Get Noticed on Hubpages: a Newbie’s Guide to Creating a unique writing Style

One thing that makes you stand out of the crowd is your style, making your style reflect in every thing you do, truly defines your personality and gives you that uniqueness and edge that puts you ahead of the game; this is why you need to let your style reflect in your dressing, manner of speaking and most importantly here on Hubpages: your writing.

Having a unique writing style makes people assign you this guru-like status enjoyed only by a select few. It takes a lot of hard work and brains to get you to the level where you can easily be identified via your writing style. but getting started can keep you in the right track to becoming a very good and stylish writer like the elites.

However, the first thing you need to do is join the train, when you hop on the Hubpages train; you get to meet one of the best writers with intimidating resumes and experience, here you meet experts on almost every field of human endeavor; from Medicine, Politics, Sociology, Psychology, Sexology and even Psychic and metaphysics education..

This is about two years since I joined this site, though I’ve been kinda lazy with writing; I was engrossed in so many things that I hardly found the time to write. I just got my groove back on a couple of weeks ago; and before you say Bingo! Hubbers who I joined the train long before they even got to know what Hubpages was, now have close to 100-200 hubs in their stables (though most of their hubs are below standard), so what you need to first of all do to get your writing style to the level that spells you out when ever some one reads your write-ups is first Join the Hubpages Train.

I’ve noticed that ever since I read more Hubs and other stuffs written by different people on a wide variety of niches, my writing gets a little better. This is so because, when I read stuffs (especially on the kind of topics I follow) I get to see and infer things from the author’s stand point. While doing that I get a glimpse of his keywords, phrases, use of word and syntax, grammar and many more.

Getting your writing to the open for critics can be of great help. It makes you know your strength and weakness. When you write and get comments either applauding you or downplaying you gives you the strength to improve on what you already have on the table. There was this piece I wrote a long time ago on “the millennium development goals and its target year 2020” I got a lot of emails from friends I posted the link of the article to.Some said it was a rather interesting piece; others were indifferent, while a bunch others did not really see anything good in the write up. As an aspiring writer then, I looked at the parameters in which I was being judged, I knew that for me to get to the very top of my game, I needed to improve on the weaknesses I was being taunted for, then I also need to do more to improve upon those things I considered as my writing strengths.

One very important thing any writer, not just on the stables of Hubpages must take into cognizance is “niche marketing” if you any intention of taking your writing to Eldora do, then it is very important that you consider this.

Why this is essential to your success in the long run can be attributed to the fact that when you get to concentrate more on what you know, it becomes relatively easy for you to come out with writing ideas every time you think and feel.

Though on hubpages you are free to write on every niche area you think you know a thing or two about; but sticking to a particular area brings professionalism to the fore.

One guy on this site I have come to enjoy his style is my friend Tattoo Guy, this guy is one hell of a tattoo and body enhancement freak (sorry tattoo if you feel slighted), but the thing I was trying to tell you about him is that he some of the time write on other niche areas like “how to increase Adsense earnings’ and all of that. But the core of his hubs are targeted to the tattoo disciples and freaks or maybe body piercing and even tongue splitting as I saw recently on one of his hubs.

One of the reasons I love Hubpages is the freedom of writing from one niche area to the other; but to be more professional like I said earlier on is the bed rock for achieving more with your hubs.

However, you concentrate on maybe two or at least five niche areas especially on hubpages; and stick to it (I stand to be corrected if I’m wrong).

One more trend I’ve noticed on this site like it is with other sister sites is Hubs that are more of tutorial minded and simply didactic: (that is-teaching one DO-IT-YOURSELF stuff or the other); are the ones that get the most views and comments.

A hub that teaches you how to build your muscle, cook a nice meal, write or input html and java codes, increase Adsense earnings, talk to a lady and win her etc, will be the darling of many readers, especially those ones who follow topics related to the niche area that you are writing a tutorial hub for.

Hubs that are more of tutorials with illustrations like videos, feed, polls and MP3, makes the reader to see the writer in a very different but wonderful light; guru-like did I hear you say? Yes guru-like.

Keywords are like food for the search engines when used appropriately, this can be said to be true when I noticed the traffic increase to one of my best performing hub “23 ways to get your blog easily indexed by Search engines without submission”.

I used the appropriate keyword that is associated with the “search engine indexing bla, blab la”, and was very surprised when I ranked in the first pages of Google’s SERP just 24 hours after submitting the hub.

Though the ranking fell a couple of week later because I did not know a thing about using social book marking sites like Digg and delicious, and I was a novice on the gospel according to back linking. Now after using sites like Reddit and stumbleupon, this hub seems to be doing well again, I plan to write a short article on the same topic, and submit it to article directories like ezinearticles and articlesbase (my two favorite directories), with a link back to the hub, I believe it‘ll will get this article in a more better position on the SERPS if I do this.

But the most important like I said earlier on, is correct keywords usage. Free keyword tools like the Google Adwords tool, are they to help you on this.

Wrong spelling and grammatical errors can stand in your way to earning a definite writing style not just on Hubpages, but on any site you write. Sites like Suite101 are sites that can get you kicked out of their system for simple and silly mistakes like this. It is a wonder, why anyone could still make silly mistakes like this when there’s a spell check and grammar check put in place by most word processing soft-wares like MS Word.

So make sure you use a grammar and spelling checker when you write stuffs anywhere, not just on hubpages, get a friend to help you proof read it, read it aloud to your self as many times as possible; you’ll be surprised that a sentence you think was correct, can be regarded as a blunder in grammatical circles.

Getting more Hubbers to know you and what you stand for can be very helpful you know. This is why the issue of socializing more here and anywhere on the web is very important. Remember this that “no man is an Island”. Lack of socializing or reaching out, makes you get this feeling of isolation; this feeling heightens when you view hubs with a long thread of comments, while yours hardly attracts any.

To be seen to socialize more; you need to follow more hubbers, place more comments on topics you love following, vote hubs up or even down, send fan mails to people you follow, answer hub questions, take part in hub activities like “the Hub challenge” etc. Socializing is one hell of a ticket to getting any hubber into the A-list category of hubbers (yet to join though), and makes you get down to the business of creating and defining your style, get a clue!

Humor is one spice that can add a whole lot of pimp into your writing. I make sure that I introduce humor in all of my writing. The comic relief experienced by a reader after reading a hub or write up filled with uncontrolled humor  gives the reader this sense of belonging and a strong feeling of fulfilled ecstasy, believe me on this one, its like having an orgasm.

I love controversy because “controversy sales” yes people love controversy; this is why great authors like Barry Sadler of the”CASCA SERIES” found their niche.

Using controversy in your writings brings in arguments by way of comments, and the more comments on your hub, the more activity, and most importantly the more money.

Controversy if used properly can give you a style that denounces every thing generic and trite. I try as hard as I can whenever I drop comments and suggestion on some of my favorite hubbers hubs to create or induce some sort of controversy: when I do this I make sure I introduce a different point of view and angle to the story on the ground.

I avoid destructive controversy, I make sure that when I write or place comments, there’s always a distinction and positive redirection to get other readers more excited and would want to know more; which will invariably bring them to my profile, where they can read some of my interesting hubs, place comments on the ones they feel like adding a comment to, and if I’m very lucky decide to follow me.

This is why controversy is very important, I’ve used it overtime and I still get the same results over and over again, try me!

Established knowledge is better than hypothetical reasoning. What this implies here is “write more on what you know and not on what you think you know”. Many writers fall into the booby trap of writing on topics they presume is making more of the money and getting the necessary hits and astronomical page views. But this is wrong; writing on what you know and practice exposes your sincerity and when your reader perceives that you are openly sincere, he regards your judgment and assertions.

Remember, when you write on what the other people are writing, is like adding a cup of water to a mighty ocean. Just imagine you a novice teaching people how to make money from affiliate marketing, and all of a sudden the iconic and larger than life Yanik Silver walks by; just picture the scenario embarrassing did I hear some one say?

This is exactly how it is when you write on generic things that people get to read about every day. Though this hub might look like one those generic info, but I tried differentiating it by writing on my experience and not on the experience of others.

Writing for sister sites like Squidoo, can jolly well put you the road to getting more exposure and notice. Though I’m yet to publish a lens at Squidoo, but I’ll be doing that in a short while, most especially as I want to use the squidoo platform for creating useful back links for my hubs.

I’ve written a couple of articles at xomba.com, but on triond.com, the article I submitted some weeks back is yet to be approved 23 months after, very funny indeed.

Sites like shetoldme.com, the dig-like content and revenue sharing sites have received some scoops recently, though I’m yet to see how this has helped. I also plan to take my game to top sites like redgage, infobarrel and more.

I talked about using articles directories earlier on, why this is very important for is for good and quality back-links.

EzineArticles.com has a Google PR of I think 8 (not sure); so writing and submitting articles related to my hubs can be of great help. I noticed the traffic spike to one of my hubs recently, and when I did more investigation on the traffic source, I discovered that it was coming from articlesBase.com; I forgot that I wrote an article and got it linked to one of my hubs, and now look at the results I’m getting from this little effort, considering the fact that the article was just about 200-300 words (very short).

Knowing basic Search Engines Optimization can become a life saver if you understand how; since more exposure and traffic is necessary for a sustained success module, then being able to write and get your contents optimized for the search bots becomes a prerequisite for long term online success.

I know you must have heard this before; however, it is a very important and necessary that you take it even more serious this time; as ignoring it will be at your own peril and disappointment.

I just answered a Hub Question recently where a fellow hubber asked how she can get more quality traffic to her hub other than the traffic from organic search; while answering this question, I made her understand that the basic thing about using other methods for traffic generation is getting more useful and quality back links for your pages so that they eventually rank high in the SERP OF Google and Yahoo, since search bots use this algorithm to determine the position of any particular page on its SERP..

This implies that for long term success, learning basic SEO could keep you in good stead, not just on Hubpages, but on every other online project you embark on.

There are a lot of free resources that can get you started, just ask the gurus how they carry out successful SEO campaign; they’ll oblige you if you know how to use the power of persuasion.

However, for me to make my contents and hubs optimized for the spiders, I use Google’s free keyword tool; then I look at the long tail keywords associated with any keyword that I’m targeting, after which I go to sites that rank high in some search engine SERP, examine how they place the keywords (keyword relevance and frequency), the number of time this keyword appeared in the overall pages (keyword density). This little stat can now help me to get my contents to optimized level; while avoiding stuffing my pages with unnecessary keywords (keyword spamming) which could result in getting my content off Google or any other search engine’s SERP

Do you place comments on other hubbers Hubs? I thought comments should place themselves when I got on this community newly. I felt it was the prerogative of other hubbers to place comments on the hubs I think should get comments; this was the case for a while, but after some time it stopped. For many months I never got any comment on any topic I write on and this was really discouraging to me. Then I realized that I was ignoring “the law of KARMA” which means that what you sow you reap, if you sow good, you reap good and if you sow otherwise then you know what the out come will be. Yes, I was not doing for others what I would want them to do for me. I wanted more comments on my hubs, yet I was not placing comments on other peoples stuff

(NOTE: the idea here is not to start spamming the community with irrelevant comments).

Then hubpages implemented “The Hub KARMA system” and awarded scores based on your hub-tivity

Getting to write like the top Hubbers means you’ve got to write on topics that not just you are interested in, but the entire Hubpages community.

I noticed that almost all the top dogs in this community write on not just one Niche, but on every thing that catches their fancy, here on Hubpages there’s no topic that cannot attract a good number of audience; but what differentiates the top writers from the ordinary or mediocre writer is style and delivery; for you to get noticed o the much needed publicity which you crave, then you have to define your style by creating a unique delivery technique; to achieve this you need to look at the topics that you know you can write original content for (all the top writers here write from their heads, not from looking and copying what others are writing). Writing original content can only be possible if you know what you are writing on based on the topic you chose to write a Hub for. Look at the topic that you feel are getting the buzz, look at the headlines of the hub, read the content of the hub to ascertain its theme; dissect it to see what can be done to get it to a much higher standard. Start writing and write confidently.

One thing that keeps bedeviling the progress and success of most budding writers is the issue of originality; I tried explaining this on a different context above, but to be more specific, avoid plagiarism- it is a crime.

I bought a PLR article during my online rookie days, I was promoting an affiliate product related to the article, it was like this article’s other name was “Conversion” so I decided to use this article to get more conversions and leads for the program I was promoting. I posted this article after a little tweaking here and there on EzneArticles.com; the article got on cue as usual waiting for approval from the editorial board, some couple of days later I got an email from the board seeking for an explanation as to the source of my article, I kind of ignored this mail thinking it was maybe a spam mail from the board.

But to my chagrin it was real; I realized how real the situation was when I tried posting another article and was denied access based on the fact that I was posting articles from sources unknown; in a nut shell I was guilty of plagiarism. I then swung into action; I contacted the board, and confessed that it was a PLR material I got from a product I bought; I pleaded for leniency and pardon; thankfully I received a mail 24 hours later telling me that I’ve been pardoned and forgiven (go and sin no more), and that I should avoid a recurrence a face a life ban from using their services in the future.

Why I’m recounting this experience is to explain the importance of original content, I’ve come to notice that here on Hubpages, that a lot of people are copying and pasting the contents of others, and I think the editorial boards need to introduce stringent measures top curb and nip this problem to the bud.

To be very original when you write it is always advisable to take the following exercise.

•  read more of other people stuff on the niche topic or area you wish to cover
•  establish the facts you wish to raise in your article and keep it in your mind eye
•  create a folder for the headlines of articles that are related to the topic you are writing on
•  use mind-mapping to further broaden the horizon and scope of the topic you are writing a content for
•  Settle down to write, and when you write; establish the facts, demystify the myths and bring the truth to the fore.

These are the few things that I do which any budding writer can imitate to get a little notice here on this wonderful Hubpages community; feel free to add your own.