Us writers are a tricky bunch. We can spend hours, if not days, fine-tuning a piece of content and, when it flops, we spend even more time agonising over the potential reasons why.
There’s nothing worse than putting your heart and soul into what you think is a fantastic blog, article, news piece, or any other kind of content, only for not a single person to read it.
We all know the gut-wrenching feeling of seeing when there’s a comment on your blog as well, only to find out that it’s a spammy robot trying to sell you viagra. It’s misery.
Go away, Mr Robot đIâve had this particular blog on my mind for a while now. Iâve been a copywriter for around three years and, until I started at Neil Walker Digital, I regularly found myself getting down about the fact that no one read anything I wrote.
Donât get me wrong – even when I used to write link building articles and content people werenât supposed to see, I still enjoyed myself, even if only a tiny bit. But writing at Neil Walker Digital is different; I can put more of my personality into my writing, Iâm not forced to churn out endless reams of useless content, and I get to focus on the topics I choose.
No one ever said writing was easy. In fact, chances are, you knew writing (especially copywriting) was a soul-destroying career when you got into it, but there are lots of ways you can ease the pain.
Whether you’ve lost your mojo after numerous pieces of dud content, or you’re just looking for ways to spice up your writing a little (since we all write better when we’re happy), think about these ideas:
1) Why are you even writing that, anyway?
Okay, the number one question you should always ask yourself before you put pen to paper (or in many cases, fingers to keyboard), is ‘why am I even writing this?’ If you can’t think of a single reason, then stop.
Benjamin Judge recently wrote a fantastic blog on this very topic, and although it’s geared towards fiction writing, it’s applicable for commercial writing as well. He says we should all ask ourselves ‘Why am I writing what I am writing?’ in order to find out how we can improve our prose.
2) Stop with the shoehorning already!
One of my biggest pet-hates is keywords that are aggressively shoehorned into content. I know I’ve had to do it in the past and it made me cringe every time. The fact is, stuffing keywords aren’t going to give you any SEO benefit whatsoever. Google will take one glance at your copy and think it’s unnatural. And, let’s be honest, it really is unnatural.
See:
“If you’re after cheap womens* clothes online, why not take a look at our skater dress lace options and maxi dress tall styles now.”
*And another thing – dropped apostrophes are not necessary. Just because your keywords come without punctuation, there’s nothing stopping you from adding them. Search engines turn a blind eye to commas, apostrophes and all other manner of grammatical necessities, so please don’t leave them out
3) Get lost in research
Research is my favourite part of writing. When it’s all coming together in my head just before I start writing – that feeling is incredible. I’m not sure if anyone else feels the same way (and I’d love to know if anyone does), so it might just be me.
Putting in the time to carry out some research can really help to make your writing meatier though. Skin-and-bones copy is just sad, so flesh your articles out with:
- Links to resources
- Opinions; yours or another writer’s
- Back-story; is there a specific reason why you’ve decided to cover that topic? (Like I have in this post)
- Quotes; if you feel dedicated enough, why not get in touch with some industry experts and ask them for a quote? It’ll give your story an edge against others as well as an authoritative piece of content.
Writing can be draining, especially when you’re stuck in a rut, but it can also be hugely rewarding and, most of all, fun.
How do you take a step back from the edge and get back into the exciting world of writing?
(Images courtesy of Shutterstock and collectorsweekly.com)