Become a better (content) writer in 5 minutes
Alternately: How you can write the perfect blog post in just 5 steps
In Joshua Rothman’s New Yorker essay The Art of Decision Making, he paraphrases the argument of Agnes Callard’s book Aspiration: The Agency of Becoming thus:
Suppose that you sign up for a classical-music-appreciation class, in which your first assignment is to listen to a symphony. You put on headphones, press Play—and fall asleep. The problem is that you don’t actually want to listen to classical music; you just want to want to. Aspiring, Callard thinks, is a common human activity: there are aspiring wine lovers, art appreciators, sports fans, fashionistas, djs, executives, alpinists, do-gooders, parents, and religious believers, all hatching plans to value new things. Many ordinary decisions, moreover—such as choosing between (a job at) Goldman Sachs and Partners in Health—also touch on the question of who we aspire to become.
This is something we often miss as marketers, and bears repeating, as Rothman puts it: Our life choices aren’t just about what we want to do; they’re about who we want to be.
And when we, as marketers and salespeople, are trying to persuade (which is the job), we should keep this in mind. When I tell my team this, I phrase it differently.
Show your audience a better future.
Simply, when you write, present, get on a sales call, or try to sell, show your audience a better future.
Give them a before (when things aren’t that great), and an after (when they have become superstars).
Now that the marketing part’s out of the way, let’s get to the writing.
Firstly, before you start hitting the keyboard, remember why you are writing. Be clear what it is that you want to drive home here; what’s the key idea. Here’s how to go about the rest:
Spend 30-40% of your writing time on the title.
Tell your audience, as simply as possible, what you are writing and why it is going to be useful for them. Remember that your audience doesn’t have time, they are being bombarded with a hundred different things from a hundred different directions. You have a few seconds to make an impression and to drive them to read what you’ve written. So spend more time on your title than on anything else; Make it as interesting as possible, use numbers to drive home importance and effectiveness. And always, always start with the title. Don’t write your entire piece and then look for your lead in. This will also make your writing that much more easier.
Start with a story.
Go to jamesclear.com. Navigate to the articles. Click on any of them, literally any single one of them, and see how they begin. See what I mean? Clear is an amazing writer, and his book, Atomic Habits, is a bestseller. He starts every essay with a story. What that does is draw you in, into a narrative that you now have a stake in, and want to see where it goes. This is an amazing device when done well. (I have another example or two, but this will do for now)
Break your blog down into bite-sized parts.
Don’t write large paragraphs that fall onto themselves, even if you have a knack for it. Be clear. Use simple words. Paragraphs that have two or three sentences are more than fine. Again, remember that you are here to persuade, and you have to work on making your idea/feature as easy to consume/repeat as possible. Which is why this is important, and breaking your sentences down to bite-sized gulps helps. Here’s something I use because I like long sentences too: Read what you have written aloud, and if you take more than two breaths as you read it, it’s too long.
Always provide a conclusion or a fact-sheet, or a takeaways column.
This is self-explanatory. You want to leave your readers with something, and you have already figured out that something with the title. Now see how you can make it into a takeaway, complete with a few numbers, or perhaps as quotes. Your reader needs to remember and repeat it when he needs to. When you are trying to pitch an idea, work on making your conclusion, your parting paragraph, work in much the same way. Do this, and your writing will have more recall than most.
Remember what the blog was for, and edit with that idea in mind.
With your first draft done, go back to your writing with one editing weapon - your title. With that in hand, edit out anything, any sentence, any detour, that doesn’t help in putting the specific idea of your title across. Sometimes doing this means that you may end up with 500 word essays. That’s fine. As long as what you are writing about has an audience that will find it interesting and important, the brevity of your writing will be an asset. It will deliver more value in less time. Your readers will appreciate this, even if they won’t articulate it.
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