You’ve written a blog post that will help your ideal customer find you and understand how you can help them. You have a great, eye-catching headline, subheadings to keep everything organised, and a call to action that makes it easy for readers to take the next step. All you need to do is add a great picture and hit publish. Right? Well, maybe not.
Here’s why your first draft is only the first step.
There’s more to it than writing
I write fast, so when I first started doing it for a living, I thought I only had to budget enough time for the first draft. I’m laughing at myself and feeling slightly nauseous in equal measure. The reality is that creating marketing that matches your personality and brand and writing in a way that connects with your audience takes a bit longer.
You might write something you think is great, but it’s not as polished as it could be. There’s also a fine line between scrappy content and something that’s so heavily edited your readers will think you used AI. Taking time to re-read and edit your work helps you find the right balance.
Good editing is invisible
Have you ever watched a TV show where it’s so obvious someone is acting that you can’t concentrate on the story? Good editing is like good acting, because you don’t notice it. Someone can see your logo and branding, or a beautifully designed website and appreciate the work that’s gone into it. Editing your writing is the opposite. It sits somewhere between shabby and showy, so people feel the effects without noticing the technique.
If you write your own content, you probably looked for advice on how to write, but you might not have done the same for editing. You might be able to tell the difference between a well-written, edited post and a first draft, but not understand why.
Proofreading and editing aren’t the same thing
Proofreading and using spelling and grammar checkers can give you a more readable post. You might read something through and notice a few errors, especially if you meant to use a different word. Using tools can be helpful. My spelling is pretty reliable, but I also use a grammar checker to make sure I’ve got my tenses in the right place and to catch me if a typo completely changes the meaning of a sentence.
That said, grammar checkers have one major flaw, which is that they can suck all the personality out of your writing. If you’ve written something the way you’d say it and your readers can understand what you mean, strict grammar rules matter less. They also can’t tell you whether a piece of writing will do its job. Editing goes beyond grammar to help you make your content more effective.
Perspective matters
When you’ve just written a piece of content, you know exactly what you meant to say. You might read it back and feel that it makes complete sense. The trouble is, you’re too close to it. You wrote the words yourself from inside your business, with all your knowledge. If you come back to it a few days later, you might notice some issues. You included a sentence that was obviously relevant to a point you wanted to make, but now you can’t remember what it was. A friend reads it and tells you there was a section they didn’t understand.
I have conversations with clients that include questions their clients might ask so I can explain things more clearly. One of the great things about sending work off for checking is that the feedback forms part of the editing process. There might be something they’ve forgotten to tell me, or a point that I’ve misunderstood. Getting different eyes on your work helps you get different perspectives to make sure it’s accurate and clear.
How long does editing take?
You might be reading this thinking that writing your blog and social media posts takes long enough as it is. How long do you need to spend on editing? It’s a tricky question to answer because it varies. I’ll often spend as long on editing as I did on writing the first draft. The grammar-checking tool I use also suggests ways to rephrase sentences. They aren’t always that good, but it helps when I’ve been too wordy. Sometimes, I’ll write the first draft in a stream-of-consciousness flash, then spend twice as long on editing it because it all came out in a blur.
If you work with a writer, checking a post and suggesting amendments takes a lot less time than writing and editing it yourself.
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