Crafting the perfect Article

Organization • Branding • Visuals • Structure • Flow • Navigation

Table of Content
1. Categories and perspectives
2. Branding
3. Visuals
4. Article Structure
5. Flow
6. Navigation
7. Podcast
8. Technicalities

We are imagining crafting the best article template, in the light of a personal or company brand and not from the perspective of a book or article writer.

Categories and perspectives

Considering that in one year we will pretty much do a full cycle, passing thru all the categories and subjects that we’re focussing on in our activity, we should think about what we will write in the following year and imagine where do we want to be.
With this silver line in mind, write down the categories and perspectives from which we will act on the subjects.
Example: my horizontals might be categories like Business Development, Marketing, Advertising, Growth Hacking, E-Commerce etc; my verticals or perspectives might be: How To, Reviews, Case Studies, Behind the scenes, Bootcamps etc

In this article cover, I expressed the article Categories using “How To” and “Branding” and the perspectives, using the “Substack” and “SEO“ icons.

You can represent however you want this categories and perspectives, as long as you are consistent. In the below example, the perspective is written explicitly: “Review” and “Explained”; this is a clear indicator for a reader that he can expect more “Review” articles. It also make it easy for a reader who’s scrolling thru multiple article to filter and focus on the area that he wants, since the category or the perspective is easily recognizable.

Branding

I won’t get too much into this, but before everything, you should have written down your mission statement comprising a simple and brief description that encompasses the purpose of a company defining your culture, goals, and values.

Next in line would be your brand identity - the visible elements of a brand, such as color, design, and logo, that identify and distinguish the brand in consumers' minds.

Then with these two in mind, you should design yourself a cover template that you will use for your article and social media.

Visuals

A good visual should be consistent and should comprise the following elements:
- use your brand colors
- keep the same layout globally or craft a few for each category or perspective
- 1920px x 1048px with your main focus on 1048px x 1048px area, because on some platforms, the sides that excess the 1048px will be cropped out (not showed)
- make sure to include in your main area the title, category and perspective.
- put the article number, logo etc in the extended area
- keep the text size over 80px - 100px in order to be legible.
- title can be on 1, 2 or 3 rows - center it vertically.

Article structure

If you write a long article, where you’re reaching 15000 characters, you might want to split it in 3 articles, map every article to a section that doesn’t appear on the homepage (make it hidden), then write in the first article and link the other two using a table of content.
When you publish the articles, publish the last two first and choose to not notify your readers thru the newsletter and publish only the first one on the homepage alongside with a email notification. This way, your homepage will look clean and your readers won’t feel bombarded.

If you happen to show these categories on the homepage, what you can do is to double each category, with its pair being hidden.
Ex: Marketing & Marketing articles (hidden); you publish your main in Marketing and the other 2 in Marketing hidden.

Ideally, we should keep the article under 5000 characters or 700-1000 words, that’s around a 5 minutes reading time.

Title should be 60 - 80 characters from the SEO point of view.

Flow

Start with a Hook so they can see in the preview and realize after reading just a few words the value that you bring to the table.

Have a table of content so they have an article overview and be able to navigate the article using it.

From the writing perspective, you can use the Pyramidal structure or the Inverse Pyramidal Structure.

Use the Pyramidal Structure if you are inclined more towards the storytelling: start with a catchy introduction, gradual build up to the main point, keep them in suspense as they anticipate the core message and end with a summary.

Use the Inverse Pyramidal Structure if your readers are seeking quick answers and you want to give out essential facts from the beginning - who, what, when, where, and why - and then you will continue with additional context and details, then expand in the conclusion on the the broader implications.

Navigation

Let’s craft our table of content upfront, for readers to have it included when they receive the newsletter.

Write down your blog title; in my case: https://weekly.tekbassador.com/

Convert your section names by making everything lowercase and replacing the space with a dash (note that I am writing the categories as they appear in the article body, not numbered, as I wrote them in the table of content); in my case:
Categories and perspectives → categories-and-perspectives
Branding → branding
Visuals → visuals
Article Structure → article-structure
Flow → flow
Navigation → navigation
Technicalities → technicalities

Convert your articles title by making everything lowercase and replacing the space with a dash: “Crafting the perfect Article“ → “crafting-the-perfect-article”

We will then concatenate our “blog title”, “/p/”, “article title”, “#§”, “section-name”. ¹
You can write the Section sign (§) by using Opt + 6 on a mac and I alt+0167 on a pc.

Now take each one of these links, go to our table, select each section title, type Cmd+k or Ctrl+k (insert link) and paste the link.
https://weekly.tekbassador.com/p/crafting-the-perfect-article#§categories-and-perspectives
https://weekly.tekbassador.com/p/crafting-the-perfect-article#§branding
https://weekly.tekbassador.com/p/crafting-the-perfect-article#§visuals
https://weekly.tekbassador.com/p/crafting-the-perfect-article#§article-structure
https://weekly.tekbassador.com/p/crafting-the-perfect-article#§flow
https://weekly.tekbassador.com/p/crafting-the-perfect-article#§navigation
https://weekly.tekbassador.com/p/crafting-the-perfect-article#§technicalities

Podcast

I wrote a few days ago “You need to start a podcast like yesterday” and I hope that by now you start it already 🥳

For important articles or as a long time strategy, is good to pair the article with the podcast episode. You can publish the podcast first (without sending the e-blast and notifications), in order to have it live and published, get the podcast episode link and insert it at the beginning of your article alongside with a call to action (Listen “Article name“ on this link).

This way, when you publish the article, your readers will receive the article and the podcast at the same time and they can decide if they want to listen or to read.

Technicalities

• Use shortcuts while writing:
  To write down the Table of Content in a compact format, choose the block form and at the end of the row, type Shift+Enter.
  That will create a New Line, instead of a new paragraph.
  Type # followed by space to create an H1 heading.
  Type ## followed by space to create an H2 sub-heading.
  Type ### followed by space to create an H3 sub-heading.
  Type * or - followed by space to create a bulleted list
  With text selected, press press cmd/ctrl + K to add a link.

• Don’t forget to use a custom domain for your publication - grow your brand.

• If you use referral links in your articles, use a custom url shortener on your custom domain as well: go.customdomain.com/keyword

• track your articles and referral links in an excel file or a google sheets.

• add folders to google drive, in order to feed resources at the end of the article. Folder name should include the article number: “#001 Article name”
  When share the link choose “For anyone who has the link”

• Serialize the articles. Examples:
  Tekbassador Weekly #129: Title
  Tekbassador Weekly S1 E129 (change the season each year)

Let me know if you have questions and I will do my best to help you out 🥳

1. While you are writing the article, you can click on the Settings in the lower right, Click on SEO options and copy the link from the Post URL.
You will just add “#§”, “section-name” to the end.
Notice there is no forward slash “/” in-between article title and #§ or in-between #§ and section name