What can we say except: If you think your writing can be improved (and who doesn’t?) this one’s for you:
by Belle Beth Cooper
In the past six months that I’ve been aContent Crafter at Buffer, I’ve beenwriting a lot. I’ve also been trying to write regularly on my own blog and for my startup, Exist. That’s a lot of writing.
During this time, I’ve also been experimenting with small changes in my workflow, my writing process and the types of content I produce. The result has been an improvement in my writing and a better understanding of how I work best. Hopefully you’ll find some of these things helpful in improving your own writing.
1. Exposing it to different people for feedback
Feedback is hugely important for my writing. If I don’t spend long on a piece, I often overlook small typos or grammatical issues. I don’t craft my words quite as carefully as I could, and I tend to repeat myself a bit. Having someone read over my writing can highlight these issues and help me to clean up my work.On the other hand, if I spend a long time on a piece, it can be just as bad. It’s easy to become lost in a piece after a while, and have trouble stepping back and seeing it objectively. It’s also hard to forget all of the extra context I have in my head by that point, and read it as a reader, who has little or no context about the topic.
Again, having someone else read my work really helps at this point. If nothing else, it gives me a break to refresh my mind before I come back for more editing. Usually, though, I find my work improves from other people’s suggestions.
2. Experimenting with new formats and structures
We have a pretty good idea of what works best for us on the Buffer blog, but it’s always interesting to experiment with new content types as well.Here’s a list of the different types of formats I’ve experimented with over the past few months: