The first draft of a blog or social media post, or an email to your subscribers, is only the start of the story. Reviewing, editing and refining your work helps you express yourself, show your expertise and connect with your ideal customers.
If you’re reading your writing and wondering what needs to change, here are my tips to help you get started.
Read your work
This tip might seem a bit obvious. Reading your work is an easy way to spot the typos that a spell checker or grammar-checking tool misses, but there’s more to it than that. I’d always recommend reading your work out loud if you can. I know it isn’t always practical if you share an office with someone who needs quiet, or if you’ve got the kids hanging around. Of course, if you have people around who are happy to listen as you read, it can be a great way to get feedback. Questions, confused expressions or lightbulb moments can all help you understand what’s working.
The benefit of reading aloud is that you’re less likely to skip over something that looks vaguely right. Your eye might skip over something familiar, but reading every word means you don’t miss anything. It also helps you consider whether it sounds like something you’d say. If you’ve written a sentence that sounds clunky and wrong when you speak, you can swap it for something else so your readers feel as if they’re hearing your voice.
Does it pass the so what test?
After the read-through, go through your work again and ask yourself why your reader will care about the things you’ve written. I love sharing a behind-the-scenes anecdote, but I’ll only do it if it helps you understand the point I’m trying to make. Read as if you’re a customer who needs something from you and ask yourself why each sentence or paragraph matters. If your customers would say, “So what? That doesn’t help me,” it’s a sign something needs cutting.
Applying the ‘so what’ test is a good way to cut anything irrelevant or reduce sections that might have got a bit flabby or overly wordy. It’s also one of my favourites as I occasionally ramble or go off on a tangent that has nothing to do with the original plan. That’ll fail the ‘so what’ test for readers who found you because they wanted an answer to a specific question, and you’ve suddenly started talking about something completely different. I sometimes find myself cutting something I like from a blog post because it doesn’t fit the theme. I usually save it somewhere because it might make a good social media post or even inspire a new topic.
A few common symptoms
There are a few symptoms you can spot that help you improve your writing and tell a better story. The way you structure your posts helps you hold your reader’s attention. A few years ago, my husband went on an open water swimming camp. He’s a bit of a regular (that’s a whole other story), and a swimming magazine invited him to write an article about his experience. When he asked me to edit his work, I found he’d buried a brilliant hook in the middle of the article because he’d written it chronologically. I moved the bit where a fellow swimmer swore at the guides to the beginning, and suddenly we had a dramatic opening.
You might find you’ve taken a similar approach. You’ve asked a vital question halfway through or written a great ending that would work better at the beginning. Sometimes, when you start writing, it can take a while to warm up, so your introduction sounds apologetic or pedestrian.
Ask yourself whether you’ve highlighted the important points or if all your sentences are the same length. Varying your writing makes it more interesting.
Who are you talking to?
You might have one ideal customer or a few different ones, depending on the service or product you’re offering. When you read each post, ask yourself who it’s for and whether you’ve written something that’s relevant to them. There’s more than one way to go astray here. You might have written something generic that tries to speak to everyone and ends up missing the mark with everyone. It’s also worth considering whether you’ve made assumptions about your audience that aren't accurate. If you’re basing your comments on experience, say so. If you’re guessing, you risk being patronising or losing people because they don’t feel seen.
Sometimes, checking to see if you’re talking to the right people means trusting a gut feeling that something might be off.
Starting with a plan and some structure often helps you get better results from your editing. If you’ve run through all of these and still think there’s something missing, let’s have a chat.
Ready for a chat?
If you want human, trustworthy content that helps your customers find you online, my content writing packages give you monthly content built around your business. We’ll have regular chats so I can get to know your business, and I'll take the rest off your plate.
Book a 30-minute call or email me to talk it through.
Not ready for a call yet? Sign up for my mailing list, and I'll send you 50 free marketing topic ideas with tips for structuring posts yourself.
