4 Impactful Writing Tips

or how I can save you 3 years in a single blog post.

You may not be a natural writer, you may be struggling to string a few sentences together, we get it, writing can be a rough ride. Capturing the audience, holding their attention and delivering a great message isn’t the easiest. My first 3 years as a writer were tough.

I’d spend hours crafting a few hundred words together, but ultimately nobody read them. I tried to submit my articles to well known publications, but every-time, without fail they’d get rejected.

Absolutely nothing worked, every word was generating more doubt in my mind that I wasn’t a any good at writing.

Overtime, and with a bit more work I slowly figured out what worked, and more importantly what didn’t. My only regret was that it took me so long!

So here are 4 quick topics that can make you a more impactful writer today.

1) Publish often but take your time

Should you post 500 words every few days, or write 1,000 words and publish once a week? The simple answer is the latter.

The longer version is that both humans and search engines prefer longer form content. It’s harder to write, it takes more effort to piece the content together. But long term you’ll have a piece of content that will be more comprehensive and more useful for the reader.

Longer content takes time, and generally it doesn’t scale linearly. 1,000 words takes more than twice as long as 500 words. Our weekly blog content generally takes 5-6 hours of work end to end. Take your time writing content, think about writing in more detail and more focussed, with real tangible take aways, not just general points.

2) Headlines are important, more important than you think

My first mentor told me this, he said “Headlines are more than half the battle”. A simple, clear headline can grab the attention of the reader. You don’t need to overthink it and be extra smart, don’t try to pull the wool over your readers eyes, and trick them into reading your content. All you are going to achieve is an annoyed reader.

Remember there is so much content out there, and the reader is bombarded with options. You need to grab their attention and get your message across in a persuasive manner.

3) Embrace all mediums and test

Producing content for Facebook / twitter / Medium / your blog / news sites /LinkedIn can be time consuming. But you need to be everywhere, at least at the start. Understand that content for

LinkedIn may work for one segment of your audience, it ROI for what you produce for Medium might better than the content on your own website. It’s all conjecture until you’ve tested and measured. Use each of the platforms to test your messaging, to speak to the customer in a different way.

4) Collaborate, Collaborate, Collaborate

Writing on your own isn’t enough, you need to think about how you can bring a whole team together. Collaborating on content is the greatest accelerator I’ve used to drive more web traffic to my clients’ websites. Get help generating outlines, research, fleshing out paragraphs and editing your articles.

The result is content that’s more rounded and complete. Bringing in more than one opinion on a piece of content means that you’re less likely to miss some important points. Of course you need to think of of what to write about.

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Still confused as to how your writing can be more impactful? Get in touch to talk about your next writing project, we can help!