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Writing advice: what to do when you’re stuck

By Patrick Gant

ideas that pop with passion icon[Updated] Anyone can be a writer, it’s true. But sometimes—whether you’re writing for the web, crafting an article, a direct marketing piece or a book—you’re going to get stuck and it can seem as if no amount of rewriting is going to fix your copy.

Don’t wait for that sinking feeling to set in.

Here’s the first thing you must do.

Keep writing.

Don’t give in to that feeling that says you need to walk away.

Giving in is easy. It’s what many people do.

There are cases where you need to shift gears for a bit (and I’ll come back to that). But unless you keep working at your craft and your ideas, you’re going to lose any momentum you started with.

There’s an even bigger danger.

Unless you’re in the deadlines business like I am, there is also a good chance that if you put that writing project away, you might not come back to it. Ever.

Stop with the Point-A-to-Point-B thinking. Be more abstract.

Ideas and the business of writing them down is not a linear practice. In fact, it’s rare to be struck by a fully formed thought that’s ready to share. That’s just the low-hanging fruit, my friends. The rest takes time to ripen. And often it’s going to take you in directions that may surprise you as much as your reader.

Here are a few methods I use when I get stuck. You can use any of these, too.

The tangential method

Find a good quote about the subject you are writing about. Don’t just slap that quote into your copy.

The writer’s first devotion is curiosity and you feed it by asking questions.

Who is the speaker behind the quote? Are there any articles posted online about this person? Book reviews?

How might what they have to say about one thing relate to another thing in an entirely unexpected way?

A few minutes of satisfied curiosity can provide you with an entirely new angle on what you’re writing about.

Here’s a secret: it’s one of my most reliable ways of coming up with new topics for my newsletter.

The switching gears method

I said earlier that you have to keep on writing when you’re stuck. But that doesn’t mean you have to keep bashing your head against the wall and wishing for a different result. Some ideas need to simmer. In the meantime, write something else.

Creativity is a weird visitor (click to tweet). It often walks into your house, puts its feet up on the sofa, grabs pen and paper and tells you it’s working on something. Let it do its job. Just don’t let it switch on the TV.

Switching gears means that you might not be working on the thing you started on in the first place, but you’re still producing.

Practice and discipline. These are your best teachers.

The backstory method

This one applies to fiction writing. Having trouble making a character believable? Invent a backstory and write it down. Need help asking the right questions? Go to one of those free online dating sites and look at the questions they ask of people when creating a dating profile. Fill it in. The answers you’re being asked are meant to help other people decide if you’re likeable and compatible. This is a good resource if you’re stumped.

With a fact-filled backstory (okay, made up facts, but I’m sure you get where I’m going with this), you have new ways to approach your subject and write convincingly. After all, you totally know this guy now.

The undoing method

Some ideas are just not ready for primetime. Some are just crappy ideas. A good way to test yours is to turn them inside out. Play devil’s advocate. Write a short piece arguing the opposing point of view.

One of my business lines is speechwriting. I sometimes use this method when I’m finding the copy isn’t as persuasive as I need it to be.

Undo your arguments.

You’ll quickly reveal the cut line that separates the facts you know are true from the rest of the points that you simply feel are true.

Three things to know about how people read today

By Patrick Gant

iconmonstr-glasses-4-icon-256Audiences today have high expectations about what they choose to read. And that’s especially true online.

As more and more marketing shifts to digital formats, readers’ tastes are changing.

Here are three important trends that can help you be a better writer, to stay connected with your audience and to have them coming back for more.

Be reader friendly: use narrower columns

Susan Weinschenk illustrates in her report on reader behaviour that while research shows people can read faster when you use wide columns (more than 100 characters per line), people respond more favourably to narrower columns (betwen 45 and 100 characters per line).

It’s no accident that The Economist and The Guardian–two publishers who have been highly successful at switching to online content–continue to opt for this narrower column style for their online version (particularly for tablets). People come back more often to what they enjoy best.

Bullets go bad quickly

If you have to use bullets at all, use them sparingly: never more than in a group of five. They’re designed to draw the eye to something very selective. Use them too often and it will look like work to your readers.

People read more when it’s enjoyable. They bolt when it starts to feel like a task.

Rethink the fold
When it comes to posting things for others to see–and even though much of that today increasingly is digital–we’re still prone to think in newspaper terms. Thus the expression: put your most important content above the fold. It’s not wrong, but don’t be too rigid about what it means.
Digital content doesn’t have a fold quite the way that a newspaper does. It cuts in different places depending on screen size, particularly on mobile devices–and that’s where traffic is really growing. That’s why scrolling and gesture-based scanning have come to be integral to the reading experience online. Research heatmap activities on your site. Look where people click more often. The results can be surprising.

Cool fact about the @ symbol and where ideas come from

By Patrick Gant

atsymbolTraditionally used as a symbol in commerce to denote unit pricing, email inventor Ray Tomlinson adopted the @ sign as a simpler way to distinguish between user and host.

Soon after, Internet pioneer Jon Postel saw the genius in this, remarking: “Now that’s a nice hack!” And the idea caught on.

More often than not, good ideas are borrowed ones: made better by how you apply them.

Declining online traffic? Stop blaming SEO

By Patrick Gant

Photo for Stop blaming SEO: Everybody looking for something, by Mimmo Pellicola

Photo by Mimmo Pellicola on 500px

There has been plenty of talk lately about important changes that Google has been making to how it ranks websites. Those changes involve Google’s closely guarded algorithm, which is the magic juice behind how its search engine produces accurate results.

As I have been covering in greater detail in my newsletter, the most recent of these updates is code-named Penguin. It’s designed to give more weight to good quality content and down-rank the stuff that isn’t.

Penguin has also made a few people unhappy. [Read more…]

Q&A What is SEO copywriting and why does it matter?

By Patrick Gant

[Updated]
SEO writing for the web: question mark imageSearch-engine optimized (SEO) copywriting is the combination of two practices: SEO writing and copywriting. Let’s look at what each of these is all about. Next, we’ll talk about what happens when you combine them.

About SEO writing

First, SEO writing is the practice of choosing a select group of keywords or phrases and placing them in strategic spots on your website for the purpose of gaining a higher ranking in search-engine results.

On its own, good SEO is mainly about keeping robot search-engine crawlers happy.

You do that by making it easy for them to determine what your website is about and whether your content matches the keywords that people might use to get there. Bad SEO doesn’t just doom you to a poor ranking. It’s also an invitation to bad karma.

There’s an entire industry out there devoted exclusively to showing businesses how to make better use of SEO and organic keyword selection. I’m not about to compete with those pros, so I’ll keep this section brief.

As someone who works both as a copywriter and who crafts writing for the web, I’ll say this: SEO is important for every business. You need to learn more about it. But remember: it’s also only one part of the solution to obtaining and maintaining an audience of readers online.

About copywriting

Copywriting is the act of writing text that is used for the purposes of selling a product, service or idea.

Good copywriting converts readers into buyers. Lousy copywriting doesn’t.

Search-engine optimized (SEO) copywriting fuses these two practices into one. But be forewarned if you’re shopping for writing help: not all copywriters are good at SEO writing.

When it’s done well, it draws on good SEO practices that keep the robots happy. And it draws on good copywriting skills and time-honoured principles creating captivating content that keep humans happy.

What does SEO copywriting and happiness have to do with it?

Happy robots help give you a good ranking on Google, Bing, Yahoo and DuckDuckGo. Happy humans are going to be more open to what you have to say and are more likely to tell others, too.

These outcomes are a foundation. On this, you can build a loyal audience online and positions you to convert traffic into sales. That’s not to say this is easy to do. But like most things in life, getting the fundamentals right first is a very good determinant of your success.

“It don’t mean a thing if it ‘aint got that SEO swing”

As Brian Clark of Copyblogger points out in his excellent book, How to create compelling content that ranks well in search engines, “” compared with most Internet traffic, searchers are the most motivated people who hit a website. This is important.”

Great content can’t win an audience if the audience can’t find it. And a website found via searching isn’t going to be all that helpful—or visited ever again—if the content isn’t any good.

So it’s worth taking the time to learn more about how SEO copywriting works and to learn the difference between creating engaging content that people can easily find versus hacked-together keyword stuffing.

Here are some resources that I highly recommend for additional reading:

The 5 Essential Elements of Search Engine Keyword Research

SEO Moz Search Ranking Factors

Everything Marketers Need to Know About Google’s Panda Updates

The future of SEO

Infographic / Why Content for SEO?

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