- 1). Identify a business topic you'd like to write about. Examples: how to increase employee morale, pros and cons of new software programs, how to organize a company retreat, staying afloat in a bad economy.
- 2). Identify your target audience for this topic. Examples: women over 50 who are returning to the work force, entrepreneurs, mom and pop businesses, CEOs, college students. Research the types of magazines your target audience reads. A good place to start is with resources such as "Writer's Market," published annually by Writer's Digest Books, and "The Writer's Life," a website that identifies well-paying magazine markets.
- 3). Study 6 months' worth of back issues of publications that are the best fit for your business topic. This will give you a sense of the tone, style, word count and supplementals such as photographs, charts, graphics and sidebars. Read the submission requirements of the publications you're interested in, and query the appropriate editor with your proposal. Include a brief mention of your qualifications to write the article and the benefits that readers/subscribers will glean from your content.
- 4). Write an introduction that will instantly hook the readers' attention, let them know what the article is going to be about and make them curious to read the full text. Examples: "Six out of 10 restaurants go out of business every week. Yours may be the next"; "Is outsourcing costing your company more than you realize?"; "Two years ago, Lenny Sherbowitz was living in a tent city on the banks of the Sacramento River. Today he's the CEO of the world's largest kayak franchise. He credits his success to three simple rules."
- 5). Develop the middle portion of your business article with a chronological story, a Q&A interview, research from different sources that support your introductory premise, a how-to format that goes from simple concepts to instructions that are more complex, a collection of case studies and analyses or a checklist of suggestions (i.e., "Ten Top Tips to Run a Successful Seminar").
- 6). Wrap up your article with a summary of the article's key points and/or your personal conclusions. This follows the "Rule of Three" popularized by the advertising industry: (1) Tell the reader what you're about to tell him, (2) tell him the information you want him to know and (3) tell him what you just told him.
- 7). Include sidebars in your article if there is something that is relevant to the text but that doesn't fit smoothly into the contextual flow. For example, if your business article is a succession of short interviews with editors at publishing houses that are open to receiving inquiries from new authors, a sidebar would include their companies' contact information such as addresses, phone numbers, email addresses, fax numbers and websites. Other examples of sidebar material would be anecdotes, short quizzes or historical notes related to the subject matter.
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