Writing is like anything else: the more you practice, the better you’ll become. That being said, writing to an audience as a selling tactic is much different than writing a text message, email or college essay — it requires strategy, eloquence and flawless grammar. If you wish to earn a pay cheque writing, you’ll need to be gifted at the craft.
There are limited jobs available to writers. Only the best of the best get hired by newspapers, advertising agencies and media companies. Others make a buck freelancing. Freelancing is usually where a writer’s journey begins, and it’s exactly where I currently stand in my career. But even a freelancer needs to be a good writer or he won’t obtain clients. Worse, an inadequate freelancer will get projects and make a mess of them, which can damage his reputation and prompt a customer to not pay for completed work.
Before you call yourself a writer or a freelance writer or a copywriter, make sure you improve your writing skills.
Practice writing on a daily basis, even if you have a full-time job that exhausts you. You won’t become a good writer by dreaming about it, that’s for sure. So write, a lot.
Read relentlessly. If you’d like to improve your writing you should always have a book in hand. Once you’ve read all your books, go out and buy more books. Read the same books twice. On the second reading you’ll better acknowledge the way the author set up his story because you’ll be less focused on the story itself, having already learned the outcome.
If you wish to sell yourself as a freelance writer, read books about copywriting. There are dozens of terrific works concerning the topic. The most revered is where I recommend you begin your journey. Do yourself a helpful favour and purchase Hey Whipple, Squeeze This! by copywriter, Luke Sullivan. It’s an insightful, entertaining manual that will advance your understanding of copywriting lightyears into the future.
And read online too. Much of a writer’s work in the coming years will be published online, so familiarize yourself with the difference between print and Internet writing; they’re different.
On the web, paragraphs aren’t indented — they are separated by a break. Plus, online content writing entails more work than merely writing the content itself. You must insert link to enhance reader experience, embed tweets and video; optimize your content for search engines and engineer headlines differently than you would with print. Print headlines must be enticing enough to compel a reader to continue reading. However, online titles not only need to pique the reader’s interest, they also require a keyword strategy so Google will favour them as it sifts through endless competing materials to form a search engine ranking.
Most folks’ writing training extends as far as essay writing techniques they learned in school. Essays are cool and fun, but most of the freelance or agency work you do will share little in common with traditional essay format and structure. Use your essay writing background as a base, nothing more. You certainly shouldn’t write essay sized emails to busy clients. Furthermore, don’t even think about posting an essay explaining your business’s vision on the company’s home page. Consumers don’t want to spend fifteen minutes reading your incredible back-story when they arrive at your site. A home page should do no more with its written content than quickly convey benefits in a colourful fashion. That’s it. Same way you don’t want to read one of my marathon articles about what I sell on SICopywriting.com‘s home page. You’ll click on blog links if you’re looking for in depth info.
As a reader, all you wish to know is: what’s in it for you? The answer to that question varies from person to person. It could be information, knowledge, entertainment or something else. The point is, your reader must derive something useful from your writing. Keep web copy short, direct, and make sure it sells benefits to consumers. If you have a lot to say — and you most certainly do — save the long spiels for your blog.
Write blogs. A blog is basically an article, except it’s published on the Internet and anyone can write it. Blog writing offers aspiring writers the opportunity to write steadily and have others read their work.
Don’t know what to blog about? What interests you? Write about it. Select a free domain name from WordPress and get going. Your first blog is practice — don’t over think the domain name and the website layout for months — just write! Once you’ve improved your writing and developed a great blogging idea with potential, get another domain name — they’re inexpensive. Start a second blog if you wish. Juggle as many blogs as you’d like, but start with one and use it for practice.
Edit constantly, thoroughly and attentively. Writing is like painting a wall. The first coat acts as a base, but it is unfinished work that contains imperfections. A second coat is needed for the wall to truly look great, and sometimes a third coat is required. Edit. Edit again if you have to. Edit until it’s perfect.
If you’re unsure about a word’s spelling, check. Every time I write I have a separate Google page open. When my work yearns for a word I can’t think of, or I have a hint of doubt about the proper usage of a certain word — usually one I don’t use often — I quickly double check with my buddy Google, to make sure my spelling and application are correct. You should do the same if you’re an aspiring writer.
Keep reading. I know, I’ve already mentioned the importance of reading, but I can’t stress it enough. To write well, you must read often. Think about it: If you wish to become a great hockey player, you’ll be helped by watching the NHL and mimicking its players. If your wish is to be a master chef, watch cooking shows and experiment with ingredients. Writing is no different; if you’d like to become good at it, study its masters and implement their techniques into your own writing style. Read a lot, and you’ll write a lot better.
Unlike many other professional fields, writing allows no room for mediocrity. A store manager may mistakenly botch her purchase order and only suffer minor repercussions. A school teacher can accidentally teach a falsity then clear the air once the mistake has been recognized. Writers can’t make mistakes. Mistakes mean no money for a writer. You’re either a great writer, or you’re not a writer at all. There is no in between if you wish to be paid for your work. Quite simply, writing leaves no room for error — and I don’t mean the odd typo in your blog — I mean spelling mistakes, poor grammar and the misuse of words.
If you’d like to improve your writing, avoid spelling mistakes.
Two common types of spelling mistakes:
1. Spell word correctly; apply it incorrectly. The English language is riddled with words that sound the same as each other while spoken, despite having entirely different meanings. For example: there, their and they’re.
There implies location or direction: There it is, over there.
Their is possessive: That is their car.
They’re is short for “they are”: They’re on their way over there.
Observe the following dialogue containing misused words:
Writer: I lost my job and now I’m pour (poor).
Friend: Look at the bright side, at least the sun is shinning (shining).
Writer: The sun is nice but I need to earn a pay check (paycheque, in Canada) so I can feed my family.
Friend: Or you could make you’re (your) family get jobs while you take time off and enjoy the whether (weather).
Writer: Sounds nice, but I don’t think they’d except (accept) that offer.
Friend: Well than (then), I guess you better perfect your resume and find a job.
*Correct spelling in parentheses.
The misuse of words is common. We write how we speak. I mean, teachers taught us to sound out our words when we were children, and we naturally still heed that advice while spelling. Unfortunately, simply sounding out a word, typing it, and smiling as Spell Check lets it pass the red squiggly line test does not mean the correct word was used. And your readers — at least some of them; and probably most of them — are going to notice your errors.
2. Plain and simple incorrect spelling. This occurs more often with lengthy words than it does with short ones, and it typically involves the improper usage of vowels or double letters.
Improper use of vowels: Separate, is correct. Seperate, is incorrect. When spoken, especially if you live in Ontario like myself, you’ll say the word as: sep-per-ate. Some words aren’t spelled exactly how they sound when spoken, and that often leads to the practice of common spelling mistakes.
Spell Check usually corrects mistakes like the one above, but it can miss others. Below is an example of two correctly spelled versions of two different words with unique meanings. One ends in a double letter, the other doesn’t.
Possess and posses. The two words are different. Possess means: to have control of. It is the more commonly used of the two. Meanwhile, posses (with one “s” at word’s end) is the plural form of the word “posse,” which vaguely means: group of people. Spell Check will let “posses” slip through the cracks every time, even though you meant to write “possess.”
If your wish is to improve your writing, you’ll need to practice, practice and practice more. Learn from your mistakes. Read a lot. Study the works of elite writers. Don’t skim through a book, read thoroughly. Don’t speed through a book, read the thing slowly and absorb its details. Observe the grammar and sentence structure within the writing. When do paragraphs start? How do they end? How are quotation marks used? What about dashes? And hyphens?
Read great authors, top journalists and respected copywriters if you’d like to improve as a writer. There’s a lot of junk online, be wary of poorly written content. It’s out there.
You will improve your writing if you use the right word for the job.
Inexperienced writers often use the wrong word for the job. Or worse, they use a string of words when one could’ve done the trick.
For example, if you want to tell consumers that your product “can withstand a beating” then tell them it’s “durable.” Durable is one clean word.
Improve your writing by removing “very” and “really”.
There are many words which are overused by writers. Here’s a short and obvious list:
*Very
*Really
*Amazing
*Incredible
Very and really are used much in speech, thus inexperienced writers always seem to toss them into their work. The truth is, half the time you’d be best served by removing the word without finding a replacement. But sometimes, as a writer, you must emphasize your point, and words like “very” and “really” are easy ways to do so. However, there is often a more descriptive word worth substituting in their place.
For example, rather than saying: “I had a very long day today.” Be descriptive and say: “I had an exhaustingly long day today.” One option tells me your day was long. The other tells me your day was long and tiring. Both sentences are seven words long. Yet the second sentence tells me two things about your day, and the first only tells me one.
Words like “incredible” and “amazing” are used frequently to emphasize something’s greatness. However, I find them to be overused. Here and there, throw in other words instead, like terrific, wonderful, astonishing, stunning, sensational, remarkable, etc.. Change it up.
Slow down, you move too fast.
Write slowly. One of my biggest mistakes when I started writing was a propensity to speed write. Put me at a desk with a MacBook and I’d make it chorus like a thousand woodpeckers at work. But typing is not writing, it’s only one part of writing. Being a fast typist will help you when a client is giving project details over the phone, but when you transform those details into web copy, slow down and let yourself think while you type.
First person or third person?
I’ve read company web copy — usually home page stuff — that switches between the third tense and the first. For example, a company will write:
S. I. Copywriting provides freelance writing services to Southern Ontario’s hard-working small business owners. We strive to improve your SEO while strengthening your company’s message to consumers.
The first sentence was written in the third-person. It spoke of “S. I. Copywriting.” Meanwhile the second sentence adopts a personal tone, as though the company itself is now speaking, “we strive to . . .”
Shift between tenses if you must. Many a company does so, and in my experience it’s an acceptable form of cheating. I don’t wholeheartedly recommend switching between tenses, but some companies desire the name-dropping ability of the third tense and the personal feel of the first to be melded together.
If you switch between tenses, here is the best way to apply the switch: begin in the third, shift to the first, then stay there for the rest of the paragraph. Aside from a few uptight English professors, no one is going to notice the switch anyway, let alone care about it. Consumers don’t proofread web copy, they simply seek value in it. Switching from the third tense to the first is barely noticeable, if at all. That being said, this is the only “mistake” that won’t make your website read unprofessionally, thus hindering reputation. Spelling mistakes, grammatical errors, etc. will not fly with many consumers.
Improve your writing using the tips I’ve provided in this blog and consider advice from others, as well. I’m a freelance writer and blogger of hundreds of posts. I wouldn’t call myself an Oxford Grad, I’m just a student of the craft, hoping to help other aspiring writers by sharing some of the knowledge I’ve acquired over countless hours of hard work and learning. Good luck!
