Marketing Tip: Writing Compelling Articles

Writing is an art with a long tradition. Much of todays writing style has evolved from centuries of authors compelling us to enter their world and see things from their point of view. A good writer can encourage their readers to suspend their disbelief and take on new thoughts and perspectives. This has a powerful effect in convincing people that the author offers the correct or best opinion on the subject. Influencing people in such ways not only leads to better conversions, but more involved and passionate clients. People who like what you write will come back to learn more of what you have to say.

Certain aspects of classical writing can be incorporated in to your every day writing style. First and foremost make your text easy to understand. Many inexperienced writers try to throw bigger words in to their text in order to appear more intelligent. The fact is that the larger and more obscure the words in your text are, the more difficult your text is to understand. When your text is difficult to understand it is harder to reach your target audience. Keep the big words on hold for the technical parts of a web site, and use your common everyday vocabulary for your readers.

Writing is a challenge for many people, and they often hit a stopping point. While it is great to keep your text to the point, it's not good if you're unable to get your entire point across. One trick that can help with getting all of your ideas out is to write without stopping. Many people will want to go back and change wording, correct spelling, and re-read what they've written to make it sound better. The fact is it's much better to get the fresh stuff out of your head first, then go back and correct it later. This will help keep the new ideas flowing, and lessen the chance of getting stuck on a particular idea. The best part about writing is you can always go back and change things before you make it public, so there's no rush to edit.

There are plenty of challenges to creating strong content for your web site. Writing that compels people takes practice and forethought. For more on the subject of writing to compel your visitors I suggest visiting Dan Santow from Word Wise. Dan compiled a great list containing one year of writing tips for his readers. Dan has lots of informative things to say and plenty of great resources. I encourage you to check him out.

Normally I write about search engine optimization and more of the technical side of things, but I feel that these sort of tips are just as helpful if not more to my readers. Building web sites that compel people takes more than technical skill. There has to be some art involved or the site will end up being cold. What are your thoughts?