7 Tips for writing great articles with examples

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Our network has a diverse readership: from accountants at varying levels of experience, internationally trained accountants, CPA candidates and university accounting students.

Between the period of October – December 2016, we successfully began to create a library of articles on the Black Female Accountants Network website in 30 subject categories

The articles included in our very first newsletter came from authors based in Canada, United States, West Africa, South Africa and Europe, giving us both a local and global perspective.

We recognize there is a knowledge and information sharing gap. With every gap, comes a huge opportunity – let’s bring our lessons learned, best practice methods, thought leadership and subject matter expertise.

If you have never written before, we want you.

If you’ve written a tonne of articles, we want you too!

Don’t be put off if you see a published article on our website which happens to be in your field of expertise. There are numerous perspectives that are up for discussion and learning, purely from the fact that we all have a unique set of professional experiences.

We need multiple articles in the same subject area.

So…don’t be shy, join the conversation and have a voice!

Our network, website and newsletters are a safe space to share your ideas.

Let’s look forward to collaborating and empowering each other!

Here’s a few writing tips and suggested approaches, with examples, to get us started!

Be concise

In article writing for newsletters, blogs, websites, more is less. To captivate your audience and hold their attention, write within the recommended word limit of 700-800 words and strive to keep to the lower end of this range. Be ruthless in your review and editing by keeping in mind that quality counts for far more than quantity.

More is less.

Help others solve their problems by sharing your strategies for success

If you are new to writing, a great place to start is to write from your own experiences based on your expertise. Examples : How you solved a staffing or technical problem at work, advice on how to improve a key business process (e.g. shortening month end close or the annual budget cycle), what to watch out for during from an accounting systems implementation

Give your opinion on a current affair or business event

An analysis of a recent world or business event and what you learned from it

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/lessons-from-trumps-election-victory-elewechi?trk=prof-post

Share your lessons learned

This is another good approach to writing an article. Here are some examples from members in our network. You could base this on an event you attended e.g.a training course, meeting, webinar or conference. Alternatively some other type of resource such as a book, white paper, third party article or a report.

https://bfannetwork.wordpress.com/2016/12/14/what-i-learned-from-this-years-cgma-annual-conference-on-diversity-and-inclusion-as-a-source-of-competitive-advantage/

https://bfannetwork.wordpress.com/2016/12/15/my-top-3-business-books-in-2016/

Share your insights, experiences and professional reflections with others

Giving your perspective on a subject area is a great way of sharing your insights with the network, based on your own experiences

https://bfannetwork.wordpress.com/2016/12/16/so-you-want-to-become-an-independent-consultant/

Guidelines / Coaching

These are typically framed as ‘5 Tips for’ ……or ‘How To’…….articles.

https://bfannetwork.wordpress.com/2016/09/24/how-to-make-the-most-of-your-internship/

https://bfannetwork.wordpress.com/2016/09/22/10-things-successful-job-hunters-dont-do-part-1/

https://bfannetwork.wordpress.com/2016/09/24/networking-begins-at-home/

Curating Third Party Content

This is an effective way of capturing content from disparate sources in a single article. Tip: Ensure the third party content you are curating is relevant to the professional and personal development needs of our network. Always remember to include all of your references.

https://bfannetwork.wordpress.com/2016/12/22/top-business-news-stories-in-2016/

https://bfannetwork.wordpress.com/2016/12/21/some-of-the-biggest-data-breaches-in-2016/

https://bfannetwork.wordpress.com/2016/12/22/business-book-review/

We look forward to all of us coming together and sharing our ideas, views, opinions and knowledge on a variety of topics to meet the needs and interests of the black female accountant. Let’s work together to make this happen.