Many people have difficulty creating a successful online business, whether it is selling their own product or affiliate marketing, or because they have poor writing skills. This inability to communicate clearly through the written word is not a problem unique to the online world. It is, in fact, common to all businesses, including corporations. An Inc. article by Kaleigh Moore, Study: Poor Writing Skills Are Costing Businesses Billions reveals, “A study from CollegeBoard, a panel established by the National Commission on Writing, indicates that blue chip businesses are spending as much as $3.1 billion on remedial writing training — annually.”
How do poor writing skills affect your success as an entrepreneur selling products or services on the web? In a number of ways: If, for example, you’re an affiliate marketer with poor writing skills, you are losing many opportunities to strategically insert your affiliate link in your copy. Here are 4 income opportunities you’ll be missing out on:
- Writing review posts on your blog.
- Writing informative posts on your blog.
- Writing guest posts to increase traffic to your website.
- Writing articles on article marketing websites.
Besides learning how to get good at expository writing, you have to get really good at writing sales copy, too. You will need to get good at writing ads, writing sales pages, writing descriptions in your YouTube videos, and so on. If you can’t learn how to persuade people to take a desired action – click a link – then you aren’t going to make money online.
With all the talk of social media campaigns and SEO, it is easy to forget that advertising is still the most valuable tool in the digital marketing tool chest.
1. How to get good at expository writing.
The solution that works for corporations can also work for you — take a remedial writing class. You may be able to find one at your local community college or adult education center. While you can also take online classes in writing, many simply offer videos and tutorials, but don’t ask you to submit written work for commentary. The result is that you don’t get the feedback you need to correct mistakes that you might not even realize that you’re making.
Writing classes will teach you how to discover writing themes, revise your work, and edit and proofread it. You will also learn how to describe, compare, associate, and analyze ideas. As a result of these skills, you will be able to write good blog posts, articles, and informative comments in forums.
2. How to get good at persuasive writing ads.
As a digital marketer, you will also need to learn how to write persuasively. Unfortunately, this is something that is harder to find training on. If you did find an adult education or MOOC course on persuasive writing, it would teach you how to argue for or against an idea. However, the kind of persuasive writing you need to learn as a marketer is far different: you need to learn copywriting, the type of writing used to write sales letters, landing pages, opt-in boxes, and ads. The best way to learn this specialized type of persuasive writing is through a mentor, taking an online copywriting course, learning from copywriting blogs, and reading copywriting books.
3. How to use copywriting skills to write good ads.
If you learned how to be a copywriter, here is how you would write a good ad:
- 1. You would create a catchy headline or a snappy tagline.
- 2. You would use the AIDA model to make it memorable. You would capture the reader’s attention, appeal to their interests, stimulate their desire, and incite them to take action.
- 3. You would write with an image of your ideal customer in mind so that your writing would be more intimate.
- 4. You would include all the relevant details of your offer to draw people into your ad.
- 5. You would use small words and short-sentences so that the ad would also read well on a mobile device.
If, on the other hand, you only knew how to write well but not to write like a copywriter, you would skip one or more of these 5 steps. While you might have a good choice of words and impeccable grammar, your ad would not be persuasive.
By making the time and effort to be a good expository and persuasive writer, you will be able to turn words into dollars!
