How to write your op-ed piece

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Op-ed articles, also known as opinion/editorial articles, are a great way for aspiring writers to publicize their work and, in exchange, receive an amazing amount of publicity for free. You can write an op-ed piece and get it publicized provided you follow these simple rules.

Before you begin to write, you need to target which newspaper you would like your article to appear in. You stand a greater chance of getting into your local paper than in a national publication like The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, or USA Today. Still, if one of the national publications appeals to you, then give it a try.

1. Follow the rules. Every newspaper has guidelines on what their specific requirements are. Familiarize yourself with these guidelines and stringently hold yourself to their requirements. Failure to do so will mean you will be rejected.

2. Write with precision. Newspapers do not like verbose writers, unless it is for a feature piece and it is for a high end publication, such as The Washington Post. Short, crisp, and to-the-point sentences are the order of the day.

3. Write with persuasion. Whatever your point of view, write persuasively. Do not muddy the waters by giving vague answers. If you are discussing a problem, count on offering the solution. Expect that your article may occupy one half of the op-ed page; the other half may feature a rebuttal or an opposite point of view.

4. Double space. As with any submitted writing, you must double space your text. Expect the editors to work their magic on your piece, including removing entire paragraphs to make everything fit.

5. Submit a cover letter. Yes, you more than likely will have to snail mail your letter, so send it off with a cover letter to the appropriate contact person.

6. Your contact information. Your name, address, city, state, country, zip, contact numbers, and email address are all needed. More than likely none of this will be included in the piece, but they do need a way to get back to you.

7. Resource box. Unlike ezine sites where you can write a lengthy discourse on who you are and have links to your site, it is likely that only a one or two word sentence about "who you are" will be included. So, consider writing your own resource box and hope that they like it. [You can count on it being changed if they do not.] It could be written something like this:

John Doe is a Detroit based freelance writer affiliated with Writer's Write.

Yes, that may be about all the information they want to share about you with their readers.

More than likely you will know within two weeks time if your piece will get published. Some papers will contact you to let you know if you have been approved/rejected, while others will simply publish your article. Do not hound them as you may want to become a regular contributor.

What is the next step?

1. If you are approved, you can expect letters to the editor -- from readers -- in response to your piece to begin appearing in subsequent editions of the newspaper. Do not be surprised if letters begin arriving in your home or place of business too. Expect phone calls from people who may want to discuss your point of view further, or invite you to speak in front of their group, etc.

2. If you are rejected, consider modifying and resubmitting your piece or forwarding it to another publication. Accept criticism about your writing style, if offered.

3. Op ed pieces are sometimes picked up by syndicators such as Reuters or Google News; your piece can have a life well beyond the local newspaper. If you hit the national press, you can count on your article having widespread coverage. Do a search on Google a few days after publication and you may discover how wide a net your piece has cast. If that is the case, good for you!

Above all, op-ed article can help shape local or national opinion, so think of the greater good you can do as well as the publicity you just may receive when crafting your article. Although newspaper circulation continues to drop, online versions of these same newspapers continue to grow, thereby giving you exposure far beyond the intended market.

Why and how to write articles

When it comes to SEO and a stream of long term traffic to your site there really is only one way to go.

Articles are the best way to ensure that you have constant links to your site circling the web with a one time only input from yourself. And the best thing about article writing is that it doesn’t cost you a penny – in any currency.

Here’s how it works:

-make a list of the things that you know enough about to be able to write a helpful and informative article on.

-Brainstorm the points that the article needs to cover,

-choose 3 or 4 main points and write a few sentences around them that can qualify them as ‘valuable content’

-put all that together into an article of around no more than 800 words (you don’t want to bore people away) 500-600 is best practice.

-close your notebook and leave it for a couple of days.

Why? Do you remember when you were in school and the teacher always used to tell you to ‘make sure you read over your work.’ Well they were right. If you submit your article straight away you will inevitably come back to it later and think to yourself that this sentence doesn’t make sense or that you could have worded that better. If you give yourself some time away from it and then come back with ‘fresh eyes’ you will be in a much better position to objectively critique your work.

Once you are happy with your article copy you will need to submit it to article and ezine directories so that editors and site owners can pick it up and use it as content in their own sites.

There are two ways to do this.

a) You can manually submit your article to your preferred sites which means that you will have total control over who your article goes to or

b) You can use automatic article submission. Submitting your article automatically will save you hours once you get going as you will only need to submit your article once and the website or software that you use will then take over to add it to thousands of lists.

The choice is yours but it’s pretty much a no brainer…

Make sure that you close each article with some information about yourself which lets people know that they are free to use your article and also tells them a little about you including a link or two to your own site(s). This is known as a signature box.

Along with providing good quality content a signature box is the whole reason for you writing the article as it will let people know that you are a leader in your field and where they can find out more about you and your business.

Once your articles start to circulate you will find that the number of visitors to your site will grow and so, therefore, will the revenue you make.

Articles are a great way to position yourself as a leader in your field, so be sure to write about what you know about. Don’t try to make things up as people will be able to tell and you will not be taken seriously.

The more articles you publish, the more links you will have to your site and the better your search engine ranking will be and your bank balance.

Happy Writing

Denise Hamilton

How to succeed as a technical writer

If you have great passion for words and have a degree or diploma in any technology field, then your chances of success is beyond your wildest imaginations. You can be part of that clan of writers out there, who make anything from a thousand dollars to several thousands every month from writing technical articles online for freelance websites, building their brands and getting noticed.

It’s a really wonderful field of writing. And, with the advent of Internet and web publication technologies, the traditional text publication platform has tasted a whole revolution. Today, as an author you are free to publish anywhere at your own will. All you need is some talent in writing, which most of us inherently have.

However, in order to succeed, the most important thing is your brand. You may be a great writer offline, you may know it yourself, and possibly, your nearest friends may know of this fact as well. But the world doesn’t, your prospective client doesn’t. In such a scenario, come the freelance websites. These websites give you a platform to show off your merit and get sales for the content you make.

Examples of the best freelance websites are Guru. com, Elance. com, getafreelancer. com, and so many others. You may just do a search from Google and you will stumble upon a million of them.

What you need to succeed?

One and the most important thing you need for success in freelancing industry is a flawless language and an extensive vocabulary. This will come about as a result of a lot of reading. But do not read any ordinary web publication. You should strive hard to find out the best publications to read. Those, which can enrich your mind, give you some thoughts, and give you new words and ideas. There are not too many of them. And I assure you, top bloggers may not get one sentence correct!

So, look out for authentic sources to read or those sites or blogs, which help you in writing. There are many.

Secondly, you should have quality content in your writing. Writing anything would not make you successful. The quality comes inherently. Naturally. All you have to do is understand what you are writing about and do an in depth research on the topic. Find out the important information on the technology you are going to write about:

It’s advantages and disadvantages

It’s issues and glitches

It’s benefit on the ordinary people

The ways people may use to tweak it to their advantage

The ways to use the tool productively

Any issue with particular groups of people: like children, adults, senior citizens, etc.

Any future improvements

The general statistics of the service provider and the service itself

In any writing about technologies hitting the market and those already in, these points are very important.

To do the research, you can use tools like Google. Do an in depth search for all the terms associated with the technology and find out everything available related to it. Once you get enough information, should read through it. Reading will generate more ideas in you, and will strengthen your points. Start your writing only after you read your research content.

Topic to find

You can find out the topic of writing by various means. The best way is by looking at the current technology news from Fox News, CNN, New York Times, Reuters, BBC World, etc. Such news channels and their websites provide you with the latest happenings in the technology field. What you have to do is read through a specific interesting post and find out the proper keywords. Then do an in depth research on these keywords with Google and Wikipedia. You can get a number of research pages to concentrate your writing on. And such content-rich articles are what the people want, and what hit high in search results. So, they will be purchased for any price you set on them.

All the best to all those who wish to get successful technical writing careers.