WRITE AWESOME CONTENT

Content is king !—This was the way my previous employer concluded my hiring email.

I wish he had begun that email with this pick up line. I may have agreed to join them 20 seconds sooner. Content is indeed what they say it is. Churning out content is not exactly easy. If anything, it is precisely the opposite. Be it a drab product description for a leading E-commerce or a very creative listicle for ScoopWhoop, the hardships faced are similar.

I wish I had known the tricks of this trade before I signed up for it. So here is an attempting at easing the pain we writers experience, in order to mass produce tons of written material.

1. Focus on One Thing!

Talk about one thing. Just one. We do not want to confuse our audience with zillion ideas when we aim at one. For example: If you are writing a product description about a bed sheet, then there is no apparent need to delve into the ‘uniqueness of the jasmines placed so smartly on the sides, to provide its user with a visual treat’- I mean, see what happened there? You don’t’ want this customer darting out of her house to buy jasmines now! A casual line about it’s floral design and a whole lot more about the durability and comfort quotient will work just fine.

The key is to stick to one point and elaborate on it just enough to convince the buyer. This brings me to my next point.

2. Vocabularise (Yes this word is accepted by Urban Dictionary) for the Audience

Yes, yes, you are a writer. The most elite among fellow sapiens. The one that has everyone gawking at his/her proficiency in the language and the outstanding usage of words that actually sound like Japanese cuss words. But hold your horses, friend! As a content writer, you are concocting a piece not to admire it yourself. You are doing it for a certain group of readers. The need for simpler language is simply staple. If you are going to make a silver spoon sound like a piece of cutlery fit for the royalty, your customer is going to want to dress himself up in an armor and scream, “ Finissssshhhh himmmmm!

Okay wait, I will give you a simpler example. If you were to say something like ‘Every morning, escape to the real world of the minions. Where, equipped with their bananas, the not-so-brave minions with Kevin leading the way, are ranting away in Minionese and then….”, for the description of a coffee mug with minions on it, you might as well sell them the DVD instead, because you just probably sounded like the movie trailer!

3. The Pick Up Line

Content writers have it real hard when it comes to writing engrossing articles. You see some good concepts and content written in not-so-fascinating way. The key is to make sure you have some catchy lines right at the start so that you have a reader hooked.                                                                                          

I would definitely read an article that begins – Kim and Kanye disappoint again! From North West to Saint West, we didn’t see this coming. We were thinking more on the lines of South West, maybe?...”  than an article that begins—“ Kim Kardashian and Kanye West have named their son born on December 5th-‘Saint West’ as they believe him to be a blessing! Kim said….”

It’s not a bad idea to include a quote by a famous personality somewhere in there. It adds dollops of authenticity to the article and shows that you have done some research and this makes your article worth a reader’s time.

This also includes the title! They say spend as much time you spent on the article, on figuring a title. I will grab a suspense thriller called ‘A Stranger in the Mirror’ a little faster than I would a book called ‘The Host’. Agree?

4. Research – Note – Repeat

No writer should ever ever EVER get out of research mode! The one thing you want to write about may have been written, researched, covered, and talked about from an infinite number of angles in different places.

 You thought Mars was red in colour. NASA said they found water on Mars. Astronauts think Mars looks habitable. The Government thinks NASA just blew up dollars in thin air. People think it was the money they paid as tax. Matt Damon survived on that planet for over 500 sols and grew potatoes, goddamnit! Do you still want to write about Mars being a planet that looks red on television?

Research lends you perspectives that was initially unknown to you. A writer needs to have an open mind and an open word doc at all points in time, to accept and take notes as and when something relevant, fascinating and different comes up. Being one one’s toes or should I say being on the ready-to-type finger?!

5. Abundant Examples

It’s actually one hell of a simple trick that will sell your article beautifully! Everybody understands examples better than the real concept. Please don’t say No! Remember learning addition in school? Your teacher said, “So children, addition yields the total amount when two quantities are combined! “ And you said, “ Err.. What?!” Then she explained with an example. She said, “You have 1 orange in one box and 2 apples in the other box. So how many fruits do you have in total? “  And you happily stuck out your fingers, counted and yelled, “Threeee!”.

It’s that easy really. Though most articles will not require an example, the ones that do, can be made comprehensible with an example .

Saving this exclusively for the conclusion-- as much as the above are important so is the way you end an article. The way an article begins, determines if you have an interested reader and the way you end it determines if you have a reader that has taken back a lesson or two from the article. And edit an article as religiously as you ever will do anything. A good writer making a grammatical error or a typographical error is a sin unforgivable. Heavens doors will not open for you even if Axl Rose came along and sang about knocking on heavens doors.

Ernest Hemingway said, “We are all apprentices in a craft where no one ever becomes a master.” And this is especially true for writers. A dozen blogs to your credit doesn’t make you the best. The art of writing is a fine blend of attempt, error, reattempt. Achieving perfection is something that will tag along on the way!

Write away, little Shakespeares! The might of your pen is one that can dissolve boundaries!