Learn all the PROVEN techniques to write
POWERFUL, IMPRESSIVE and IMPACTFUL contents
It does not matter if you are writing an essay or an email, it should always be persuasive and impactful to your reader. Better content writing helps one to convey ideas to the world effectively. Therefore, one must learn how to write quality contents that influences readers and get the job done.
By the end of this course, you will be have all the information that you need to write better contents and essays. This is going to definitely help you in your career as a student, graduate or a professional.
Importance of Writing good:
It does not matter if you are a student, a graduate or a professional, writing better contents is as important as good academic score. It is evident that if you are able to write well, you are more likely to succeed in your field. Anyways, if you wish, you can definitely check this blog post to learn more about importance of writing good. So, without any further delay, start now and learn how to write better contents and essays.
#1 Plan and Prepare for good content ##
Before writing a good content, it is important to plan how you are going to prepare it. There are many ways to prepare good content, below are a few.
#1.1 Write as you wish to Read.
Stop writing with your own point of view or interest, instead start writing about what your reader is interested in. Always put yourself in your reader’s shoes and think what your reader is expecting from the content.
- To prepare a good content ask yourself the below questions regarding your topic.
- How interested is your reader in this topic?
- How well do they know this topic?
- What they will use the information for?
- How much background information do they need?
If your content has answer to all of these questions, then be certain that your content is going to impact your reader.
#1.2 Pick a purpose of writing
- What is your primary goal for writing this topic?
- Are you writing to influence your reader? Or,
- Are you writing to inform something?
To identify your primary purpose of your writing, ask yourself, “Do your reader need to take any action”? If yes, then write to influence. Otherwise you write to inform. Some examples are given below
- Writing to influence Example:
- Please call me back as soon as you are available.
- We are still waiting for your response on this.
- Writing to inform Example:
- The documentation has been posted online and can be accessed using this link
- John scheduled the meeting on Monday at 3PM.
#1.3 Order content according to priority
Help reader to scan through your document easily.
Are you aware of Journalistic triangle? Did you know, journalists use an inverted triangular approach to evaluate which information should be used in the heading and which will be used in the body?
In business writing, always put the most important topic/point in beginning. If put somewhere around the middle, reader can skip it unknowingly. This causes information leaking and can lead to bad reputation and results. For this reason, always follow the triangle rule and organize the contents of your writing in order of their priority and need.
In a good writing, the most important (key) point is often put in a single sentence. This sentence is known as key sentence. Key sentence helps reader to understand the topic of the content easily. Therefore, always write the key sentences in simple and easy to understandable words and put it at the beginning of the essay.
Example: The updated policy will be in use after 17th March, follow this document to learn more.
#1.4 Strengthen your writing with impressive content
Having a good content body improves user impact.
The body of your content contains most of the information. Thus, it is very important to structure and write a content body that is persuasive and encourages your reader to take the necessary action (if any). However, if you are writing technical content, use less technical jargon and write in a clear and concise way so that your reader can understand.
If you would like to learn more on how to write valuable and powerful content body, check out the other blog here.
#2 Improve Readability of Your Writing ##
We are most likely to finish a reading if the content is clear, organized, understandable and engaging. Therefore, writing clearly and concisely is very important in the perspective of reader.
#2.1 Organize and group your contents
Understand that, grouping contents logically helps reader to identify the domain of the topic. Moreover, they can visually distinguish different part of the topics and hence, can focus on their area of interest. Therefore, always remember to group your contents together whenever possible to improve readability.
Although, you can group/organize contents in your own way, but below are a few suggestions for grouping.
- Order your content in such a way that it makes sense to reader
- Topic – such as “ease of use”, “cost”, “special features”, “additional benefits”, etc.
- Chronological order– such as “year 1”, “year 2” or “FY2017”, “FY2018” etc.
- Comparison – such as “benefits”, “pros”, “cons” etc.
#2.2 Write short sentences and paragraphs
Often times, if a sentence is too long we need to read it multiple time to understand its meaning. Thus, it is never a good idea to write big sentences or to combine all sentences in a big paragraph. Having smaller sentences and compact paragraphs, not only improves visual appeal of the document but also helps user to scan through the document.
Note, if your content has big sentences and multi line paragraphs, then reader will tend to skip them. So, always try to use small sentences and reduce paragraph lengths to improve user experience.
- There is no general rule for writing shorter paragraphs and sentences. However, you can definitely follow these guides.
- Limit your sentence length below 25 words, preferably below 20 words.
- Make sure that one sentence is conveying one or two ideas and not more.
- For writing shorter paragraph, convey only one key point (or idea) in a single paragraph.
#2.3 Use bullet points or lists
It is very true that a list is always more visually appealing than a paragraph. Lists are very effective when you are trying to convey few points quickly. Lists are very simple and straight forward. Also, lists helps user to understand the topic and its priority at the same time. Therefore, try to use lists as and whenever possible.
- lists are of two types. Bullet point lists and numbered lists
- Use bullet point lists when all the points are equally important.
- Numbered lists are useful when the order and priority is important.
- Lists have a number of benefits, below are few of them
- Greatly reduce paragraph length.
- Improve readability of your content.
- Convey key points very easily.
#2.4 Add Visual elements to your writing
Remember the saying, “A picture is worth more than a thousand words”.
It is certain that, visual elements add a wow factor to your writing or helps your reader to better understand the topic. In either of the scenarios, visual elements such as images, videos or graphs are great option for better content design.
Although, there are different elements which makes your text become alive, but element such as graphs, images, pie charts and especially videos are very effective.
Therefore always remember to add visual elements such as example images, graphs or explanation videos to your writings.
You can also check this video to better understand the importance of visual elements.
#2.5 Improve your writing flow
It is proven that a writing with flow is comfortable to read over the one which does not have flow.
Flow is a word used to describe writing that has logical structure and varied language within and between sentences and paragraphs. Having flow implies having comfort as a writer and a mastery of not only the content being written about, but the writing craft itself. Learn more here.
Adding flow to your writing will reduce the likelihood of confusion. Learn more using this link: https://writingcenter.uagc.edu/making-your-writing-flow
#3 The Finishing Touch ##
If you have followed the above steps, then your content is almost ready. However, if you can add a finishing touch to your content, it will greatly improve the appeal. So, let’s see the final few steps and make the content 100% ready.
#3.1 Revise and remove the clutter:
It is evident that, if you write a long email or a document, you are bound to make mistakes. This mistakes can be as simple as writing “there” instead of “their” or “advice” instead of “advise”. Although simple, but theses mistakes costs documents readability. More on document readability below.
So, make sure to revise your document quite a few times and remove all the mistakes, unnecessary words or commas. Also try to reduce sentence and paragraph lengths as much as possible.
#3.2 Reduce passive voice:
Passive voice are easy to write but often weaken the content. On the other hand, active voice increases your reader’s attention and impacts your reader directly. Also, active voice greatly reduces sentence lengths.
To write in active voice, say, “who” performed the action? As an example
Passive voice: The report was submitted by John.
Active voice: John submitted the report. – Clear, concise and to the point.
Therefore, always use active voice as and whenever possible.
#Finally
I would like to conclude by saying, improve your contents readability as much as possible.
As the name suggests, readability score of a content defines how easy it is to understand. As rule of thumb is to make sure that your content has at least readability score of 60 or higher. Without exception always try to target 70 or higher. Always remember that higher the readability score, the easier it is for your readers to understand.
To learn more about how readability score is calculated, visit this link.
At the end thank you for reading this through and Congratulations on completing this blog to Write Better Contents and Essays.
I hope this document has helped you in improving your skills to write better contents. However, if you wish to learn more about writing contents, you can definitely check this LinkedIn courses below.
LinkedIn course: Tips for Writing Better Contents
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