Article Marketing Top Tip Of The Week: Might Failure Be The Best Writing Teacher?

Just the other day I heard about a really intriguing experiment into quality versus quantity in the book "Art & Fear: Observations On the Perils (and Rewards) of Artmaking".

The experiment happened in a ceramics class that was separated into two groups.

Group A's mark was based on the absolute quantity of work they produced. For example, 55 pounds of pots for an "A", 40 pounds for a "B", etc.

Group B's mark was based on the quality of the groups work. Essentially they only had to create one pot, but it needed to be excellent.

Quickly - answer these two questions:

=> Which of the two groups would you guess produced the best pots?

=> Which of these two groups would you like to be a part of?

It might interest you to find out that it was the group that focused on quantity that had more high quality pieces.

Why could that be?

It could have been that the team that concentrated on high numbers had all pressure of performance removed from their grade - they simply need to knuckle down and start creating pots.

With all that fear of failure taken away, the team was free to act on instinct, even if that action ultimately led to a poor product.

However, generally the actual outcome of the quantity driven team was not a poor product ' how could that be?

Simply by going through the process of manufacturing more pots, this group had much more opportunity to gain knowledge from errors. With each additional pot that the group produced, they improved just a little bit more.

So, how can we apply the findings from this experiment to an article marketing campaign?

I'm certainly a quality focused worker. If I ever were given the choice of being placed in one of these two groups and not knowing the outcome of the experiment, I would have chosen the quality targeted group.

I do not conclude that the experiment is downgrading the final quest for quality, however I do think it is enlightening us to how we can strive to as article writers. There's a value to creating a steady stream of articles as we grow as writers.

Here are some top tips on how to apply the lessons learnt from this experiment:

1 You must start thinking about your articles as a campaign, as opposed to individual articles. This will really help you get the momentum started, and you will resist the pull to focus too much energy on a single article.

2 If like me you are a perfectionist author who will spend days and days getting your article just perfect, try to set yourself a time limit - say one hour - to complete the initial draft.

Wait just one day, then proofread your article; again using a time limit.

That time limit will really help you target and be even more productive. Your article quality really should not suffer. This plan will help you get over the desire to obsess over just one single piece of work.

Remember, with an article marketing campaign you need to learn to produce high quality articles on a steady basis. You have to learn to balance quality with quantity.

3 It's also helpful to set yourself a word count. Why not pick a target of approximately 500-700 words.

4 - If you are already a more quantity focused individual, and you're submitting significantly more than eight articles each and every month per site utilising automatic article submission software, then really scale down the quantity so you can focus more of your energy on quality.

Create an article first draft, then let it sit for the next 24 hours before you review it for the second time. Take some more time on each of your articles, and really pay more attention to the various nuances of your creative.

It's really important to balance quantity and quality when carrying out an article marketing exercise. Some of you need to set targets to write high quality articles faster and more consistently. Others need to set targets of writing better and more insightful articles.

Questions for you:

Are you more quantity or quality focused as an author?

How can you apply the lessons learned from this test to really improve your own writing?