In this day and age, the demand for content writers has grown due to the rising digital landscape of marketing and educational platforms. Content writers are responsible for the amazing copy that you see and words that make you feel connected to a brand or even a cause.
Everything from blog posts, web pages, social media posts, white papers, press releases, email marketing to e-books, content writers are the voice that uses words and language to formulate stories and engaging copies that resonate while transmitting important information to readers, businesses, and organisations worldwide.
For all the content writers out there, here are some pointers for improving your performance and writing better copies.
1. Write More And Fail More
The best way to be good at any skill is to do more and fail more. Start by writing pieces that are easy and take stride in the process of creating drafts and mistakes along the way. It is always good to attempt more challenging pieces to broaden your writing horizons and expose yourself to many subjects of interest. This can accelerate the areas that you need to improve on and identify the aspects that you may not be well versed in writing about. Always write more and don’t stop until you have learned something about yourself and the type of writing that you are able to write.
2. Mastering Different Writing Styles
It is good to develop different writing styles in order to be agile and flexible when it comes to writing for multiple industries and organisations. You are required to know the linguistic styles that accompany different formats of copies. For example, a press release would annotate a formal and professional tone of disclosing important information to the public. A blog post would give a friendly and personable language that is usually informal and casual. A white paper would be a long, credible source of information that is organised to describe a problem and provide a solution. An advertisement copy would be persuasive and catchy to grab readers’ attention. Every different format of the medium has a different tone and description of the language that needs to be mastered in order to know when to use it and why.
3. Do Your Homework
Being a content writer requires you to have an inquisitive mind to learn and research about new fields and topics that you have never known before. Read journals, articles, or interview people in the field of that subject to further acquaint yourself with the subject that you are going to write about. Make sure to have credible sources that can support your points in your writing, as well as demystify industry jargon that is not familiar to people outside that industry. You are a bridge that connects specialized industry people to the public. With that being said, you are doing an important job translating technical and hard-to-understand languages into easy to grasp general knowledge. So, make sure you have done your homework before you write any subject.
4. Make An Outline
It is advisable to note your heading, body, and closing before diving into writing your piece. This is to make sure that your writing piece is thoroughly structured from beginning to the end, without being taken off track from the main focus of your core points. Having an outline can help to organise the points you have into a smooth, easy read that flows nicely from point to point and avoids the mistake of being all over the place. The outline can also help you to break down the piece by asking the 5Ws and 1H of who, what, when, where, why, and how. This allows your focus to be clear on what to incorporate into your piece, without wasting time on points that have no relevance to the piece you are writing.
5. Proofread For Grammatical Errors
Your content should be free of grammatical and typo errors before you publish it for your audience and readers. This is because a sloppy error of spelling and grammar signifies your lack of care for your readers and ultimately your credibility. Always proofread or get an editor to check your errors to ensure error-free publishing and happy readers.
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