9 Tips To Up Your Content Creation Game

You want your writing to be top-notch. Here’s how.

When you get right down to it, writing is an exchange solely between you and your audience.

No matter if your audience is narrow or wide-ranging, it’s up to you to present your words in an organized, readable manner. If you want your reader to respond favorably to your words, you need to put your best work forward to showcase not only your topic but your professionalism as a writer.

These tips and suggestions will boost your content creation skills.

Know your audience

Think about who your audience is. You’re not going to write for scientists and use language better suited for junior high dropouts any more that you would write an article aimed at laymen but exclusively use technical jargon.

A content manager I often work with always includes a description of the audience for me to consider:

US-based small business leaders with 1–2 locations who are interested in practical, effective business insights. Assume basic business acumen. They already use a payment processor. They know basic business terms, and they are already established and successful.

If you’re not lucky enough to have a client get specific about their reader expectations, take a look at the above example and ask yourself how you’d write the description for your intended audience.

Plan ahead

What is your topic? What’s your angle? What specifics will you include?

Ideally, you’ve already asked yourself who your audience is and what they expect from the piece you’re working on. The next step will be deciding your angle and making sure you have the research or knowledge to support your arguments.

From there, have your resources lined up so you know where to find the information you’ll need as you work on the article.

It’s much like preparing to bake a cake. You’ll know what kind of cake you want to make, you’ll have the recipe close at hand and the ingredients and kitchen supplies lined up on the counter.

Try making a cake without doing that.

(On second thought… don’t.)

Making a list

If outlining works for you, great! If you’re not the sort of writer who works from an outline, trying listing out everything you need to cover. Bracket it with the word “Intro” and the top and “Conclusion” at the end.

You can do this on a notebook page and glance at it as you work, or you can place it at the start of your working document and refer to it from time to time as you write.

I don’t like formal outlines, so I’ll make a list instead. I keep the list at the head of my document and then make another copy beneath that. I use that second list to form my topic headers, then insert the copy below each header.

When I’m finished, I look at the order and see if I want to rearrange any topics. The idea is that I used my list as the skeleton of my article and attached the meat to that skeleton as I went along.

But I needed to arrange those bones first.

Stick to your deadlines

At first glance, this advice sounds like it’s meant to benefit your clients more than anyone else. While keeping to deadlines is crucial to maintaining a career in content creation, there is a real argument that the discipline required to stick to deadlines shows through in your written work.

A disciplined writer writes in a disciplined way… that is to say… your writing will reflect a sense of professionalism which the reader will pick up on.

Keep it simple and honest

Even if you’re writing to an audience made up of advanced-degree professionals, that doesn’t mean you have to obscure your writing with needlessly complicated language.

Don’t burden your copy with complex language or fancy terms when simple will suffice. Why make your copy harder to read than it has to be?

As important, try to write in your unique voice. Be authentic.

While it’s perfectly acceptable to study the works of other writers, don’t slavishly imitate them. Readers can often tell.

Be yourself and present yourself in an honest manner.

Your work will be better for it.

Don’t be coy about that call to action

Whether you’re writing content intended to drive business to your website or writing content for someone else, don’t forget to include the call to action and don’t be shy about it.

Want your reader to subscribe to your newsletter? Want them to buy your book? Does your client want the reader to contract with their IT support service or gutter cleaning business?

Include that call to action.

Before you write that final word of the piece, make sure the reader knows who to contact for more information or where to sign up for that newsletter. Have something special to offer? Make sure the reader knows it.

Even if you just want to get the reader to follow you on social media, make sure to let them know you’re there. Include links.

Don’t be shy. You’re not going to get any bites if you don’t offer any worms.

Stop fretting over the word count

A good article is as long as it needs to be. That’s it.

Many of us have been guilty of padding a piece of content to fill what seems to us as an arbitrary word count requirement. We use filler words and text, we say things the hard way when the simple way is so much easier to understand. We don’t like writing like that, but we see an assigned word count and think it holy.

You can negotiate.

If your content manager assigns a certain word count, but you feel that stretching your copy to fill that count would result in extraneous and unnecessary verbiage, let them know. The content manager might very well see it your way and consider the piece stronger for its conciseness.

If they insist on more, ask how it might be expanded without just being fluff. This also has the bonus of sending a message of professionalism to your client.

Let your words rest

Never send a piece out as soon as you’ve finished it.

Okay, maybe you’re trying to beat a quick deadline, but really… if you can… just let it rest for a bit.

I like to let a finished piece of writing sit untouched and unread for at least ten hours. That’s enough time to refresh both my eyes and perspective to then see if anything pops out in the text that seems awkward or just plain wrong. We are too close to our writing while we’re in the act of writing it, and it’s very easy to miss obvious problems. A little time away between writing and reviewing will do your article a world of good.

Heck, read it out loud now.

Does it flow? Or does it stumble?

Proofread backward

I went to college in the 80s. While there were computers available with spellcheck, it wasn’t quite the universal feature it is now. Back then, the best advice I’d ever received regarding proofreading was to read the piece backward. This would force me to see each word individually and make it easier to spot typos and misspellings.

These days, catching misspellings isn’t a huge task.

Catching misused words, bad diction, and poor punctuation are still challenges, however.

Use programs such as Grammarly to check your work, with one note of caution. Grammarly catches a lot, but it should never be used blindly. Always consider if the suggestion Grammarly or other grammar-checking program is appropriate for your meaning and context.

For that, I recommend reading your copy backward. Not word-by-word, but sentence by sentence. You may catch some of those common bugbears such as “they’re/there/their” or “you’re/your” and so forth. You may decide a comma should be a semicolon. You may notice how many adverbs litter your paragraph or that you’ve built too many passive sentences.

You may decide whole sentences need to go.

When you’re done reading your piece backward sentence-by-sentence, try paragraph-by-paragraph. This is more for meaning and organization. Does your paragraph work like it’s supposed to?

Then, finally, read your piece one more time from beginning to end.

That way you can send it off with confidence, and your readers can be impressed with your style and presentation.

You’re always auditioning for the reader. With that in mind, you always want to put your best work forward. Why would you otherwise?

Keep these tips in mind and your writing will become stronger and more professional.

Who knows where this could lead?

This whole writing thing just might work out.

Thank you for reading. I’d love to share more with you via my Weekly Word Roundup newsletter sent to subscribers every Sunday. It will feature news, productivity tips, life hacks, and links to top stories making the rounds on the Internet. You can unsubscribe at any time.