Writing one blog post may not be that difficult, but if you wish to churn out a post week after week, or even day after day, it can get a bit tedious. Plus, staring at a blank page can always has the unexpected power of paralyzing you!
What if you have a deadline looming ahead, and you still have zero idea how to craft your idea into a readable—let alone engaging—piece? If you’re suffering from writer’s block, the best way out of it is to start writing. But that’s easier said than done, especially when the pressure is mounting!
The good thing is that some tools can help you overcome that struggle. One of the biggest help we’ve found for conjuring up articles that are informative and catchy is to use tested and proven article writing templates.
Before you protest, hear us out: using an article template isn’t cheating. It’s simply a tool that can help you bring focus to your piece and also encourage you to be consistent in your writing output. In this post, we hope to share the benefits of an article writing template, plus a free download for you over at the end.
Benefits of Using an Article Writing Template
Check out some of the benefits of writing with an article template:
You will be more focused.
Sometimes, the struggle in writing is not that you don’t have any ideas, but that you have too many of them! The problem is that this tends to cause analysis paralysis, where you spend too much time trying to explore each idea, going into all these rabbit holes without getting anywhere.
This is the beauty of using an article template: it helps you hone in on only one or two ideas at a time, making the task much more manageable. Because you’re writing within a set template, you set restraints on yourself, which actually help you to be more creative.
You will be more efficient.
When you write, you want to maximize your time so that you can have the greatest amount of results. Sometimes, even organizing our ideas can eat up so much of our time and energy.
An article template already has a proposed order that you just need to follow, so you can spend your time writing out your ideas instead of worrying about how to organize them.
You may get more clarity.
Think of an article template as a writing plan, an outline that you can use to brainstorm your ideas and to get them down on paper. With this kind of plan, you’ll be able to think of which information is relevant and therefore that you want to include, which also helps clarify things for you.
You can be more consistent.
Perhaps one of the biggest benefits of using an article template is that it can help you be more consistent. And if there’s anything we need more than anything when it comes to blogging and publishing content, it’s being able to have new content regularly.
Think about it: consistent publishing means that you get closer to your marketing goals, whether it’s to increase your website traffic, to collect more e-mail subscribers, to have higher conversion rates or to improve your social media engagement. The more content—and good quality ones, that!—you have, the easier it will be to reach your target audience.
An article template will serve as a system for your online business, which you can just follow day in and day out and see the results you want.
The 4 Important Elements of any Article
With that said, here are the 4 most important elements that you need to have in any article you write. (We also include this in the free Article Template download at the end of this post!)
1. Headline
Do you know that copywriters spend the most effort on getting the headline just right? And for good reason! The headline is the first thing that your readers see, and it determines whether or not they will click through to read the entire thing!
Think of your headline as the one-line summary of everything you talk about in the article. But more than just giving a boring summary, you need it to function like the storefront of businesses on a busy street. What will keep a person from walking by, and get him to take a second look? Usually, it’s when what’s shown in front is something that a potential customer needs, wants, or can be curious about.
To create a powerful headline, think about the following:
- Good word balance: Use a good mix of common and uncommon, expected and unexpected words
- Length: Make sure you create a headline that can be wholly visible on social media posts and detectable by search engines
- Power Attraction: Know the most catchy types of headlines, such as those that list Top 5 Reasons (the “why” headline), Top 7 Ways (the “how” headline), or the use of a controversial question
- Simple and skimmable: The best headlines are those that a reader can easily skim and understand right away
2. Introduction or Lead
Now that you have your audience reading past the headline, you need to keep their interest. The introduction is also called the lead or the lede, and serves as the bridge to get them to read the main content.
Expand on whatever promise you made in the headline, and give a teaser of what’s in store. You can also draw your reader in by specific examples, or addressing what your reader might be feeling or wanting from your piece.
3. Content or Body
Now, this is the main part of your article. You can wing it, but sometimes it helps to write within certain boundaries.
Some of the most common ways is to use the list format. For example, you might be writing about car disinfection. Using a list template means that you will focus on top 5 ways of doing it. It helps you formulate your body according to the five main ways.
4. Conclusion or Call to Action
At the end of your article, you need a conclusion, where you sum up what your article was about. This is also where you put in your call-to-action, to help your reader decide what to do next.
Article Template Download
If you need help applying all these things into an actual article, here’s our free Article Template Download for you. All you need to do is fill out the contents according to the template and you’re good to go!
In addition to using an article template, you might want to learn about different writing structures, literary devices, and other tools to help improve your writing. That way, you never stop growing and expanding the kinds of things you can write about!
Did you find this post helpful? Let us know in the comments below!
If you enjoyed this post, then you might also like:
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- How to Write an Appreciation Letter: Tips and Templates
- How to Ask for a Letter of Recommendation: 6 Steps and a Template for Getting Endorsements
Yen Cabag is the Blog Writer of TCK Publishing. She is also a homeschooling mom, family coach, and speaker for the Charlotte Mason method, an educational philosophy that places great emphasis on classic literature and the masterpieces in art and music. She has also written several books, both fiction and nonfiction. Her passion is to see the next generation of children become lovers of reading and learning in the midst of short attention spans.
