Not all who own a camera are photographers and not all who own a pen or authors, or writers! Well, this could be an anonymous quote or someone from our side. You never know.
But the point is, most of us seem to take content writing for granted. You know what it’s similar to? Comfortably sitting in the living room with fries and commenting that the ball was coming on the leg side and the player should have simply flicked it seamlessly. Give that guy a bat, gear him up and ask him to do the same in the ground when millions are watching, all of us would know the reality.
Content writing is exactly like that. It is difficult. It requires years of experience, a natural creative flow, great understanding of languages and most importantly, crystal clear thought process. However, tons of us today are becoming increasingly confident that we can pull off the feats of a content writer. That’s good.
But the question is, how many of us actually can? Well, this post is dedicated to all of you aspiring content writers out there, who believe you can weave magic with words.
This post will give you a quick idea on how to approach this job – or passion in millennial terms – and make a living out of it.
Get Your Basics Right
You would have stopped reading after the first line of this post if it had grammar errors that were too trivial to make. I mean I is always capitalized. However, not many of us aspiring content writers get the fact that you cannot mess with grammar and still manage to become a writer. People don’t want you to know the syntax of grammar and nobody is going to ask you to say the parts of a sentence. All readers expect is an error-free work. Content marketing ties back to the brand value and the recall measures it works for and anything that would bring suspicion to its credibility would be lethal to the brand.
So rule number one – Master grammar.
Writing is Not Equal to Having Amazing Vocabulary
One of the major misconceptions surrounding content writing is that you need to possess amazing language skills to become a writer. People also say that you need to know heavy words, use complex sentence structures and more to prove your expertise. The reality is that the simplest of the language attracts more readership than its complex counterparts. You need to keep the language as simple as possible and write like how you would talk – casual. Unless formal writing is required, language can be kept to colloquial terms.
Have a Clear Thought Process
When we ask you to share a memorable incident from your life, you say it with precision. You tend to narrate it quite realistically, taking us with you to an extent on your flashback. That is the result of a clear thought process and memory you have. As a writer, you need to have that thought process on anything you write on. With that said, you should also ensure that your thoughts get translated into words without making a reader get confused. When you are done, you need to be confident that what you thought is what it reads.
Keep Writing
Some of the best writers you know did not discover their writing style overnight. Nor did they stumble upon that in weeks. It takes months and sometimes years for a writer to discover his or her own style of writing – something that readers will associate with in the long run. The language and style of Mark Manson is very different from that of Seth Godin. J.K. Rowling writes differently than Tolkien. Every writer has a style and you have one, too. Just don’t rush there.
Like we said, content writing isn’t easy. But it’s not difficult as well. Work on these basics and we are sure you would evolve as a writer. Good luck!