5 Tips to Crushing Article Writing

Throughout my PR internship I have found myself writing numerous articles for all different platforms and audiences. Through doing this I have come up with a few key pointers that I have found helpful when constructing an article and I thought I would share them with you all.

Firstly and most importantly, know your audience. I know you would have heard it a lot but you don’t realise how important it is until you are writing an article. Knowing whom you are targeting affects the whole article and really tailors it to what the final product is. For example articles I write targeted at Curtin students are totally different to those directed at the Curtin staff.  

Once you know your audience my second most important tip is using the correct language. As I said, writing an article for students in comparison to staff is completely different. Students generally don’t have “time” to waste reading an article (although they will always find time waste on social media), therefore it needs to be direct and to the point with language that is easy to read and understand. In comparison to an article for staff, I find these article I do a lot more research on, they involve background or history and the language used is more professional whilst still being easily understood.

My third tip is having an attention grabbing title. I know we are always told how important it is but it actually is! People aren’t going to click through to what you’re writing if they aren’t drawn in by the title. I usually find it very hard to come up with titles for articles, but here’s a bonus tip for those of you out there that are like me and find it difficult… Ask the people around you! When I finish an article I usually give the 4-6 staff members around me a quick recap and we all sit and brainstorm a catchy/pun intended article title. If no one has something creative off the top of their heads we will research words associated with the main focus of the article and come up with something from that together.

The fourth tip I have is making sure the structure of your article flows and is still engaging right to the very end. Again knowing your audience is really key, don’t over load student articles with information they don’t care about, make sure it is structured in a way that it flows enough that all the important information is covered and they make it to the end.

Lastly, my fifth and final tip is always having a point of action at the end. A link for people to further read, apply, register or visit other social media platforms is a necessity. Those that do read articles right to the end and are intrigued by what you have to say need to know how to act upon it before that moment is gone.

I know almost everyone undergoing their internship will be writing an article of some form at some point so I hope these tips can be adapted to help you! I’m interested to know if anyone else has tips they hold more important than these few I have found? Please leave a comment and let me know!