7 Writing Mistakes Non-Writers Make When Trying to Build Influence Online

7 Writing Mistakes Non-Writers Make When Trying to Build Influence Online

And that truth is rarely more important than when you're trying to build online influence. To your readers, passive voice feels like trudging through mud. Keep the actor at the beginning of the sentence whenever you can and your readers will thank you for it. Today's online world, however, demands something much different. Generally speaking, though, avoid bad grammar. Transitioning thoughts too quickly Sloppy transitions make writing difficult to read. And if those thoughts don't clearly transition from one to another, then readers will struggle to understand the point you're trying to make. Depending on clichés In On Writing Wonderfully: The Craft of Creative Fiction Writing, author Pawan Mishra says, "Clichés are the viruses that infect your writing with diseases." It takes very little time to think of a cliché (because it's a cliché) and they often spit themselves onto the page without the writer even noticing. Unfortunately, those clichés will make you seem uninteresting and incapable of coming up with your own comparisons.

How to Make Your Content Work Harder: Seven Fatty Phrases to Avoid in Your Writing
Invisible Content Syndrome and the Content Promotion Tactics to Cure It
Our Top 10 Content Marketing Posts of 2018

Writing might not be your strong suit, but there’s no reason to repeatedly make these kinds of mistakes.

7 Writing Mistakes Non-Writers Make When Trying to Build Influence Online

Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.

In her book Everybody Writes: Your Go-To Guide to Creating Ridiculously Good Content, Ann Handley, chief content oficer of MarketingProfs, wrote, “In an online world, our online words are our emissaries; they tell the world who we are.”

And that truth is rarely more important than when you’re trying to build online influence. The words you use when posting on social media, writing a blog post, sending an email or offering advice will either increase or decrease your authority.

Sadly, these seven common mistakes from “non-writer” wannabe influencers hurt online authority. Avoid them at all costs.

1. Using passive voice when it’s unnecessary

English speakers follow sentences best with an actor-action-object cadence. Passive voice, though, removes the actor from the sentence altogether. “The boy threw the ball” is active voice, while “The ball was thrown” is passive.

To your readers, passive voice feels like trudging through mud. It’s difficult and uninteresting.

Active voice, on the other hand, feels like slipping down a slide — they couldn’t stop if they wanted to. And this principle doesn’t just apply to fiction writing, it applies to your online writing. Keep the actor at the beginning of the sentence whenever you can and your readers will thank you for it.

Here’s how former University of Kansas journalism professor John Bremmer put it in Words on Words: A Dictionary for Writers and Others Who Care About Words: “Active voice is [the] vigorous voice, unashamed to say whodunit. Passive voice is preferred by the weak, the cowardly, ashamed to name the fink who told them what they are evasively telling you.”

2. Using too little white space

In grade school, you probably learned to write using long paragraphs of text (four to five sentences) with small indents between each.

Today’s online world,…

COMMENTS

WORDPRESS: 0
DISQUS: 0