brief articles can be quite fun and easy, once you have the process down. What follows is a short list of steps for quickly and effectively writing brief articles for your own blog, or to submit to someone else’s.

1. Isolate your main topic. What do you want to write about? If you already have an idea, that’s fantastic. If not, try doing a Google blog search and see what others are blogging about. Sometimes this is all you need to get the creative juices flowing.

2. Do some research. Read some other articles on similar topics and learn a bit more about the topic you’ve chosen. The more short articles you read, the better you will understand the style and flow.

3. Identify commonalities. You’ll begin to see that many people are saying similar things, just using different wording. You want to bring together something that’s already out there and add to what’s being said on the topic. This will help to separate you from the crowd.

4. Get away from the computer. Take a note pad to another location and spend some time writing notes about what you’ve been reading. Identify your main points and sub points so that when you return to the computer you have a clear idea of what direction you will be taking.

5. Start writing. After your brief brainstorming session, get back to the computer and pound it out. You will see quickly just how fast and easy the process is when you have a road map leading you through the article. Having approximately 5 key points will get you somewhere between 350 and 400 words very easily.

This post was contributed by Kelly Kilpatrick, who writes on the subject of online colleges and universities. She invites your feedback at kellykilpatrick24 at gmail dot com