Detailed yet interesting

Brochure writing is a detailed affair, yet crispy. Modern brochure writing style is crisp yet very effective. A brochure may run over many pages or consist just 3-4 pages, depending upon its nature. Make sure you include all important information like company’s history and description, CEO’s message, mission and vision statement, product or service detail, achievements. Since brochures are long in nature it will be all inclusive yet crisp.

Keep the style same

Irrespective of brochure’s total number of pages, keep the writing style same all over. If you are talking in passive voice, talk in the same style throughout. Don’t switch on and off between styles. If you have taken a poetic style of writing maintain that throughout. Sign off with the same flavor. Even keep your font style same.

Understand the purpose

There’s no set formula of brochure writing. Brochure writing style may vary depending upon the purpose of writing. A technical brochure or a product brochure; corporate brochure or sales brochure, each calls for a different style and purpose of writing.

Don’t overstuff

Often marketers are tempted to stuff a brochure with maximum amount of factual data. It certainly bores the reader. Don’t overstuff a brochure with data. Keep it light, crispy yet all inclusive. Touch upon all important points needed to be conveyed, and elaborating in short only most important parts. If you are mentioning product features, make sure you convert those features into benefits. Translate each feature into functional and emotional benefit. Break the paragraphs into bullet points when needed, else into short paragraphs. Don’t write a page full, in one single paragraph. Make sure you leave enough blank space or space for images on a page. It makes reading interesting.

Put quotations whenever applicable

Quotations are always appealing. While you craft a brochure page, try to put some quotations wherever they are applicable. It can be some words from the company’s chairman or some famous quotes or simply few lines you wish to emphasize. When the brochure page is designed such quotations can be nicely used in bold and bigger fonts. It easily grabs attention.

What samples to show and what not to show, and how many to show? These questions often haunt a freelance writer, more so because there is no one right answer to this. Every client is different so is there demand, and so is the solution to that.

The question is then how to decide what to show and what not to show? As said, there is not any definite answer to this question, but I can tell you about what I do when it comes to hunting writing gigs. That will help you devise your plan of action.

How to decide which sample to show

What clients want?

The first step in the process is to see what client is asking for, as sending relevant samples is what you should do. Sending a sample of how-to article to a client who wants a sales page will do no good. Similarly sending a sample of an article to one who is asking for a press release will also not get you the job.

Have you written on the topic?

If you have written on the topic related to project advertise then send that sample, but while doing so do keep the following tip in mind.

When did you write that one?

This is very important. We all grow one article at a time, so sending a sample that you wrote 2 or 3 years back will do more harm than good, as it will not demonstrate you current style. Do not mistake in thinking that writing style is static; rather nothing is more organic than writing style. The more you write the better you become. You should, therefore, send the samples that you wrote in last month, or last to last month. Do not send any sample that you wrote more than 6 months back.

How many

As many as required to get the work. This is a judgment call you have to take. If the work advertised is going to last long than I provide more samples and if it is a small project then I do not send too many samples, or too many types of samples. It also depends on what a client is asking for.

This is how I decide on what samples to send and how many to send. I hope this will help you decide as well.

Was this narration of Romeo and Juliet interesting? Was it even one millionth of excitement that you got from reading the famous tragedy?

Why didn’t you enjoy it? It had all the key elements that were present in the original play. It told you everything that Shakespeare wanted to tell you then why didn’t you enjoy?

Because it lacked the details, isn’t it?

People like stories not because it connects with them at the level deeper than mere comprehension and consciousness, and details do exactly that. It provides fuel to emotion. Greatness of a story lies in detail. When writing a story, or an article, a feeble writer tends to wander around the subject matter using useless adjectives, dead cliché, etc. But when a great writer writes a story, he goes directly to the heart of the matter, and covers all he sees in his journey to the heart of the matter.

Photograph in outlines

If story is a photograph, details are color, texture, shades, and patterns, without which the photograph is nothing but mere outlines. And I am sure not many people enjoy outlines. A great picture is made when colors, shades, textures, patterns, and other things are added to the outline. Similarly, a great story comes to life when required detail is added.

What about articles?

An Article is a non-fiction cousin of story. It just differs in the subject matter it handles, people who are reading it, and slightly in the writing style.

There is no reason why a non-fictional piece could not be written in story form. After all, the goal of a communication is to connect and inform, and you cannot inform anyone, not with any credibility, without establishing a deep connection with he or she.

Better Website Copy Writing Tips

• Your copy should not be visually heavy. Make the copy easy to scan. You can do that by dividing copy using sub-headings, and bullet points.
• Keep one eye on the target audience and another on the matter you want to convey. It is necessary to strike a balance between the two.
• Always remember, in writing style is so important that at times style, in itself, becomes substance.
• Add relevant “call to action” at important junctures in your web pages. This will help you increase conversion.
• Do not talk about attributes, talk about benefits.
• Build the story until it reaches to climax in the last line where you should add the ultimate call to action.
• Do not make pages multi-focused.
• Define model target audience of the website before writing copy for them.
• Use short sentences and short and simple paragraphs.
• Keep the content jargon free.
• List the benefit.
• Make the benefit as clear as possible.

Copy is what determines the future of the website. The more time you will invest in creating the copy, better will be the future of your website.

In this article, I have tried to provide a workable “feedback seeking system” which you can use to get a proper feedback. You can also modify the system, if you feel something is missing.

Step 1: Define your feedback goal

Why you want a feedback and on what? The answer to this question matters a lot. A generic feedback like, “all is good” or “there is some problem here and there, but the rest is good” will not do any good. Set a target for why you want a feedback. If you have written something then the feedback you can seek could be related to your writing style, coherence, grammatical and punctuation errors, or overall understandability. You can subdivide your work in this way and ask for feedback about the particular thing you want to know.

Step 2: Qualify your feedback source

Do not seek feedback from anyone and everyone. It will do no good. A proper feedback should come from a qualified source. Ask your senior, your client, your boss, your teacher, or anyone who is more qualified than you are on the subject for the feedback. A washerwoman’s feedback on the structure of your SQL database will serve nothing.

Do not ask your family or the closest friend who knows everything about your project for the feedback. Good or bad, it will never give you the feedback that you can use.

Step 3: Ask targeted question

Ask questions relevant to the feedback goal you set in step one. Do not pose generic question, as it will not fetch desired answer. Ask a targeted question and listen patiently for the answer.

Step 4: Promise anonymity

If feedback sought is for something or someone else then assure your source that his or her identity will be kept hidden if he or she wishes to do that. And if the feedback is about you then tell the feedback source that his or her honest opinion will not tarnish your relationship. This is very important.

Conclusion

Do not lose heart if you do not get positive feedback from all quarters. No matter how smart your source is, he or she can still be short-sighted or wrong. Show confidence in your ability.

Always have a complete list of every client and contribution you’ve made in your career.  These come in handy so that you can have a comprehensive guide to tailor a resume to any given position.  If it’s a job writing about entertainment, you want to have your entertainment examples handy, and so on and so forth.  Always have a complete list for your reference, but limit what you put on the resume to the best examples of your work, as they relate to that job.

Practically everyone is going to ask for a brief summary of your writing experience, and usually about yourself personally.  This serves as a guide to your experience, as well as the sort of writer you are.  Usually you’ll end up writing a few paragraphs to satisfy both, and these will serve to give them a taste of your writing style.  So make sure they are concise, easily read, and reflective of the style in which you write.

Try to make the information about you as interesting as possible.  Think of an interesting professional story that you can tell, that defines your character and ability.  Then tell the story in a riveting way.  Something that keeps your target engaged in what you written.  You want them to be dying to talk to you more about the job, and certain that you’ll be a great fit.

E-Book writing

Writing a book is the ultimate dream of any writer, but not everyone can accomplish that goal despite having all the required ingredients. Well, I wandered off the topic. The point I wanted to make was this, there are lots of demand for niche market e-books, and lot many people are looking for ghost writers for their e-books. If you can meet the tight deadline and write 20-100 pages e-books then this market is waiting for you with its arm flung open.

Report writing

Reports are short documents written about a specific topic. A report is primarily a condensed output of the research or survey done by the report writer. Reports are objective and based on factual data only. It may or may not contain interpretation. For example: an online marketing report will have data about rise or fall of online marketing effectiveness, and a blogging report may contain the new advancements in the blogging world, etc.

Essay writing

Essay comes in various shapes and sizes. It could be persuasive, descriptive, argumentative, comparative, evaluative, or narrative. Most of them are academic in nature, and they follow a certain writing style as well as opening and closing statements. If you know how to write academic essays then you can earn a lot more than any other form of freelance writing. This is the best paying writing market. You need to know MLA and/or APA style of citation to succeed in this market.

Sales letter writing

An effective sales letter is often the difference between winning and losing the sales battle, online. If you know this fact, and if you posses the ability to write a good sales letter that converts well then you can ask for lifeblood as a fee for your services. An online marketer struggles for a good sales letter to promote his product. He will embrace you like his new-born first child.

Review writing

Writing a review is entirely different from other forms of writing. A review takes more time because you need to familiarize yourself with product before you can write an honest review about the same. You need to know features and attributes of the products and services, its competition, and history of its producer etc. There are many paid review works available online as well.

Good writing should be as concise and always to the point as possible.  When you write too much fluff your readers tend to shut off their brains, or worse, get bored and stop reading altogether.  You first edit should focus on how you can take what you’ve written, and formulate it into a shorter piece of work that tells the same story.  Nobody wants to read over inflated paragraphs or multiple sentences that make the same point.

After that, learn your strengths and weaknesses.  If you’re not very descriptive, make sure you spend extra editing time ensuring that your moments of description are fleshed out well enough.  You can’t be too vague, but you also don’t want to over describe to make up for your weakness.  Also learning the areas that you tend to need work on will allow you to target where you should go first when editing a piece.

Get as much feedback from third party sources as possible.  Get a friend to read what you’ve written, or a coworker, or even a family member.  Someone that will provide you with good honest criticism.  We all need honest criticism so that we can grow as people, and writing is no different.  In fact writing ability hinges on your ability to get effective criticism, and incorporate it into your style to become a better writer on the whole.

Finally, always give your piece a read through backwards.  This is especially helpful for noticing little grammatical errors, or punctuation mistakes.  By reading backwards your brain doesn’t concentrate on what the writing means, but just on the words and characters themselves.  This affords you the opportunity to avoid being engaged in what your writing says, instead focusing on how you’ve written each individual portion.

Sometimes, instinct gives a good indication about what topic will get warm welcome from the readers, and what will be ignored as if it never existed, but instinct cannot be a reliable guide, if you have to write daily or regularly for any magazine, newspaper, online magazine or blog. You need a more reliable system then the instinct has to offer.

Before working on developing any idea into an article or a blog post, you should check how it does on the following parameter:

Do you have something new to offer?

The chances are quite high that the topic you are going to write about has already been covered by the magazine or blog you are writing for. Even if they have not covered it, their competitors must have done that. Do you have anything new to say about the weight-loss program you are going to write about? Any new development or a new angle? Even a fresh point of view can offer the required newness.

Does your writing flow?

If you want people to read what you write, your articles and blog posts need to flow. No one likes bumpy rides. Your words and sentences should help them glide through the paragraph after paragraphs. Do not use jargons, and keep the structure as simple as the writing idea permits. Always remember, your readers have limited time, and in this time, he can either read your article or do other things like, watching television, listening music, or write on Facebook walls.

How will it connect with the reader?

This is the most crucial point. You have a groundbreaking idea, and your writing style makes you hell of a charmer, but still your visitors are not falling over each other to read your piece, why? May be because you have targeted a wrong market, and the readers here are too smart or too stupid for your kind of articles. People will read only if you step up or step down (depending upon where you are) to their level. Can the reader connect with your article?

What’s the use?

Imagine this: you have come home after a long tiring day at office, and you turned on your laptop to read something, or picked a magazine to browse through. Your eyes happen to find an article that has a nice juicy headline, interesting sub-headlines, and even the first few lines are written wonderfully. You couldn’t resist but read it till the end, but here comes the bomb. The article has nothing to offer but a nice flowing style of writing. It doesn’t add even a single word, sentence or idea to your repertoire of the existing knowledge. You feel wastes. Your reader will feel the same, so make sure you are writing because you have something valuable to offer.

Will it entertain?

The entertainment value of any article should not be underrated. People do not read your article just because they feel you are going to redeem them. They do not think that way, nor are they here to get enlightened, though they will not mind it, if the redemption and enlightenment is offered sugar-coated in entertainment. You do not need to preach to send the serious message across. Do not think readers are so blunt.

At first glance, CADIE and Gmail’s Autopilot Email program seem unbelievable!  Gmail says that you don’t have to spend all your time reading messages because  Gmail’s Autopilot will do all the work for you by matching your writing style.  If two Gmail accounts use the autopilot program then they can “converse with each other for up to three messages each.”  Before you continue reading this post, go check it out for yourself now by opening a new window and visiting Google’s Gmail.  Also check out the CADIE page to befriend the artificially intelligent being yourself.

I checked out the CADIE blogspot homepage, which seems like a cheap mock-up from the past with all of its flashy scrolling banners, and I asked myself, “Why a panda?”  The music is nice, but why does it say this at the top of the page:

All your personal World Wide Website belong to CADIE

Did Google get hacked?  It can’t possibly be!  I scrolled back to the Google page and effectively, there was the announcement for Gmail autopilot!  Google is either way ahead of the IT game or has poor security!  What do you think?  Or did Google get hijacked by a supercomputer it created?  Maybe we shouldn’t be questioning CADIE or Google!  Okay, okay, the truth (which dawned on me after a little while) is that Google has played one of the biggest April Fools jokes on the internet!  I didn’t want to spoil the joke by posting on it, so I tried to just pass the information on…  Were you fooled?  Would you want artificial intelligence to do the things Google said she could?  Is email with artificial intelligence just too much for now?  Leave a comment with your opinion…