Business bloggers: just how good are your writing skills?
Most bloggers and those who run small businesses that publish blogs are not natural-born writers, or even trained writers. Most businesspeople studied things such as marketing, communication, or business.
It’s not often they’ve studied English or creative writing. Yet it’s becoming expected that businesses have a well-written blog, as well as expertly-written content on their website.
Some businesses can afford to hire professional writers to author their blog and/or website. This is great, if you can handle the expense. Many small businesses are not willing or able to pay a writer when first starting out. So how can you brush up on your writing skills in order to maintain a professional blog and website for your company?
There are lots of resources for business bloggers available in many different mediums. Here are some ideas:
- Books: Good old fashioned reading can definitely help you to review grammar and sentence structure rules. There are many good books out there on writing. A search on Amazon for “writing skill reference books” turns up many titles that are well-reviewed by customers. Most can also be purchased in an eBook format for reading on the go. You could certainly purchase one of these books and read it when you have a few free moments. Any effort you put into learning more about writing well will show in your material.
- Websites: There are many blogs and website that are dedicated to helping people improve their writing and grammar skills. The great thing about finding information online is that it is free and easily accessible. Just be careful, because there is nothing governing these sites, and there is no guarantee that the information that is being presented is one hundred percent accurate. If the site that purports to be teaching about spelling, grammar, and writing, make sure that those things are represented well on the site; i.e. look out for sites that say they will teach you to have better “grammer.”
(Note: James Chartrand and Men with Pens is a great resource for learning online writing skills, and they have a course starting shortly.) - Classes: If you have a bit of time to spare, taking a class in the basics of writing can improve your writing skills dramatically in a relatively short period of time. Writing classes are offered at community colleges, universities, online schools, trade schools, and Coursera. Coursera is a relatively new service that offers classes for free that are taught by instructors from major universities. The classes that they offer change constantly, so if they aren’t offering what you are looking for right now, keep checking back.
Brushing up on writing skills is a good idea for anyone in the business world, and particularly for those who incorporate writing into their business and website on a daily basis. Your readers will take you more seriously if your information is well-written. This can translate into sales and interest in your business!
About our Guest Author: Megan Totka is the Chief Editor for ChamberofCommerce.com. She specializes on the topic of small business tips and resources. ChamberofCommerce.com helps small businesses grow their business on the web and facilitates connectivity between local businesses and more than 7,000 Chambers of Commerce worldwide.
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