Writing on the Web from Patsi Krakoff, The Blog Squad

How to Improve Your Writing: an uncommon truth

How do you improve your writing? There's no question that there's money to be made selling information online.

You only have to look at people like Brian Clark and Darren Rowse to know that you can wake up one day, start blogging, and end up rich and famous!

There's a clear path from your brain to your fingertips on the keyboard that leads to creating written materials on the computer screen. Those words published on a blog can reach millions of people world-wide since there are 1.4 billion people connected to the Internet.

So what do you think the difference is between the big guys and you? Don't tell me you think they're brilliant and you're not because I'm not buying it. Talent is overrated. It's an excuse to hide behind.

For every gifted person I've seen on the Internet, I've seen a hundred who aren't making any money. Plenty of average intelligence people are.

The Right Brain/ Left Brain Tango: How to Get Your Creative Mojo Back

What's your favorite way of stimulating your creative juices? How do you inspire yourself?

I don't usually get up at 2 a.m. and work, but when work's creative it's more like play, so why not? Here's two good posts to read and then I'll tell you why these two writers, Sean D'Souza and John Jantsch, are actually dancing the Tango together...

1. How to Succeed at Content Marketing Even if Your Content Skills Suck by Sean D'Souza. Sean is guest posting over at Copyblogger and makes a great point of stressing regularity and reliability. He says your content writing skills can't get better if you're not writing often, and if readers don't hear from you with frequency, they'll just 'change the channel, and go elsewhere. You've got to publish, stay on target with your messages, and keep readers informed.


2. Are You Right Brain Dead? asks John Jantsch of Duct Tape Marketing. Small business professionals often get so wrapped up in running a business, using their left brains for managing, organizing, and getting things done, that they neglect to stimulate their creative brains. Right brain functioning is essential to customer service, product enhancements, and in general finding creative solutions.
   
   John says, "If, as a marketer, the creative side of your thinking gets shut down you can find it difficult to create engaging blog posts, elegant customer service solutions and innovative product enhancements."

So true. Here's what happens: It's Friday so you run around checking to see if your to-do lists are on track. You may even spend the weekend catching up with left over tasks.

Getting things done is so left-brain. And once that left-brain energy gets plugged in, it's hard to shut it down. While that's a good thing for task accomplishments, it's not the best way to stay creative and improve your writing skills. (And it's not as much fun, I think!)

The Real Problem: What NOT to Write About...

There are a lot of posts in the Blogosphere about how to choose a topic to post about, where to find content, how to link to good resources.

Even though one of the most commonly cited fears of newbie bloggers and newsletter publishers is "What will I write about?" -- I believe this isn't the real problem.

Once you get the hang of blogging, and you've developed your posting wings (2-3 times a week), the real problem is filtering out an excess of information. You must narrow down your focus. Weed out all the dead rabbit trails.

This is the real problem for most of us. I call it Reverse Writer's Block. It's when you have so many ideas and resources and things you could write about, you grind to a full halt.

The real question becomes: what business am I in? What am I in the business of selling? What do I want readers to spend money on?

I'm not denying that writing clever blog posts and newsletters that showcase your expertise isn't foremost. Nor do I diminish the quality of relationships intended in your content. But if you're in business, I'll assume that you have something to sell.

The 3 Must-Have Ingredients to Writing Great Content

I'm talking about content marketing here. Not about copywriting for a landing sales page, although that might ultimately be where you want your readers to click through to. No, I'm going to tell you what I think are the 3 keys necessary in all your content marketing that precedes your sales copy.

This means writing content for your:

• Blog posts
• E-newsletter articles
• Emails to your list
• Twitter updates
• Other social networking site communications
• Comments on other people's blog posts
• Web pages
• Articles
• Speeches
• Podcasts, audio files
• Video casts
• Ebooks, special reports, white papers

If you think of other places where it's important that you write and publish content to market your business, let me know.

If you aren't writing sufficient content in multiple forms and places on the Web, then it will be that much harder for you to get enough traffic over to your sales pages where you convert them to real clients and customers. That's what content marketing does...

Each form has a different style, but here's what they all must have in common to qualify as great content that effectively markets your business and your products and services:

1. Unique, useful information that saves time, energy or money or in some way enriches the lives of your targeted readers. It doesn't have to be original or new. But it should be presented or positioned so that it's not ho-hum.
   
   It's not good enough to regurgitate what everyone else is saying. Readers want to know your own particular perspective. Tell them why this is important for them to read and learn.