Let’s face it: there are many great writers out there, but not all of them can write great copy for the web right off the bat and find a path to livable income that way.
I’ve handled over 1,000 clients, thousands of writing projects, and have retained successful writers that have been in my agency for 3+ years earning 5 figures a year consistently.
I started out as a freelance writer myself, and I learned (the hard way) that online writing is not the same as “writing” in general.
Why is this?
While it may seem like web writing and the writing you learn in academia should be pretty interchangeable - in all reality that’s not the case!
In fact, virtually everything you learned in school about writing does not apply to online writing. (I’ll show you more on why in a bit.)
Here’s the thing, though.
People that are fantastic writers offline (and I mean perfect grammar, natural fluency in style, passion for it, straight A’s in school and college English classes) often just need a tiny bit of mentoring to start adjusting their skills for the web.
With the right set of guidelines, they’re the perfect candidate to become a career freelance writer—where you get to quit your job, work anywhere you want to, and simply write to make a living. Sound like a dream? It’s not! The world needs more great writers, so here’s a quick guide I wrote up to help point the way if your’e ready to take your writing skills online.
The main difference between online and offline writing is the way that people read. A web-based audience is looking for information, seeking answers to their questions, and trying to find value in social media, blogs, and articles.
An offline audience, however, tends toward reading for pleasure a bit more. They're happy to meander a bit, to work to get to the point, to let the author lead them around for awhile before they stumble on the focus of the piece. As such, the same rules don’t apply.
While it’s possible to be a great writer in both spheres, you need to develop two distinct writer-ly personalities – one for your online audiences and one for your offline readers. This is the ultimate secret to being a successful writer in today’s world, and it’s one that will help you go far as a career of hobbyist writer.
To succeed as an online writer, you’ll need to work to develop the following skills:
1. Trim the fat
You name any successful classic author: if they had been an online writer, they may never have succeeded. (WHAT!)
While that’s hard to say, it’s 100% true. And here’s why: an online audience is interacting with content on the go, trying to find answers as they walk through a supermarket, learning how to fix a flat tire on the side of the road, looking for something that will give them the most essential details of the current political climate, etc.
When readers interact with content in this way, they don’t have time to fiddle around. Instead, they want to find what they need and be done with it. As such, it’s in your best interest to trim the fat as much as possible in your online writing. Extra words, meandering phrases, and fluffy content will kill your online writing career, and the more you can chop them out, the better off you’ll be. This can be as simple as changing “in order to” to “to,” or as major as deleting an entire paragraph of text because it’s repetitive or doesn’t serve much of a purpose.
Trimming the fat is, incidentally, one of the hardest things for an exceptionally good writer to do. It is my own weakness—and I won’t lie: it’s taken me five years to learn how to nutshell my ideas in writing. (Which is ironic. Because all my blogs are long-form.) If I have to craft short copy, I can—but that skill set took me years to hone. A 50 word tagline is still harder for me, and less fun, than writing a 500+ word blog.
2. Develop an instinctual feel for different types of content
One of the things that will benefit you the most as an online writer is learning to develop a “feel” for various types of content. When you have a deep and intrinsic understanding of the layout of and requirements for a landing page versus a blog versus a white paper, for example, you’ll be better prepared to ace each variety of online material.
While nobody expects you to just absorb all of this via osmosis (there’s a lot of learning involved, trust me!) knowing when it's acceptable to make a small joke in a blog, and when to keep a white paper professional is an essential skill for anyone who wants to succeed in the world of online writing.
3. Know when and how to adapt a different writing flow
Knowing how to adjust the flow of your writing is an indispensable skill.
All in all, there’s 7 types of online content you should know how to write, if you want to succeed as an online writer:
1. Web Content 2. Blogging 3. Social Media 4. Advertising/Sales Copy 5. Industry Writing 6. Journalism 7. Creative Writing
Your flow in blogging will be very different from your flow in writing social media copy. Blogging is best done long-form, with focus on a powerful intro, and well-researched insights paired with screenshots and visuals inside. Social media is best served in tiny, short tidbits and questions that tease the reader's interest and encourage them to click-through for the answer.
The nuances of all of these content types are very different. Web content is nothing like social media content. Neither is ad copy anything close to creative writing. I’d suggest Googling these terms to find different long-form guides on each topic. (Or, you can get my book, which dissects each of the seven. ;-))
4. Learn the ropes of formatting
While Jack Kerouac may have written On the Road as one continuous scroll, that approach will destroy your blog. While people who write offline, in the sphere of academic writing, for example, have gone toe-to-toe with formatting issues before, they’re different than they are for an online audience.
For an online audience, everything is about relevance, logic, and easy skimmability. This is why list posts perform so well, and why it’s so essential to learn to break up your content accordingly.
With this in mind, find out what makes an online post viral and then learn to format your content to mimic it. Hint: numbers, power words, lots of subheaders, and bullets are always helpful!
5. Take yourself out of it (almost) entirely
Unless you’re authoring something that’s written from the first-person perspective, there’s very little room in online writing for YOU.
Online writing is designed to be about the audience first and you second, third, or fourth. With this in mind, use your personal experience, pain points, and knowledge to help THEM break down their issues, but don’t make yourself the center point of the story. Instead, keep the focus thoroughly on your readers and interject the “I” only when it’s really needed.
6. Write multiple drafts
The most successful online writers are the ones who have developed a consistent process for writing and editing their material. To get good at this, you need to embrace the fact that it takes much more than just one pass. Here’s generally what your process should look like:
· A “show up and throw up” draft, where you get all of your ideas out onto the page, not stopping to re-read what you’ve written or even check your spelling
· A second draft, where you go back through, clean up spelling and grammar, removed unneeded bits, and fine-tune
· Several more passes over the piece, potentially by someone else, as well
· The finished copy, which you will submit or hand over to your client
While this may seem like a ton of hands-on time for a simple blog or website page, it’s an essential part of being a good online writer. Online audiences are smart, and they also have an immense amount of information at their disposal. If your writing isn’t up to par, they’ll happily go somewhere else.
7. Grab the reader in the first line
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: online audiences are rushed. They’re on the go. They do not have time for bad content. With this in mind, you’ll need to do everything you can to grab them at the outset of your article and ensure that they’re not looking back. By far the best way to capture your reader’s attention is to follow these pointers:
· Use the personal “you”
· Use emotion
· Help them understand that you understand! Something like this would work beautifully: “You’re rushed. You’re busy. Between dropping the kids off at school, scraping together thirty minutes at the gym, and grabbing groceries for dinner, you barely have time to brush your teeth, let alone struggle with a difficult CRM platform.”
· Make it different. There’s enough same-old, same-old on the web, and the more you can make your content stand out, the better.
8. Write to a single person
Addressing “the online audience” can feel intimidating. You know why? You should never write to that audience. You’ll always be unsuccessful if you do!
It’s like this...
If I stood up and started yelling in a coffee shop, everyone would hate me, right?
But what if I sat down with a new acquaintance that I liked at a coffee shop, and got to know them over a cup of joe?
That’s what I’m talking about.
Instead of writing to the roughly 3 billion people currently using the internet, pick just one of them to write to —your ideal client, the person who would buy your services or product. Or, your client’s services/products, if you’re a freelance writer.
Lifestyle guru and NYT bestselling author Tim Ferriss has famously said that his writing improved immensely when he stopped trying to address an “audience” and started writing as if he were writing a response to a close friend, after a glass of wine. With this in mind – loosen up! Scratch your own itch, and the itch of your target audience, and don’t get too tied up in the idea of being everything to everyone. It’s impossible.
9. Learn (some) SEO
While online writing isn’t all about appealing to search engines, it’s a critical part of getting found in the web of information in the content sea. At the very least, you should know how to include good backlinks, what DA (domain authority) is (and what a good score looks like), how to include relevant keywords naturally throughout content (and where they should live), and how to write and optimize meta content before you venture into online writing.
While there’s no question you can write and publish content online without knowing any of this, you may well be doing yourself more harm than good, since search engines and readers alike will know the difference.
10. Read online content
The best way to learn to write online content is to read online content. There’s a wealth of resources out there, and seeing the way the pros do it can help you learn what you need to enhance and improve your own writing.
Online Writing Made Simple
While thousands of people are great writers offline, it takes a unique skill set to be a good online writer. With this in mind, my ten tips can be your foundational aide. Now, go forth and learn—and earn!
If you’d like to take this knowledge a step further, my full, 175-page unabridged guide to online writing can help: So You Think You Can Write? The Definitive Guide to Online Writing.
Julia is a best-selling author, podcaster, and the CEO of Express Writers. Follow Julia on Facebook and read her musings at the Write Blog.