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The Art of Writing: How to Create Content Like a Pro
By Guest Author, October 3, 2016
Even if writing isnโt exactly your forte, the ability to communicate clearly and persuasively is essentialโboth for your leadership skills, and your ability to develop a strong online presence for your brand.
Imagine this: youโve spent a good deal of time and money developing a beautifully designed, user-friendly website for your company, and you have high expectations for it to lead to greater brand awareness and more sales. But that website needs fuel in the form of great content. Moreover, youโll have to promote it via social media, withโฆ you guessed it, more great content.
Many of you donโt need to envision that scenario: youโve faced it already, and you know that you simply canโt afford to neglect your writing skills.
6 Types of Writing
There are many different types of writing available to you as a new writer. Below is a small sampling of some genres of writing you might want to explore:
- 1. Essays: Essays are short non-fiction pieces recounting personal experiences or offering analysis and opinion on an issue or story. Essays can be published in many different places and types of publications and are a great starting point for new writers.
- 2. Blogs: Blogs feature posts that can be very similar to essays, although the blog format generally allows bloggers to be less formal and more brief than traditional essayists. There are many different formats and publishing sources for blogs including Tumblr and WordPress.
- 3. Poetry: Poetry is a great medium for emotionally driven writers who like exploring a form with many avenues to play with form and structure. Many non-fiction writers and traditional fiction writers like writing poetry to supplement their other work as it allows them a different creative outlet than their other writing.
- 4. Short stories: A short story or novella gives new fiction writers a good format to use as a starting point. Short stories have a lower word count than traditional novels and are a great place to start learning the principles of fiction writing.
- 5. Novels: Novels are a great place to cut your teeth as a fiction writer once you feel youโve got the basics down. Novels give you the space and length to dig into complex characters or plot out complex storylines. Novels can be shopped around to lit agents for representation and can also be sold through self-publishing.
- 6. Audio: Audiobooks and podcasts are a non-traditional avenue for writers to explore. Writing for an audio medium presents a different sort of challenge for writers.
3 Things to Consider When Choosing a Topic to Write About
There are many different ways of deciding what you want to write about. Your topic will depend on the form of writing you have selected or been assigned, but here are a few different ways to generate topics and premises for your writing:
- 1. Story: Starting with a good story or compelling main character is a good way to get into a piece regardless of whether it is fiction or nonfiction. Brainstorm a number of creative storylines and find the one that is most compelling to youโthink about what would keep a reader engaged.
- 2. Personal experience: Thinking about a personal experience is an excellent way of starting out a new piece of writing. As a human being, your memories provide you with great fodder for writing as you have an immediate point of view and can recall textural details that make your writing more specific. Think about memories that are particularly evocativeโlike the first time you rode a bike, maybe, or a fun date that went awryโthen hash out a piece of writing based around your experience.
- 3. Issue: Thinking about a compelling and divisive issue in contemporary society can be a great way to come up with non-fiction pieces. Whether you are just starting out in your writing career or are working full time as a professional writer, thinking about issues that you have a particularly strong point of view on or opinion of can help generate very compelling persuasive pieces.
How to Master the Art of Writing
Of course, there’s aren’t any instant shortcuts that will make you a brilliant writer overnight. It’s a skill that takes a lot of practice, commitment, and diligence. However, there are certain methods that will help you improve your creativity and writing technique with less effort, including these key strategies and tools:
1. Understand the ‘Why’ Behind Each Piece of Content
Think the purpose of content is simply to promote your brand? Think again! Your primary goal is to help the reader. Your reader should not come away believing that promotion was your main objective, but that your content is helping them in some way. Here are the main goals your content should have:
- Delivering value for the target audience, in the form of problem solutions, tips that improve their lives, answers to their questions, or entertainment
- Growing relationships with your audience that keep them coming back over the long term
- Defining your brand (or yourself) to target readers
Researchers from the University of Pennsylvania analyzed the most emailed articles from The New York Times. The results were surprising: people liked sharing elaborate articles on intellectually-challenging topics, and they preferred recommending articles that awakened positive emotions. What about your brand? Analyze your own audience’s preferences and then craft content that will meet their expectations.
2. Create How-To and List Articles
Although some audiences prefer long form content based on in-depth research, they still want it organized in a clean, easy-to-skim format. Even if listicles and how-to articles seem like an outdated form of content, they are still effective.
The trick is, you need a very specific topic that will separate you from the competition. So, instead of writing an article named Top 10 Movies from the 80s, try something like Top 10 Movies from the 80s to Watch in October.
3. Use the Right Keywords
It’s not enough to write great contentโyou have to make it easy for your audience to find. You know how Google works: you enter a set of keywords and the engine lists relevant results. Obviously, you want your content ranked as high as possible in results pages for the search phrases your audience uses most often. This is where SEO optimization comes in. Youโll need to use the right keywords in the right places, without letting those keywords take over your content. You should always put the human reader first by making sure keywords make sense within the context of your writing.
4. Ask Questions
Questions are great because they make your content interactive. When you ask a question, the reader will answer it in their own head (and hopefully in the comments section of your article as well). In addition, questions awaken curiosity. It’s a perfect opportunity for you to guide them to another of your articles or content pieces that discusses their question in greater detail and offers answers.
5. Express Your Personality
Uniqueness is the factor that makes your content recognizable. It doesnโt matter whether youโre learning how to start a blog, a social media page, or youโre writing email campaigns. You have to find your unique voice! Your content should convey your company’s distinct organizational culture, and it should make your brand recognizable.
Youโll connect better with your audience if you write in first or second person, as if you’re speaking directly to them. Adding some humor, storytelling, and real-life experience to your posts will help make your content even more engaging.
Tools to Make You a More Efficient Writer
Now that youโre aware of some tips to help you reach your the target audience, letโs go through some tools that will support the process.
This is where youโll get SEO keywords from. In addition to keyword ideas, the tool gives you a chance to organize your overall content writing campaign. You will see how a list of keywords may perform, and you can create your own keywords by combining different suggestions.
If you need outside help generating content for your blog, email campaigns, and social media updates, you can outsource with a service like EduGeeksClub. This writing service connects you with professional writers from different niches, so youโll always rely on experts who will work under your specific instructions.
A great title is a critical part of attracting attention, especially when it comes to standing out in a sea of online content. If you have no idea where to start, this tool will give you a solid starting point. Enter three nouns relevant to the theme you want to work on, and the app will give you suggestions for a captivating title.
If you’ve brainstormed a few options for a headline but don’t know which to use, this tool will predict how each of them will perform before you even publish the content. It gives you a grade based on word choice, emotional appeal, and the power of the topic.
Are you ready to start working on your writing skills? Try the tips and tools suggested above and inform us about the progress you make!
8 Tips for Becoming a Better Writer
Becoming a better writer is a lifelong pursuit. Donโt expect to master the craft within a few weeks. That being said, here are some tips that can improve your writing:
- 1. Read. One of the most important things to do to become a better writer is simply to read. Youโd be hard-pressed to find a great writer who isnโt also a voracious reader. Reading other writersโ work can help you discover new writing methods and expose you to different source material that will improve your writing and inspire you.
- 2. Commit to a routine. As a novice writer, staring down the blank page and dealing with writerโs block can be incredibly discouraging and panic-inducing. One of the most important parts of developing writing skills is simply to commit to a daily writing routine. Develop a writing routine and set aside parts of your day as designated writing time. You donโt need a lot of time as long as you are devoting a set block of time and limiting distractions.
- 3. Use writing exercises. New writers sometimes find prompts and exercises are incredibly useful to give them a place to practice writing and develop their personal writing style. Prompts can give you the structure to explore the first sentence of an essay or a premise for a thriller that exercise different creative muscles. Freewriting is useful, but some people find structured prompts and exercises to be especially helpful at the outset of their writing careers.
- 4. Keep a journal. Regardless of what type of writing you are focusing on you should keep a journal to record observations from your real life that can help generate essay or story ideas. Your everyday life and experiences can give you valuable information as you think about new pieces to write.
- 5. Join a writing group. Starting a writing group is a great way to network with fellow writers and crowdsource tips on the writing process.
- 6. Practice different forms of writing. Even if youโve found a type of writing that works for you, it can be very useful to sit down and work on a piece of writing outside your primary medium. If you think your best writing is generally fiction writing, try exploring essays or nonfiction articles. If you are primarily an essayist, try writing the first chapter of a novel and playing around with character development. Broadening your skill set will help improve your writing across the board.
- 7. Do your research. No matter if you are a bestselling author working on your third book in a series or a new writer working on your first book, one of the keys to good writing is research. Before starting work on a piece of creative writing, do your homework and make sure youโve thoroughly researched any outside information that will help you.
- 8. Take classes. A writing course is a great resource for beginner writers to get writing advice and feedback from established writers.
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