Writing content

Once you have taken note of these basic tips for effective content writing, all you have to do is practise, practise, practise!

Read/research widely: Gain industry knowledge by reading widely on and off the web. Add summaries of some of the articles you found and provide links to the full article as well as the original article.

Other writers: You may attract readers to your site by publishing content or linking through to content provided by other writers. Find ways to get to know other writers. If you know that a prominent writer will visit your town, invite them to parties. Offer to introduce them to interesting people.

Ideas exchange: All writers thrive on ideas. Share your ideas generously with other writers. Be generous, too, with your time and effort, everyone can use a hand.

Link exchanges: By exchanging links with other content writers you will gain more visitors to your site. Be generous with providing links to other sites.

Inspiration: Store lots of topic ideas, news, articles and make notes for when you need inspiration. Resist the temptation to drop things entirely when you need inspiration.

Correctness: Don't worry about correctness too much. Find your voice and use it, if its passionate, informed, interesting and confident. Write passionately, clearly, simply and quickly.

Consistent: Establish a rhythm, so your writing comes naturally and your readers experience it as a natural part of life. Keep religiously to a schedule of publishing information. If you are inconsistent, readers will conclude you are untrustworthy. Get someone else to do the writing if you are not available.

Poll: You can use an online poll to find out what position your readers take on certain topics.

Audience: If you write with energy and wit about things that matter, your audience will find you. Promote your writing, through email, business cards and search engines.

Critics: Don't let bad reviews cloud your spirit. It's the ideas that matter, not the name-calling.

Archives: Provide a permanent location where each article can be found, even after archiving.

Searches: An effectively categorised archive is very useful for finding information. Topical summaries and overviews are very helpful to readers, and search functions to search through archives in order to find the content they are looking for.

Provide Information: Remember that old articles will often be read by visitors from search engines, thus ensure you tell people on every page who you are, what you want, and why you're writing, your email address, where to find your latest writing.

Regular: Write regularly: B.F. Skinner remarked that fifteen minutes a day, every day, adds up to about book every year.

Tools: Invest in tools to fit your style of writing and improve your writing capabilities.

Style and content:

Passion: Write with passion about things that matter greatly, or don't write. Before you start writing content for a product, project, conference, meeting, trade show or enterprise, you must find a way to represent its passion, beauty and excitement - or find a new writer.

Why it matters: Don't just tell what happened. If the readers believe that it matters, they will be enthralled by what you are telling them. Writing is bad and boring when readers aren't told why it's important or given a good reason to care. Tell your reader why your opinion or the seemingly trivial encounter is important.

Detailed: Include the intricate details about the things you are passionate about and teach your reader why even seemingly insignificant details are important.

Truth: Never, for any reason, publish a statement if you know its not true and never exult in your rival's bad news.

Honest: Find the strength to be honest, to be your authentic self, to work hard and face embarrassment. Avoid starting with passion and ending with a worn-out formula. Don't hide in the familiar, the sentimental or the fashionable, and don't stop short.

Boring?: If you write about how your job bores you, it will bore your readers. But! If you despise your job with an enduring, rich passion, it's something entirely different!

Concise: Write succinctly, re-read your work and revise it when necessary. Ask yourself whether you could choose a better word - a more precise, clearer, richer one? Can you remove the word, sentence or paragraph entirely?

Narrative: The emerging structure of your site, your ideas, passions, arguments and rivalries unfolds like a story with each new revelation. When the 'star' of the site is a product or an organization, do not give in to the temptation to reduce the narrative to a series of triumphs.

Creating Interest: Foreshadowing hints, unexpected flashes of humour or a sudden change of direction, refreshes and delights. Use links within your work to build depth, eventually your own update will someday be your back-up story.

Challenges: Your readers know that every enterprise faces challenges and obstacles. Consider sharing a glimpse of your organization's challenges and how you faced them. Afterwards, your readers will experience the mention of your success more vividly.

Interweave topics: Find ways to vary your pacing and tone. Change the subject; go somewhere new, if only for a moment. When you return, you and your reader will be fresher and better prepared.

Real and Invented People: Write about people with care and feeling and precision. A fascinating imaginary friend could balance your own character on your site - it can be endlessly fascinating.

Debate: Dramatic conflict, controversy and debate are exciting and a powerful means for illuminating abstract or difficult point more real. Carefully choose and respond to an advocate who holds a contradictory position. Have a plan in mind for ending the debate so that it doesn't drag on and become boring. Something like a live debate or online poll will provide a sense of closure. When it's over, make good friends with good enemies.

Your Opinion: State your opinion clearly and explain why. Whether you are very young, or unknown, or lack credentials, or that crowds of famous people disagree doesn't matter. If you did your homework and know your facts, you have a right to your opinion. The truth matters, but refrain from whining!

Intimacy: The more of yourself you put into your writing, the more human and engaging your work will be. Depending the trajectory of your relationship with the reader, the gradual growth of intimacy and knowledge between you, you may have to 'undress' - figuratively.

Benjine Gerber, Author, Systems developer benjine@itemporium.co.za www.self-educate.com