✨How to start writing online and get better at it.✨
A mega thread! 🧵
So, I recently took @dickiebush & @Nicolascole77's "How to start writing online" email course to improve my writing & content creation skills.
This thread consists of my notes and key takeaways.
Let's start! 🚀
✨Lesson 1: Legacy Writers vs Digital Writers✨
Two types of writers in today's world:
1️⃣ Legacy Writers.
2️⃣ Digital Writers.
1️⃣ Legacy Writers: those who think, to become a writer, they must live in a cabin in the woods, stare out the window and wait for inspiration to strike, and dedicate the next decade of their life to writing the next great piece.
2️⃣ Digital Writers: those who live in the age of the Internet, incorporate writing into their daily lives and publish frequently.
Difference b/w Legacy Writers and Digital Writers:
Legacy writers hide their work until it’s perfect, while digital writers allow the outside world to take a peek into their work & use all the outside help they can.
Instead of waiting until ‘the big moment’ (hitting the publish button), digital writers test their ideas, practice in public, and gather feedback as they go along.
✨Lesson 2: Mindset of a Prolific Writer✨
How many times have you come across a content writer and thought “wow, this guy def has some magical skills. I could never write so well.”
But if you study any of today’s most prominent creators, they all have one thing in common: they are less concerned with being perfect, and more focused on generating ideas that are “good enough”, consistently.
✨The Endless Idea Generator✨
The Endless Idea Generator is a simple framework that makes it easy to not only come up with new ideas but also to understand which format might work best for that idea.
Image Credit: @ship30for30
✨Here’s how that works:✨
Step 1: Figure out what you want to write about.
Take a topic and challenge yourself to pick a direction:
🔹Actionable (here’s how)
🔹Analytical (here are the numbers)
🔹Aspirational (yes, you can)
🔹Anthropological (here’s why)
Before choosing a direction, you’ll force yourself to decide what sort of journey you want to take the reader on and where you want them to end up ultimately.
Step 2: Figure out which proven approach is going to work best for that topic.
🔹Is this a “how-to” article? Then organize your article in steps (step 1, step 2, etc…)
🔹Is this a “lessons learned while doing X” Twitter thread? then it should be organized in lessons.
The key here is to structure your piece in such a way that all the main points & subheadings follow the same pattern.
Step 3: What credibility can you leverage to establish trust?
Why should the reader trust you?
Mistake many writers make is thinking they need to be an expert in order to write about a subject.
You don’t need to be a subject matter expert.
All you need is to tell readers why you're writing about what you’re writing, & why they should consider your perspective.
3 ways to do this:
1️⃣ Tell the reader why you are the expert.
2️⃣ Tell the reader who the real expert is, & how you curated their advice in this piece.
3️⃣ Tell the reader you aren’t the expert but are just sharing something from personal experience.
The only difference between prolific creators and everyone else is before they write even a single word, they’ve already figured out which format or framework they wanna use.
✨Lesson 3: Biggest fears Writers face✨
Maybe you’ve decided to start writing online but aren’t sure which of your ideas are good enough.
or maybe you have a couple of drafts sitting in Notion, but you’re too hesitant to publish them.
Well, you’re not alone.
Many beginner writers face these 5 overarching problems:
1️⃣ Distraction: the easiest way to postpone doing the thing that needs to be done.
Solution: Start seeing the distractions in your life as a potential material to write about.
2️⃣ Procrastination: “I’ll start tomorrow”.
Solution: Start today and write, even for just 5 mins.
3️⃣ Perfectionism: “It’s not ready yet!”
Perfect is an unreasonable milestone. Aiming for “perfect” will only slow you down.
Solution: Publish today! Who cares if you publish something that doesn’t get a lot of traction. The more you publish, the more you’ll learn.
4️⃣ Over-editing: We all love over-editing, switching out adjectives, debating, “should I say ‘amazing’ or ‘astounding’?”
Solution: You shouldn’t worry about editing at all when starting out. Just focus on getting your ideas out into the world.
Once you get a sense of what ideas your readers find intriguing, then start refining your writing.
5️⃣ Finding time to write: Most writers think they don’t have enough time. Well, here’s the thing: you don’t find time, you make time.
Solution: Block out some time from your calendar and use it strictly for writing, even for just 30 mins a day.
✨Lesson 4: Benefits of Writing Online✨
5 biggest benefits that come from writing consistently:
1️⃣ If you can build a daily writing habit, you can build any habit.
Writing is much more than an act of assembling your thoughts, putting them down & hitting “Publish”.
It’s a commitment to continuing to work on yourself, clarifying the way you see the world, and building the confidence to take a stance on what you believe.
2️⃣ The more you write, the more ideas you generate.
Before you start to write, you think, “I only have so much to say”.
After you commit to writing, you’ll think, “I have too much I want to say!”
3️⃣ Writing online is scaling yourself.
How many times have you repeated the same thing, told the same story over & over? When you write and publish online, what you’re doing is taking all those stories and insights, and scaling them.
Instead of repeating the same story over and over again manually, you can publish it and anyone who reads it now knows about it.
4️⃣ Instead of you chasing opportunities, opportunities will chase you.
When you write and publish online, people reach out to you and it unlocks a new path for opportunities that you were completely unaware of.
5️⃣ Getting connected with people you never had access to.
Once you start writing online, you're immediately perceived differently by your peers. You’ve transformed from being a consumer to being a creator.
And creators love spending time & connecting with other creators.
✨Lesson 5: Don't start a blog!✨
Back in the early days of Internet,the only way to publish online was to either build a blog or write on someone else’s blog.
But things are different now. Now, starting your writing journey on a blog is the biggest mistake you could make.
Here’s why:
Blogs have one major flaw: it has no distribution flywheel. How are people going to find your little blog?
Unless you already have an email list, the only way to draw audience to your blog is to build an audience elsewhere & then say, “hey! check out my blog!”
That’s why you are so much better off starting your writing journey on social platforms like Twitter, Quora, Medium, etc.
Now you’ll say “well, what if I have 0 followers on social platforms?”
The way these platforms work has a lot less to do with your follower count and a lot more to do with how many people the platform thinks will be interested in your content.
Beat the Algorithm!
It is once you have built a decent audience, you start working on your blog.
But for now, let's just stick to the bird app.
✨Lesson 6: How to make writing effortless✨
Do you know how a ~600-word article gets written? 250 words at a time.
Do you know how a long-form blog post gets written? 250 words at a time.
One of the greatest secrets to writing is that great writing doesn’t happen all at once. Great writing happens piece by piece, day by day. And great writers don’t write “more” than other writers, but rather “more often”.
Writing 250 words per day is challenging, but doable.
Lesson 7: Power of a Writing Community
Writing alone is hard. It takes significant amount of hardwork & discipline to show up, sit down & write 250 words per day, every day.
It takes even more self-discipline to write & publish things you aren’t sure about on the Internet.
It feels vulnerable.
So, how do you overcome these obstacles? By joining supportive digital communities of fellow writers.
All prolific creators join communities to:
🔹Make friends & share their work.
🔹Gather feedback & get better.
🔹Share best practices and growth tips.
🔹Collaborate.
There’s always more to learn, and you learn faster and go further when you’re surrounded by a supportive community.
Also, please consider subscribing to my blog & get content like this delivered right into your inbox. ⬇️
cryptoshuriken.com/#/portal/
Akshay
@cryptoshuriken
Social Media Manager @Impact3Growth / Helping crypto brands & KOLs go viral / Memecoin degen