I’ve been thinking a lot about writing… about longer-form writing, in particular, recently.
You see, the thing about long-form written content is that there’s a demand for it.
People want to read beyond the 280 characters of twitter if it’s good quality.
Here are some examples:
- blogs
- mail lists
- articles in online publications like Medium.
Also, many academic programmes of study at all levels require you to write long-form content like essays and reports.
If this is your situation, then you have to write and while it doesn’t take much to rise above the very average competition, you need to know how to play the game.
(And it is a game)
But as well as the kind of writing you might have to do for high-school, college or university, the internet has made possible a myriad of other opportunities for writing.
Let’s get back to that for a few minutes.
There are lots of advantages when it comes to writing long-form
Long-form content, for example, such as with articles longer than 2000 words, rank higher in search engines like Google.
This means that you’ll get better search engine optimisation (SEO) if you can write posts or articles that are longer.
What’s more, blogs, especially those with long posts, are now a more accepted source of information and authority.
We can see this not just in the world of blogs but also in the proliferation of email newsletters and newer platforms such as Medium.
What that means for you is that if you can write long-form content you can position yourself as the expert and authority in your field.
But wait, there’s more.
People are more likely to share long-form content.
And yes, this is despite the length.
Or perhaps more accurately, because of the length.
And, if you want to leverage your writing for other purposes, such as to persuade or sell something, longer-form articles, posts and essays are more likely to do that than shorter ones.
But it’s not just about quantity.
You have to write good quality too.
And good quality, at the very least, means that you have:
- Thought about the content
- Done some planning
- Organised your ideas
- Written coherent sentences
- Linked your sentences together into coherent paragraphs
And, here is where it gets mysterious… your writing has to flow.
Whatever that means.
None of this is easy.
And it’s especially not easy if no one has ever shown you how to do it.
So, while short-form content like Twitter isn’t going anywhere, people are writing (and reading) more long-form content and essays.
These opportunities to write simply didn’t exist before and this brings me to my point:
- Writing, and learning to write, gives you superpowers.
It’s a fact, but you really need to experience this to know that it’s true.
If you have – or can develop – these writing superpowers you can use your gifts help create the ideal conditions for yourself and others where you can:
- Discover things that you didn’t know that you knew
- Learn new things more easily
- Think more clearly
- Influence people
- Make money
And that’s just scratching the surface.
If you can read, you can learn to write.
And it’s a great way to help make the shift from being a consumer (and mindless scroller) of other people’s writing, to being a producer.
You can become a writer.
