Making the Strange More Familiar

The goal, when writing on complex subjects, should always be to make the strange just a little more familiar. Whether you’re talking about the inner machinations of a factory equipment, the technical details of a software, or the things that happen behind-the-scenes of government, adopting this strategy will always be in your best interest.
Never forget that your goal is communication: helping the reader understand the numerous details that underscore a subject. The best way to do that, at all times, is to write in a way that makes understanding your ideas as little work as possible. Just like a salesman isn’t going to sell a prospect on technical features unless the prospect is as technically capable, you aren’t going to communicate well unless you’re speaking on the reader’s level.

Choosing The Simple Over The Technical

When writing about complex ideas, always make an effort to go for the simple: shorter words, simpler sentences, and more focused paragraphs. Dressing an otherwise complicated subject in such familiar language can make even the most complex ideas sound very accessible.
Complex prose for complex ideas is just a recipe for disaster. Unless you have an unusually patient reader willing to put up with the difficult task of deciphering both your writing and your subject matter, it’s just not a great way to communicate.
Of course, you’ll need to get technical at some point. In that event, rely on plenty of definitions and explanations while using simple language, making sure every term or concept you use is clear to the reader. Break up the text into smaller chunks, delving into each concept in detail to answer all potential questions before proceeding to the next.

Putting in the Work

Deciding to write simply is only the first step. What follows is the real hard work: researching and organizing the information in your own head. If a complex subject isn’t clear to you, there is no way you can ever successfully pass it on to any of your readers, so the real hard work will happen before you even write — unless you’re one of those folks who work better discovering things as you write (just be prepared to rewrite, likely a lot, in this event).

Personalize It

Use the first and second person when appropriate as much as you can. Doing this helps personalize the writing, making it friendlier and more approachable — a big deal when hashing out the details of a complicated subject which can, literally, scare off readers.

Put Odd and Interesting Things Side-by-Side

When two disparate things are placed next to each other, with one commenting implicitly on the other, the result is called an “ironic juxtaposition.” This technique is used extensively in songs and comedy, providing a high point that spikes the reader’s curiosity and attention.
In writing about complex subjects, those high points can provide just the break needed to keep things interesting, especially during sections where you need to get the most technical. Ironic juxtapositions often result in some amount of humor, piquing the reader’s interest and renewing their attention in the material.
Why this strategy in particular? Mostly, because it’s one of the easiest to use when dealing with complex material. Pairing a complex concept with a simple one is natural to the source, making opportunities to do so very obvious in a lot of instances.

Use Examples And Illustrations

Sometimes, trying to explain something just leads to more complexities. In these situations, it will be wise to lead off with an example or an illustration, allowing the reader to visualize a concept using things and ideas they can actually relate to and then linking that with the idea you’re trying to explain. Examples and illustrations are among the most useful communicative methods you can rely on when it comes to shedding light on potentially confusing topics.
Examples can also encourage the use of imagination, especially when the ones you create serve to paint an image in the reader’s mind. This is especially useful for engaging their interest, apart from making what you discuss linger on longer in their memory.

Break Things Down

Break up large parcels of information into small chunks, dealing with them one by one. This is why lists and steps work very well in technical documentation, as they convey information to the reader in short, clear and manageable chunks.
You will, of course, have to do extra work in identifying discrete parts, steps and stages, but rest assured, it will be worth the trouble. As a side benefit, breaking things up in small chunks usually earns the reader’s respect because it takes quite thorough knowledge to be able to separate elements of an erstwhile overwhelming subject.

No Jargons

Imagine two obsessive anime fans talking about their favorite obsession. Unless you’re also similarly inclined, chances are good you won’t understand half of what they’re talking about. That’s because they’re likely using jargon that’s common among fans of the hobby. Your utter confusion listening to them will be the same thing experienced by a layperson reading a document filled with jargon.
Are jargons acceptable for use? Sometimes. If you’ll use them, though, make sure to define and explain it beforehand in a language that will make sense to those unfamiliar with the subject matter. Jargons are like a death knell — unleash it and it can kill interest shortly thereafter.

Knowledgeable Readers

When you simplify your discussion of a complex subject, will knowledgeable readers be turned off? Chances are, they won’t. In fact, they’ll probably appreciate the fact that you can explain a subject they’re interested in using simple language because they can learn from how you’re able to communicate something they usually struggle to explain themselves. It’s a helpful strategy overall and one you should really be adopting in your own writing.

Passive Versus Active

If you’ve taken writing lessons, you’ve probably been told to minimize the use of passive sentences as a way of tightening your grammar. While both active and passive forms are valid, the latter is frowned upon since it makes writing a lot less palatable to consume.

Why? Because the passive voice will often either delay the real subject of the sentence (puts it in the middle or the end) or erase it completely, obscuring the meaning of the statement. It also requires more words to construct a sentence with the passive voice, effectively dulling its impact. More often than not, the passive voice suggests hesitancy and relays an ambiguous meaning.

The active voice, on the other hand, puts the real agent of the action in front, using it as the subject of the sentence. Doing this makes the message of the statement clearer, apart from being more forceful.

Myths About the Passive Voice

First, let’s clear up some common myths about the passive voice in writing:

1. It’s a grammatical error.

In truth, the passive voice is just as grammatically correct as the active voice. The preference for active voice is a stylistic issue — one that affects the clarity of meaning in your writing.

2. All use of the verb “to be” creates a passive construction.

While that is often the case, it’s not 100% correct. While using forms of the verb “to be” can dull the impact of your writing, it isn’t automatically cause for the passive voice. In fact, using it is necessary in many occasions.

3. The passive voice should never be used.

Again, while stylebooks caution against the passive voice, it’s not a construction to be eliminated entirely. There are times when the passive voice is preferable, in fact, and we will discuss that shortly.

Using the Passive Voice

The passive voice is often recommended when you want to be intentionally ambiguous. In business communication, for instance, passive constructions are generally employed to obscure impact. Say, a boss asked what went wrong with a project. Instead of saying “Mr. Anderson messed up the calculations,” you can soften the impact (on Mr. Anderson) by stating that “The calculations, which Mr. Anderson oversaw, were messed up.” Both sentences state the same thing. The first one, though, puts the blame solely on Mr. Anderson, while the second one paints him as being only partly responsible (in an ambiguous way).

In most writing situations, we want to be clear rather than ambiguous. And it’s that reason why we want to avoid passive constructions as much as possible.

Recognizing the Passive Voice

A lot of us default to writing in the passive voice out of habit. For the most part, it’s how we learned to form sentences when we were young. As such, it’s important to learn how to recognize when you’re using them. Only when you can recognize passive constructions can you act towards minimizing them in your writing.

First, a warning: it’s often not easy to review your writing for passive verbs. As such, if you can get a friend to do it or a software that scans for passive constructions, we suggest going that route. Too often, we tend to gloss over our own work, looking at it with bias. Relying on a third party can help things immensely.

If you will do it yourself, though, the steps are simple:

1. Find any form of the verb “to be.”
2. Check if that verb is followed by a past tense verb.
3. Check if the word “by” appears after the whole verb. If it doesn’t (e.g. it has a “which” or “that” instead), check if the sentence still makes sense if you add a “by.”

Once you find a sentence that fulfills all three steps, then you have a passive construction. Mark it off and rewrite, unless you intend that specific sentence to be mildly ambiguous.

Passive to Active

When rewriting a passive sentence, what you should do is look for the action being carried out by the subject. Once identified, rewrite the sentence using a descriptor of that action as the main verb. Often, you can do this quickly by using the subject at the beginning of the sentence.

Example 1: “The report is being written by Steve.”

In this example, simply rewrite it using our guideline above to:
“Steve is writing the report.”

Example 2: “The world record was finally broken.”

In this example, you can rewrite to active by adding the person performing the action (e.g. “Carl Junior broke the world record finally”). However, do note that in this particular sentence, the writer probably wanted to put emphasis on the object (world record); hence, it’s possible that the passive voice makes better sense.

Example 3: “He ate like a pig. Ten hamburgers must have been consumed.”

In this two-sentence example, the first sentence is in the active voice, but the second one, which follows up on information in the first, isn’t. To fix, you can either change it to:

“He ate like a pig. He must have consumed ten hamburgers.”

Or, you can combine the two sentences into one that is in active form:

“He ate like a pig, consuming what must have been ten hamburgers.”

When To Use

As a rule, we are told to use active sentences in our writing. If you want to be selective about your revisions, though, here are some guidelines that you may want to follow:

1. Does it matter who’s responsible for the action?

If it’s important to the meaning of the sentence, then it’s necessary to change it to an active form. Otherwise, you can leave the passive sentence without doing much harm.

2. Is the sentence too long?

If the passive construction causes the sentence to become too long, then change it to active form for brevity’s sake. This is one of the best solutions to excessive wordiness.

3. Can you imagine the reader having questions about the meaning of a sentence?

If you can, there’s a good chance the use of the passive is responsible for that. Eliminate the ambiguity by rewriting it to an active form instead.

4. Avoid passive form in the introduction.

Whether you’re writing a 5,000-word essay, a 20-page report or 2,000-word magazine feature, avoid using the passive form in the introduction. Oftentimes, the passive form ends up being employed as a crutch and they end up starting off your writing on the wrong foot.

To do that, you must provoke your readers.

No, we don’t mean provoking them with schoolyard taunts, playground barbs and ridiculous histrionics that literally beg for attention. While that’s fun, leave that to battle rappers trying to entertain a restless crowd. Instead, focus on structuring your content so that it makes the reader respond the way you want them to.

Provoking By Omission

Don’t write a single article that teaches everything and solves every issue about a subject. Instead, focus on one or two aspects, using the entire length of the material to expand on them.

When you do this, you give yourself the room to create multiple pieces of content addressing the same topic, answering many questions while leaving others on the table. Those questions you leave out and help create will fuel further discussion, extending both the scope and breadth of the conversation, as well as encouraging readers to wait for future installments.

Won’t leaving out things in your content make your material less helpful and informative? While that’s always a risk, it doesn’t have to be the case if you don’t go too far. In fact, if you take proper precautions, it may actually turn out for the better. How?

1. Shorter articles are more focused than longer ones. When you cover a smaller patch of the subject matter, you get to really zone in on an aspect of a subject, instead of merely glossing over numerous items.
2. Shorter articles allow the reader to process everything that’s relevant to the topic. This goes not just for what you write, but the stuff you leave out, giving them more things to mull over while they contemplate the ideas you’ve expressed.
3. Shorter articles let you ignore difficult areas. If certain aspects of a topic create trouble for you, then writing shorter allows you to ignore those more difficult issues until you’ve done more research and given it further thought, which should work out a heck of a lot better than just spouting some low-rent ideas that you can’t exactly support.
4. Shorter articles let you go out on a high note. It’s tougher to finish strongly with longer pieces simply because of the sheer amount of material you cover. Shorter articles make it easier to tie everything up and end on a high note, leaving you with a snappier and more memorable piece.

Provoking With Content

Probably the most common way to provoke readers, you draw a reaction by relying on content. Offbeat takes on race, class, sexuality, politics and religion always do a good job of provoking readers, especially if you choose topics that are highly controversial, shocking or sensational.

For example, a recent paper called “Is U.S. Economic Growth Over?” by The National Bureau of Economic Research created a lot of chatter for exactly that reason. The powerful headline alone is enough to provoke, much more so when you dive into the content, where author Robert Gordon presents compelling data and evidence that seek to convince you of America’s economic growth genuinely coming to a halt.

Low-brow variations of this include the items you see in tabloids and gossip rags. Same with the kind of stuff websites like TMZ and Perez Hilton specialize in. In fact, it’s probably safe to say a good amount of websites rely exclusively on provoking with content to get on people’s radars.

The content of your writing itself can be sufficient to provoke, provided you choose your material wisely. When you choose provocative content, things will often simply fall into place, allowing you to provoke readers without requiring a whole lot of technique.

Provoking With Arguments

Strong arguments are the best way to provoke a reaction, especially ones that give readers a difficult time disproving. In the Robert Gordon paper we mentioned above, the topic is only half the story. If the actual essay was lacking in concrete data and research, it wouldn’t get half the reaction it’s received. But because the actual arguments presented were compelling, people continue to “talk” about it.

When people read convincing arguments, it gets their mental gears going. It gets them thinking. It makes them look critically at their views and opinions. It gets them viewing things in a new light.

At its most basic, creating a strong argument requires two things:

1. Evidence. This is comprised of your data and research — facts you’ve collected that back up the points you make.
2. Reasoning. This is your interpretation of the evidence, wrapped up in a weave of logic and reason that serve to further your claims.

Practice crafting strong arguments and you’ll have a very strong weapon in your arsenal for writing provocatively. On top of that, you’ll develop a very useful skill that you can apply to other areas, most especially in your chosen profession.

Provoking With Stories

Almost every single one of us, at one time or another, has read a story that made us rethink our lives and our outlook on various subjects. Whether it’s a depiction of heroism, a story about an individual’s triumph over adversity or a sad tale about a person’s struggles in life, there are stories that make such a strong impression on us that it literally affected the way we think. Such is the power of a good story — provoking us to respond in ways we couldn’t even anticipate.

Storytelling is one of the most effective, but also most difficult, ways to provoke readers. And it’s also one of the oldest, having been employed by everyone from generals inspiring troops in the battlefield to ancient philosophers educating students to modern politicians trying to get your vote. If you can craft a good story, you can provoke people by simply telling one that speaks to issues and struggles that are relevant to them.

Regular Articles

Think of regular articles as the meat of your blog. If someone audited the quality of your blog, they’re the ones you will present, since they form the core of what you aim to communicate with your online presence.

While they are the ones you want to focus most of your efforts on, you can think of other content as a way to get closer with your readers. After all, gaining and keeping an audience rarely comes down to just good material — it’s about making them part of the conversation, too.

Fun Content

1. Top 10/Top 100 Lists

These are, usually, very easy to write, since you can get away with a short blurb about each item on the list. If you need to expand further, you can hook it up with a separate post for individual items. Do note you might want to do some research to ensure you’re doing a legitimate “Top 10″ list (i.e. a list you can justify), rather than just taking arbitrary items and calling them “top 10.”

The most important thing here is to find a good subject: one that your audience is likely to be interested in. You should try scouring social media websites for ideas.

2. Pop Culture Framework Pieces

Here, you take a popular pop culture item (example: Gangnam Style) and write about it using an angle that’s relevant to your readership. If you write a blog about SEO, for instance, you can look at how different websites are optimizing for the search term “Gangnam Style”; if you write a political blog, you can make a tongue-in-cheek comparison of the song’s rise to the rise of another politician that may be considered a novelty candidate.

While these pieces are rarely taken seriously, they can be very entertaining, especially when attacked from a lighthearted angle. They also tend to be very popular on social media sharing because the pop culture reference gets people excited.

3. Resource Lists

Many blogs don’t do this as posts — instead, they do it as pages, since resource lists are meant to be updated over time. If you run a Dodge Challenger blog, for instance, you can make a resource list for all clubs centered around that car around the world, posting links to club websites and listing their contact information. As you can guess, these types of content are very popular destinations for people interested in a specific type of information and could very well end up one of the most popular pages in your website.

4. Cartoons

One little-used type of content in blogging today are cartoons, which is a shame because they can end up one of the most fun parts of your website. A simple cartoon with a witty caption can make for an entertaining post on its own. If you can inject them into your regular content, even better. If you can’t draw and don’t know anyone who does, you can even appropriate clip art or do silly doodles then add your own humor in the mix.

5. Ebooks

If you have an idea for a long piece, such as a detailed guide, you can opt to publish it as a downloadable ebook for your readers. Many blogs offer this as an incentive for opting in to your email list, which you can then use towards your blog’s marketing efforts.

When doing an ebook, make sure it’s a genuinely useful one. If it isn’t, people probably won’t bother downloading either, so it just ends up being a waste of time. Considering how much longer writing an ebook takes compared to regular blog posts, that’s likely going to be plenty of wasted hours.

6. Case studies

Doing a case study isn’t easy, but it’s one of the most rewarding types of content you can add to your blog. A lot of what is talked about online is just that: talk. A case study allows you to rise above the ranks, giving your readers measurable real-life data that can substantiate your ideas.

7. Polls and surveys

These are fillers that can get your readers more involved. You can let the poll or survey stand as a one-shot or expand on it later, examining the results in relation to your blog’s subject matter. I’d recommend the latter, since it forces you to come up with survey material that will be useful for future discussions, making them more relevant to your audience.

8. Curated links

If there’s a good selection of blogs and websites related to your subject, you can create posts whose sole purpose is to direct your audience to fresh and relevant content from those other websites. Make sure you take time to properly curate the material, though — folks online don’t take kindly to being led to more crap, being they’re more likely exposed to enough of it during their time online.

9. Product releases

I’m not a big fan of regurgitating press releases for new products in the market, but if you come across one that’s genuinely relevant to your readers, it makes sense to share it. You can post the entire press release if you want, although I prefer simply summarizing the announcement and sparing the readers from the overwrought marketing parts. Make sure to inject some personality into the post and talk about the points that will be of interest to your audience.

10. General interest

There are things majority of people are interested in, regardless of what specific demographic they belong to. Mainstream music, movies and TV generally fall in this category, so you can use these to add extra items of content for your blog. We suggest doing data mining on your readers (age demographic and such) or using data from your polls to determine what kind of music, movies and TV shows they might be interested in, then feature those occasionally (e.g. a weekly “Music Suggestions” column).

Sure, you can remedy that by being an overall better writer, developing your skills through workshops, seminars and various avenues of learning. However, the traditional route doesn’t always have to be the default. There are many things you can do specific to blog writing that can adequately improve your posts.

1. Plan before you write

Too many bloggers write literally from the seat of their pants. While there’s nothing wrong with that, a properly thought-out and planned piece of writing usually works out much better. If you prefer to hash out idea while writing, you can use the stuff you write as an early draft. Once you have it laid down, you can then proceed to planning a structure for rewriting or using various bits of it in a different article altogether. We highly recommend mind-mapping if you prefer to work in a visual manner.

2. Vary your post lengths

There’s nothing wrong with writing 500-word-post after 500-word-post. The problem is, this leaves you prone to mechanically putting out the same word count regardless of what topic you’re writing about. Instead, look to vary the stuff you produce. Say, create a 2,000-word diatribe today; three 150-word capsules tomorrow; and a standard 800-word discussion the day after. Doing this also keeps your blog feeling fresh, a side benefit that doesn’t hurt your case any.

3. Unpack your paragraphs

Rather than using a paragraph to discuss a host of things, focus on one item each. This will automatically keep your paragraphs shorter (ideal for reading online) and make it easier to follow your points. Additionally, this makes the next two tips easier to integrate.

4. Add examples

If you’ve been skipping providing examples and illustrative situations in your writing, start now. A lot of bloggers do the amateur mistake of wallowing in generalities with their discussion. Examples easily remedy that, giving your readers a specific and detailed narrative that applies to your topic.

5. Add exercises

If you run an educational blog, try providing exercises that the reader can do after reading an informative post. Doing that makes the content more interactive, encouraging them to participate beyond simply reading the material. Exercises can range from short quizzes, actual activities they can do or links to related items they can check out.

6. Add a call to action

What do you hope to achieve with the post? Do you want readers to try a particular product? Do you want to encourage them to subscribe to your newsletter? Do you want them to turn off their computer and get some sunlight for once? Whatever it is, add a call to action for it. Make sure the call to action ties in with the subject and discussion of the actual post, too, rather than just a stock paragraph you use with every post.

7. At the least, edit your headline, introduction and conclusion

A lot of bloggers don’t bother proofreading, much less editing their work. Well, your English grammar software can handle the proofreading part, so that should be good. You’d like to do a minimum of edit, though, to ensure you don’t create something that readers will literally just gloss over.

If you’re not stoked about investing a lot of time in editing, then do it for just the headline, introductory paragraph and concluding paragraph. Fixing up those three items will allow your post to make a stronger impact, even if the body is a little weak,

8. Format your text for the web

People in the internet will read your content either from a browser, a feed reader or a phone. Make sure to consider all three when formatting the presentation of your text. Follow the cardinal rules of web formatting by using subheadings, bullet points, numbered points, shorter paragraphs and so on.

9. Make your writing sound natural

Does your writing sound like a 13 year kid tasked to write a formal paper for class? Does it sound like a lawyer drafting a deliberately obtuse contract? Does it sound like teenager trying to sound cool?

The best way to make sure your writing sounds natural is to play it by ear. That is, read your post aloud and watch out for passages that call attention to themselves. Most of the time, those are the parts that sound manufactured and out of place. Rewrite them until they sound like normal conversation.

10. Don’t restate the obvious

If something is obvious, don’t bother writing about it. Doing so doesn’t just waste space telling the reader something they already inferred, it makes you sound like a very bad writer, too. Unless you’re writing for kindergarten readers, you don’t need to parrot what they already know.

11. Don’t preach

There are many ways to get a message across without preaching. Unless you’re writing to a flock of people who consider you their pastor, don’t do it. Having a blog doesn’t automatically make your opinions more valid than anyone else’s, so don’t write like that’s the case. Very few readers will ever appreciate being preached to, especially when you’re not somebody they consider an authority (i.e. some random dude from the internet).

12. Avoid parroting

You know how a lot of small blogs merely parrot what huge blogs talk about? Sure, they’ll rewrite a paragraph or two, change the headline and add a short original blurb, but they’re essentially acting as a press release outlet? While it’s fine to occasionally indulge in that type of material, be wary of turning to that as your primary source of content. Aggregators don’t get regular readers unless they can bring something special to the table.

13. Minimize in-stream links

I know, that $20/hour SEO consultant you chatted with on AIM said it helps your site. Problem is, too many in-text links makes blog posts distracting. Seriously. Do you want your reader to actually read or just keep clicking off the page till their fingers hurt?

However, you’ve noticed something — your product reviews just aren’t converting into actual sales after the readers click through. Of course, this could be due to a variety of reason: you could be attracting shoppers rather than buyers, the landing page could be doing a poor job of selling the prospect and so on.

If you find this happening consistently with your reviews, then there’s a good chance you’re not writing your product reviews correctly. Maybe we can help.

Why Product Reviews Rock

We think product reviews are among the most effective ways of pre-selling a prospect. An honest, sincere review of the positives and negatives of a product can really affect purchasing decisions. In fact, I’d venture that the majority of online shoppers actually seek out reviews before plunking their money down on any product, regardless of whether they’re buying an informational MP3 download, a cordless hair dryer or a second-hand car.

Product Reviews Should Help Sales

If you’re a critic or a consumer watchdog, then you write reviews to inform people. Since you’re an affiliate, however, you write reviews to help the sales process. Those are two very different things. The former writes merely to express an opinion about their experience with a product; you do the same while keeping in mind that you want to prod the reader just a little closer to that buyer’s mindset.

What if you don’t like a particular product? Then don’t bother reviewing it. Outright lying on your reviews is one of the easiest ways to lose readership for your blog and ruin your online reputation. Plus, we doubt you’re fooling anybody anyway — it’s not that hard to figure out when a review is absolutely fake.

Do note that we said “help sales,” rather than sell. Never use your product reviews to do a hard sell. That’s the merchant’s job. Your duty as an affiliate is to presell only, softening up the prospect so the merchant can push them to buy.

What Items Should Your Product Reviews Have?

1. A high-res image or a video of the product.

A lot of people are heavily visual. Even when they aren’t, most people would still like to be able to see a product even through just pictures. If you’re reviewing a bike, post video or pictures of it from different angles. If you’re reviewing a DVD program, post screenshots or clips.

2. A description of the product.

Write a dry description of the product. And by dry, we mean straightforward and no hyperbole — the same way you expect a newspaper reporter to write a news piece. Don’t just copy the product description from the landing page or the sales website. Instead, write your own to ensure it’s free of unnecessary language and color.

Include all necessary information in the product description. If you’re reviewing a bike, give details on the parts, the dimensions and all the important specs. If you’re reviewing a book, include the number of pages, the publisher, ISBN number and so on. This way, the reader gets to know exactly what the product is — no misconceptions and no misunderstandings.

Personally, I like to put the first half of the description, which consists of general details, on top, followed by the actual review. Then, I put the detailed specs in list form after the rest of the content. This way, the factual information doesn’t get in the way of the review, which will happen if you overload the user with too many details.

3. A description of the ideal buyer.

Tell readers exactly who can benefit from the product. We don’t mean dropping names, though. Instead, describe the different qualities of the people who will gain the most from the product, explaining how they can gain from it.

For instance, say you’re selling a laptop and software bundle aimed at students. Describe the qualities of those students who can benefit most from it. Are they in high school, college or graduate programs? What is their age range? Is there anything they do on a computer that make them the perfect buyers for this package? Do they use their computers in home, at school or on the road? And so on.

One of the most important things a product review will do is narrow the list of customers for a product right down to those that will find it an irresistible purchase. Describing your target readers accomplishes that, all while painting a positive picture of the product clearly in the minds of those who fit your description.

4. Positive claims.

You’re writing a product review that’s meant to “soft” sell to the reader, so you need to cite positive experiences you’ve had with it. Simply saying a product is awesome isn’t enough — you need to tell the reader why it’s awesome.

5. Prove any claims you make.

If you say that an informational product helped you make more money, you need to show proof. If you say a software helped you become more productive, you need to explain how. Basically, you need to prove any claims you make, either by showing them pictures (e.g. if you said you made more money, then post a screenshot of your check) or telling a plausible, believable story (e.g. cite specific instances of how the software made you more productive).

People are skeptical of product reviews, especially online where most websites have no editorial discretions. You need to get over that hump every time you write a review.

6. Point out negatives.

Being an affiliate, you’ll naturally tend towards writing positive points in your review. That’s fair. However, make sure to add a paragraph or two about the negatives, too.

People don’t expect perfection from anything, so don’t give it to them. Instead, point out problems you had or things you wish the product had but didn’t. This will make your review sound more believable, rather than being a mere shill piece for a product.

7. Add a call to action.

Product reviews from consumer sites don’t need a call to action. But you’re an affiliate who’s looking to make a buck, so make sure to add it. As with the rest of your review, never hard sell on the call to action. Keep it dry and simple.

If you’re struggling to get those links organically, here are some things to consider improving on:

1. Your Headlines

If readers can’t wrap their heads regarding an article’s subject from reading the headline, there’s a good chance they won’t read it. And if someone doesn’t read your content, then there’s an even smaller chance they will link to it.

Work on your headlines, making sure they’re both descriptive of your content and interesting enough to command attention. Additionally, use language and phrasing that your target readers will use — that’s how they’ll know it’s what they’re looking for, after all.

Avoid headlines that require context to be understood. Headlines that try to be clever or creative often fall in this category. Don’t sacrifice clarity just so you can be witty — prioritize headlines that actually inform.

2. Your Hook

The internet is littered with content covering just about any subject in the world. As such, there are very few chances that anything you produce will be treated like a special snowflake. So how do you differentiate yourself from the mass of content out there?

That’s where your hook comes in. What is it about this particular piece that entice readers to actually stay on the page and read through? If they see it in a list of articles about the same subject, why would they choose it over all the other links on the page? Your hook, whatever bait it is you’re dangling, will be the deciding factor. If you have a good hook, readers immediately have good reason to link your way.

4. Your Angle

Even the oldest subject can be attacked from a different angle to make it feel fresh and relevant. The most common of these is offering up an off-topic subject with an angle aimed at a website’s core readers, such as when a tech blog writes a post called “A Hip-Hop Guide For The Silicon Valley Set” or when a diving enthusiast blog writes about “10 New Gadgets To Make Your Diving Life More Fun.” Finding interesting angles that aren’t played out is the challenge and that’s where your creativity will come into play.

5. Your Article Length

There was a time when all people could tolerate to read from the web were articles with 500 words or less. I believe that time is long gone. That doesn’t mean, however, that you can now inundate your readership with 4,000-word mini-novels and get consistently fruitful results. It works for some subjects because people will link to quality material. Make sure the length is warranted, though, such that you really need that many words (instead of merely being repetitive and dragging) and it makes more sense not to split the information up into separate articles.

6. Your Choice Of Topic

There are just some topics that people don’t care about, regardless of how much you enjoy writing about them. If it’s not within most people’s sphere of interest, then they won’t link to it. It’s just the way of the world.

If you’re interested in maximizing the amount of links and social media mentions your content gets, then choose topics that people actually care for. Sure, put in your share of passion pieces. For building the profile of your website, though, you’ll want to focus on topics that people will actually link to.

Choose interesting topics if you want to draw interest. Writing about your company, your business and yourself may be interesting to your friends, but it’s doubtful how many other people give a crap about them. Do research on your target readers and survey your blog’s existing readership if you need help finding topics they’d actually like.

7. Your Writing’s Coherence

A lot of articles on the web aren’t produced by writers with years of training up their sleeves. Instead, a lot of tech articles are written by tech enthusiasts; a lot of game reviews are written by gaming fans; and so on. Couple that with the lack of an editorial hand in many content sites and the result is a predictable flood of incoherent content.

You don’t have to write like a Pulitzer candidate. Just write enough that you can be understood and your ideas can be communicated effectively.

8. Your Focus

The narrower the focus of your content, the easier it is for readers to mentally file them, making it clear exactly how to link to it and where to use that link. Articles with a wider focus tend to be a little more difficult to promote, especially with the character limits inherent in many social media sharing platforms.

9. Your Page Layout

This has nothing to do with your writing and everything to do with how the article is laid out on a web page. If your layout is poor, the article is tough to read. While a lot of people will persevere through poor layouts in printed matter, most people usually equate the same thing with garbage websites on the internet. Chances are, people won’t even give your article 30 seconds of their time with a stinker like that.

10. No Promotion

You can’t just buy a domain, throw on WordPress, write a couple of features and expect people to show up. For the most part, you’ll need to do some promotion if you want people to visit your content.

Having a social media presence and getting your content seen by the right people is one of those crucial steps. Figure out a way to insert yourself in the conversation for the subject matter you want to write about and leverage that to promote any new material you produce.

Conclusion

When you want to attract links, you need to give people a reason to give you the link. You can’t just throw up anything that comes to mind, then pray that it sticks. Think about why people will link to you while putting together your content. If you can’t come up with one, then you’re probably missing something essential. Find that and make it the highlight of your piece.

Maximizing Value

Maximizing the value of a blog post isn’t just relegated to researching and writing it well. To draw as much benefit from a post as you can, you want to get the word out and promote it to really draw new readers in. You want to write follow-up posts to keep the conversation alive and relevant. Before you can do all that, though, you need to write the first post in a way that both interests and engages readers.

Writing A High-Quality Blog Post

1. Pick a descriptive, engaging title. When writing for blogs, you want a title that’s direct but enticing. No cryptic titles, regardless of how enjoyable clever wordplay in titles might be, like magazines or book anthologies do. Instead, your titles need to reflect the aesthetic of newspapers — straight-to-the-point while grabbing attention.

Why straight to the point? Because blog readers are a finicky bunch. If they can’t understand what a post is about just by looking at its title, there’s a good chance they won’t bother to click on the link. There’s nothing with being clever — if you’re going to go that route, though, make sure your title still conveys the subject matter clearly.

Why the need to grab attention? Because blog posts are a dime a dozen on the web. Chances are high that people are seeing your title on a feed reader, a Twitter timeline or a Facebook wall. If it doesn’t grab attention, it’s going to be ignored. This is true even if readers visit your site directly. If the title is too boring to warrant attention, they’ll just scroll down past it.

2. Make the main point clear. After reading the title, any subtitle and the introductory paragraph, it should be 100% clear to the reader what the main point and the direction of the post will be. This is non-negotiable. Those initial elements are usually all the readers need to decide whether they should read on right now, bookmark the post for later or abandon it entirely. If you don’t clarify them from those items, they’ll choose the latter course of action.

3. Get to the meat quickly. Suspense, mystery and cliffhanging dramatics may serve you well in fiction, but they’ll do you no good when writing blog posts. Save those tension-heightening literary elements to your creative writing projects. Most people read blogs for information and opinion — give it to them with little filler in between.

4. Make it a numbered list post. If the content lends itself well to this format, do it. Lists, especially numbered ones, are considerably easier to read. It’s less daunting when you know that you can read the first point and stop to continue later without destroying the flow of the writing. While you can do that with regular posts divided into paragraphs, readers won’t exactly know when is a good time to stop. The numbered blocks give them a start and stop place, similar to chapters in a book.

5. Stay on topic. Too often, bloggers who write long posts end up going off on too-distant tangents. While there’s nothing wrong with it (some will even argue it adds to the conversational feel), it distracts from your main point. The result is watered-down impact for whatever message you were hoping to communicate. The more you stay on topic, the lesser the chances of that happening.

6. Maximize your chances at going viral. This is, of course, easier said than done. But it will never hurt to stack all the cards you can in your favor. How? The easiest way is to tie your post to a heavy-circulation subject. Around this time last year, for instance, there was a huge discussion over the white rapper Kreayshawn, her music and all the controversy surrounding her. That’s why it wasn’t very surprising to see music blogs tying posts that have nothing to do with Kreayshawn to her, either using her as an example or attacking the subject from an angle that will peripherally involve the upstart rapper (so she can fit into the title).

Another way to maximize your chances at going viral is to be controversial. Attack your subject from a controversial, sensational angle and present a polarizing position. While the link juice from other blogs may not be as heavy as during the heyday of Digg, all those “shares” on Twitter and Facebook can be just as valuable.

7. Don’t be afraid to write long. As a rule, blog posts are supposed to be kept short. These days, though, long-form has been slowly making a comeback even in blogs. With tools like Instapaper and Pocket allowing readers to archive their material for later text-only reading, perusing long rows of text from a screen is no longer the daunting challenge that it used to be.

The point is, if your subject matter requires a long post, do it. You can break the post into multiple sections spanning multiple pages if it helps readability. It’s a new world — keeping your blog posts to 500 words is no longer the hard and fast rule that it was a short while ago.

8. Be aware of LSI keywords. For the most part, you don’t need to pay a lot of conscious attention to this. If you’re a competent writer, you’re likely incorporating LSI keywords already without knowing it.

Just to cover all your bases, LSI is a way of measuring the use of associated keywords in your post. A post about the beach, for instance, will have secondary keywords related to the main keyword, such as “water sports,” “summer,” “sand,” “holiday vacations,” “island resorts” and similar terms if it was organically-written, rather a mere SEO play. LSI has become a key component in major search ranking algorithms, so you need to write with that in mind.

9. Express strong opinions. The stronger your opinions, the more polarizing the writing becomes. In turn, it encourages readers to comment and move the conversation forward. Don’t be afraid to express strong opinions — they could be the sticky element your blog has been missing all this time.

In a perfect world, you will jump right in and get to work as soon as you get an assignment. All your actions from that point on will be productive and you don’t allow distractions to take your attention away from the job at hand. As a result, you finish a strong draft way ahead of deadline, giving you plenty of time to edit and revise.

But the world isn’t perfect. Where we live, most people who get a two-month deadline will probably not even do anything related to the work in the first week. Sometimes, the second, third and fourth weeks, too. And that’s why it’s important to create a work plan as soon as you get the assignment. Doing so gives you a structure that clearly outlines everything you need to do in the time you have leading up to the deadline.

Making Your Plan

Each person’s work habits vary. Some people can perform research work for 12 hours a day; others can’t stand it for more than 2 hours at a time. Some people can spend 8 hours calling up sources and conducting impromptu phone interviews; others are more comfortable emailing people and setting up scheduled appointments. Some people can put down a 3,000-word draft in one sitting; others do better writing the same thing in 500-word chunks. Basically, your plan should fit in with how you prefer to work, taking account of your strengths and weaknesses. Don’t plan for something you’ve never done before (e.g. proofreading a 10,000-word document in one sitting if you haven’t done it even once) — that almost always leads to a poorly-calibrated time budget.

It’s not just your skills and abilities that tie in to your planning: you also need to account for everything else that’s going on in your life. Will you need to look after your kids during this timeframe? Will you need to file papers, apply for loans, deal with editors or do any of a thousand other things that people do in their day-to-day lives? Those things, more than the actual work, can end up being the ones that actually drag your schedule behind, so do your best to plan around them. Schedule the bulk of your work during weeks that you’ll be relatively free and pencil in a minimal amount of activities during times when you’ll have life literally getting in the way.

When putting your plan together, always do the following:

• Define a clear start and end date for the entire duration of the writing job.
• Set start and end dates for each step in your research paper.
• Make an effort to stick to your schedule. If you miss a day, then always make an effort to catch up to the original schedule within the next three days — the more you change your plans (as usually happens when you miss a day), the greater the chances you’ll mess it up.

Long Deadlines

Long deadlines will make you feel like you have all the time in the world. At the onset, you’ll probably be feeling really good about that. But douse yourself with a glass of water and wake up to the real facts: you don’t really have all the time in the world.

Truth is, ten weeks isn’t nearly the infinite amount of time that it might feel at first. Those weeks will go by in a flash. If you don’t use them wisely, you can end up without a finished product by the time of the deadline expires.

When you have a job with a deadline that’s still 10 or more weeks away, don’t slack. Instead, create a plan that will allow you to finish your first draft as early as possible. That way, you’ll have plenty of time to review, revise and verify your piece before turning it over to clients or editors.

While it’s tempting, try to avoid taking in too many other projects during the same timeframe as the project with a long deadline. Mixing up multiple work plans can get confusing really fast. At some point, one or more projects will suffer. Instead, why not just start work on the project early, finish it early and get a new project afterwards?

Short But Manageable Deadlines

When it comes to deadline, “short” is a relative term. Depending on what kind of work a writing project requires, an entire month can be short. Either way, short deadlines are usually still manageable, provided you’re willing to give up a few of your non-work activities along the way.

Again, it’s important to come up realistic plan, since you’ll need to prepare your schedule to maximize your opportunities to get work done. Basically, you’ll want nothing but work plus important things on your plate — everything else can wait.

Unrealistic Deadlines

Unfortunately, unrealistic deadlines are more common for writers than you think, especially when you work for publications that ply their trade in breaking news and current events. Business writers and technical writers aren’t spared — the boss can require a 20-page business report because he suddenly realized he wants one for tomorrow’s stockholder meeting at a whim.

Taking on a project with an immediate deadline automatically means you’re willing to drop everything for that writing project. Unless you are, don’t accept it (and, yes, suffer whatever the consequences). If you do take on such a job, you need to accept that it will be your sole focus for the time being. Everything else has to wait.

For many writers, unrealistic deadlines usually mean throwing plans out the window. While I can understand the sentiment, I believe it’s misguided. In fact, spending 15 minutes drawing up a detailed hourly (or 30-minute-block) plan might be the way to go. At the least, it can help calm you. At best, it will give the way you work some semblance of structure and order.

Simply put, a lot of the skills you built up to turn yourself into a qualified writer for online copy just aren’t the same ones you need to whip up effective social media copy. If you want to do good in this new field, you’ll probably need to drop some old habits and shore up a few new ones.

What Makes Social Media Writing Different

There are many differences between traditional web writing and social media. Just as writing for the web requires a lot of changes to writing in print, the same holds for social media compared to the traditional web.

1. You’re writing directly to people. With traditional web copy, you’re writing for both readers and algorithms. Striking the balance that accomplishes that is the tricky part. In social media writing, you’re writing purely for the audience, regardless of whether you’re composing 140-character Tweets, Facebook blog posts or LinkedIn recommendations. Writing for real people, particularly ones you may have a relationship with as you do in social media, requires a shift in style and attitude.
2. Social media is shorter-form content. Remember when you used to call blogging as short-form content. Social media takes the lack of length a whole other level. On the one hand, this limits the amount of information you can communicate. On the other, this allows you to connect to readers without heavy amounts of research and preparation. It’s both harder and simpler for different things, respectively.
3. You don’t just write conversationally — you literally carry on a conversation. Think back to your favorite Twitter and Facebook timelines. Chances are, these are from people who actually engage their audiences in one-to-one conversations. Rather than fill their timelines with general announcements, they spend a lot of time answering specific questions from people they’re connected to by engaging in genuine conversations.
4. Web copy is for linking, social media is for sharing. With traditional web copy, we wrote material that lent itself well to being linked to. That is, we wrote quality copy that fit into a lot of current issues that people are discussing and framed it so that the keywords we want are the logical anchor text for the piece. In social media, we aim to be shared, so we need to write with the assumption that it will be shared. People can see exactly how many other people read a shared sales letter, for instance, so we can’t rely on fibs like “You’re one of only 100 people who have access to this information.” Instead, you want to frame your copy so it is shared, so you use lines like “This information deserves to be known by not just 100 individuals.”
5. Social media demands you to respond to issues in real-time. With web copy, you can wait out issues, ignore negative information and, generally, wait for heat to pass before issuing a response. Social media changes that, since your own fans and followers will be pestering you for an answer. It’s a different kind of writing that requires you to deal with problems head-on.
6. Rhetorical questions don’t count. When writing regular copy, you can use rhetorical questions to steer ideas towards the direction you want the piece to go. In social media, you don’t get such benefits. Remember: social media writing is a conversation, so any question you pose are ones you would like to get an answer to. Asking questions is one of the most effective ways to get people to participate in your social media campaigns.
7. Social media is about sustained effort, not one-shot successes. With traditional web copy, you put a story up, get on your grind (pinging, tagging and all that), and measure your results, whether you’re going after sales, links or comments. With social media, the goals you set are usually worked up into using sustained effort, with measurable results only coming in long after your first tweet about the matter.

Tips For Better Social Media Writing

1. Lead with the most informative words and phrases. Social media writing is short, but it’s easy to get it lost among a wall filled with messages. A lot of the time, people scan lists of unrelated messages. The earlier you include the most important parts of your message, the lesser the chances it will fly over your audience’s attention. Pushing the important keywords up front makes sure readers see them immediately.
2. Choose words your audience will understand. In regular web copy, you’re told to write using language your readers will understand. The same guideline holds true in social media: you need to use words and phrases that actually speak to your followers. If your audience consist of academics, speak their language. If your supporters are made up of teens, then use everyday street language to your heart’s content.
3. Write concisely. Use short words instead of long ones and use short descriptive phrases rather than lengthy descriptions. Twitter only gives you room for 140 characters and LinkedIn allows you 700. Granted, both Facebook and Google+ (and a few other social networks) allow a more generous limit — keeping things short, however, serves your audience’s tendencies to jump from item to item much better. Remember the old warning that online readers tend to have very short attention spans? It’s even worse in social media where isolated articles don’t appear on a page; instead, they’re staring at multiple ones every time.
4. Verify auto-generated titles and descriptions. Some social networks will generate automated titles and descriptions for content when you share them. Make sure those generated for your writing are actually meaningful, lest risk having it ignored when appearing in lists, timelines and similar mediums.