Have you ever thought about finding quick ways to improve your writing skills as an entrepreneur?
Business owners tend to feel an immense amount of pressure to be able to do it all and do it all well. Writing for your business is one skill you must nail to feel successful.
However, we also understand that even the most high-achieving entrepreneurs can feel burnt out, against a wall, and just plain ol’ uninspired when writing for their business.
For some, it’s been a while since you’ve sat in a classroom fine-tuning your creative writing brain. And for others, writing anything is your worst nightmare – even with all of the coffee in the world to keep you going (we’ve been there, too).
But we’re not here to gatekeep the best ways to improve your writing skills as an entrepreneur, which is why we’ve created the list below.
Why Every Entrepreneur Should Improve Their Writing Skills
As an entrepreneur, you have many many many hats on your head. Writing is one of those hats that will continue to serve you over and over again.
Similar to accounting, you need to know how to do it. Whether you should do it – that’s an entirely different question.
But when it comes to your words, you need to have the skill sharpened. When you know how to communicate effectively through the written word, you are able to:
- Close sales on the deals you actually want
- Attract the right types of clients
- Secure financing through traditional loans or investment
- Motivate your team, vendors, and clients
- Limit the back and forth in email because you got your point across clearly
The limits are endless when you know how to write well.
How To Improve Your Writing Skills
Yes, writing is a skill. This means you need to practice every now and then to avoid making mistakes while getting your message across clearly. Here are 15 ways to improve your writing skills as an entrepreneur.
1. Create A Daily Practice To Write
Again, writing is a skill much like swimming or cooking. You can excel at it, but it takes time and practice.
To clarify, you don’t need to sign up for another college course or set aside hours of your day. You can polish your general writing skills in as little as 15 minutes a day using quick writing quizzes from free sources like the Academic English Cafe.
If you’re looking for less structure, pick a fun prompt you can use to write a short story for yourself. Set the clock and write as much as possible in 15 minutes, then stop. Plug your story into software like Grammarly to check for spelling and grammar and see how to improve your style.
No extra time on your hands? We’re here to help. Let’s talk about what you want out of copywriting for your business.
2. Diversify Writing Styles
Go back to choosing a fun prompt. This time, take only a few minutes to write using 3 different styles. You can alter anything you want to make it sound…
- Extra professional
- Positive and lighthearted
- Extremely emotional
- Sales focused
- Exciting
- Straight forward
When you’re done, take a look at all 3 and read them aloud to yourself to get a better idea of which styles you excel at and which could use a bit more work. Believe us when we say there’s a big difference between writing styles depending on your voice and tone.
3. Time Yourself
There are 2 solid ways you can practice timing your writing in 15 minutes or less:
- Answer an industry-based FAQ you definitely know everything about
- Discuss an industry-related hot topic you wish you knew more about
The first will allow you to see how much and how well you can get your point across in those 15 minutes. The second will give you a short chance to research and write what you know with the same previous goal in mind.
Reread both finished prompts and try to pinpoint places where you could improve.
4. Select Your Favorite Passage Or Page To Copy
Have you ever read something that you truly admired?
Whether you were looking at another company’s website or e-blast, you can emulate a similar style in your own writing without being a complete copycat. Here’s how to do just that using a landing page like this one:
- Find a landing page you admire
- Break down the page line by line into clear sections like…
- Headlines
- Subheadings
- Body copy
- Call-to-actions (CTA buttons)
- Final statement or header
- Write about your own business following a similar style
Once you feel like you’re going in a good direction, take a step back, and admire your hard work.
Thinking about adding engaging landing pages for your business but don’t know where to start? We’ve got you covered!
5. Record Yourself, Then Transcribe
Let’s say you’ve been chosen to give a speech on a popular topic in your industry. Keep the speech under 5 minutes and simply speak on the topic while recording yourself.
As soon as you’re done, start transcribing what you’ve said. Chances are, you’ll notice right away the number of times you say things you would NEVER write. This includes words like…um, err, uh, like, and anything else that isn’t truly a full thought (Hint: Don’t include those). From there, you can write down everything else you’ve said and edit it to make it more concise and digestible to read.
Psst! If you do this, you can create a blog or social media post for yourself.
6. Edit Someone Else’s Writing
One of the best ways to hone your writing skills is to edit other people’s writing. This allows you to get used to various styles and personalities to see what fits where best. Don’t know where to look? Start with editing friends’ or family members’ social media posts or emails they’ve sent (just don’t be so quick to point out their errors ????).
If you’re comfortable, ask someone to write something for you to edit it for them. You never know, it might spark up some pretty interesting conversations about writing choices and preferences.
7. Let Someone Else Edit Your Writing
Whether you pick a friend, colleague, spouse, or whomever, this practice will require you to be open to criticism. Choose something you’ve written before or something you haven’t yet published. Pass it on and be patient. Allow your editor time to read, edit, and offer other feedback if necessary.
It’s important to be open here because making mistakes doesn’t need to feel like the end of the world. Try to see it as a learning experience so you don’t make the same mistakes moving forward.
8. Don’t Be Afraid To Travel Back To The Basics
Let’s talk about timing yourself to gauge your typing speed. Most people consider this the number of words you type per minute (WPM). You can use a free tool online like this one from LiveChat to see where you stand on the writing race track. This is a good tool to use every now and again to get a quick measure of your WPM and the number of errors made. Continue practicing until you reach a new higher WPM with zero errors.
9. Try Benefits > Features
Every business owner knows which cool, innovative, or unique features they offer. But knowing the difference between a feature and a benefit is even more important.
For example, if you run a dental clinic, described features usually look like:
- Customer Parking Lot
- Open Late On Tuesdays
- Fast Service
- Kids Dental
But here’s what they could look like when turned into true benefits to really entice your customers or potential customers:
- No-Stress, Free Parking In Nearby Lot
- No PTO Needed With Late Tuesday Appointments Available
- Wait Time Is Always 10 Minutes Or Less
- Quality Dental Services For Kids Ages 4+
So, what about your business? Write down your offered features and turn them into big benefits your audience can’t wait to learn more about.
10. Be Your Own Headline Hero
Take 10 minutes to jot down as many headline options you can think of for your business. Good, bad, and ugly – write them all down! Don’t overthink it or focus too hard on perfecting each one. This is a fantastic exercise to do when you feel uninspired, unfocused, or everything in between. Have fun with it! Use puns, wordplay (personal favorites), bold statements, and questions to spark your creativity.
11. Practice Punctuation.
We like to have fun here…But honestly, practice using the correct punctuation throughout your writing. You can use a simple spell-check tool to see if you got it right or to explore other options. For example, if you’ve never truly been strict about using the Oxford comma, give it a shot and see how it fits with your writing style. In addition to improving accuracy, practicing punctuation is also a good way to explore different writing styles.
12. Dear Diary Journal
You’re a working professional and entrepreneur, so we can go ahead and call it journaling now ????.
Make journaling a short practice that you do every day or even once a week using an actual notebook (just smell those fresh pages) or your laptop, phone, or tablet. You don’t need a prompt to journal. You don’t even have to think about anything in particular to start writing! Simply write what you feel for a few minutes before you start work.
Do you have night owl energy?
Journal late at night before going to bed and reread your thoughts in the morning!
13. Access A Writing Course
There are so many professional-quality writing courses for businesses available online. You just need to find the one that aligns with your goals. Courses like these don’t need to take up too much of your time and should be easy to follow. Courses like these also offer the most benefits as they allow you to chip away at their entirety on your own time. When you’re finished, you have a wealth of new knowledge you can use throughout all of your writing assets moving forward.
Join ours here: Launch Your Website Copy Academy
14. Explore Other Words
If you’ve done any of the above before, you can probably pick out words you might be overusing or repeating often. Put those words in a list and expand each one with 2 to 5 new words you can use in their place. Some commonly used words you should consider switching up include:
- Great
- Amazing
- Different
- Utilize
- New
- Hard
- Change
- Important
Do you use these words too often in your writing? Add some flair when necessary to spice it up for your readers.
15. Sleep On It
Seriously!
Once you’ve written something, taking a little break from it before hitting publish is okay. Give yourself the time to walk away from your writing and return to it with fresh eyes. You might find that you have a better way of saying what you’re trying to say when looking at it a second time.
No Time To Practice? Leave The Pen To The Pros!
Writing can feel overwhelming, and not everyone is comfortable writing for their business. But we are.
Contact FocusCopy for a hearty cup of copy for your business goals.
