Tag Archives: blogging

5 best blogging platforms I would recommend

5 best blogging platforms

Blogging isn’t as easy as it was in 2010, or even in 2015. Primarily because everybody wants to use blogging to draw traffic and improve search engine rankings.

Since it is increasingly becoming difficult to gain visibility for one’s blog, people are constantly predicting the end or demise of blogging.

Still, depending on who is presenting the figure, roughly 6 million blog posts are published each day worldwide. This naturally makes it difficult for most of the blog posts to get visibility.

Hence, blogging isn’t ending – more people are blogging, and hence, it is difficult to succeed at blogging compared to the early days.

Does it mean there is no use publishing a blog? It depends.

Despite stiff competition, people are able to carve out a space for themselves through ingenuity, hard work, originality, and perseverance. You can still find many successful new blogs.

How you gauge the success of your blog also depends on what you want to derive out of it. Advertising revenue is always difficult. Most of the entrepreneurs start a business blog because they want to develop a platform from where they can communicate their thoughts and also draw quality search engine traffic.

I regularly publish my content writing and copywriting blog because it generates constant business for me. It also helps me maintain decent search engine rankings for my main website.

The blogging platform that you choose for your blog depends on what you want to achieve. Are you seeking visibility? Do you want to improve your search engine rankings? Do you have a preference when it comes to interface and features?

Based on these factors I’m listing here 5 blogging platforms that I would recommend you use for your purpose.

How to choose the best blogging platform for yourself?

Since there are many blogging platforms available you need to know precisely what you are looking for before you pick the right blogging platform for your need. Just because many people you know might be using a particular blogging platform it doesn’t mean it is the right fit for your requirement.

Here are a few things to consider

Content creation and management

You will most likely be writing and publishing blog posts. You may use a few images. You may also sometimes like to embed videos.

The success of every blogging venture depends on your ability to create and publish content on an ongoing basis and hence, you will be interacting with the content editor almost daily.

The content editor of the blogging platform must allow you drag-and-drop features if you are comfortable with them. You should also be able to enter plain vanilla text with all standard HTML markup. You should be easily able to embed images and videos.

The content editor must be light, visually appealing, and offer you only the features you need.

Search engine optimization features

A big part of your blogging effort involves improving your search engine rankings. Your blogging platform must have all the standard features to allow you to optimize your blog posts for easier and faster crawling, indexing, and ranking.

Aside from the standard features such as ability to enter custom titles, descriptions and tags, your blogging platform must allow you to use standard SEO extensions that will enable you to analyze your text in real-time and make changes for better SEO.

Layouts, themes, and designs

Every major blogging platform allows you to use themes and layouts, but individual platform has its own capabilities. Do you already have a website and your blog must look like your website? Then you should be able to tweak the blog theme as per your website layout.

Some blogging platforms allow you to write themes at the code level, some allow you drag-and-drop features to easily create the layout, and some offer you a mix. You can choose your blogging platform accordingly.

Plugins and extensions

Since no blogging platform comes with every possible feature you may need, you can increase the capabilities of your chosen blogging platform through plugins and extensions.

As mentioned above, there are some SEO plugins and extensions that can analyze your text in real-time to let you know whether you are appropriately optimizing, under-optimizing, or over-optimizing for your keywords.

Similarly, you can find plugins and extensions for contact forms that also handle spam comments. There are some plugins that allow you to run complete shopping cart and e-commerce features from within your blogging platform.

You can make a list of extensions, integration needs, and other features that you may need in your blogging platform before deciding the best blogging platform for your blogging needs.

5 blogging platforms I would recommend

WordPress.org

WordPress blogging platform

This is one of the oldest blogging platforms. Ever since it was launched in 2003 it has become one of the most widely used content management systems. As of 2022 almost 43% of all the websites on the Internet are managed on WordPress. It holds 65% market share for content management systems worldwide.

Most of the web hosts these days offer WordPress.org as a pre-installed hosting package so you don’t need to physically install it on your server. Even if you go for conventional hosting packages, WordPress.org can be installed in a single click.

Once the WordPress blogging platform is installed it is ready to work out of the box. You can straightaway start publishing blog posts although you would want to customize it in certain ways. It comes with standard themes and layouts that can help you publish blog posts immediately.

Why do I recommend WordPress.org as a blogging platform of my preference?

The best part is that all your content remains with you. The blog posts that you publish, the images that you use, they all belong to you.

All the blog posts are stored in a MySQL database. You can always take backup.

In case you want to move to another web host, you are not stuck. All you need to do is take the backup of your MySQL database and then restore the backup on the new web host.

It is also a very lean CMS. Unless you install lots of plugins and extensions it has a very straightforward source code. This is very important for your search engine rankings. The less source code you have, the easier it is for search engine crawlers to access your main content.

Aside from the fact that you can fully customize it as per your needs – make it look exactly the way your existing website looks – it is harder for your content to be found by your target audience. You are publishing everything under your domain. Unless your content begins to be crawled or unless you have a good social media presence, nobody knows about what you are publishing. You have to start everything from scratch.

Also, in some cases, you may require knowledge of PHP, JavaScript and HTML to tweak your layout just the way you want. For that, WordPress developers are easily available.

LinkedIn blogging platform

LinkedIn is a social networking platform for professionals, but it is also fast emerging as a viable blogging platform. The content that you publish through the blogging platform of LinkedIn is also called article publishing.

Why use LinkedIn as a preferred blogging platform?

It already has a ready-made audience. It enjoys better search engine presence compared to a new blog that you kickstart under your domain name. It is automatically search engine optimized. You can get visibility faster because good content is promoted among the Lincoln audience.

Since it is a third-party hosted blogging platform in terms of customization and extensibility, you can’t do much. The only benefit is that, provided your blog posts are good and informative, you get traction faster.

Also, LinkedIn prefers blog posts published within its platform when it promotes content compared to links existing somewhere else.

Medium

Medium blogging platform

Medium is a full-fledged third-party blogging platform. The entire content exists on Medium. Then why am I recommending it?

Medium is a very large blogging community. It has its own audience, its own readership. It gives you live stats on how many people look at your stories and how many read them till the end. It has a unique algorithm to present appropriate content to particular readers.

In the beginning I have written that many people discount blogging as a trend that is waning, but Medium created a space for itself when bigger blogging platforms such as WordPress.com, Tumblr and Blogger.com already had thriving ecosystems. It shows that if you offer something unique, if you can stand out, you can still carve out a niche for yourself.

The Wix blogging platform

Wix

Wix is for designing and hosting websites but since most websites also prefer to have a blog, it has its own blogging platform. It has a free version but then on every blog post the Wix branding appears.

The primary strength of Wix is its WYSIWYG editor for creating layouts. You can literally drag-and-drop various components of the design that you want to create. It also has a drag-and-drop editor.

The free version allows you to create your blog as the wix.com subdomain but if you upgrade to a premium version you can host your blog under your own domain. There is nothing to install. You just need to connect your domain with the Wix web hosting server and all the features immediately become available to you.

It has blogging templates for every business need. Its biggest draw is minimalistic layouts and ease of use.

The only problem is that once a template is created, you cannot change it.

Squarespace

Squarespace blogging platform

Just like the Wix blogging platform, Squarespace is a web hosting and web design platform that can also be used to host a blog.

Squarespace is known for its sleek designs with a touch of minimalism. It is preferred by artists and designers as it focuses more on presenting portfolios without obstructions. It has beautiful templates that you can easily tweak. It is said that individual templates are handcrafted by an in-house Squarespace team of designers.

The entire interface at Squarespace works on the philosophy of drag-and-drop and no-code. You don’t have to meddle with a back-end editor to get the layout that you desire. When you are building a page, it looks exactly as it is being designed.

Unlike WordPress.org it does not have thousands of plugins and extensions, but you can have a shopping cart integrated within your Squarespace blogging platform setup. You can also integrate email marketing. There is a members-only area for paid subscriptions. You can also host podcasts.

Conclusion

As someone who prefers better control over design, layout, and content, my most preferred blogging platform remains WordPress.org. Yes, I am biased because, although I’m not a professional WordPress designer, I have a fair idea of how to handle the basic theme-altering functions to get the desired layout for my websites and blogs.

After that it is Medium. Very robust. Easy to publish. Real-time stats. Greater chance of your content being found by the right audience.

Why is it difficult to publish a blog regularly?

Leave a reply

Why is it difficult to write a blog post regularly

You want to, you need to, publish a blog regularly for multiple reasons.

When you publish a blog regularly, you regularly engage your visitors. You improve your search engine rankings. You get to demonstrate and share your knowledge. Your readers have a reason to come back to your website repeatedly. You have fresh content to share on social media websites and other platforms.

Most of the clients who approach me to write for them regular blog posts are looking to increase their organic traffic. This is the best form of traffic. Once your blog post begins to appear in search results, you don’t pay for every click. It is high quality traffic. It is free after you have recovered the cost of publishing the blog post.

How often should you publish a blog post?

Depends on what you’re trying to achieve. Websites like Hubspot recommend that businesses that publish 2-3 blog posts every week get 13X more traffic than businesses that publish 1-2 blog posts every 15 days. Ideally, you should aim for at least one or two blog posts every week. Again, it depends on what results you seek.

Let’s say you want to improve your search engine rankings in the coming two months. Then, I would recommend you publish a decently long blog post – 1000-1500 words – every day.

I have personally experienced good success by publishing even 400-500 words every day for a couple of months. Rankings improved. Targeted traffic improved. New content got crawled faster.

Why do businesses find it difficult to publish blog posts regularly?

Many reasons. You run out of ideas and topics. You feel demotivated by the lack of success that is hard to come due to competition and millions of web pages and blog posts being added to search engines and social media platforms every day. Writing every day can be a Herculean undertaking.

Some of the biggest challenges faced by individuals and businesses wanting to publish blog posts every day include

Lack of interesting topics.
Not knowing where to start and where to end.
Not enough time due to the core professional obligations (you may be a lawyer, a designer, a programmer or an architect and writing is not your main occupation).
Not having a content calendar or a clearly-defined plan.
Inability to come up with original content.
A sense of boredom – initially you may be full of excitement but as blogging becomes a usual business chore, it tends to become a boring activity.
Not knowing what to prioritize – writing what you love or writing what your core audience finds useful.
Not getting enough traffic – organic traffic doesn’t come in a few days. It may take a couple of months before the traffic begins to trickle.
Finding the perfect niche – if you don’t know your niche you are simply beating around the bush and wasting your time and precious resources, and this further leads to inertia.
The absence of the writer’s discipline – writing is a discipline and only professional writers seem to have it.
Not working with a professional writer – since writing is better done by a professional writer it is better to assign the task of writing a regular blog post to a professional blog writer.

How to make it easier and more profitable to publish a blog regularly?

You have two choices: become a prolific writer yourself or assign the task to someone who himself or herself is a prolific writer, preferably, a professional writer or content writer.

Why is it so?

A professional content writer is a dedicated writer who is everyday writing blog posts for different businesses. For a professional content writer or blog writer, writing is not a chore, it is a professional undertaking, it is a livelihood. Hence, the interest that a professional content writer shows in your blog writing, it may be difficult for you to show.

For your blog to be successful it needs to be relevant, regular and effective. Day after day it must deliver value. Your visitors must have a strong reason to come back to your website and check out your blog.

If your blog is not delivering value, it will fail to draw targeted traffic.

The problem with organic search engine rankings is that everything is interconnected. It is like an old motorbike – you need to keep kicking until the engine cranks up and your bike starts.

Somehow you need to make people come to your blog and enable them to stay there. If you don’t have quality content, people won’t stay and Google has a way of finding that out.

Here is an example:

You find one of my links on Google and come to my website. You don’t stay even for a few seconds. You go back to Google and start checking out other links. What does it tell Google?

It tells the Google algorithm that you didn’t find useful information on my website and consequently, the current rankings that the link enjoys should be degraded for the keyword that you used.

On the other hand, if you stay on my website for 3-4 minutes and you read a major portion of my web page or blog post, it tells Google that my link contains useful information and as a result, my rankings for that keyword for that link further improve.

These attributes for a successful blog can be delivered by a professional content writer or a professional blog writer. A professional content writer delivers

High quality blog posts regularly.
Quality research.
Engaging writing.
Publishing of your blog posts as per your calendar.
Targeted topics.
Search engine optimized content.

What are the 3 main benefits of business blogging?

Leave a reply

3 benefits of business blogging

Blogging has matured. It no longer remains a “trend”. If you visit a serious business website, there is a 90% chance that in the main navigation you will also have a link to their business blog. Most of the serious businesses understand the benefits of business blogging.

Since blogging is no longer a new trend, many people discount business blogging as a marketing tool whose time is over. Nobody wants to read blogs, people say. Everybody is on Instagram.

Is it true that business blogging is no longer useful? The problem is not with blogging; the problem is the lens through which these people view business blogging.

There are some blogs that are extremely popular. Most of the niches have been covered it often seems. Whenever someone thinks of starting a blog, the task seems overwhelming, especially when you don’t want to just publish a blog, but also get decent traffic.

Whereas it may be true for non-business blogs (blogs that are published merely to generate advertising and affiliate revenue), when you regularly publish a blog for your business, it never fails to deliver. This is, provided, you publish regularly, and you choose your topics after due consideration.

If you are having doubts about publishing a business blog, here are the 3 benefits your blog is always going to deliver:

Your business blog improves your SEO

One of the biggest requirements of better search engine rankings is having lots of content under your domain.

The main website can have only a limited number of web pages. In the top navigation, once you have covered everything you want to talk about your business, publishing extra pages will be distracting for your visitors.

This problem is solved by your business blog. There is no end to how much you can publish.

If they have the budget, I always recommend to my clients to publish at least three blog posts every week. There is a reason.

You want Google to quickly crawl your website and index the new content that you have published. Although you can submit your link to Google Search Console for relatively faster crawling and indexing, ultimately it depends on Google with what frequency its crawler crawls your website.

The frequency is decided by the frequency with which you publish new content on your website. If you publish content with greater frequency, Google crawls your website with greater frequency. I have experienced this firsthand.

Once I was publishing a blog four times a day. My new blog posts would get indexed within seconds. Normally, if you don’t publish frequently, it may take anywhere between one week to one month for your content to start appearing, if at all, in the search results.

So, this is one benefit of publishing your business blog – you can increase the frequency of publishing without creating a ridiculously long lineup of web pages. You provide Google with fresh content with greater frequency.

Also, you need to cover all your possible keywords. You cannot cover all your keywords using your main website pages. But this can be achieved with your blog posts.

Here I am assuming that when you decide the topics of your blogs you take your keywords into consideration. You can use both your primary and secondary keywords. You can also use your longtail keywords.

You also give an opportunity to other website and blog publishers to link to your website.

Backlinks, as you must know, are very important for improving your search engine rankings. Backlinks must be voluntary. People should link to your blog or website because of the value your content provides, and not just as a link-exchange exercise.

No matter how informative your main website pages are, people will be reluctant to link to them because after all, they are business pages. In some manner they will be promoting your products and services if they link to your business pages, something people rarely want to do.

But blog posts are informative. They have useful information that can add value to people who link to your content. People readily share and link to blog posts, but they are hesitant when it comes to sharing and linking to your main website pages.

These three attributes are important for your SEO:

The frequency of content publishing (more regular, better for SEO).
The length and the breath of the keywords/topics that you cover.
The greater number of backlinks your useful blog posts generate.

Your business blog engages your visitors

Blog posts are always thought-provoking. They inform your visitors. They educate them. People find them useful. They force people to think. When they have to think a connection is established with you.

If you are reading this blog post and if you have read it so far, it means I have been able to engage you. The topic is of interest to you.

Although if you may have found this link on Google I have been able to push my SEO agenda further, the link is not just helping me improve my SEO, it is also providing you some useful information that you can use to derive benefits from your own business blog.

You may also think, since I know so much about business blogging and since I am able to communicate convincingly, in case you need a content writer for your business blog, why not hire me?

Even if you don’t hire me immediately, assuming I publish my blog regularly and you are able to find it with greater frequency, you will remember me whenever you need a professional content writer or blog writer.

Your business blog enables you to become an industry expert

In terms of becoming an industry expert, your business blog helps you in two ways:

To write high quality content on your blog, you learn and evolve more.
Your visitors began to look at you as an authority figure because you are constantly sharing useful information.

What about people who hire a content writer for publishing blog posts for their business blogs? Even if you are not writing blog posts yourself, working with a content writer is also a great learning experience.

When I am writing blog posts for my clients, I always encourage them to give me as much background information as possible. One, it saves them money, and two, it allows me to deliver exactly what they are looking for.

If I have to research everything, I charge for my time. Since a client already has an expertise, he or she is in a better position to quickly research and give me the needed information.

Additionally, a client never publishes a blog post without thoroughly going through it. This too is a learning experience.

Although I can go on and on with the benefits of business blogging, these are the 3 main benefits of publishing a business blog. The rest of the points that you may find on other blogs are simply the subpoints of these 3 main points.

How to start blogging right now

Leave a reply

You can start a blog right now.

Blogging has immense benefits. It can improve your search engine rankings. It can build you a platform that can get you customers and clients. It increases your visibility. It helps you establish yourself as an authority in your field.

But why do most of the people find it difficult to start a blog?

What I have found is, most of the people find blogging intimidating in terms of time and cost.

This is because they do not see their blog as a platform that they can use to communicate their thoughts and share their wisdom and knowledge. They see it as a tool that can help them improve their search engine rankings.

Since they are focused on improving their search engine rankings, they get bogged down when they observe other blogs.

Information can empower you, but it can also mentally stunt you.

Don’t try to do what other blogs are doing

Before starting a blog, they visit multiple blogs. They observe how individuals and businesses are publishing their blog. They see that the blogs that do well on search engines and social media are very long, very well written, and well structured.

“Will I be able to achieve such a standard?” they end up thinking.

I mean, before starting a blog on search engine optimization, do you really want to do what Search Engine Land is doing?

Before starting a general interest blog, do you really want to do what Buzzfeed is doing?

Before starting a blog on content marketing or copywriting, right now, in terms of manpower and budget, can you really do what blogs like Copyblogger and Content Marketing Institute are doing?

No.

This is how you can start your blog right now

Complete your WordPress setup (or get it completed by your web designer). Install a basic, functional theme, but from WordPress (because they are search-engine-optimized by default).

Then start publishing small blog posts. You can write just one paragraph? Then just write one paragraph.

A blog post is not a bullet or an arrow that cannot be recalled.

You can always update older blog posts. You can always add new content. You can always add new images and new links. You can add new data as you come by it.

Right now, the main stress should be the building blocks.

Here is what I would do:

Install the blog and do the basic setup including a clean theme.
Come up with a title that genuinely represents what you intend to publish on your blog post. Do not use a confusing title. Create a title in such a manner that it exactly represents what you intend to write, no matter how “average” it seems.
Write it. Publish it.
Submit it to Google Search Console.
Do not worry about how well it is going to do on Google. Not right now.

Do steps 2-5 everyday.

Don’t worry about the length of your blog post. Don’t worry about publishing 1000 words or 800 words or 400 words. Don’t worry about images.

Make sure you have good titles and topics to cover. Then, even if you can write 100 words or 200 words, write them, and publish them. Then make sure that you submit the newly generated link to Google Search Console.

I know. No matter how good your intentions are, ultimately, you want to start a blog because you want to generate organic search engine traffic for your business. There is nothing wrong in that.

But atrophying your effort or postponing the launch of your blog just because you want to cater to certain parameters does not exactly help your cause.

Shorter blog posts may not do well on search engines compared to highly popular blogs in your niche, but they don’t stop search engine crawlers from crawling and indexing your website, which is more important.

Why?

Unless you are publishing 3-4 blog posts every day, if your domain name is new and if Google hasn’t yet indexed it, it may take anywhere between two or three months for Google to even start crawling your content.

So why waste all that time? You may not get higher search engine rankings right now, but at least a pattern will be set.

By the time you are ready to publish bigger blog posts, the crawling and indexing process will start and your more comprehensive content will be found by Google much faster.

7 things about content writing your schoolteacher never taught you

Leave a reply

7 things about content writing your schoolteacher never taught you.

In the beginning itself I would like to say that content writing is not taught in schools, at least not in normal, conventional schools. What I’m writing here is about “writing” and not necessarily about content writing. But, since content writing is mostly writing, they can be interchanged without losing the meaning.

I was just out of college and my first article was just published in a local newspaper. It was a humorous piece on how I kept falling at very odd times.

My early schooling was done in a special school for children with disabilities (I have cerebral palsy) and due to the emotional and social connections that I had made over there with other students and teachers, I regularly visited my school even when I had started my business after completing my college.

When I bumped into my old English class teacher, she exclaimed, “Hey Amrit! This is not the English I taught you. Where did you learn to write like this?”

There was a look of pride in her eyes. One of her students was writing for a newspaper.

Ever since then I have come across expressions such as, people saying that the stuff they are writing, they never learnt in school.

Though, this can be applied to any field. Unless it is a professional course, the schooling never teaches you things that can actually make you money. Can you mention something that you learned in school and now it helps you make money? I guess not.

So, what is there in content writing that you never learned in school. I can think of 7 things. I explain below.

1. Avoid using difficult words when writing content

It is difficult to define difficult words. It depends on what is the state of your vocabulary.

For example, a word that is difficult for you may not be difficult for me. Maybe the word you have never used I come across it daily. That’s a different issue.

In school they always liked it when I used words that are not used in day-to-day language.

I remember whenever I used a new word that nobody else in the class knew, my teacher, knowing quite well that it was a new word I had used, would draw a smiley nearby. I felt more encouraged.

In real-world, difficult words, or the words that are not used frequently, put people off. Using difficult words can be counter-productive when you are writing commercial content.

The purpose of commercial content is to make people understand what you are writing as clearly as possible. They shouldn’t have to refer to a dictionary to understand your copy or the content you have written.

Though, I don’t completely agree, it is recommended that you should write for grade 6 kids when writing content for business websites.

2. Come to the point as fast as possible

In school you are encouraged to go on and on about a subject.

Something that you can express in one sentence, they expect you to express in 10 sentences. If you can express something in 10 sentences that you could have expressed in a single sentence, you attract praises, and your grades improve.

This is not good when you are writing content for websites and blogs. Although you are advised to publish very long blog posts and web pages, this length is regarding the content and the coverage of the topic, and not about prevaricating on the main message.

When people read web content, they are in a hurry. Yes, even if they are luxuriously lying on a couch, they are in a hurry. They may not be running around doing their chores, it’s just that there is so much content on the Internet that they want to browse through as much as possible.

Hence, by the time you come to your main point, they may already leave your web page or blog post and the entire purpose of writing that web page or blog post is wasted.

This is more important when you are writing sales copy or website content for business websites. Yes, to entice people to read further, you don’t show all your cards but as far as your message goes, come to the main point as fast as possible.

This is good for people, and this is also good for search engine crawlers.

3. Write search engine friendly content

Search engines were unheard of when I was in school. The only engines we knew of were the rail engines, and that too, steam engines.

Even if you belong to generation Z, it is highly unlikely that your schoolteacher taught you how to write essays and reports so that they rank well on Google.

As a content writer you need to write content that is search engine friendly. Your content is supposed to help your clients improve your search engine rankings and get them targeted traffic.

Writing search engine friendly content isn’t a separate form of writing. It is just that you need to be able to write in the language people use when they use search engines.

You need to be able to strategically use the keywords without overly using them or without seeming as if you are trying to “optimize”.

Most importantly, you need to write relevant content in a friendly language that is easily readable on all devices.

Every word you use, every sentence form, must make it easier for search engine crawlers to make sense of what you are saying.

4. Write short sentences and shorter paragraphs

Shorter sentences and paragraphs are not just easier to read, they are also easier to interpret by search engine algorithms.

Though, I have seen that on many blogs and web pages, people get carried away with the concept of writing shorter paragraphs, but however much possible, use simple sentences. Express one thought in one sentence, and just a couple of thoughts in a paragraph.

In school you were taught totally the opposite, although, this might not be the case with all the teachers. In school you were taught to write complicated sentences. Therefore, there is a concept of compound and complex sentences in which, multiple thoughts or multiple inferences are included in a single sentence with lots of conjunctions.

A complicated sentence may have lots of “ands”, “ors”, “buts”, and other types of conjunctions. I’m not saying avoid them altogether, but use them only when they are unavoidable.

5. Write to convince, not to impress

In school, you are supposed to impress your teacher with your writing. When you are writing content for your website or blog, you need to convince the readers into taking an action.

When people come to your website or blog, they don’t come to be impressed or to be blown away by your writing prowess. For that they would rather read the New Yorker or a novel by their favorite author.

They are reading the web page or the blog post to get informed, to get educated, and to get convinced. Yes, they are looking for you to convince them into acting.

How do you do that? There are many emotional triggers that you can use. You can use a sense of urgency. You can use the fear of missing out. You can cater to the lazy or greedy sides.

The moot point is, when you are writing professional content, you need to sell. Hence, avoid words and expressions that may confuse people or prevent them from understanding the advantages of buying that product or service.

6. When writing professional content, you need to fight for people’s attention

Isn’t it totally the opposite of your schoolteacher who may had been chasing you around to submit your assignments?

People hardly care about you on the Internet unless you are an influencer, or a celebrity, and people read you just to get associated with you. You need to fight for people’s attention.

How do you get their attention? By using attention-grabbing headlines. By making sure that every sentence they read encourages them to read the next sentence and every paragraph they read, encourages them to read the next paragraph.

You want people to open your email marketing campaign? You must come up with a compelling subject line. Most of the email messages are lost because the subject lines fail to inspire them.

Hence, when you are writing content as a professional content writer, you are not just writing, you are writing in a manner that people are drawn to your writing, and they are captivated by its style and content.

Also, as explained above, people are always in a hurry when they are reading your web page or blog post. They are either in the middle of something – watching a Nyan cat rip off – or hundreds of notifications are distracting them away from you. If despite all these distractions and stimulation if you are able to hook them to your writing, you are a talented content writer.

7. Write in a conversational style

When you are writing content, you are talking to people. When they read your web page or blog post, they must get a feeling that someone is talking to them.

In schools, this is often discouraged. Your writing must sound pedantic. It must sound “scholarly”. It must contain long-winded jargon, phrases, and expressions that are difficult to pronounce if you need to read them aloud. People don’t hold conversations in such language, and those who do, are often ridiculed.

You must be easily able to read aloud web pages and blog posts.

The best way to find out whether your content writing is easy to read is to read it aloud and see if you can read it smoothly or you need to halt repeatedly. If you need to halt repeatedly, rewrite it.

Over the years, I have learned to adapt my writing according to different industry needs. I can write conversational, market-side language, and I can also write pedantic language.

As I have often written on my blog, more than a content writer, I am a writer, and most of my clients appreciate this.

It doesn’t mean I always do my own thing and don’t care about the concerns that my clients have. Their websites need to convert. They need to improve their search engine rankings. I deliver on both the fronts.

Other than that, whether it is web content or scholarly content, I think as a writer, you should write in your own style. Yes, cater to the conventions as per required by the institution for which you are writing (web or otherwise), but ultimately, once you have mastered the art, stick to doing your own thing.