If someone had told me when I started my business that I would have loved writing as much as I do I would have thought they had lost their marbles.
I certainly wasn’t somoene who didn’t like writing or felt like I couldn’t write, it just wasn’t something that I ever felt compelled to do or thought much about.
My creative endeavors all fell more under the arts and crafts side of things.
Until I became an entrepreneur.
To give you a point of reference, I started my business in 2008 when blogging was still fairly new and WordPress was in its infancy.
I knew I’d have to write blog posts but I didn’t think much about it.
Fast forward to 2013 when I started podcasting and all of the sudden I was writing out more in-depth posts before I recorded my solo shows and all of the sudden I found my voice.
My skills and love of writing have definitely evolved over the years, but I can say without a doubt that focusing on writing and the mastery of it (don’t worry, I have zero intentions of every writing a novel), has been of the best things I could have done for my business.
C.S. Lewis had it right when he said, “You can make anything by writing.”
Writing is the one skill that will help you in every area of your business.
It’s not necessarily about mastering writing, but choosing to focus on the mastery of the skill.
Even if your content medium of choice is video or podcasting, becoming a better writer will help you get your message across clearly and succinctly.
Think about it this way, even if those two mediums are all you’re doing, you still need to write in order to:
- Create headlines that get people to click
- Write meta descriptions that help people find your content
- Create social media content (micro-content) to share your video or podcast
- Write posts on your site about your podcast or video (if you’re not doing this just remember that only putting your content on properties you don’t own, such as YouTube or Apple podcasts, you’re missing out on valuable search engine traffic)
On top of writing content for whichever medium you prefer, there’s also email marketing, writing for your courses (lessons, landing pages, marketing, etc.), ad copy, pitches, etc.
Taking the time to get better at writing (unless you can hire a really good writer), is truly one of the best investements of time you can make in your business.
Content writing vs. Copywriting
Content writing was much easier for me to wrap my head around than copywriting.
Both are equally important and if you don’t understand copywriting your content writing may not get the attention it deserves.
Content writing is a little more obvious, but for those of you who aren’t familiar with what copywriting is (couresty of Google):
Copywriting is what gets people to click through, consume your content, and buy your stuff (my rough-around-the edges definition).
I had a friend who I would turn to when it came time to write a headline or copy that was being used for marketing and selling. The first time I had asked him to help me with headlines for something he told me to go and write 50 headlines.
FIFTY.
That’s 5-0.
I was going to him for help with one headline and he wanted me to write 50. I thought he was nuts.
This was before my new favorite saying of “you’re not going to get better at something by not doing it” came into play (obviously).
Copywriting, like content writing, can be learned.
There are a lot of moving parts to copywriting. Personally, I found starting with headlines is a great place to start.
The easiest way to do this is to start paying attention to headlines that grab you. When you see the title think about what it was that made you want to read more.
One of our favorite tools that I’m sure we’ve mentioned before is the CoSchedule Headline Analyzer.
CoSchedule is the tool we use to share our content on our social platforms. The headline analyzer is a free tool that can help you craft better headlines.
The two images below were used to create this headline. The first is a set of headlines I wrote and the second was the score I received for the headline of this post:
This was a simple task that took me a few minutes and improved the likelihood of people clicking through and reading the post.
Practice writing headlines for your content and email before you move into copywriting for sales pages, ads, etc.
If you aren’t sure where to start with writing, here are a couple of books to get you started (there are plenty more, but these are a good place to start):
“Everybody Writes” by Ann Handley
“Content Machine” by Dan Norris
Lastly, I truly believe everyone can learn to write.
Try to stay out of your head and focus on practicing and publishing, I can guarantee you it will pay off and impact your bottom line.
