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Jan 22, 2008
After a long time!
This is genuinely ironic; in October I wrote about what should be the frequency of your blog posts and then I didn’t post for almost 3 months. I was planning to write but this blog on a daily basis; so much for sticking to the blog writing schedule. There is no particular reason, and in fact I wasn’t even writing content much. For more than two months I didn’t take up new assignments and it is only in January that I have again started accepting new content writing projects.
It’s not that I didn’t do any work. I started rejecting new assignments because I had lots of work — both PHP programming and content writing. I have a few permanent clients for both kinds of works. But I think this is temporary because gradually I would prefer to write just content. I’m going to revamp my website (actually it is already revamped; I just don’t promote enough) by writing lots of targeted content for it.
Another irony is that I am writing constantly for my clients so that their websites rank higher due to their optimized content and I don’t do that for my own website. My website does fair well for some keywords (for example, for “content writer” my website appears somewhere around the first spot on Google) but there are scores of other keywords and expressions for which I get very little traffic and this means a lukewarm response.
As a content writer am not very happy these days with the way I’m writing. I need to brush up both my reading and writing because it seems my writing is losing its edge; it is losing its soul. My strength is not the impeccability of the language, although I’m not saying that there are many mistakes in my writing; my strength is the way I write and many clients hire me for the way I write. Recently I lost a project because the client thought my work was not up to the mark and it was no way near to the quality of samples I had sent him or near to the quality of content I have on my own website. When I showed the work to my wife she agreed with the client: the “Amrit” factor was conspicuously missing in the writing.
I need to bring that factor back and I know that I can only bring it back if I start writing again on various other topics instead of just sticking to corporate web content. This means writing articles and analytical essays for newspapers and magazines, the way I used to do until a few years ago. This stimulates the mind, inculcates the research habit and makes the writing muscles flexible and strong.
Let me know what you think regarding content writing an online copywriting; should a content writer stick to writing content for websites and develop his or her writing skill vertically or he or she should write for the conventional media too for the purpose of acquiring broader writing experience?
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Posted by Amrit | Tags: Content Writing, Online Copywriting
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January 23rd, 2008 at 10:53 am
“a content writer should write for the conventional media too for the purpose of acquiring broader writing experience”
I enjoy reading your posts because they force me to venture beyond my world into broader fields of info & knowledge. I know my independent reading (of real books & periodicals) has suffered in the 12 years I’ve been online. It began slowly but in the last 5 years, I’m ashamed to admit I’ve read less than 9 non-business related books.
That will change as I’m now taking my children to the library once a week & last week I checked out a fiction book!
By the way, I’m keeping pretty close to the one-post-a-day you told me to do. And it works.
January 24th, 2008 at 10:13 pm
Personally I prefer just writing on one topic. As long as it’s a large topic, I can normally find something of interest, and often a lot of other subjects can be related.
Have you ever considered outsourcing some content creation? It would help with the blog frequency and could be an interesting experiment to try out.
You wouldn’t have to write so much then- you would just be coming up with subjects, writing procedures, and then editing content.
It sounds like it wouldn’t work, but James Brausch, one of my favorite marketing bloggers, does this, and I usually can’t tell if he is posting or someone else is.
Something to consider, even if you just try it and then decide not to use the content…
January 25th, 2008 at 10:42 am
Thanks for dropping by and it is great to see you posting here. I’m glad you’re able to post everyday on your blog: something that I always advise but never follow for my own blog. Maybe someday.
There was a time when I used to write for the local newspapers and magazines. Financially it wasn’t a great activity and I am sure I would have never been able to survive had I just been doing that (unless I had made myself famous and hence charged for my name and not for my writing
January 25th, 2008 at 10:48 am
I agree with you that writing should not be a chore but I think some or the other time it does become a chore when you are writing to earn money on a day-to-day basis and that to from a sort of writing that doesn’t give you literary stimulation — if that’s what you are looking for.