by R Shimoda

Created on: April 02, 2009

The secret to developing one's Helium articles throughly is to select subjects that interest you or envoke strong emotions. Since 1985, I've been a member of Toast Masters, a group dedicated to helping its members learn to enhance their public speaking and leadership skills. When selecting presentation topics, new members are typically told to select subjects that they feel knowledgeable on or feel strongly about. It helps them to keep their nervousness under control but more importantly, helps them to better organize their thoughts on what they want to tell the audience.

Writing articles for Helium is very similar so I use the same techniques and would like to think I've been moderately successful. So out of the billions of topics, Helium has, how does one find just the right topic to write about? Believe it or not, I rate articles regularly and typically during a session will rate anywhere from 5 - 10 articles at a time. This allows me to see a variety of topics on a regular basis and allows me to read how others have attempted to address it.

The only caveat is that if I find the article title interesting, I select write an article without rating anyone else's work on the same topic. Otherwise there is a chance that inadvertently you could end up copying phrases or an approach used by another. Does this mean you'll never have duplicity or end up copying someone else's work? No but at least you know it was something that wa done on purpose.

Like a good presentation, once a topic is selected you need to set it up in a logical fashion with an opening, body and conclusion or "tell'em what you're going to tell'em" followed by "tell'em" and then "tell'em what you told'em" method. Also attention to small details like eliminating mispelled words or simple grammatical errors help to keep the reader's interest.

One mistake I made in my earlier articles was not appreciating the use of paragraphs. I assumed (and was wrong) that an interesting text would keep the reader's interest for the whole article. Wrong. Separating specific ideas into separate paragraphs, helps the reader to realize this is something important to remember.

So rate articles regularly to find topics that interest or excite you, follow a set format of opening, body and conclusion and get in the habit of using good grammar and correctly spelled words. I am confident you will find your articles will attract more interest and be highly rated much more than if you don't follow these steps.

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