The Problem with Creating Effective Writing

Anyone with a fourth-grade education thinks he can be a writer.

Writers aren’t like athletes, who have visible physical attributes that define their profession. We’re not like scientists who have a wall full of diplomas. We look like ordinary people, so it’s easy for an untrained and unproven writer to blend in.

If any literate person with a pencil and a notepad can sit down and write something, then what’s the value of a professional? It’s not our spelling or grammar. It’s our skill at rhetorical writing. It’s our imaginative use of words. It’s our ability to get to the heart of a message and verbalize it. It’s our uncanny knack for saying the right thing at the right time.

What Good Writing Does

Good writing, therefore, isn’t just spell-checked writing. Good writing serves a purpose. It answers questions, makes the complex understandable, and fills a need.

For example, let’s say you have a website to sell cars. If your home page shows photos of the cars you sell and lists the technical specifications, it has some value. You know potential customers can come to your site, do their research, and decide if one of your cars is right for them.

But if your home page instead highlighted the cars’ best features and told stories about what makes your cars so great, you may get those potential customers to invest time and emotion into your products. You may be able to persuade those website visitors that not only are your cars great, but your company or dealership is the best place to buy them.

Why Good Writing Matters

We’re advocates of good writing not just because we’re writers. We want to see the world a better place, and good writing — good communication — helps move it in that direction. The art of writing is the art of storytelling. The art of rhetorical writing is the art of shaping a story to a target audience.

You have a story to tell. You have a product or service to sell. The two merge in the message. Your website, your blog and your communications should all reflect your core story in understandable ways. Your business writing should reach out and attract, entice and tantalize. Good writing can accomplish this.

Not Tricks, But Techniques

Good writing can combine business and pleasure. In other words, if you’re blogging about your catering business, you can write about the new royal boy named George and tie it into your business, whether through a special, a new item, or just a pondering about what the parents eat. It’s a technique that can potentially find a wider audience than people looking for caterers. And it works.

Another technique is to explore your business. There is more to catering, for example, than meets the eye, especially if the eye belongs to your customers. They don’t know what goes into making those delicious cakes and pies show up on time and piping hot. That’s what your blog can do; that’s what a blog is for: educating your customers. And if you can entertain them along the way, you’ll make friends and loyal fans.

This is what we do at Ray Access: we help you make fans. We help you reach out to potential customers with good writing techniques and stories that explain your advantage and uniqueness. Anyone can pick up a pencil, but not everyone can manage good writing. That’s why there are pros like us.

Ray Access is a content marketing firm that delivers targeted words to empower your business. Contact us about your specific project to receive a quote or discuss your needs. We write website copy, blog posts, e-newsletters and more. Everything we do is thoroughly researched, professionally edited and guaranteed original.