I found, through years of hit and miss, that the key to gaining expert status is all in the advice you give in your articles. Fact is, some article marketers look at article writing as a way to vent. Big mistake! Articles should be used as a forum to help your target audience solve their problems.

Write the advice portion of your article before anything else.

There are other parts of the article that come first such as the headline, beginning paragraphs and so on, but if you're stuck about what to write to your audience, you may not want to write those things first. Instead, write the advice first. This one technique has worked wonders for me in my business. Of course, the advice part happens to be the hardest part to write and here's why. You have to do these three things:

1. Wow your audience – no room for re-hashed, outdated drivel. Your audience will see that coming a mile away.

2. Challenge your audience to think differently.

3. Provide new information – or at least information that's new to them.

This is no easy task and requires a bit of skill. Here's how I've developed my advice-giving skills to deliver business boosting techniques to my clients without coming across as heavy handed:

Slay the sacred cow. Whatever is held dear in your marketplace, identify it and either kill it or put a new twist on it. I prefer killing and here why:

- it gets me more attention
- you're positioned as an expert, and
- you'll appear to be a trend-setter and forward-thinker.

Sacred cows are usually that way for the wrong reasons – mostly because people are just too scared to take the chance to slay them.

In my industry, article marketing, someone recently said that writer's block doesn't exist. Of course that's insanity, it does exist. But that one statement definitely got people talking. Are you willing to be controversial to get the exposure you're looking for?