I had no clue about the power of writing in a business context, only until I started building a product myself. Whoever has done it, knows it: building a successful business has a lot to do with writing.
Even those that say they’ve never done it, they have, they just outsource it. When building a business, we write not just to our users, but also to our investors, partners, beta testers, etc. We are creating marketing pages, pitches, product descriptions, and campaigns. Knowing how to describe what you offer, has a lot to do with how you position your product or service. Ask anyone that has built a product (regardless if it’s successful or not), what is the most difficult part of the product-building process. Many will say “writing the copy for the marketing page”.
Your writing skills can lift up, or bury your business. If you cannot write a short, concise, and clear description of what you’re offering, users will run away. They don’t have the time to read paragraphs of empty phrases without reading about the value they are after.
Want to learn how to sell? Learn how to write first.
Cold Outreach 🔗
It is one of the most effective marketing strategies. And those that know how to do it, can pay their bills just by selling what they know. And what they know is how to write an efficient cold email (or message).
In 2018 I was still working as an Android developer. One day I received a cold message on LinkedIn. I do not have it anymore, unfortunately, but it was something like this:
Hi Aleksandar, this is Mufasa, from Lion King… the darkness you see in front of you is dangerous. Do not go there, that is the land of the iOS Developers. Do you want to stay in the light? Then consider my offer…
And below was the offer.
I replied and I explained the cringe I felt when I read that message. Turned out, that the person that sent it was happy to hear my feedback. Actually, they had doubts about it from the beginning, so they asked: “What would you like to see?”. I said: “The essence. Who are you, what are you offering to me, what do I get from it? And make it shorter". Of course, this is not the actual correspondence, but you get the point.
I didn’t know anything about cold outreach, but I gave that person a different perspective. I was their customer after all. A few months later, they messaged me again, saying thanks. As they explained, they managed to find a few more developers since they changed the format of their cold message.
The point of this short anecdote is that some people make their living by connecting to others by cold outreach. Their mistakes are not to be ridiculed. Cold messaging is difficult because it’s efficient. Sometimes they need our support.
If you want more conversations starting, learn how to write a cold message.
Communicating with clients 🔗
Similar to cold outreach, communicating with clients has a lot to do with your preparedness to explain efficiently what you are trying to sell. I know, this sounds like a 1980s movie, but to your surprise, this way of selling still happens.
As a matter of fact, it does not have to be about selling, but about buying too. Imagine a buyer has a lot of options and difficulty deciding whom to sell. Your preparedness can make you look outstanding.
Writing helps achieve that preparedness before you show up. Write it, then say it.
The same applies to communicating with potential investors when you pitch your product.
Improving websites visibility 🔗
When you are working on establishing a better promotion for your product or service, in the see of marketing opportunities, there is one technique to optimize your website so that it’s easily found by search engines, like Google. It’s called SEO and it means Search Engine Optimization. If you do not optimize, then those that are looking for a solution to a problem, will not find you.
And every SEO expert will agree, that writing as a skill is fundamental when it comes to proper SEO. Writing content in particular. How experts in the field usually do it is by tracking keywords and long-tail keywords (longer search phrases), to the content they’ll write. For example, if they find that people are Googling “how to make softer crepes", then they can take this long tail keyword and write an article about it on their blog. Then Google might show that article to the users that are looking for how to make softer crepes, and take them to their website.
Visibility is everything.
Conclusion 🔗
Of course, these are not the only ways in which writing supports your business. The emphasis is on the magnitude of writing. An article written a few years ago, that has a large number of monthly impressions on Google, has better marketing potential than a poorly set up, yet expensive, ads campaign.
When it comes to business, writing is not a skill to neglect. You either learn how to do it or outsource it.
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