If you're not a born writer, a simple way to begin writing articles to promote your business is to write list articles.

Your list articles could be a top ten list or top seven list that deals with a specific subject.

You could also write up a list of tips that deals with a broad subject such as marketing or promotion, and then add a catchy headline or title to your list.

Your list article could be without an introduction or you could write up a few short sentences or paragraphs to lead into your new list article.

With your introduction, write just enough to get your readers interested in your article before going into your list.

Some tips that will help you to maximize the success of your list articles are:

1. Make each tip informative.

You could tell your reader the benefit of using your tip, go into detail about how to use your tip, or define how your tip works if you're writing about something that is new to your reader.

One tip could simply state the benefit of using your tip, or you could tell your reader the benefit of using your tip and also how to use your tip.

The key is to provide genuinely useful information to your reader. If you're able to do this, you'll be able to get your articles published and achieve long term promotion of your business.

2. Write for your target audience.

For example, if you wrote a manual on e-zine publishing you could write up a list of ten e-zine promotion tips.

3. Use lots of white space.

Your articles will look cleaner and more professional, and you'll be able to keep your readers, including your skim readers, interested in your article.

4. Vary the length of your sentences.

Use short and long sentences to get your points across.

For example, if you have two or three short sentences in a row, you could transform these short sentences into one compound sentence.

You could also make these short sentences into one compound sentence and one short sentence.

5. Write your articles as if you are writing to one person or even talking to that person.

Writing your articles in this way will help you to add your personality to your writing, and make it feel like you're speaking directly to your reader.

6. Use the active voice.

Using the active voice will make your writing more straightforward.

It will also help you to keep your list article from becoming uninteresting or confusing to your reader.

7. Go over your article for mistakes.

Many article writers, even though they write very informative articles, have a problem with spelling and grammar mistakes.

Because they're easily avoidable, making mistakes like this can make your writing seem amateurish and decrease your chances of getting your article published.

8. Leave your list article for a couple of days and then go over it again adding detail where it's needed and eliminating parts of your article that are unneeded.

Afterwards recheck your article for mistakes.

9. Read your article out loud.

By doing this, you'll be able to make your article read just like you speak.

You'll also be able to make changes to parts of your article that don't flow very well or that are unclear to your reader.

10. Have someone else read over your article after you're done.

You'll be able to get honest feedback for your article that will either tell you that you're article is really good or that your article needs some work.

If you're article needs some work, getting this feedback will help you to avoid making the mistake of promoting your article before it's ready to be published.

11. Promote your e-zine in your resource box.

Promoting your e-zine in your resource box will help you to successfully keep in contact with your readers and keep your marketing message on their minds.

In your resource box, have your readers visit your site to subscribe to your e-zine or have an email address (i.e., subscribe@yourdomain.com) that forwards emails to your subscription email.

Doing this will enable you to continue to get more subscribers from your list articles even if you decide to change list hosts or autoresponder services.

12. Promote your finished article.

Submit your article to article directories, article announcement lists, and also to e-zine publishers.

Also post your article on your site, and keep your site updated with your new articles.

This article was posted on November 15, 2004