3 Writing Tips to Help You Cut Through the Noise

It’s a jungle out there.

New content from all of your favorite organizations is pumped out faster than you can refresh your Twitter feed and close out all the tabs on your browser. In order to get your content noticed, you may find yourself going to new lengths—paying to promote your posts on social media, investing in video equipment and production or hiring an army of content writers.

However, you don’t need to empty the coffers to get your content noticed. Here are three free, easy-to-follow tips that can help you cut through the noise out there.

Write: Pretty

An important part of cutting through the noise is to just make sure you aren’t part of the noise. If you are putting something out there, make sure it is high-quality. Spend the extra time necessary to put the article through the proper editing process so it is up to your standards.

When you are writing, make sure you have a voice and keep it consistent from post to post. Are you writing to be informative? To entertain? Both? Find a voice and then stick with it. Another key to solid writing is being concise. It is easy to go on and on about topics that you care about, but the reader’s time is important and should be respected. Otherwise you fall into the TL;DR trap.

Write: Relevant

It helps to plan ahead and schedule your posts so they have a theme or fit with whatever is going on in the world. Take some extra time to think about what you want to write about. It might help to outline your points before you sit down to actually do your writing.

What is your specialty? Is it whatever you find interesting today? Or do you have a plan to keep up on current events and topics? You should also know what is going on in everyday life. Know what major events are happening, both for cultural celebrations and issues nonprofits face – like the year-end campaign.

Write: Value

It’s easy to sit back, put some shiny words together and call it great. However, you need to know what your audience cares about in order to write about it. Do some research into the existing content on your site and figure out why your best articles perform the best. Is it because of the topic, style or way you presented the information? You should try to mimic the successful formula to get more attention coming your way. Although, be warned that if you overuse some of those tricks, the magic might wear off.

And if all those tips fail, you can always insert this button into your articles to entertain and delight your readers for hours and hours. 

Eric-Burger

Lincoln Arneal

Lincoln Arneal was a Senior Editor at Nonprofit Hub who brought loads of real-world nonprofit experience to the team. He was the past executive director of a nonprofit that provided leadership development to junior high and high school students. He looked to bring the insights from his time forming, developing, and running a nonprofit to help others in their quest to do good. Lincoln also had a legal background and had written for various newspapers (covering high school sports) for the past 15 years. He could be followed on Twitter at @NPLNK.

March 19, 2015

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