Do you have a nick for writing? Want to be a pro at it and make a living of it? If yes, then you need to brush up your skills. Professional content writers create written content for a living. You can write content of different niches, for different organizations, from science to tech website. The more style and variety you show in your writings, the more demand your content will have. If you want to become a professional content writer then follow these simple tips:
- Pick your topic and research well
One of the biggest pitfall of content writing is the subject becomes disorganized. Without having a clear idea on what you are writing or what you want to write, you will be distracted and be swimming in the confusion of topics. This confusion will dilute your message and confuse your readers and as a result your will lose your audience and spoil your reputation. When you know exactly what you are trying to convey, it will make you write better and more effectively connect with your audience. So before you put your pen down you must pick a topic and research well on it. Research will help you write well and get your story right. Not just the research on the topic, you have to also look into what others have written on the topic you have chosen. You must fill yourself with info, and your topic will start to form and your content will flow naturally.
- Put yourself in your reader’s shoes
Before you start writing, you need to put yourself in the mind of the audience as you are writing for them. If you are trying to explain something, then you must talk about it from your audience’s POV. You have to consider things such as how deeply your audience want the info to be broken down, what terms they would like, where they will be confused etc. You must think about them and then write like they would.
- Readability matters than the quantity
Even if you have trained as a prose writer or have dreamt of having a career as a crime novelist when you were young, but when writing content for websites, you must concentrate on the readability than the length. Readability is equally important as the number of the words itself. As a content writer it is your job to make the words on the webpage very engaging, with text formatting, images, page breaks etc. All these have to make the words easy to read. Some tips for making your content readable is cutting the content into small 3 line paragraphs, italicize the important phrases, mark the subheadings and other important things in bold. Provide step by step instructions which will go a long way in keeping the reader engaged to your content, plus you have the benefit you have is Google will categorize your site more easily. Most of the readers like reading the paragraph which is interesting to them, so you have to simplify and make it easy for them. Guide them with correctly formatted headlines and sub-headers. As readers want to know what is in store for them. So give them a hint in the start.
- Stress on the keywords and SEO practices
You should be well aware of the misunderstanding about search engines and keywords. You must not spam the keywords in your content as it is bad and it lowers the value of your content. It is a black hat SEO practice. A good and high quality piece of content is the one which is well written, is attractive to the readers and worthy. If you concentrate on your writing skills and out of all, create an interesting content, you will be good.
- Include relevant content only
As a good content writer you must have the goal of keeping your content fresh. When you begin writing, this has to be in your mind, so that you will include info only which supports your goal. To be more precise, if you are writing a how-to article on how to make a vanilla latte, you just have to provide the instructions on how to make it and there is absolutely no need for including the history of origin of coffee, about coffee plantations etc. When your content has more irrelevant content, your audience will be more disinterested as you will leave them confused and they will never read your entire content as they get bored mid content.
- Provide fresh content regularly
Fresh and changing content is very important. If you do not provide fresh content regularly, then readers and search engines also have no reason to visit your site. Blogging and content writing is a commitment. If you write a couple of posts and then abandon your work, you will not get many readers. Search engines too will not favor your site which is not updated regularly. If you have a content site, you must update it regularly with great content, many of the best content sites are updated regularly. Just like new items in a retail store attracts customers, new and fresh content will attract readers. A freshly and regularly updated blog or website will boost the search engine rankings and it will rank better and you will attract new audience too.
- Read the content out loud before you post
This is an old but a very effective tip. You have to read your content before you run it though grammar check. When you read it loud, you can catch spelling and grammar errors which sometimes, grammar checking software might overlook. If you think you have gone overboard somewhere or, you need to add more at some place, reading out loud will help you rectify them. You must not publish any content before you read it out loud to yourself at least a couple of times. It would be even better if you read in front of your friend or a mentor, to gather their insight too. When you have grown confident of what you have written then go ahead and publish it.
