Professional Writing: Six Great Reasons to Hire a Writer
April 24, 2007
Most people can write. Some can even write well. But only a few individuals can write as quickly and persuasively as a professional writer. Effective communication requires a well-crafted message that is interesting to your audience. Anything less is a waste of your time and money.
Professional writers can develop a wide variety of documents including proposals, advertising and design copy, content for websites, sales letters, strategic plans, brochures, and newsletters. An organization looking for the best value should consider the following benefits of hiring a professional writer:
1. Save time: Your time is valuable. Effective writing and editing is labor intensive and can constrict your already-tight schedule. Hiring a professional writer allows you to focus on your many other priorities.
2. Meet your deadlines: Professional writers thrive on meeting deadlines. They can help your organization complete that pressing project on time.
3. Get your message across: Perhaps you are intending to sell a product, educate your audience, or improve staff morale. Your brochure, proposal, report, newsletter, or website should be effective and produce your desired results. Powerful and clear writing will work to inform, persuade, and motivate your reader to take action.
Making The Time To Write That Novel
April 23, 2007
Finding the time to write a novel is one of the major issues confronting writers, particularly those who haven’t been published yet. How does one justify to themselves, or to their loved ones, that they need time to write if they have demands on their time, like a job, or a house to be cleaned, a family to be fed, or shopping to do? They make the time.
To make time, one would have to sit down and plan it. If this is not done, then writing will become a haphazard event, dictated by a whim, or a passing urge, rather than a scheduled time. This often results in the book never really being finished. You do want to finish that book, don’t you? Below, I have my own suggestions as to how to make time.
Article Writing: How to Sound Like the Expert You Are
April 23, 2007
You, too, can become a recognized expert in your specialized field. How? By writing articles that get published on the internet! Millions of people are gobbling up internet articles right now. I’m one of them.
Other people’s articles interest me for two major reasons. 1. I’m a copywriter, so I use them as an information resource to write my own articles. 2. I market my writing services on the internet, so I’m always seeking out exciting new business relationships. Articles speak volumes about an author’s intelligence and integrity. If I like what you write, I may do business with you as well as pass your good name along to others who can use what you offer.
Some articles meet my criteria for being “expert-level,” and others don’t. Trust me, I’m not the only one out there who’s judging. Position your articles at the top of your category and increase your credibility a thousandfold! Read on for some helpful article-writing tips.
1. Use the active voice. Move your audience to action with action words. This means eliminating forms of the verb “to be” in all their wishy-washiness. Is, am, are, was, were: these sad excuses for verbs will weaken your message and put your audience right to sleep. Replace them wherever possible with action verbs, and make your message pop!
How to Have an Effective Writing Group
April 23, 2007
The works you’ve written are numerous, ranging from short stories to even the novel, hidden in a storage bin (under the bed) collecting dust. But there comes a time when you must wipe away that dust, regain your pride, and prepare your babies for publication! But, how do you get such a critical, unbiased eye to analyze your works, offering both praise and criticism?
It’s simple-start a writing group!
Creating a writing group is the easy part, but creating a functioning and beneficial writing group can be quite a task.
Writing groups are age-old sessions where writers obtain helpful evaluations for their works. Nowadays, though, writing groups seem to be a fad, and for many a status symbol reassuring them of their writerdom. Don’t create a writing group simply for the sake of saying, "I belong to a writing group". Create or join a group because of the numerous benefits that come along with them.
7 Ways You Can Make a Huge Impression With Your Ezine Welcome Message
April 22, 2007
Many times I receive a Welcome Message from someone after I subscribe to their ezine that leaves me wondering what I just jumped into. A welcome message is one of your first contacts with your subscriber, and it should say something that sets you apart from everyone else right at the get-go. It is, after all, one of your first impressions with prospective customers ? and first impressions absolutely do count on the internet. Not only is your welcome message a natural opportunity for you to connect with your subscribers, it’s also your chance to make sure they remember you with positive anticipation so that they will be eager to open up your next message when it arrives.
Here are my Top Seven tips for what goes into making a great Welcome Message (and some suggestions on what to avoid).
1. Be positive and upbeat. This communicates a winning attitude. So many of the welcome messages I have received were as dry and matter-of-fact as a stale piece of bread. Your welcome message should convey an element of excitement and passion about the topics covered in your ezine, as well as your eagerness to serve the needs of your subscribers. You should also give them a heads-up about who you are and what they can expect from you in the future.
How to Multiply Your Freelance Writing Work
April 22, 2007
You can turn your $200 fee to write a press release into $2,000 to carry out an entire PR campaign simply by convincing clients to invest in campaigns, instead of individual assignments. Campaigns achieve better results and cost less in the long-term for clients, compared to individual assignments. And, of course, as the freelancer, you get paid much more for turning out a succession of assignments that assimilate a successful campaign.
Here’s how to multiply your writing sales by convincing clients to invest in long-term campaigns, instead of short-term individual assignments.
? Know the short-term and long-term results. A client approaches you to write a brochure. He may or may not know that his product can also benefit from other types of promotional pieces, such as ads, direct mail, news releases, websites, and so on, to sell his product or service. Your job is to educate the client. The brochure may be the first promotional piece in a consortium of promotional pieces. Here, you must know the short-term and long-term view results of the brochure.
How To Write and Publish A Successful Ezine Article
April 22, 2007
The ezine article is of major importance to the world of Internet marketing. It is a great way of list owners to provide great content for free to there subscribers and an excellent my for internet marketers to get there name out there and get some exposure for there websites, free.
Tips for writing an ezine article:
1) Don’t blindly dive in and start writing, do some research and make sure all your information is correct.
2) Once you have thought of a title, write it in the certain of a blank sheet of paper. Then jot down your information in lines that radiate out from your title. This technique is called ‘Mind Mapping’ and it’s a very effective way of organizing your ideas.
3) To get ideas for you article look at previous articles in relation to your topic, crawl through the search engines and find as much information on the topic as possible as well as using your own person experience of course.
4) At the end of your article, attach a 5- or 6-line ‘Resource Box’ that includes your website URL and/or your email address.
Write a Letter, Make a Difference
April 21, 2007
Today I took the dog for a walk and realized that there is a letter that I must write. Near our house, we walk up a once paved road that is now mostly rock and mud. It runs behind several houses then up a hill and ends at some very high priced home sites that are, as yet, unbuilt. In the winter this is a beautiful trail lined with small waterfalls and lush green trees, in summer it is a trail overrun by wildflowers that the neighborhood children enjoy picking. This trail, used regularly by its neighbors, is in danger of disappearing. The developer of the homesites is petitioning the city to repave the trail and make it once again an automobile thoroughfare. This trail is a vital part of our neighborhood, and losing it to another street (that would benefit only the future homeowners of 5 homesites) would distress those who use it regularly to walk the dog, teach their children about nature, or to escape the concrete jungle for a moment of peace.
Choose Your Topic
10 Things You Should Expect From Your IT Copywriter
April 21, 2007
Anyone who’s ever tried marketing IT products or services knows that it’s a specialist field. Your customers in the IT industry have very unique and specific requirements, and that means you do too. In order to write compelling copy around your offering, you need a copywriter with a solid understanding of the IT world ? someone who’s not afraid to call themselves an "IT Copywriter".
So how do you know when you’ve found an IT copywriter? And ? more importantly ? how do you know what to expect from them? The following 10 tips will give you a good understanding of the qualities to look for ? the things that make a copywriter an IT copywriter.
1) IT background
Perhaps the most beneficial quality in an IT copywriter is a solid background of some sort in the IT industry. If your copywriter shares an understanding of your domain, you’ll spend far less time explaining the benefits of your product or service. Remember the last time you watched someone glaze over as you waxed lyrical about the wonders of your latest technology? You don’t want that to happen when you’re briefing your copywriter. More importantly, you don’t want that happening when your potential customers read your copy!
I Am Biodegradable - My Writing Is Not
April 21, 2007
My dad was wrong. I just discovered that I am good for nuthin’ after all. In fact I’ve been good for nuthin’ all along. I am 100% biodegradable and that means I can be recycled into nuthin’. It also means that no matter how much I waste, no matter how much I consume, no matter how much I pollute, in the end I am environment-friendly. Best of all, I now have an end use.
Now that’s something to put on my resume!
This comes as particularly good news to somebody who is not sure what his purpose is. Sometimes I write these humor columns, pretending to be funny. Sometimes people even laugh, and I worry that it might be the start of an ominous trend.
Sometimes I am selling my happiness book, pretending to be a successful author. With 2,000 copies of my book keeping the floor from floating upwards, perhaps I AM successful. Levitating floors are generally not considered signs of success in this part of the country.
Sometimes I am optimizing websites for search engine rankings. “What exactly does that mean?” I am often asked.
“Well…it means that I get my clients’ site high up in the searches.” Blank stare.








