Each month at writebythesea, you’ll find a different Build Your Business Challenge designed to help you start taking small, consistent actions to build your freelance writing business or your career as an author.

The August Build Your Business Challenge is all about blogging.

But it isn’t about helping you or showing you how to set up a blog.

You can read more about that here.

This month’s challenge is about helping you create great content for your blog and driving traffic to that great content.

Your challenge this month is to write 4 different types of articles for your blog:

1. A List Article

Write a 500 to 800 word list article.

Before you start writing your article, read this post that gives you tips for writing a killer list article:

http://www.submityourarticle.com/creative-article-marketing/how-to-write-a-killer-list-article-in-10-easy-steps/

Now, follow the steps in the article you read and write a list article and post it to your blog.

2. A How-to Article

Write one 1,000 to 2,000 word how-to article for your site.

Before you start writing your article, read this post that gives you tips for writing a killer how-to article and explains why you want to master the skill of writing how-to articles:

http://www.dangerandplay.com/2015/08/11/how-to-write-a-how-to-article/

Use the information you learned in the article you just read to carefully plan your how-to article.

Then write your article.

Also try to create a short video to include in your article (as suggested in the post you read).

3. A Tips Article

A tips article is much like a list article, so you should easily be able to write one 600- 800 word tips article.

However, when you write a tips article you need to make sure the writing is very clear, so readers understand exactly how to follow each tip.

Before you start writing your article, read this article called 20 Quick Tips on Writing Great Blog Posts (if you can’t get this link to work directly from this email, just copy and paste it into your browser):

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/20140602121530-3161863-20-quick-tips-on-writing-great-blog-posts

As you read this article, notice how simple it is.

Readers love tips articles and the more tips you can offer in an article, the better.

Just be sure each tip itself is rather simple, clear, and short.

4. An Interview Article

Write one interview article for your site. Your interview article should be at least 600 words but could be as long as 2,000 words.

The first step to writing an interview article is preparation. Decide on a topic for your article. That will help you figure out who you will need to interview.

Tip: I find it helpful to also come up with a tentative title for my article even before I contact people to interview. With a title, I know exactly what my article will be about, so I can create more focused questions for the experts I plan to interview.

Read these two posts for additional tips and steps to writing an interview article:

https://blog.flipsnack.com/how-write-interview-article-for-magazine/

https://www.thebalancesmb.com/how-to-write-a-profile-or-interview-based-article-1360733

Finally, write your article.

These 4 types of articles are fairly easy to write and once you get familiar with each of them you may decide to write these types of articles for your blog every month.

Try it!

Suzanne Lieurance

P.S. If you’re new to these Build Your Business Challenges, go back and try some of the other monthly challenges here:

July Build Your Business Challenge
June Build Your Business Challenge
May Build Your Business Challenge

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