You’ll catch clunky sentences, missing and repetitive words, and misspellings.
Make a list of your most common offenders. Then search for those words and see if you can take them out without altering your intended meaning.
Take a look at each sentence and see how many words you can cut out.
Check to make sure you put commas before direct address in dialog.
The most mutilated verbs are lay, sink, drag, swim, and shine.
Flowery verbs such as quizzed, extrapolated, exclaimed, and interjected, stick out. Instead, use said and asked, with an occasional replied or answered.
When sentences begin with “it was” and “there were,” readers are left wondering exactly what “it” is. These words are vague.
“It was hot today” can easily be replaced with “the sun baked his shoulders,” which paints a clearer picture. Think: strong nouns and verbs.
Spreading an idea means getting it from your brain into someone else’s. It means putting together the essential facts, the logical arguments and your insightful conclusions together in exactly the right way to recreate your brilliant idea in the mind of your reader.
Try to describe your audience with this simple formula:
X who Y.
For example: “Bloggers who want to get more traffic”.
If you can’t explain what your post is about in one simple, short sentence, it’s probably too complex or unfocused.
Make sure a clear connection exists between the opening of your post and the headline.
If a sentence, phrase or word is particularly important or significant, use bold or italics to add stress.
But don’t overdo it.
Always be consistent with your terminology.
If a point is worth making, it’s worth making twice. Or even three times.
Only tell them what they need to know to follow your argument. Share the minimum you need to convey the desired message.
Clear examples help readers understand difficult concepts.
Concrete language describes something detectable by the senses. Something you can see, feel, hear, smell or taste. Abstract concepts are much harder to imagine.
When you provide specific detail in your writing, there’s less room for ambiguity. Your reader is far more likely to end up with the same idea in their head as you have in yours.
Clarity does not tolerate “might,” “may” or “possibly.”
If you can’t say something with certainty, perhaps you shouldn’t be writing about it at all.
if you’re in the business of spreading ideas, you must make friends with bullets.
Bullets are a valuable tool, but you should never drop your reader into a list without first setting the scene.
make sure each point is recognizably related to the others.
If you were giving your reader a list of steps, you’d present them in the order they needed doing, right? Obviously.
But if the items in your list aren’t steps, they often still have a natural order – even if you didn’t have one in mind when you wrote them.
always supply everything the reader needs to fully understand your points within the post itself.
You think you’re being generous but truthfully you’re being greedy. Greedy with your reader’s time, their attention, and their patience.
include a clear call-to-action. Tell your reader what you want them to do.
My trade magazine features can require up to dozen sources, which means many interviews and lots of quotes. Sometime early in my freelance life, I realized I needed a way to keep the sources and their material straight, especially during the cutting and pasting part of the editing process. The solution? Type the notes from each interview in a different color.
The colors facilitate turning an overwhelming mishmash of perspectives, examples and quotes into a coherent article.
Which are the most common mistakes you’d like to warn your readers for? And help them avoid? Sprinkle these mistakes — with advice on how to avoid them — over your tutorial, to keep readers captivated.
Your word choice has to be sharper and harder-hitting than the words you use when you talk because in writing you can’t scream, sing, or use wild gestures. Your words have to capture attention, express emotion, and get your message across.
To make your writing voice stronger and more dynamic:
Choose sensory words like creepy, bland, or dazzling
Pick emotional words like mesmerizing, mind-numbing, and captivating
Religiously tighten your text; and tighten it more
There’s one more thing you shouldn’t forget: A good teacher or mentor inspires her students to implement her ideas.
Consider what might stop your reader from following your advice … and take away that final obstacle.
When you encourage your readers to overcome their doubts and take action, they’ll hang on to your lips to hear each word.
Metaphors help readers visualize an abstract concept by relating it to something concrete. They help people understand a new idea by relating it to something they know already.
Problems are like speed bumps — they slow your reader down. They start paying attention again, because everyone is keen to avoid glitches, hassle, and mistakes.
You have to go above and beyond your keyword list to get a reaction. There has to be a general theme – or story – that runs through the entirety of your marketing. People are getting the story in pieces from different platforms so it has to be consistent.
Have things changed? What happened to the not-so-old-but-old-as-the-Internet saying "Content is King"? All Google did was bring it back to what great authors have been saying since the beginning of stories.
You’re a storyteller now – whether you like it or not.
The “just the facts” approach to your website may cover all of the bullet points you need covered, but it’s not engaging enough to keep people around.
Your role is to sell your products or services – but in order to do that you have to engage and encourage your audience. Your content can’t read like you’re in it for the sale. Your job is to be an advocate for your audience. You’re there to help. Learn how to engage on each platform you’re using for marketing, and then be present as a helpful, encouraging voice to guide your audience to the right decision.
Unlike the early days of SEO copywriting, you can’t keyword stuff and get great results. You can’t even rely on customers to visit your website before they make a decision about company. They are connecting with you on Facebook, following you on Twitter or reading a landing page.
It’s a trash can.
Not a physical one, but a mental trash can.
It’s for discarding advice that doesn’t feel right for you. It doesn’t seem like the right answer.
Your gut tells you this advice isn’t for you. It just doesn’t resonate.
If that happens, you should ignore that tip and move on.
My teacher would say, “Use what feels right and discard the rest.”
I think a lot of writers forget to take out their trash can when they’re learning about writing. But it really pays to keep it handy.
The clients are “not there” for all freelancers, until we go out and proactively market and find them. Take responsibility for your business success and realize it’s up to you to get out there and look for new clients (or new projects from current clients).
Don’t have a writer website? It’s time to get one. You really can’t present yourself professionally these days without a site.
Tweaking your site copy is something you can do 10 minutes a day on, and it’s well worth it to up your odds of drawing prospects to you.
The writer who sent this comment may be missing out if they’re not active on LinkedIn, the one social-media platform where self-promotion is more acceptable.
My experience is LinkedIn connections are happy to recommend and refer you, if you’ll only ask. And it takes just a few moments a day to reach out. You can even mass-mail your LinkedIn contacts 50 people at a time, but use this option with caution to avoid coming off spammy.