John Kagendo

  5 Steps to Better Online Writing 1.Confidence Be unyielding , direct and passionate. Express yourself fully and honestly- your opinions, your feelings, your arguments, your observations, anything and everything. Never hedge or use the passive voice. Don’t begin sentences with ,’I think’. If you don’t believe fully in your content ,then readers won’t have a confident message.Always go for it. 2.Know your target (audience) The first questions you should ask yourself is, “Who are the readers?” It is important to learn as much as you can about the people who are reading your work. Ultimately, it’s our writing’s ability to communicate powerfully to these individual people that determines if it’s any good. Decide what your readers know or think they know about your subject. 3. Imitating the Writers You Admire Remember, imitation is not the same as plagiarism. Identify what it is you enjoy about their work, and see if you can use it to improve your writing skills. Does a writer you like use humor to spice up dry topics? Try it. Do they use pop culture references to make their work entertaining and useful? Try that, too. You’ll also read from other bloggers and writers and marketers on their take on your writing niche. How do they talk about the popular health food called Keto bombs, for example? You also get to read how these writers use their words and write sentences for an online audience. All of this can help you develop your writing skills. 4. Editing your work ruthlessly A lot of writing is actually rewriting, and this is where the cold, hard eye of an editor will serve you well. Develop the discipline it takes to eliminate extraneous words (more on this shortly). Resist the temptation to wax lyrically and get to the point. Not sure if a paragraph works? It probably isn’t. Be tough on yourself, and know when to delete/rework something. Your work will be much stronger as a result. 5. Don’t over-explain everything. If you’ve taken the time to organize your thoughts in advance, you should be able to keep things simple. The idea is to give readers just enough to understand what you’re communicating without overwhelming them with trivial details. If you find yourself getting in the weeds with more details than you need, look at each piece of information and ask whether it’s essential to help your reader understand your message. If not, get rid of it. Practice, practice, practice! The ultimate way to improving writing is to learn what weakens it in the first place, and then set your mind to fixing (and eventually preventing) the glitches. The more you write, edit, and proofread, the better you get at it.