If you are new to blogging and finding it difficult to create content that you are proud of, do not be discouraged.
You don’t need to take a lot of writing classes or join a content marketing team to become a good blogger. Although it certainly wouldn’t hurt, it’s not necessary. This blog post can be one of your go-to resources for improving your writing skills.
Listed below are eight essential writing tips I’ve gleaned from all my classes and content marketing experience.
The following website can teach you how to write better blogs by being clear and concise while also engaging your audience. I’m embarrassed about my first blog post after seeing how much better I could have written it.
Essential Writing Tips for Crafting Clear, Concise, and Compelling Content
1. Trim The Fat
The fewer unnecessary words your include in your writing, the easier it is to understand. Concise writing is lean. And readers can zip through it with little effort. To sharpen your writing, follow the four pointers below:
- Avoid linking verb phrases like “Sam was writing about his van.” “Sam wrote about his van.” sounds more forceful. Linking verbs have a passive effect, which is why they can’t pack much of a punch.
- Change prepositional phrases like “The decision of the board was final.” to “The board’s decision was final.” Prepositional phrases make sentences longer and harder to follow.
- When a noun ends in -tion, change the noun to a verb. For example, “They will collaborate to create a new style guide.” sounds cleaner than “They will collaborate in the creation of a new style guide.”
- Reduce verb phrases like “The results are suggestive to the fact that on-page SEO still works.” to simple verb phrases like “The results suggest that on-page SEO still works.” The latter sounds much smoother.
2. One Sentence Should Only Cover One Idea
A sentence that is clear and easy to understand should stick to one main idea. However, sometimes writers focus more on sounding intelligent than expressing information in a straightforward manner. This can lead to complex sentences that confuse readers.
Remember that your readers don’t care about how well you can write. People want to quickly understand how to solve their problems, and short sentences can help with that.
3. Sentences Don’t Live in Isolation
You need to take into account the surrounding sentences if you want to write a sentence that is compelling. When you use the same word in two consecutive sentences, it is called repetition. When you cover similar ideas in two different sentences, it is called being redundant.
To make your writing more interesting for your readers, use different words and phrases, and omit any information that is repeated.
4. Vary Sentence Length and Structure
I came across a graphic on Twitter called “How to Write” about a year ago and it vastly improved my writing skills. Take a look. Humans crave variety. Simple and compound sentences work together to create a well-rounded piece of writing.
If your sentences have the same structure or length, your writing can become repetitive and boring. Diverse sentences make your writing pleasant to read.
5. Scrap The Cliches
It would be a cliché to begin this paragraph with a cliché. I thought so. That’s why I didn’t do it. Cliches sap your content’s originality.
People use these phrases so much that the meaning becomes diluted. Full activation of the prefrontal cortex is not necessary for figures of speech or buzzwords to have an effect. They’re too stale to impact you.
A good way to test if a phrase is a cliche is to ask yourself if you’ve heard it before. If you have trouble coming up with new ideas, try expressing your existing ideas in a new way. You can avoid cliches by using a cliche finder tool to check your content.
6. Appeal To The Senses
Fiction writers who are good at their craft can transport their readers into the world of their stories. The author uses concrete details to create a vivid picture for the reader.
Skeptical? In a 2012 study at Emory University, researchers monitored participants’ brain activity when they read metaphors involving texture. They found that when people read metaphors involving texture, the same part of their brain was activated as when they experienced the texture with their own body.
When people read metaphors like “He had leathery hands,” their sensory cortex, which is responsible for perceiving texture through touch, is engaged. They did not experience the sense of touch when they read the phrase “he had strong hands.”
“Leathery” is a concrete detail that appeals to touch. And it places readers into the exact scene the writer described. They also help people to understand complex ideas by breaking them down into more manageable metaphors.
The difference between business writing and creative writing is that creative writing harnesses the power of sensory language. If your readers can engage with your ideas on a sensory level, they will be more engaged with your content.
Having trouble grasping this concept? Here are some examples:
Visual
You can’t help but stare at the timer on the skip button, patiently waiting for the seconds to pass by.
Auditory
shocking that even through all my colleagues’ noise-canceling headphones, I could hear his obnoxious laughter.
Touch
“Your well-formatted paragraphs will hold her attention captive.”
Smell and taste
If you want your writing to have more zest, try turning it into sound bites.
7. Let Things Go
Whenever you come across a well-written paragraph or sentence, your internal author becomes attached to it. However, even if the topic does not fit within the scope of your content, you may still try to include it. You can get too attached to let it go.
Any text that does not provide new information or help the reader to understand the topic better is superfluous. And all fluff does is muddle your writing.
Instead of relying on things that are not essential, start fresh and from the beginning. It is always hard to give up on something that is beautiful, but if it does not offer value to those who read it, it is best to let it go.
8. Take a Break
Do you ever read your final draft so much that you can’t tell if it’s good or bad? You can trick yourself into thinking a bad draft looks good if you’ve spent enough time on it.
It is vital that you take a break from your final draft before you submit it. Taking a break from your work can help you come back to it with fresh eyes, allowing you to find errors you may have missed and new creative possibilities.
Eddie Shleyner, copywriter and content marketer at Workforce Software, tries to make sure that there are never more than twelve words in a sentence, twelve syllables in a word, or twelve letters in a line when he edits his blog posts.
He leaves his final draft for 12 hours before returning to it. He then makes his final round of edits, during which he always finds a mistake or a better way to improve his writing.
9. Always Start With the Why
What are you trying to accomplish with this and what does it do? It’s important to know your goal so that you can create a plan to achieve it. What is your blog for:
- Are you an information resource on a niche topic?
- A thought leader to be the authority in your space?
- Or, a topical or trend site that breaks news or cutting edge design and technique?
Once you understand the fundamental identity of the blog as a whole, then for each article you should answer, what is this post for:
- To grow readers?
- To grow subscribers?
- Is it a spoke to support a hub page?
- Is it for shares or for links?
- Is this to newsjack a trend for a quick win?
- Or, do you want longevity from an evergreen article?
10. Know Who You’re Speaking To
Who is your audience? What do they want to read? This is something you should keep in mind when writing your blog articles – you need to focus on what your audience wants to read, rather than what you think they want to read.
Your personas are the people who you want to target with your writing. You should know what interests them and what their problems are so that you can solve those problems with your writing.
There is no guarantee that this will get someone’s attention, but it is a good way to try to connect with someone. Corporate blogs often discuss recent events and happenings within the company.
In other words, your employees don’t really care about the company’s successes or problems–they care about their own. People are mostly concerned with themselves and how you can help make their lives better or easier.
The audience of Wellness Mama consists of women and mothers who want to be healthier and be better parents.
The site contains advice that used to be passed down from grandparents to grandchildren, but is now being lost.
This website understands its target audience and provides titles for articles that will help them be the best parents they can be.
It’s an incredible resource and wealth of information. This site is a great example of how a publishing site should be run.
11. Only Write About What You’re Qualified to Talk About – Don’t Fake it
If a chicken farmer tries to tell me how to catch fish, I would be skeptical of their advice. For a brand to become an authority, it needs to have the expertise and knowledge to be qualified in its field.
A legal firm that tries to sell you recipe ideas is not going to be successful in convincing you of their conveyancing skills. Similarly, a tennis coach shouldn’t try to give tax advice. If they don’t, I will be searching for someone else to do my tax return.
After you have chosen your niche, it is important to become an expert on the topic by writing articles that cover every aspect of it.
If you did your research to figure out who your target audience is, then you will know what their biggest problems are. Your niche is where your pain points and your specialist knowledge intersect with what your audience wants to read.
This will give your articles an edge by getting the attention of your audience with catchy titles and then delivering helpful advice in the body of the text.
Every time I look up something related to health, like [what are the symptoms of kidney stones], [what is the best way for the body to absorb vitamin C] or [intermittent fasting], I see Mercola in the top results.
12. Research To a Journalist Standard
Google’s original algorithm was inspired by the importance of citations in academic papers. The paper is judged by the number of citations it contains and the number of other papers that link back to it.
This is what the algorithm was based on before anyone could think of link farms. I think that the content of what people are searching for has gone back to being like academic papers that have credible sources cited.
Any high-quality article must be written using standard journalistic style. I mean that no claims should be made without evidence to back them up. Your piece should be well researched and supported by other information, stats, and studies.
If you want to lose credibility, the quickest way to do it is by offering unreliable information.
Many successful blogs are now hiring journalists to help improve the quality of their online content. A well-written article should include links and references to other credible sources to support its claims.
As mentioned before, Mercola provides medical references to back up any claims and advice.
13. Don’t Run With the Herd – be Original or Find a Fresh Approach
I used to call content that talks about the same things everyone else is saying “me too” content, but that term now has a whole new meaning. Instead, I’m going to say “herd content.”
The content on websites in the same niche often says the same things. If you’re looking at a niche and you see that one article seems to have copied the references and structure from another article, that’s an example of lazy research.
To stand out, you need to be unique. Be ahead of the pack and try to say something original, or take an original approach to an existing subject.
Even though other people have done similar things before, it is always possible to find your own unique approach to a subject. You can always find your unique approach to a subject, even if everything has already been done.
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