The Importance Of Developing Good Writing Skills - Make Or Break

bysahalliwell

244 followers

Updated 5 years ago

If there is one thing that I have learned over the course of my life, it's the importance of developing good writing skills. Whether it was while I was working as a writing tutor in college or writing my own papers, songs, and now web content, I've found that how you write is almost as important as what you write!

There are a couple of things to remember before getting to why developing good writing skills is important.

1. Not Everyone Is A Natural - But Everyone Can Learn

Working as a writing tutor, I saw both sides of the writing coin. There were students who came in needing only a final check of spelling and grammar or a final look-over of their paper's flow. Others who came had trouble putting together coherent sentences. It certainly ran the gamut!

There were several students who when they first came in, were having a great deal of trouble writing. As they kept coming back for help, I saw firsthand how feedback and critique was leading to fewer mistakes, clearer ideas, and greater flow in their work! In the end, they were coming in just for reassurance, not that they really needed anything fixed.

Even if you are completely new to writing or have had a bad experience with it in school, you can still learn to write effectively for your website! It will take some effort and practice, but it is nowhere near impossible.

The most important thing is being willing to learn and put yourself out there for feedback. This was one of the lessons I learned while doing my undergraduate studies.

2. Putting Yourself Out There = Forced Growth

In college, I took two creative writing courses. I had always loved reading stories, and had just recently become interested in writing fiction and poetry, so I decided to check it out. I can now point to it as one of the most influential decisions I made as far as my writing growth is concerned.

The class was set up in a round table format. Not only did we have to write a lot (forcing yourself to write when you aren't exactly inspired is a really great exercise!), but then we had to present our writings, live, in front of our classmates to be critiqued, sometimes praised, but often torn apart.

It was a big step for me as I had always been shy and reluctant to share my writings. However, through the process of getting feedback and critique, it showed me what worked and what didn't. It helped me to hone my craft until I was able to confidently present my work at a college writing showcase!

How does this apply to your website? Well, it is a certainty that you will be doing a bunch of writing. Wealthy Affiliate has a really helpful tool called Site Feedback where you can reach out to the community and ask for a critical analysis of your content, specifically.

The members here are more than willing to help out and give incredibly useful and growth-oriented feedback that will help you improve your writing. I highly suggest using it as you create your content.

I know it may be uncomfortable at first. These are your thoughts after all and having them exposed to critique and suggestion can be difficult. However, from my own experience, I know of no better way to improve the flow and clarity of your writing. Give it a shot and see if it produces results!

Now let's look at the two main reasons I can think of for increasing your writing skills:

Reason #1 For Developing Your Writing: Authority

Perhaps the most important reason for developing your writing skills is showing you have authority on the subject. Informal language, rambling sentences, presenting ideas in a confusing manner, along with poor spelling and grammar, can hurt how much people will be willing to invest trust in what you have to say.

However, if you can write in a way that is conversational, organized, clear, and looks squared away, that automatically brings you more credibility in the mind of your readers. It's also one of the reasons I personally choose not to curse in any of my articles. I just feel it steps too far over the fine line between conversational and informal. Your opinion may vary. You have to know your audience!

Reason #2 For Developing Your Writing: Help Your Rank

This can be a direct consequence of reason #1. If your content is lacking authority, then your traffic might suffer. If your traffic suffers, it will be nearly impossible to be trusted and ranked by Google. When that happens, success will be hard to come by and isn't success the reason why we signed up to try Wealthy Affiliate in the first place?

It becomes clear at this point that developing your writing skills can make or break your website. Therefore, it behooves us to give ourselves the best chance possible. To do that, we must constantly be willing to learn about growing our writing ability in addition to the other skills it takes to build a successful website.

Your Turn

Taking steps to improve your writing and show yourself to be an authority in your field can directly affect your success, whether online or off. Therein lies the importance of developing good writing skills. In order to do so, I absolutely suggest getting into the habit of asking for objective feedback from others, as well as doing some homework of your own. This can lead to incredible results.

I hope this article has been helpful and encouraging to both the experienced writer and the rookie. There is always hope and room to improve! Please feel free to share your own experiences with writing. How did you learn to improve? Do you think it's as important as I make it seem?

Additionally, as this is an article about good writing, please feel free to point out any and all spelling and grammar mistakes and rip apart the content to keep me honest and humble. :)

Hope all is well and keep on typing!