How to Write Online
Write snappy prose., Break the silence loudly., Be funny., Tighten up your writing., Learn to use basic HTML., Learn about search engine optimization (SEO)., Give equal weight to the design and the style of the content., Stay on top of current...
Step-by-Step Guide
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Step 1: Write snappy prose.
Online prose is often highly-referential, witty, and relentlessly current.
If you want to put your content online and eventually get paid for it, it's a good idea to focus on developing your voice as a writer and in making your content as engaging and sharp as possible.
Work on your voice and writing voice-driven content.
Online content will vary depending on the venue, but will often have a strong first-person "I," with an emphasis on subjective "views" on subjects, rather than objective analyses.
The world of online writing is more niche-driven, and less broadcast, so we look for strong voices and unique personalities as readers. -
Step 2: Break the silence loudly.
The introduction and the titles to online content are some of the most important parts of the copy.
Since there's so much content online to click around, your writing needs to grab the reader in the first few lines, making it critical that you learn to break the silence quickly and effectively.
Your hooks should be severe.
All you need to do to see this in action is check your email and look for the headlines: "You've Been Eating Breakfast Wrong" and "Consider Switching Bank Accounts if Your Bank is Not on this List" are instantly attention-grabbing.
Even if you're completely happy with your bank and your corn flakes, there's a worm of doubt these writers have learned to grow in readers.
You can't not click. , Sites like Buzzfeed, The Onion, and Upworthy live or die by the funny content they provide.
While online content is often serious and often informative, you'll make your skills much more amenable to world of online content if you've got a great sense of humor. , For the most part, copy that you'll be writing for the internet needs to be short and to-the-point, usually in the neighborhood of 500-800 words per article.
It also needs to be written quickly and efficiently, producing a diversity of well-edited and clean copy with a quick turn-around time.
If you've got a tendency to ramble like Kerouac, writing online might be difficult to pull off unless you learn to cut the florid adjectives and get to the point. , If you're going to be writing online, it's important to get familiar with how to use basic HTML commands, of which most blogger templates and online publications will use some simple variation.
You don't need to know how to make your own website, but learning how to negotiate some simple commands will keep you one step ahead of the game when you eventually start adding your own content to blogs, journals, wikis, and other online venues. , Learning to write with an eye for attracting the most traffic to the website will be essential if you're going to work as a content creator online.
Web developers often live or die by the traffic that goes to the site.
If you want to keep your job, learn about SEO.
Most websites generate revenue from ad sales.
The way to get more money from advertisers is to prove that traffic to the site increases under certain conditions, so it's in the website's best interest to drive as much traffic from search engines to their website as possible by learning about search engines' algorithms and tailoring the content to the queries.
The higher the site ranks in search, the more money the site makes.
This is the basic principle of SEO. , Online content offers a wide variety of rhetorical design choices that aren't available in traditional print media.
The look of the writing and the design elements are equally-important to our experience and enjoyment of the writing, as what it actually says.
You can't link to a YouTube video in the middle of an essay for school, and you can't slip a .gif into your novel, unless that content appears online, so you've got a wide variety of tricks at your disposal.Pepper your writing with pictures and .gifs when appropriate.
Learning when to break up your prose with a well-timed or ironically placed picture or .gif is a great way of giving your readers another way of experiencing content.
This works especially well for injecting an ironic tone into your writing–if you're writing with subtle-mockery about how much you love your boss's wardrobe, and link in a picture of the boss from Office Space, we'll get the picture loud and clear.
Link out to other articles you’re referencing.
One unique element of online content is that, in an effort to stay as current and quick about producing it as possible, many writers won't summarize other articles or essays being references throughout, instead choosing to link to them in-text.
This gives the reader the option of clicking out to get the back-story, or continue reading the essay at hand, making the content interactive and complex., If you want to be an online content writer, it's important that you stay on top of culture, and aggressively.
You want to be the person who's already seen every viral video, already linked out to that New York Times article about Julian Assange, and commented in the comment stream 20 minutes after the content went online.
Bloggers and tech writers are at the forefront of culture updates.
Content needs to be updated as often as possible.
You don't want to be reviewing an out-of-date version of the iPhone that you just purchased, or write reviews of a record that's been out since 2004, unless you've got a particularly thrilling spin on it. , Before content goes online, it needs to be as polished as it would have been if it had been peer-edited, turned into a lit professor, and returned to your desk with a shimmering score.
Just because the content is online doesn't mean that you get to shirk the ability to follow the rules of copyediting and usage, or throw grammar and spelling out the window.
Use the elements of style you'd use with traditional print media, and hold yourself up to the same standard of quality.
You're not writing a Facebook update. , You might be a great sentence-writer, but that doesn't mean that you'll necessarily be the greatest online content creator.
If you want to write online, lots of work can be found at the entry level, especially if you're a talented copyeditor, content editor, and layout designer.
If your goal is to find employment first and foremost, try to find a complementary set of writing and editorial skills that will both diversify your portfolio of talents and make sure that you get paid.
Some good skills for the online writer, and things that you should devote a considerable amount of time to include:
Self-promotion and marketing Basic HTML and design work Networking Copyedit and proofread Read and write quickly , Unlike traditional publishing, online writing allows the content-creator to focus on very specific sub-cultures, niche groups, and unique readerships, rather than worrying about connecting with the most amount of a general audience as possible.
Thus, a site catering to vegan baking recipes, dodgeball, or traditional homemade banjo culture is a perfectly acceptable focus.
What do you know a lot about? What is your specialty? Terminal Boredom, a music blog and review site, caters specifically to super-obscure limited-run punk rock, metal, and lo-fi recordings.
The content is crude, the website looks like it was made in 1998, and the reviews are often savage if the music doesn't live up to the site's punk ethos.
And lots of people read it.
Video game culture is ripe for the picking with online content.
Many sites freelance out game reviews from intelligent and opinionated gamers with the right writing skills, making reviews an excellent way of getting your foot in the door.
DIY topics like up-cycling home repair, farm-to-table cooking, wild fermentation, and homesteading are popular topics in aspirational online communities, that cater to urban dweller's interest in traditional rural culture.
Literature, specifically alt-lit, is a niche market online with a large following.
Many sites like HTML Giant, the Rumpus, and others provide a venue for book reviews, interviews, and other types of resources for writers and readers alike of traditional and experimental fiction, contemporary poetry, and non-fiction writing. -
Step 3: Be funny.
-
Step 4: Tighten up your writing.
-
Step 5: Learn to use basic HTML.
-
Step 6: Learn about search engine optimization (SEO).
-
Step 7: Give equal weight to the design and the style of the content.
-
Step 8: Stay on top of current events.
-
Step 9: Polish your pieces.
-
Step 10: Diversify your skill set.
-
Step 11: Find a niche of readers that you connect with.
Detailed Guide
Online prose is often highly-referential, witty, and relentlessly current.
If you want to put your content online and eventually get paid for it, it's a good idea to focus on developing your voice as a writer and in making your content as engaging and sharp as possible.
Work on your voice and writing voice-driven content.
Online content will vary depending on the venue, but will often have a strong first-person "I," with an emphasis on subjective "views" on subjects, rather than objective analyses.
The world of online writing is more niche-driven, and less broadcast, so we look for strong voices and unique personalities as readers.
The introduction and the titles to online content are some of the most important parts of the copy.
Since there's so much content online to click around, your writing needs to grab the reader in the first few lines, making it critical that you learn to break the silence quickly and effectively.
Your hooks should be severe.
All you need to do to see this in action is check your email and look for the headlines: "You've Been Eating Breakfast Wrong" and "Consider Switching Bank Accounts if Your Bank is Not on this List" are instantly attention-grabbing.
Even if you're completely happy with your bank and your corn flakes, there's a worm of doubt these writers have learned to grow in readers.
You can't not click. , Sites like Buzzfeed, The Onion, and Upworthy live or die by the funny content they provide.
While online content is often serious and often informative, you'll make your skills much more amenable to world of online content if you've got a great sense of humor. , For the most part, copy that you'll be writing for the internet needs to be short and to-the-point, usually in the neighborhood of 500-800 words per article.
It also needs to be written quickly and efficiently, producing a diversity of well-edited and clean copy with a quick turn-around time.
If you've got a tendency to ramble like Kerouac, writing online might be difficult to pull off unless you learn to cut the florid adjectives and get to the point. , If you're going to be writing online, it's important to get familiar with how to use basic HTML commands, of which most blogger templates and online publications will use some simple variation.
You don't need to know how to make your own website, but learning how to negotiate some simple commands will keep you one step ahead of the game when you eventually start adding your own content to blogs, journals, wikis, and other online venues. , Learning to write with an eye for attracting the most traffic to the website will be essential if you're going to work as a content creator online.
Web developers often live or die by the traffic that goes to the site.
If you want to keep your job, learn about SEO.
Most websites generate revenue from ad sales.
The way to get more money from advertisers is to prove that traffic to the site increases under certain conditions, so it's in the website's best interest to drive as much traffic from search engines to their website as possible by learning about search engines' algorithms and tailoring the content to the queries.
The higher the site ranks in search, the more money the site makes.
This is the basic principle of SEO. , Online content offers a wide variety of rhetorical design choices that aren't available in traditional print media.
The look of the writing and the design elements are equally-important to our experience and enjoyment of the writing, as what it actually says.
You can't link to a YouTube video in the middle of an essay for school, and you can't slip a .gif into your novel, unless that content appears online, so you've got a wide variety of tricks at your disposal.Pepper your writing with pictures and .gifs when appropriate.
Learning when to break up your prose with a well-timed or ironically placed picture or .gif is a great way of giving your readers another way of experiencing content.
This works especially well for injecting an ironic tone into your writing–if you're writing with subtle-mockery about how much you love your boss's wardrobe, and link in a picture of the boss from Office Space, we'll get the picture loud and clear.
Link out to other articles you’re referencing.
One unique element of online content is that, in an effort to stay as current and quick about producing it as possible, many writers won't summarize other articles or essays being references throughout, instead choosing to link to them in-text.
This gives the reader the option of clicking out to get the back-story, or continue reading the essay at hand, making the content interactive and complex., If you want to be an online content writer, it's important that you stay on top of culture, and aggressively.
You want to be the person who's already seen every viral video, already linked out to that New York Times article about Julian Assange, and commented in the comment stream 20 minutes after the content went online.
Bloggers and tech writers are at the forefront of culture updates.
Content needs to be updated as often as possible.
You don't want to be reviewing an out-of-date version of the iPhone that you just purchased, or write reviews of a record that's been out since 2004, unless you've got a particularly thrilling spin on it. , Before content goes online, it needs to be as polished as it would have been if it had been peer-edited, turned into a lit professor, and returned to your desk with a shimmering score.
Just because the content is online doesn't mean that you get to shirk the ability to follow the rules of copyediting and usage, or throw grammar and spelling out the window.
Use the elements of style you'd use with traditional print media, and hold yourself up to the same standard of quality.
You're not writing a Facebook update. , You might be a great sentence-writer, but that doesn't mean that you'll necessarily be the greatest online content creator.
If you want to write online, lots of work can be found at the entry level, especially if you're a talented copyeditor, content editor, and layout designer.
If your goal is to find employment first and foremost, try to find a complementary set of writing and editorial skills that will both diversify your portfolio of talents and make sure that you get paid.
Some good skills for the online writer, and things that you should devote a considerable amount of time to include:
Self-promotion and marketing Basic HTML and design work Networking Copyedit and proofread Read and write quickly , Unlike traditional publishing, online writing allows the content-creator to focus on very specific sub-cultures, niche groups, and unique readerships, rather than worrying about connecting with the most amount of a general audience as possible.
Thus, a site catering to vegan baking recipes, dodgeball, or traditional homemade banjo culture is a perfectly acceptable focus.
What do you know a lot about? What is your specialty? Terminal Boredom, a music blog and review site, caters specifically to super-obscure limited-run punk rock, metal, and lo-fi recordings.
The content is crude, the website looks like it was made in 1998, and the reviews are often savage if the music doesn't live up to the site's punk ethos.
And lots of people read it.
Video game culture is ripe for the picking with online content.
Many sites freelance out game reviews from intelligent and opinionated gamers with the right writing skills, making reviews an excellent way of getting your foot in the door.
DIY topics like up-cycling home repair, farm-to-table cooking, wild fermentation, and homesteading are popular topics in aspirational online communities, that cater to urban dweller's interest in traditional rural culture.
Literature, specifically alt-lit, is a niche market online with a large following.
Many sites like HTML Giant, the Rumpus, and others provide a venue for book reviews, interviews, and other types of resources for writers and readers alike of traditional and experimental fiction, contemporary poetry, and non-fiction writing.
About the Author
Kayla Peterson
A passionate writer with expertise in practical skills topics. Loves sharing practical knowledge.
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