Lesson 3: Developing Your Ideas

I hope the first two lessons taught you how to harvest ideas.

After the first two lessons, you have at least 10 ideas (keywords or points) to start with. That is all you need to get started.

Before we learn how to structure an article, let's get started on converting your ideas into sentences.

The third exercise you have is simple:

1. Check your list of ideas
2. Develop those ideas into simple sentences (three to five sentences per idea)

That is it. We are not looking to write a full fledged article. We are just learning  to put your ideas into words. And, if you have written an essay at school, it is going to be an easy task for you.

Here are the points I chose. See how I convert those ideas into sentences.

Point 1: Use a Travel Check List

Sentences: Use a travel check list to keep track of everything you need to remember. You may forget to pack your regular dose of medicines, eye-cover, chargers, essential documents, and necessary supplies. You can also forget to check if your cellular phone works at the place you are travelling to. A thorough checklist will remind you of everything you need to remember.

Now you see what I've done. A single point (an idea) is converted into a paragraph of more than 50 words.

Point 2: Write Down Room Numbers

You may think you can remember your hotel room number. The point is, you can easily forget that number. You may think your hotel room number is 370, while it can be 307. And, you may confuse present hotel room number with one you have stayed at in the past. Avoid all those confusions. Just write the room number down on a scratchpad or a tiny notebook and keep it in your pocket – all the time.

See, that is another 70+ words for your article.

Point 3: Meet People

Wherever you go, there are chances you can meet people you know from various places – past work, work, and people you meet through social media sites like Facebook or Google+. Meeting people is an enriching experience, an added bonus every time you travel for business.

See what I have done. I have harvested the ideas from others' articles. Then, I developed those ideas in my own words.

I only need to develop two or three more ideas to develop enough content for a decent article.

Exercise (DO THIS!):

Write three to five sentences for every idea in your list. To get a list of ideas, you may need to use the exercise in lesson 2.

Lesson 2: Discovering More Ideas on Any Given Topic

In the first Lesson, you discovered the major points to use in an article that gives 'business travel tips'.

One question:

How did I decide the article was about 'business travel tips'?

Ans: The article provided tips for business travel and I decided the article gave business travel tips.

Now, I am going to expand the number of points (or ideas) to at least 20. I will show you how.

First, I go to Google.com and enter the search term 'business travel tips'. That is it. Google returns 323,000,000 results in half a second.

Wow, that is overwhelming, I can't possibly check all those results in a year or two. And, why should I? I have better things to do.

I will just use the first five or ten results. Then I will write down additional points (ideas) from those ten pages. Let's see how it will go.

The first result is from Business Insider (result) and I will see what tips I can harvest from that page.

Tip # 1 : pack light (already in the first list of four items)
Tip # 2: Wake up at 5 am, go for an early morning run (not found anywhere else and goes into the list).
Tip # 3: Avoid jet lag by syncing to the destination's time zone well in advance (also gets into the list).
Tip # 4: Disconnect and Relax (also goes into the list)
Tip # 5: Schedule meetings continuously to get back home fast after zipping through all the meetings (also goes into the list)
Tip # 6: Research local culture and customs well in advance (a version of this is already there in the original list, but this one can replace the original point # 3 in the original list of Lesson 1)
Tip # 7: Is about not avoiding a trip (won't make it to our list).

Look at the 7 tips listed above. We have four new points to add, one modification for an already noted point. Thus, we have expanded our list of article ideas to 8 (from the original 4).

Isn't it cool? We now have 8 points to expand to an article titled 'business travel tips'.

The second result Google gave me is Business Insider, but that is not of much help and I skipped it. Then I try my third result, which is from Entrepreneur.com. And, in that article, I lift the following tips.

1. Use a travel check list
2. Pop some (pain-killer) pills
3. Keep an energy bar
4. Write down room numbers (of hotels you stay at)
5. Eat Well

There are addititional points to add. I strike off the second point in this list because I'm not comfortable advising people take pills or medication. However, I will use all of the rest, which means, my list of ideas now has 12 items in it.

Think about it, I already have 12 points or ideas to expand on. I have checked only three web pages. Is it cool or what?

Going at this pace, it is not very difficult to bulk the list up to 50 points or 100. We are yet to get any points on booking flight tickets, fighting hotel rooms, or  renting cars. You can't go business travel without those items.

Fourth Result is a Goldmine

The fourth result gave me is this: (4th result)

It has a 58 business travellers giving you tips. Some of them are repeating, but you can easily find more than a dozen new points to write about 'business travel tips'.

Once you have more than 20 points, you can choose five of six of them to write a decent article. Once you have more than 50 points, you can randomly pick five to seven points from the list and create a dozen unique articles.

Next lesson is about arranging the points (ideas) you collected into neat little groups, and using those groups to develop your ideas into an article. Till then, stay strong.

Content Writing Lesson 1: Extracting Key Ideas from An Article

Before you write your first article for the web, take a little while to identify what online articles are made of.
click here: http://goo.gl/IJP6YO

What are the important things you understand from the article?


As in case of school essays, each paragraph of an article is an expansion of one or two ideas. Before you start writing an article, I'll tell you how you can extract key ideas or important points from an already written article.

Activity:

1.   Go to EzineArticles.com
2.   Select an article on a topic you like
3.   List the important points mentioned in the article

This activity is very simple. Just write down the important ideas the article tries to convey.

Here I pick a random article as an example,

• The article is 431 words long.
• It talks about business travel.
• It mainly gives four tips to business travelers.
• And, the four key ideas are:

Research the place beforehand to maximize productivity
Pack light. Heavy luggage hinders your movement.
Be nice to locals (for specific reasons)
Meet people you know (directly or through social media)

Well, that was a very easy article to start with. The key points are numbered and listed. Now, if you are serious about getting started in content writing, do the same with at least 5 articles.

And, the second lesson will come in a couple of days.