Best Tips for Digital Writing

Best Tips for Digital Writing

Digital writing covers the written word when it appears online. More precisely, we could say that digital writing is for sales, marketing, or retail purposes. Whether you know it or not, articles are the frontline in selling goods or making money through other, more complex, digital marketing strategies.

In other molds, digital writing can stretch to journalistic or entertainment niches, but for the most part, the previous paragraph holds. Academic essay writers can often be slightly puzzled by the intricacies of digital writing; wrangling phrases that don’t make proper sense into sentences is one such task they have to contend with if they are to succeed.

As it stands, though, digital writing is a code that is ripe for cracking. The following tips will make writing for digital media more manageable and successful.

1. Get the proper tools

Digital writing tools extend beyond spell checkers and grammar checkers, although we will return to those in a moment. Understanding the relationship between language and monetization is crucial. Keyword research is sometimes allocated to a specialist, though some writers may find they have to develop the words themselves.

Various tools exist which track the popularity of keywords and phrases, also known as long-tail keywords. SurferSEO, KWFinder, and Google’s Keyword Planner are just several of many.

In terms of grammar, Grammarly is now the industry standard for checking your writing is top-notch. They’ve made leaps and bounds in the field of language processing and are approaching a point where they will rewrite sentences for you, not just point out mistakes. Hold on for the GPT-3 version.

Free trials of Grammarly don’t offer this feature, but still, it packs a lot in. The service can be used as an add-on for most browsers and will work within Google Docs too.

Person using laptop on desk

2. Learn the basics of digital style

Counter to the previous section, a basis in grammar is still necessary. While you don’t need to go into full linguistics mode, as enjoyable as it can be, a tip for writing well in digital media is to study the rhythm and rhyme of existing content. Study the best and worst ways to phrase calls to action and what the no-nos are regarding politically correct and audience-appropriate language.

Checking these aspects of your writing is essential as the posted text will be ranked and marked by Google (other search engines do this too, but Google is dominant). Content that is a bit risque will suffer in the algorithm, and your work won’t get featured.

3. Master the caption

Twitter was the first social media to limit the number of words, characters even, that a user could write; digital writing often means writing in short form. Instagram caption, advertising headlines, there is a particular skill to this art. Writing tips for beginners tend to overlook the importance of social media, where brevity is again the soul of wit.

Person using laptop on white table

4. Use freelancers

If you’re a business owner, potential or actual, reading this article, the notion of doing the content-creation yourself might not be the best use of your time. Thankfully the internet has opened up a world of talented freelancers who specialize in content creation. It’s time-saving and ultimately money-growing to join a platform like Upwork or Fiverr and say to someone, write my essay, then maybe do the editing yourself.

If you’re a writer, then understanding the SEO involved might be something you wish to outsource. It depends on your relationship to the task at hand.

5. Don’t waffle

Cookery websites are the worst offender in this category. A recipe for nachos becomes a venue for a novel-length diktat on the vagrancies of some utter banality. The purpose of this prose is to cram in keywords and please the algorithm; they are essentially selling their terrible stories and memories to Google to rank higher.

With that in mind, you might think that pleasing Google is OK and you should waffle on. Do not do this; algorithms change and are fickle. If you want to promote useful content, do it with a sense of brevity and respect for your customers and readers. The audience is changing, and younger generations won’t stand for authors taking liberties. It just looks crummy. Don’t start this practice, and stop it now if you are doing it.

6. Stay healthy

Digital writing is a desk job. Sitting at a desk puts you in the ‘sedentary’ category of workers. The damaging effects of prolonged sitting are becoming more well-known. Do yourself a favor and make sure your working environment is conducive to good posture.

Standing desks are one alternative; they do have a hefty price tag at the moment, so if you want to try before you buy, find a substitute: a large cardboard box, some free-standing shelves, and see what you have to hand at home. Standing for a few hours more a day will reap dividends in the years to come.

For those unable to stand for whatever reason, placing something under feet and ensuring the desk is at the correct height is also effective.

Hopefully, the tips in this article will spur on your digital writing career or provide illumination of some of the dark corners. Remember that your digital writing is a skill that evolves through further education and improves upon over time.

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