Need Good PR for your Company? Write an Article!

A good way to get your personal and business brand in front of more eyeballs is to write articles for magazines, journals or newspapers. Winning the brand war today is about visibility, trust and value, which makes article writing a particularly effective medium.

Here some ideas on how to use articles to grow your brand influence and, by degrees, your business revenue:

1. Write about what you know best: Stick to your core business expertise. If you are a career coach, then write about your experiences helping friends, colleagues and customers find greater satisfaction from their careers.
2. Write for relevant publications: Make sure you write for the right print or online news publication. A female owner of a web and graphic design firm specializing in non-profits might consider publishing an article in a business magazine dedicated to women or in a journal about managing non-profits.
3. Know what your customers read: Not sure what your customers read, ask them. Or, next time you stop by their office, look around the lobby to see what kind of magazines they have on the reception desk or coffee table. Then find out if those publications accept articles written about your area of expertise as a value-add to their readers.
4. Don’t shoot from the hip: Research before you write or you may risk looking like an amateur. Feel free to borrow quotes and statistics from other news sources as long as they are both accurate and relevant; also make sure to give credit to the news source in your article lest you be accused of plagiarizing another writer’s work.
5. KISS: Remember the KISS principle: Keep It Simple Stupid? Don’t go overboard with the information and lexicon – unless of course it’s an academic journal, then it’s preferred! – or you may lose the attention of your audience.
6. Practice Zen writing: As a writer, I admit I struggle with a tendency to overwrite. In the case of articles, however, less is usually more. Keep sentences lean, easy to follow, and to the point. Keep the length of the article only as long as is absolutely necessary to get the point across. Believe me, your readers, and editor, will thank you for it!
7. Write first, edit later: Many beginning writers fall into the trap of writing and editing as they go along. It’s always wiser to get your initial thoughts down on papers during the “white heat” of inspiration and come back later to refine the content and style. Just as every great painter is first a great sketch artist, so should you be a dab hand at the quick composition.
8. Admire your betters: When a very young Ernest Hemingway asked veteran writer Sherwood Anderson the secret to becoming a great writer, the older man said you need to “ape” your betters. So can reading better writers help you improve your style, vocabulary, grammar, organization, and so on.
9. Self promote: When your article gets published, tell the world about it. Tweet it multiple times, mention it on Facebook, blog it, include it on your website, etc. The point is to establish yourself as an expert while simultaneously increasing your readership.
10. Daily bread: Just as you break bread every day, so should you write every day – at least every day of the work week. The more you practice a writing style, the sharper your skills become. That’s why journalists find it so easy to write under the pressure of a deadline. I know of one blogger who gets up at 4am every day to blog 2-3 hours before he starts his regular job. It may sound crazy but it works for him, and he’s got a huge following.

It’s takes a real effort to get going as a writer. Last week, I sat down with a personal fitness trainer friend of mine, Kyle Goldin, owner of Work It Personal Training in Austin, and talked about writing articles, something he has done in the past. We agreed that writing is very similar to getting into shape in that it takes a few months of diligent exercise before you begin seeing the results you seek.

So whether you want to shed a few pounds or add some muscle to your brand, all it takes is a dedicated effort (and following some of the tips outlined above) and you too will start reaping a rich reward.