I was playing around with Wordle.net last night, and of course the first thought that came into my head was to put my own site into Wordle to get a visual representation of the kind of stuff that I write about. While I maintain my own list of tags on my site, it’s always interesting to get a better tag-size/importance correlation. Not to mention Wordle’s pretty colours.

Not many surprises there really, but apparently I use the word ‘things’ a lot. Who knew. Click on the image below for a bigger version.

One of the most common things that is missing from people’s writing when they are writing content is that they forget to tell a story.

Of course I don’t just mean telling any story. If the story you are telling is about what you ate today and the types of things you like to do, you are not differentiating yourself from the crowd.

Not only do you need to tell a story, but you need to tell an engaging story that your readers will be interested in.

One more important point: don’t create unnecessary flourishes in your writing or you’ll end up drowning in them. Keep it simple and just write what you mean.

Try out the four tips below in your next piece of writing.

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I’ve gotten a few tips on writing from articles I’ve read on the subject.

The operative word here is a few. Most articles give you grammar tips or tell you about writing in the active voice to engage your reader — useful tips for sure, but they don’t tell you much about the actual process of writing well.

This article is not a list of ideas you should write about either — it’s more of a listing of reasons why you already know what you need to know to write effectively.

What you already know may sometimes surprise you.

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