Article Series Template: How to Launch an Article Series from One Lonely Article

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We’ve been talking about the perks of doing an article series and how to do one correctly (don’t put Part 1, Part 2, ect in your titles!), but today I’d like to share with you a little trick I stumbled upon when I was trying to figure out how to get more marketing mileage out of my blog posts.

As I told you previously, here is one of the ways I morph one piece of content into multiple articles:

“What I do lots of times is I take one aspect of a post and elaborate on it in an article. For example, let’s say my post is about how to do a successful article marketing campaign, and I have listed several brief steps.

I can take each one of those steps and turn them into a stand-alone article by elaborating on them. I can have one article about how to craft a strong resource box, another about how to craft a great article title, and another about how to locate a great article submission service (you know that there’s one that I highly recommend! )

You get the idea–you can elaborate on ideas that you first broach in a blog post, fleshing them out so that they are article-worthy. Depending on the post, you may get several articles out of one post.”

Well, in the same way you can turn one blog post into multiple articles, you can also use one article as a launching pad for an article series.

Here’s how:

1) Write an article that contains a list of items or instructional steps. For example, check out this article I recently published called 7 Habits for Highly Effective Article Marketing

This is my article series launching pad.

I’ve chosen to list 7 items in this article, but you can choose as many items as you like–3, 5, 7, 10–whatever. Whatever number you choose to have in your list, each item must be a weighty enough topic on its own that it can be elaborated on in much greater detail.

If you look at that article “7 Habits for Highly Effective Article Marketing”, you’ll notice that each item in my list is a topic that is article-worthy in itself, and I’ve done a brief summary of each topic.

For anyone who reads that article, they are receiving an overview of a larger subject and a brief intro into each topic on my list, rather than an in depth article about one specific topic.

I’ve done this on purpose–that article is the intro to my unconventional article series. I call it unconventional because:

a) I don’t say outright in any of the articles that it’s an article series.

b) My titles are not indicating that these articles are part of a group.

c) Each article is a stand alone article, making perfect sense when viewed by itself and apart from the rest of the series.

2) Use your original article as an outline for your article series. After you’ve written the article that will launch your series, create an article that expounds on each item in your list in your original article.

For example, going back to my article “7 Habits for Highly Effective Article Marketing”, here’s how my unconventional article series will play out:

Article 1: 7 Habits for Highly Effective Article Marketing. This is basically my outline for my article series.

Article 2: 3 Tips for Developing Healthy Article Submission Habits. The topic of “submit articles regularly, but not too frequently” was the first “habit” that I listed in my original article, and now I’ve written an article to elaborate on that topic.

Article 3: “How To Write Articles That Will Drive Traffic Back To Your Website” (I haven’t submitted this article yet). This article elaborates on habit #2 in my original article. In my original article this habit was “Write articles that demonstrate your expertise, not articles that are promotional.” In this article I really flesh out the idea of writing educational, non-sales oriented articles that will tweak a reader’s interest in your topic and make them want to visit your website.

And so on…

Do you see how this works?

Each subsequent article covers another “habit” that I listed in my original article.

Should Titles in a Series Be Unified or Not?

Notice that my article titles are not really tied to each other–this is just a personal choice. If I wanted to I could have titles that unified this series, for example:

Habits for Highly Effective Article Marketing: Developing a Healthy Submission Schedule

Habits for Highly Effective Article Marketing: Write Educational Articles, Not Sales Letters!

One thing you will not see me doing is doing the Part 1, Part 2, Part 3 bit–don’t do that!

Make your article titles unified in a different way or else don’t make your article titles similar at all–it’s up to you.

Why Write an Article Series If You Can’t Say Outright That It’s a Series?

You can probably tell why I like doing article series–it makes the writing process easier on me!

After I started this series, it was easy for me to reach my goal of monthly article submissions because I had a plan–all I have to do whenever I sit down to write is look at my original article and go to the next step. That original article is my road map, and I just follow it until I complete the final article.

Then a feeling of accomplishment washes over me–It’s a lot like running a race and being able to see the finish line.

If you know that your ending point is approaching and you can actually see the finish line up ahead, it gives you inspiration to keep on going, and it also helps you stay on track and not get distracted!

Question for you–Do you have any secret article writing efficiency tricks you’d like to share?  Please do!

Related Resources:

What To Do If You’re Itching To Write An Article Series…

What Harry Potter Taught Me About Writing An Article Series

The 3 Reasons Why Writing An Article Series Can Simplify Your Life

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