While format and topic are key factors that will ultimately catch the interest of your followers, it’s also important to look at the quality of the writing itself. After all, for many people Blogging is about the written word. Though you could also be creating a photo, audio, or video blog, in this lesson we’re going to look at some tips around improving the quality of your writing specifically.
Something that has become increasingly popular with written communication, is to keep it conversational. The more of you that you can inject into your writing, the more connected your readers will feel to you. And when it comes to winning over and keeping visitors coming back – you are the secret ingredient.
The fact that there are probably thousands or more blogs online that cover the exact same topic/niche as you do, is terrific! It means that there’s an audience out there who wants it. If no one wanted it, people wouldn’t keep doing it. The trick is in figuring out how to make your unique spin on your niche stand out.
Ask yourself: Why should people read my blog over that other one?
Your unique life experience, flare, and spin on the topic is exactly what someone is looking for. What is special and unique about your voice or perspective on the topics you write about? Make a list and then let these elements shine through!
Keep in mind, this isn’t a business letter or a job application. Write your posts as if you’re having the most engaging conversation with your closest friend who can’t get enough of it. It’s a part of you and something that you’re passionate about – share that passion.
While the odd typo, and slip of grammar, here and there won’t likely send your readers running away screaming. Too much of it will definitely sway them into clicking that “X” to close your post sooner than you’d like.
So far, you’ve got the right topic and you’ve injected the uniqueness of you into the writing. The next step is to give it a bit of a polish.
Self-editing is one of the hardest things any writer can do. Since we intuitively know what we mean to say, we may miss mistakes a new set of eyes would pick up on right away. At the very least, you want to make sure that you’re paying attention to the feature built-in to many web browsers that adds red lines under text which is spelt wrong. Tools such as Grammarly or ProWritingAid can also be extremely helpful. That being said, they’re not 100% accurate so you’ll need to make some judgment calls along the way, and possibly look things up to confirm for accuracy..
- Write in advance and come back to it later with a fresh look to read through it once more. Try reading slowly and out loud! (Reading your work out loud will not only make errors and awkward wording stand out, it will help you to ensure that you’re keeping a conversational tone.)
- Read from the bottom up – the most common reason we miss mistakes is because our brain fills in the gaps. When you read from the bottom up, either one sentence or one paragraph at a time, it breaks the natural flow that our brain would tap into.
- Right click on a word and select “Look up” – this is super handy for those words that you think you’ve gotten right but maybe aren’t quite sure.
- Use free online tools like Grammarly or ProWritingAid to double check your work.
It really doesn’t add a huge amount of extra time or effort to do a bit of edit polishing on your writing, but it is a step that will make a huge difference to your readers – and again, they will thank you for it!
While polishing up your writing before publishing it is a good idea, revising and editing content is something that you can continue to do at any time.
If you’ve already got some content published, take a moment to review one of the pieces and apply the techniques presented in this lesson to polish it up.
If you’re writing your first piece, be sure to apply these techniques before you click publish (or schedule).
Back to top