Writing lessons I learned as a content writer at a tech company

If you didn't know, I work as a content writer for a medium-sized tech company. I’ve been working there for 3 months now as of writing.

It blows my mind that I've learned more about writing in 3 months compared to my 3-year English degree.

But it could also be because my degree focuses on professional communication instead of writing.

And that got me thinking: if you're after a writing career, getting an English degree that doesn't focus on writing is just a waste of time.

Instead, being an unpaid content writer/copywriter intern or accepting peanut salary for the sake of learning is way better.

Anyway, this writing lessons series has 4 parts. I’ll send each part on Friday at 9 AM Malaysia time. So, this series will take 4 weeks to complete.

Part 1: Article writing

Part 2: Cold email

Part 3: Sending survey question

Part 4: Improving landing page copy

Article writing

1. Ditch the business speak

If you’re a content writer for your company, you literally have a writer’s bio where your face is there. But why do you still write inhumanly and completely devoid of personality?

You should write like how you talk. You need to show personality and have a voice of your own because people buy from people.

Boys like Nike because of Cristiano Ronaldo and Neymar. Men buy Sauvage because of Johnny Depp. Women buy SKIMS because of Kim Kardashian.

Not that I want to say you have that kind of a big influence, but human touch is important. That’s why businesses hire celebrities or influencers. They want to humanize their brands.

Whenever you write, imagine you’re talking to a potential customer. Do you talk to them in real life like this?

Or like this?

Don’t think your work will get ignored because you write in plain English. John Caples, one of the greatest admen, said

2. Short introduction

I've noticed that many writers tend to start with lengthy introductions. It's not wrong, but shorter intros are better. They are straight to the point and most importantly, save your readers’ time.

Those long introductions are usually just you “clearing your throat.” Once you've done that, take some time to analyze and you can actually see that most of what you just wrote are fillers, and deleting them will make it more effective in hooking readers.

Here are two intro examples. One long, one short.

This long introduction is like the Turkish ice cream man. Each end of a paragraph feels like you've finally got your ice cream but only to get bamboozled. Then the start of the next paragraph pulls you back into the man’s trick, making you wait more.

But in this short one, you immediately get what you want. No games. No tricks. No Turkish ice cream man.

That’s it for the first part.

If you find this helpful, do something good today and share this with your marketing friends so they can avoid these silly mistakes.

See ya next week!