One thing we constantly hear from employers is that most of the writers they hire lack hard content creation skills. While writers may be knowledgeable in their niche, getting content that is well-organized, attractively-formatted, fact-based, SEO-optimized, and highly engaging is often a swing-and-a-miss for employers.
Solution? Teach all writers, regardless of their niche, the hard skills they need to write content for today's readers.
In this course, we teach you how to write from soup to nuts.
This includes lessons on:
If you took the free course already, this course goes MUCH more in-depth on those topics, and so much more.
Freelance writing is not your typical 9 to 5 job. In fact, we think it’s one of the most unique career paths you can take. In this lesson, we define what a freelance writer is, and touch on the many (and often unexpected) niches they populate. When you're finished, you'll have a working understanding of the risks, rewards, and opportunities involved in this amazing profession!
Too many writers skip this step (and it shows in their work every time). Creating a solid outline is the bedrock to any piece of content worth reading. You cannot afford to skip it. So, we'll make it as easy as possible to include the outline in your workflow with our simple formula.
Nobody will read your work if they can't get past the title. Don't just slap a title on your article at the last minute so you can turn it in quickly. Titlecraft is a ninja skill that deserves your attention and thoughtful focus. So, how do you use the title to reel those readers in? What do you need to know about title scoring, or ranking in Google Search? We explain all that and more to help you become a master at writing titles.
The title may get the reader into the party, but they're only going to stay if they think they're in the right place. That's the point of your introduction. We can't stress enough how important those first 100 words are to whether a reader sticks around to read the rest of the article. We can give you some tips to write intros that reel in readers and keep them there. So that's what we do here.
Finding your voice as a writer isn't just a matter of sitting down and spilling your thoughts onto a screen. You definitely can try to do it that way, but it'll take a while to figure it out organically. Why not shortcut that process? We teach you a more thoughtful approach to developing a style that will help you clean up your prose and become a better writer no matter what your project is.
Readability is one of the most underrated skills a writer can develop. It affects reader engagement, time spent on an article, SEO, and more. What's more, a lot of writers think that their writing is more readable than it actually is. We teach you some tools for developing (and measuring) readability so you can get that smooth prose clients love.
Even if creative writing isn't part of your career path, knowing a thing or two about storytelling, metaphor, and imagery will improve almost any kind of writing you're hired to do. The ability to entertain with your work will be a huge asset when it comes to turning new clients into returning clients. We'll show you!
SEO might be the main reason you bought this course. Or, it's a topic you're hoping to avoid like the plague. Either way, this is an important lesson that does two important things.
Sometimes if a client's SEO strategy isn't working, they blame the writer.
Most of the time, it's actually not the writer's fault.
We'll empower you write good SEO content and educate clients about what you're actually responsible for.
Persuasive writing is an extremely useful skill when it comes to sales copy. But even if sales isn't in your career path, persuasive skills can come in handy for almost every other kind of writing you'll be hired to do. This lesson is all about getting into the minds of your fellow humans and using insights from psychology to increase engagement and keep readers riveted.
How can you tell what's true? Having a good answer to that question is extremely important if you want to last in this business. As a writer, you're a de facto gatekeeper of information. You need to use that power responsibly! This lesson is all about developing good habits that will help you parse good information from garbage as you do research the content you write. Get ready to become the annoying friend who constantly debunks fake news!
These days, writers are asked to do a lot more than the written word. Often, writers will be asked to provide images, or video clips, or work with other media to help make the format or presentation of a piece more attractive. This lesson explains how to use media, what "fair use" is all about, and how to embed things like video clips or tweets.