NRao Blogs: Writing Knols

Sunday, May 6, 2012

Writing Knols - Some Thoughts

Authors

Narayana Rao

Knol official directions and some comments on them.

* A knol is an introductory article about a specific subject - Official statement

We can interpret it broadly as an article about a specific topic in a subject.

* To write a successful knol, focus on the first things a reader would want to know about your topic.

If an article is to be read by people it has to be of interest to them. Especially if there have to come to your article via search it has to be of interest to them.

* Remember that knols are openly available online, so you should aim to write for the broadest possible audience. For example, it’s best to avoid jargon and explain technical terms in straight-forward language.

Unless you are focusing your articles to people who have prior knowledge of the subject, your articles have to be more simple.

Length

* There’s no ideal length for a knol, but as a general rule a good knol will be longer than a typical web page.

Knols can be as small as one page in word and depending on the requirement they can be bigger.

* Because knols are meant for readers who want more detail on a subject, they should be more in-depth than most web content.

The article requires detail to be of use to the reader.

* Be concise in your writing. Readers appreciate getting to the point no matter what type of information they’re looking for.

Details mean necessary information. Do not waste the time of the reader with unnecessary material. If you are writing number of knols, reader will visit one more knol of your only when he is happy with the one he visited first.

Tone

* Knols aren’t blogs, and should avoid the informal conversational style common in blog entries.

Blogs are considered as diary entries also. Knols are not diary entries.

A knol is meant to be an authoritative source on a subject, and so should use a more formal tone. Think of your knol as a statement more than as an ongoing conversation. A good tone to aim for would be similar to that of a textbook or a pamphlet:

Write knols as magazines articles or textbook chapters.

Writing an authoritative article often requires soliciting reviews from people you consider experts in your field. Knol makes this very easy to do.

Solicited reviews

You can solicit reviews from anyone by using the author toolbox on the right hand side of your knol. Simply click the "invite" link next to the reviewers count and you will be able to send a request for a review via email. You do not have to publish your knol for this, the email contains a special URL that will allow your recipient to see and review your knol even though it has not been published yet. Once your reviewer has accepted, written and published their review, a link to it will appear alongside your knol.

Unsolicited reviews

Anyone can write reviews of any published knols. These reviews will also be shown as a link alongside the original knol.

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27.4.2011

Today Knol is reasonably successful wiki-based article publishing platform. There are many educational knols on Knol. Knol articles are appearing in search results of all search engines.

Today I noticed that three to four persons have seen more than 10 pages from my knols. So what knol authors are writing are found to be useful by certain people and they are visiting many pages in a single visit.

Knol authors have to write interesting and useful knols and they have to promote them through emails, networking forums, blogs and social bookmarking sites. Unless the author of a knol promotes his knol there will not be any page views normally.

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