Published articles in any form of media can be very powerful tools. If they are well written, they have the ability to move or compel people to act or react in a certain manner. You don't have to be a professional writer to accomplish this, you only need to write about things that will cause them to feel something which is what professionals are trained to do.

Someone who would be considered an amateur writer may be inclined to write about things that give them some sort of personal pleasure or something trying to please others. Although it may be entertaining to some, it is usually a wasted opportunity to create some kind of change in their audience. Those types of articles rarely cause people to react in anyway that might improve their business or their environment or to take any kind of action at all.

So what we need to learn from the good professional writers of the world is that your articles need to have a purpose. Figure out what you are trying to accomplish with your article and write about it. Don't just write to write, have a purpose and accomplish your goal. But remember that you are writing so your audience can view things from a different perspective than theirs. You need to help them see through a different set of eyes and want to go out and act differently because of how you made them feel with your words.

Transformational writing can be defined as writing to create an impact in your audience. If you want to actually have an impact through your writing, you cannot just throw words together to make complete sentences. You must learn to be persuasive and compelling not merely informative.

There are 3 steps to learning transformational writing:

The first step and one of the most talked about aspects of writing for business is knowing who you are writing to. You absolutely must know who your audience is for that particular article. We are not just talking about knowing who they are but understanding their point of view and connecting with them through their perspective. Some good information to know about your target audience would be their age, race, gender, income level, buying habits and other interests.

Once you have that information, you can now use it to custom fit the message in your article so the reader knows you are speaking specifically to them. With this rule in mind, you certainly wouldn't want to use trendy words like "dope" or "fly" when writing to a target audience of senior citizens anymore than you would want to use words like "safe" or "sensible" to a group of teenagers.

The next step in transformational writing is choosing the right venue to publish your article in. As I said earlier, published articles in any form of media can be very powerful tools. But only if you know who you are writing to and can get the article in the hands of your target audience.

An excellent example of writing to a targeted audience and placing it in the correct media would be when a doctor writes an article and places it into a medical journal. You don't often see doctors placing articles about medical procedures or studies in online blogs, they want other doctors to read them. So they publish them in the one place they know doctors will read them, medical journals.

The lesson we learn here is that although we are all exposed to these types of communications that we sometimes skim through or maybe even ignore completely, we are much more likely to read it if it is in a venue we frequent or are comfortable with. So use the best venue for your subject matter and make it speak to your audience.

Lastly, the final step in transforming your writing is choosing the right type of transformation. The three types of transformations are:

1. To Know

2. To feel

3. To do

When writing an article and giving the reader new information or at least old information you have arranged differently, you would be using the "know" transformation to help them learn how to do something they didn't know before.

The "feel" transformation is obviously taking your audience on an emotional journey. You want to evoke some kind of strong emotion in the reader so they will react to the article and act on their feelings. Marketers are very good at this type of transformational writing.

This brings us to the "Do" transformation which is a way for you to get your reader to take immediate action. If you want to compel them to take specific action right away you would use the "Do" transformation to do it.

As you use and develop these in your articles, you will find that it is more important to focus on using only one of them in each article. Professional writers tend to focus on doing one and doing it really well so it affects the others without actually having to do more.

To choose the right one for your article, you must decide what reaction you want to get. So before you begin to write, you need to ask yourself: Do you want to change people's lives with your message, and if so, how? Do you want them to Know, to feel, or to do? When you have your answer, pick your transformation type and go for it! But when you do, you need to stay focused and really nail it. The others will just fall into place.

To have a real affect on your audience, it is critical that you learn how to write for transformation. Remember to learn who your target audience is and learn to understand them. Then use the right venue to reach them with your article that is locked in with your one transformational type. If you do things well, you will develop the great ability to create action and change with nothing more than your words.