Focus Your Writing to Strengthen Your Content

WRITE   

First, when planning our post (or message, letter, etc.), which I detailed in my last Steemit blog post, we ask ourselves two key questions: Who is my audience? Why am I writing?   

With the answers to those two questions in mind, we can begin to WRITE. Our first draft should be more than stream of consciousness writing or simply tossing ideas down on a page. (This is fine when we are brainstorming, but not when we are aiming to create focused, clear content and certainly not when we have a deadline.)   

Since we have considered our audience (and determined if it was a specific one or a broad one) and we have determined our purpose (perhaps it is to persuade or to educate), we can start to focus our message to help us to reach that audience and fulfill that purpose. 

How can we focus our writing?    

Well, we can employ some tried and true techniques. For instance, if we have determined that our purpose is to persuade, we can simply put persuasive writing techniques to work. This will, to some degree, shape our message. These techniques, in combination with our own voice and unique style (more on this in a later post), will help to create strong and engaging content.   

Examples of persuasive techniques that you can implement today

1. Include a hook. 

Near the opening of our post (or letter or message), we will want to include a hook sentence or two. The hook sentence should be something that compels the reader to keep reading. The hook will require some measure of creativity. If it is something you’ve read a thousand times before, it likely isn’t a strong enough opening to hook the reader. A possibility includes an interesting fact if it is relevant to the content to come. The hook may well be one of the most difficult sentences to compose.   

2. Strategically place key words. 

As I mentioned in the last post, this is a simple but effective way to persuade. The end of a sentence and the end of a paragraph are great places to load with key words. Visually, these positions stand out and we want to take advantage of that. (William Strunk Jr. and E. B. White in the well-known reference book The Elements of Style say exactly that: “Place the emphatic words of a sentence at the end.”)    

After we have our first draft we should NOT click post (or submit our work via any other channels). Why? Revising marks the difference between a professional, clear post and one that may have great ideas but is lacking the clarity and conciseness to make it stand out.   

A first draft is not a final draft. After we have a first draft, we move on to the third step of the writing process: REVISE.     

I hope you found this post useful! If you have any questions, don’t hesitate to ask them in the comments. I’ll detail the Revising Phase (Step 3) in my next post.