Two Major Points that Improve Writing Skills

    What are writing skills ? Why you need the writing skills?

    Writing skills include using perfect grammar in constructing sentences with out spelling mistakes, applying punctuations wherever necessary, giving necessary references and the writing style (Poor writing skills create poor first impressions and many readers will have an immediate negative reaction if they spot a spelling or grammatical mistake) in your article.

    Without improving writing skills you will not get readers to your articles and get recognition for your efforts. Two major points that improve your writing skills are reading experts and writing at least hundred articles with not less than 1000 word each article.

    writing skills

    How do these two points improve writing skills?  

    Reading: by reading expert articles you will improve vocabulary and writing styles. Expert writer use specific words to enhance the meaning and reason their articles. For some time follow your chosen authors style for sometime till you acquire and develop your own style. By reading others you will develop subject knowledge, recover from spell and grammatical mistakes. Reading improves concentration and patience.

    Write Blog Posts Readers Love: A Step-By-Step Guide

    Writing: Keep writing. Start writing. Start writing rubbish. Soon you will become an expert writer like a cocoon turning into a beautiful butterfly. Writing and blogging need two different writing skill sets. Writing skills are different for the topics under consideration. Writing  a résumé is different from writing a project report. Preparing a tutorial is different from preparing for a lecture. They require different writing skills.

    All bloggers who write articles for blog posts are not good writers. Bloggers write for unknown audience where as writer writes for known repeat audience.  Writers can become bloggers but the reverse is not true. A novelist is different from a columnist. You can develop all these writing skills only when you start writing.

    For example writing skills required for a product review differs from writing a blog post. Product review article follow a specific order and slowly take the visitor to making a sale decision. The author will offer all the information that the buyer is looking for about the product or service. Product reviews always follow the following order. 

    Writing review articles will be a pre selling attempt, that is preparing the customer to finish his mind to buy the desired product. The seller will close the deal once the visitor reaches their website with their great content. To prepare the customer to finish the decision you must concentrate your article around these points.

    • Choose a proper headline – If your product review is about a desktop computer, be specific. Head line must contain the exact product name with a promotional tag.
    • Introduce the product to the customer in a presentable way. Write facts about the product. Do not hype or degrade.
    • Give a link to the product. This link could your affiliate link or direct product link.
    • Describe the salient features of the product. Include the key feature in the subheading. Write at least  paragraph of 100 words about the edging features.
    • Another subheading with another key feature and a paragraph of 100 words explaining the feature.
    • Use bulleted or numbered points to highlight the product.
    • Give here a second product link here.
    • Touch upon customer reviews, with one or two real review abstracts.
    • If you could get customer review ratings for a genuine source, mention them.
    • Touch upon few negative point that the customers spoke about the product, but then ending on a very positive note.
    • Finally summarize your article with main points.

    Where as writing a blog post need the following writing skills

    • An Informative title: The title is very important for an article. The title must height the topic summary. The article should have a clear title and not a  vague title. If you are writing an article about a specific product like latest desktop by apple better mention the full name as’ Apple Mac Pro ME253LL/A Desktop – Review‘, instead naming as ‘ New Desktop by Apple ‘ as heading. 
    • Introduction paragraph: A brief intro of the article topic highlighting the main features bulleted. 
    • At least 3 related images with a featured image.
    • Minimum one outbound link
    • If you are an affiliate add an affiliate link at a proper place
    • Include a voting form or a feed back form which will help you to improve the article further and you will get details of a  confirmed visitor with their email address interested in your articles. You can followup with this non span visitor further.

    An article I recently read about ‘writing skills – Getting Your Written Message Across Clearly’  By Ruth Hill and the Mind Tools Team tells about a formula while writing articles. To quote

    Use AIDA – If you’re writing something that must inspire action in the reader, follow the Attention-Interest-Desire-Action (AIDA) Add to My Personal Learning Plan formula. These four steps can help guide you through the writing process. Extract from communication skills.

    The article also insist on writing simple sentences and straight sentences to attract audience. Avoid using passive voice sentences in the article.

    Using  proper ‘quotations’ often is a good idea. Adding fun is also appreciated. But do not deviate  the article attention from the main focus, what ever techniques you use. 

    To summarise

    • The only way to develop writing skills is through writing, writing and writing. 
    • To become expert writer  one must at least write hundred articles of 1000 words each
    • write articles every day or at least once in two days
    • Read  other articles and develop the style and skills from those articles
    • Never ever do grammatical mistakes, spell mistakes and punctuation mistakes
    • Write simple sentences and do no dump the article with complex and compound sentences
    • Proof read the article before publishing
    • Write the articles for the readers not for your satisfaction
    • Remember that content is the king. Without useful information to the visitors, you can not expect them to come back to you again
    • Ig you are writing for a blog remember to meet the Search Engine Optimization techniques to get your share of juice from Google