A Step-by-Step Guide to

Producing a 3,000-Word
Article on Any Topic

_____________________________

quicksprout.com
Write about what you know
● When you’re writing 3,000 words you must select a topic that you know a lot about.

● When you write about what you know, your experience shines through.

● Most importantly, your article won’t be boring. It’ll be informative and in-depth.

Building your outline

● When you’re building an outline make sure it have list of all the subheadings in your
article. Or it could be a bullet point list of things you want to write about.

● Whatever you use for an outline, don’t spend too much time on it. You want to move
to the drafting part of the process as soon as possible.

Getting your sources

● Find your sources first. If you wait till later to find your sources, it’ll be tougher to
organically implement them into your writing.

● Look back at your outline, and identify the main points you want to make. Find one or
two primary sources for each point. This will ensure your arguments are sufficiently
supported.

● Some great places to look for sources:

❏ Online publications

❏ Research-based sites (e.g., MarketingSherpa, HubSpot)

❏ Industry blogs

Draft with detail

● After you have your sources, it’s time to knock out your first draft. When drafting, keep
one important thing in mind: detail.

● When writing make your article long don’t sacrifice a lot of detail to create a short 500
words article.

● Shorter content can work under the right circumstances, but to build authority and
grow your readership, make your content longer. And that means detail.
Break it down
● When you’re writing an extra-long article, make sure everything is broken down into
parts. Explain each aspect thoroughly.

● Also when you write your first draft, answer these fundamental questions:

❏ If you were completely new to this topic, what questions would you have?

❏ Have you broken down every area into easily digestible parts?

❏ Have you defined terms some readers may not understand?

Build pillars
● Revisit your outline again, and take a look at your main points. You should have 5-7
points you want to make.

● These 5-7 points are your pillars, and together, they support the central argument.

● One final word about your first draft:​ Try to make it longer than you want your post
to be. That’s because during the editing process, you’ll usually cut out a lot more than
you think.

Edit ruthlessly
● When you edit your own writing, you have to be brutally honest with yourself.

● It’s easy to develop editing blindness: you’re too familiar with your own writing and
can miss mistakes.

● To battle this, leave your article for a day or two. When you come back to it, you’ll be
able to be more objective when editing.

● Read your article loudly and give your article a close read all the way through.

● Also use tools like G

​ rammarly​ to fix any grammatical error.

● Finally, run your article through the H

​ emingway​ app. This is a fantastic text editor
that will point out long sentences, complex words, and adverbs.