12 Best Content Writing Tips for Beginners
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Content writing tips for beginners are well worth bearing in mind all through your writing career. So, whether you’re just starting out or want a quick refresher on the basics, this post is for you!
Read on for our twelve best content writing tips for beginners.
1. Read, Read, and Read Some More
One of the best things you can do to improve your writing is to read other writers’ work. It’s like test-driving a car or hunting for a new home. You might not see exactly what you like, but you’ll see plenty that you don’t like, and that’s just as useful.
2. Write as Often as You Can
Like every skill, the more you practice, the better you’ll become. Use it or lose it applies to writing too!
3. Enhance Your Research Skills
Well-researched content shines out from all the rest, so it’s important to research your piece carefully. That means brushing up on your research skills. Make sure you always use reputable sources, organize your information logically, and check your interpretation against the outcomes you expect to find.
4. Using Artificial Intelligence
If you use AI to do your research for you, it’s even more important to check the sources. AI makes mistakes! And if you use it to write your content, remember to fact-check and humanize what it produces. You’re writing for real people, and AI-produced content still sounds quite robotic.
5. Know Your Target Audience
Make sure you know who you’re writing for, what their interests and desires are, and how you want them to engage with you or your client. You’ll know from what you read on social media that you quickly feel turned off by content writing that doesn’t seem to know who you are or what you enjoy. Don’t be that writer!
6. Write Memorable Titles, Headings, and Subheadings
If you don’t catch your reader’s interest at the very start of your content piece, you probably won’t do so later. This is why your title, headings, and subheadings are so important. Your title is the first thing a reader sees, so it needs to hook them in. A good title will:
- Be clear and concise (many readers have a short attention span!)
- Offer the reader value (will it answer a question or help them solve a problem?)
- Use psychology (e.g., adding statistics can help boost your credibility)
Take a look at our blog post, How to Write a Blog Title That Gets Clicks, for more on writing engaging titles.
Similarly, a lot of people only take a quick scan of the heading and subheadings, so it’s crucial that they’re punchy and eye-catching too. Make sure your headings and subheadings are succinct, clearly describe your content, and follow a logical progression of ideas.
7. Start with the Most Important Information
Again, this tip caters to readers who don’t always read the whole content piece. We know! How dare they not read every single word of your brilliant writing?! Capturing your reader’s attention in the first few seconds will help keep them with you until the end, so use an engaging style, focus on the rhythm of your writing, and write something pacy at the start.
8. Make Your Writing Easy on the Eye
When writing content, always keep formatting and readability in mind. As we mentioned before, lots of people will skim-read your content, pulling out the main ideas without reading every word. You can help your readers quickly and easily understand your message by:
- Using headings and subheadings that clearly describe what each section covers.
- Being aware of the white space around the words. Large chunks of text are a no-no! Try breaking longer paragraphs into smaller sections.
- Varying your sentence length and structure. Too many long sentences can be hard to read.
- Breaking up information using bulleted or numbered lists, tables, and other visual aids.
9. Be Aware of Brand Voice
Brand voice is your client’s personality. It’s important that your content writing always reflects and enhances the brand, so be consistent in your use of aspects such as tone, style, humor or formality, and vocabulary.
10. Use Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Techniques
The ability to write for SEO is a major part of becoming a successful content writer. Most people will land on your content via a search engine, so knowing how to increase the chances of your writing appearing in the top few search results is a great skill. Learn how to include links in your writing, how to use keywords, and how to write meta tags, and you’ll be well on the way to climbing those rankings.
11. Edit and Re-edit Your Writing
Try to see the first draft of your content writing as just part of the process. It’s a great idea to take a quick break when you’ve done the first draft and then read it again later. You’ll always find ways to improve your writing and things you meant to say but didn’t quite get around to including. Or you might realize you could have been more concise with some of your ideas, so go ahead and reword some of them. Once you’ve done that, go through the process of editing again. The quality of your content will be enhanced, and it will give the reader a better experience if you’ve edited thoroughly.
12. Proofread Your Content
Writers use their grammar, spelling, and punctuation skills almost without noticing during the writing process, but learning to proofread your work to the next level is a great idea. Proofreading focuses on the details, so if you want to build a reputation as a great writer, you need to produce carefully proofread content. We have a course that you might like to check out: Becoming A Proofreader. It will teach you all you need to know to give your work that final polish.
Becoming A Freelance Writer
If this post on the best content writing tips for beginners has made you think that content writing could be for you, kickstart your career as a freelance writer with our course, Becoming A Freelance Writer. You can even sign up for a free trial!
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