As a business owner, you probably know that writing articles on your topic of expertise and distributing them online is great way to publicize your business, increase your expert status and increase your newsletter/ezine list. If you like the idea of article marketing but don’t fancy yourself a writer, I have a simple technique that I use myself to create 11 articles from just one idea.

This technique is what I call a “Top Tips Article.” This technique is best explained by way of example: Let’s say you’re a personal trainer. You write an article called, “The Top 10 Questions to Ask a Personal Trainer Before Hiring Them.” If you have been in your field for any length of time, 10 questions should be super easy for you to whip up.

Once you have your top 10 questions written on paper, write a sentence or two about each one and why it is important to ask. Write a short intro paragraph that sets up your Top 10 list and a brief wrap-up paragraph stating that the answers to these questions will help set your readers up for success. At the end, add your resource box which tells readers who you are and how to find you online and voila! Your first article is done!

To create your next 10 articles, take each question from your Top 10 List and expand up on them individually. For example, let’s say that one of your suggested questions was, “What is your exercise philosophy?” Write an article about that one question. You could call it, “The Best Kept Secret in Personal Training.” In your article, tell your readers why knowing a trainer’s philosophy is the first step they can take to practically guarantee their success, what answers they should look for and what answers should make them run the other way. You can even offer a fun story that illustrates your point if you like. Work through your 10 questions by creating articles on each one and you have created your first 11 articles and it’s time to start over with another Top 10 List!

Here are some other “Top Tips Article” suggestions:
•    Top 5 Reasons You Need a Financial Planner
•    Top 7 Ways to Apply Feng Shui to Your Home
•    Top 3 Ways to Increase Your Wealth
•    Top 5 Answers to “What’s for Dinner Mom?”
•    Top 8 Misconceptions about Leadership
Articles are usually between 400-1000 words, which is actually very short! You need to keep your articles on point so people will actually read the whole thing. This article, for example, is around 560 words.

Remember that you should leverage your articles by using them not only for article marketing, but also in your ezine, on your blog, submitting them to local newspapers, expanding upon them by creating a workshop or teleseminar and so forth. If you have a really nice series of articles like a “Top List Article” series, you can package them and sell them as a bundle. In fact, I work with an incredibly successful business consultant who wrote an article every week for a year in order to develop content for her first paperback book which is now successfully sold on Amazon.com! As with everything you do in your business, try to think about how you can repurpose your articles and get more bang for your buck!