I heard about the contest Xomba is doing, and thought that I should share some of my ideas to hopefully help other people along.  And who knows?  I might even win.  This is tailored to writing on Xomba, but most of it still applies to writing in general.

1. Title your piece last – I thought I’d start off with some basic advice.  Something you’ve probably heard an uncountable number of times, however it is very good advice.  When I started blogging, this came up in 9/10 of the blogs I read online when I was looking for advice. Basically, you want to write and then make a title that best describes what you have written.

2. Make your “tags” second to last – This kind of ties in with the first point I made, but it’s a bit different.  I think you are allowed to have 5 tags on Xomba, but I usually have 3 or 4.  When deciding on tags to use, use words that come up a lot in your piece of writing, because search engines will find it easier.  They search by keywords and tags before they search content in most cases.

3. Use a word processor – to both save your work and check spelling/grammar.  I have seen a lot of posts with spelling errors in them, and it really takes away from the post.  Also, it’s best to have a saved copy on your machine, just in case you need it (e.g. your internet dies and you need to print an article you wrote for someone).

4. Know what you’re talking about – it will make a lot more sense and more likely to be understood.  If you include facts on a topic, do a quick Google search to see if they are true.  You should also want to write about whatever it is your writing about.  If you write just for the sake of writing, you writing might suffer.

5. Organize your writing into sections – intro, body and conclusion.  You should have an introduction paragraph of 2-3 sentences, a body of at least one five sentence paragraph and a concluding paragraph about the same length as your introduction.  A tactic that I don’t personally use but I know of some people who do, is to write your introduction paragraph last – for the same reason as you write the title last.  Seems kind of odd but I have seen it used with some degree of success.

6.  Post your articles in multiple places that link to each other – this will give you more exposure and therefore more hits.  I post all my articles (exception of Xomba contest articles and xomblurbs) on my BlogSpot page and on Xomba.  This will get you more views on your articles overall, and more people will read your stuff.

7.  Read other posts with tips – this is what I did.  Read as many posts as you can about blogging and writing.  It will help you.  No one article can give you all the advice!  And even if it could, it’s always best to get a second opinion.  There are a lot of articles on Xomba about this (I'll link one I think is worth reading)  How much money do you want to make today?

8. Use your resources – there are a lot of places to find stuff.  This is related to 4 & 7.  Google is your friend, big time.  In fact, you’re stupid not to use it.  It’s like a knight not using armor – it makes no sense.  One thing that not a lot of writers know about is Google trends – it displays the #1-100 things searched for.  When Michael Jackson died, the top 3-5 were about him at about 8pm (his death was first reported at 6:30pm or something).  Anyway here is where you can find that: http://www.google.com/trends

9:  Spread the word – tell others about your writing.  Word of mouth spread very quickly, especially online.  One becomes five; five becomes 50, and so on. Ever heard the term, “viral video”?  Same principal applies to this.

Well, those are nine tips that I found useful during my writing career.  Although I’ve only been writing online for 2-3 years, I have written a good number of pieces and I hope that my advice will help someone out there.  Thanks for reading, be sure to check out my other posts ;)