Why It Is So Important To Write

Why It Is So Important To Write

“Just write every day of your life. Read intensely. Then see what happens. Most of my friends who are put on that diet have very pleasant careers.”

—Ray Bradbury, WD

There is nothing more attractive than a well written content. Good content is the flagship that steers the ‘business ship’ in the right direction. There is no shortcut to good content because it is pure hard work. Spreading the word about your business is the best way to get people to know about it. Good content is what drives people to your website and retains them there. The main problem is to get people to read your articles and make them come back for more. As a writer, you must know that there are two ways to write an article – the attractive way and the downright boring way. If you want people to come back to your website then choose the former. However, it is not easy to write an interesting and engaging article because you have to keep them reading till the end.

Excellent pieces of content are what attract people to your website. Search engines have the task of directing people to websites, but they can do it only if the right keywords, titles and other important phrases are included in the article. Search engine spiders can identify words in a particular article and present them according to the query entered by the visitor. The more hits your website has the more chances it has of being displayed in the search engine result pages. Hiring a good writer is quite important to ensure the content is well-written and search-engine friendly. Often entrepreneurs and business owners do not have the time to write their articles, newsletters or blogs. So they outsource writing jobs to people who are certified or experienced in the art of writing.

Importance of writing well while running a business

While content writing can be delegated to an in-house agency or outsourced to a writing agency, entrepreneurs must have sufficient writing skills to convey information to their employees and partners. On a regular business day, bosses would have to write plenty of emails or provide written instructions. It is true that the boss can hire a secretary with good writing skills, but having skills of his own would put him at an advantage all the time. Similarly, the advertising and SEO agencies might bring him pieces of content for review, including magazines, brochures, sales presentations and even website content. Without skills of his own, how can he expect to make suggestions or changes in the content.

What writers should be aware of

The biggest woe of a writer is that he/she often sends the final document to the client, only to realize that there was a silly grammar/spelling mistake caused due to oversight. This is quite mortifying for a writer who wishes to have perfection in writing. A client who catches the errors before the writer has had a chance to correct would be his second biggest nightmare. A single, silly typo is enough to limit the professional opportunities of a writer. So the best way to get out of this nightmarish event would be to proof read and double proof read till the writer is sure that there are no errors. As a writer, you may even find it time consuming because of other assignments in the pipeline, but delivering quality is important. It is not the number of assignments that you have that matters, it is the number of quality articles that you’ve delivered that matters. Read an article at least three hours after you’ve written it and then read it again the next day; you would be amazed at the number of silly mistakes in it.

“Get it down. Take chances. It may be bad, but it’s the only way you can do anything really good”

-William Faulkner

Proof reading when in a hurry

Professional writers may get a few writing jobs along the way, but the excellent ones would always be busy chasing deadlines and striving hard to maintain the quality of their work.

Here are certain tips that you can use for speed proofreading:

Try reading your text the opposite way

Normally writers read their work the way they write it – from top to bottom. Now, try it the other way round – from bottom to top. It would be a novel way of finding errors. Actually, many writers have claimed that this technique worked for them.

Try changing the font of your text

If you find it easier to find errors when you magnify the font or change the font type, then do so by all means. The problem with the brain is that it becomes adjusted to the font size and type, that it automatically corrects the mistakes as you read along. So when you change the font type, your brain is trying to register it before it reads the words. This way you can find the mistakes as well.

Reading the text aloud

Reading aloud would help you find punctuation errors. It would also help you find an awkward sentence, repeated usage of certain words and sentences that aren’t flowing properly.

A few tips on writing great title:

• Make the headline an attention grabber
• Trigger curiosity and interest in the first paragraph
• Write only value-for-reader kind of content
• Plain, conversational style would get them interested

Conclusion

There is no shortcut to success. A great website is crucial to the success of any business. Good content is what makes a website alive. To have good content, you must maintain a blog. A well-written blog would attract a community of readers who would subscribe to it, provided they get valuable knowledge out of it.

Interesting links:

Several reasons why you should write

Pictures: Flickr.com/ Krebs/ The Italian Voice/ Valli

The author: Reema Oamkumar is engaged as a thought leader at Software-Developer-India.com which is a part of the YUHIRO Group. YUHIRO is a German-Indian enterprise which provides programmers to IT companies, agencies and IT departments.