Article Marketing Tips: How to End an Article Naturally

Saying "good-bye" can be a bit awkward sometimes, especially if you're not that familiar with the other person. You can experience that same sort of awkwardness in your article submissions when trying to end the article.

After you've said everything you have to say, how can you wrap things up in a natural sounding way? And do you even need to?

A free reprint article has different parts--the main ones are the introductory paragraph, the supporting paragraphs, and then the concluding paragraph. Sometimes you may be tempted to just omit the concluding paragraph because you're not sure what to put there.

For example, if you've just written an article with 5 points in it, you may be tempted to just not write anything else after listing the 5th point. I've seen articles like that, and I can tell you that doing so basically leaves the reader hanging.

The reader is left wondering, "Is that it? Did the rest of the article get accidentally cut off? Am I missing something?"

That's not a good feeling to leave a reader with. It sends the impression that the article was less than professional as well. Including a concluding paragraph is not optional--it really does serve an important purpose in the construction of the article.

The conclusion to an article serves the purpose of tying up loose ends and rounding out the article. When you studied writing in school you were probably taught that the concluding paragraph was a summary of the information in the previous paragraphs.

It can still be that in your free reprint articles; you can definitely use the concluding paragraph to recap and reiterate some of the main points in your article. There are, however, other techniques you can use to end your article in a natural way. Here are a few:

1 - Help the reader apply the information in your article by telling him specifically what he should do as a result of reading your article. List some "action points" of practical things that the reader can do to put the information he has learned into practice.

2 - Send the reader off with a pep talk. Many times people need more than technical instructions in order to do something. They also need encouragement that they really can do whatever you are trying to teach them and that their effort will not be wasted. As you're creating your concluding paragraph, think of any emotions or thoughts that may be working against the reader putting your information into action and address them there.

3 - Motivate the reader by asking a question or questions.

Your free reprint articles should be teaching your reader how to do practical things associated with your niche, but what use is all that knowledge if the reader does not do anything with it?

In addition to providing information, one goal of your article is to inspire the reader to take action. You can do that by providing action steps, but you can also take a more subtle approach by getting the reader to mentally answer a question such as:

"Which of these tips will you try the next time you do such and such?"

It's even better to give a time specific time frame, such as "Which of these tips will you try this week?"

Ideally, the reader will look back over the article and decide which tip he or she wants to start with, and that little decision will be akin to a commitment to take that action. Even though it doesn't seem like much, the idea is planted in the reader's brain that he will take a specific action in a certain time frame.

One hint on this--avoid questions that have a "yes" or "no" answer. Those types of questions do not engage the reader or cause him to think and decide. Phrase your questions so that the reader needs to take some sort of mental action in order to answer the question.

You can mix and match these techniques to suit the context of your article. In addition to the idea of using the conclusion of the article as a recap for the main points of the article, you now have three additional techniques for writing a natural ending to your article and also inspiring the reader to put the information you've provided into practice.

Steve Shaw's article submission service has helped thousands of business owners worldwide build traffic, leads and sales to their websites. Submit your article to 100 top article directories for just $2 - go now to http://www.submityourarticle.com

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