Real Words

This is a guest post by Alexis Bonari. Learn more about her by checking out the bio at the bottom of the post.

The online community moves fast. In order to capture the fickle attention spans of mouse-clicking generations, we online freelance writers must be on top of trends across the board. No one outside of niche blogs wants to read anything by a stilted writer who sounds like she’s from 2010.

Trendy writers come up with and reuse popular words or phrases like foodie, quick fix, and green. Everyone does it—and that’s fine—but I’m going to let my inner mom come out for a second to illustrate a point: If everyone was jumping off a bridge, would you?

Admittedly, inserting the word vacay isn’t going to bring down your writing career (probably). This might be a good time, however, to remember a few basic do’s and don’ts of freelance writing.

Use latecomers sparingly

The English language morphs to suit modern purposes. Although Shakespeare’s work wasn’t looked upon kindly by the contemporary upper classes, the now-acclaimed playwright added 1,700 words to the English language, including bedroom, dishearten, and majestic. Shakespeare’s experience demonstrates that some trends catch on for a reason.

If you know what you’re doing and the audience you’re writing for, go ahead and use gorgie or fab. If, however, you’re using trendy words simply because you’ve seen them before and you haven’t checked up its etymology, you may want to pass. Many media-generated words are redundant and classless, but because no one bothers to say so, they catch on. More importantly, they can suck the creativity from your own key-stroking fingers. Stop mimicking the cool kids and use your own words.

Don’t be afraid to pick up a dictionary

Since I often write about eco-friendly (there it is again) topics and skincare, I come across this one frequently: skincare regime orregiment.

Regime, regimen, and regiment have for some reason been lumped into one vague but militaristic definition. Many writers think the three words are interchangeable.

Typos and misunderstandings may be to blame, but let’s make it clear: a regime is a form of government, a regimen is a procedure or system, and a regiment is a military unit of ground troops.

Avoid redundancy

Are you going to send a few manuscripts out later this week? What are your future plans? Are you in the process of deciding whether or not to go to the party this weekend?

Of course you’re sending the assignments later this week. Your sentence is already referring to the future (as in, you’re going to send the manuscripts), so it has to be later. Future plans? A plan is already for the future. And why not nix the excess baggage and simply say, “Are you deciding whether to go to the party this weekend?”

If you look at good poetry, you’ll see that much is conveyed in as few words as possible. That’s a good principle in freelance writing, too, especially if you’re constricted by a word or letter count.

Take, for example, the word reiterate, which I heard on PBS the other day. Sticklers for the English language know that iterate suits the purpose just fine, sans two letters. Because we hear these words and phrases all the time, however, they’re surprisingly difficult to expunge from our vernacular.

Bio: Alexis Bonari is currently a resident blogger at College Scholarships, where recently she’s been researching art scholarships as well as business scholarships. Whenever this WAHM gets some free time she enjoys doing yoga, cooking with the freshest organic in-season fare, and practicing the art of coupon clipping.

If you’re a blogger whose page is suffering from low readership, repetitive posts, or a general lack of innovation, chances are that it also lacks collaborative strategies. Some bloggers may be hesitant to even explore the idea of collaboration, foreseeing a loss of readership if they point out a better blog. However, experience shows the opposite: readers enjoy being introduced to new bloggers, so they’ll keep coming back for more.

There are many ways to start adding more collaborative writing and sharing to your blog, and most of them are painless – maybe even fun. The following are some of the strategies of successful blogs that can be translated to your writing for increased readership and rave reviews.

Set Collaborative Readership Goals

Communicate with other bloggers about your collaborative writing and let them hold you accountable for reaching a specific readership goal. When you know that someone expects something of you, it’s easier to actually do it.

A group of personal finance bloggers, inspired by a single challenge posted on Financial Samurai, agreed to increase their Alexa readership ratings within six months. Some aimed to join the ranks of the top 200,000; others challenged themselves to reach the top 50,000. But all 49 personal finance bloggers who answered the challenge observed significant increases in readership due to the collaborative nature of the goals they had set for themselves. One blog even managed to increase its rating from #1,432,262 to #215,606.

How did they manage this?

1.     They started right away without procrastinating. They didn’t make excuses about needing to think it over or question the feasibility of the task. They just joined up.

2.     They tracked something tangible. Whether it’s page rankings, readership, number of Tweets, or any other popularity indicator, this is an important factor in goal-oriented blogger collaboration.

3.     A concrete and desirable goal was set. Without focus, collaboration loses some of its efficacy.

4.     Keeping it casual enabled these bloggers to just “let the magic happen” as members of the challenge group created blog badges and set up tracking pages for collaborative commentary.

5.     They promoted each other. Small increases in readership added up for everyone and created a more synergistic partnership among bloggers.

Start Blogging Collaboratively

There are many ways to incorporate collaborative writing into your blog, and there are also many reasons for doing so. It can help you realize something about your niche that inspires you to expand the scope of your blog; it can help you get past writer’s block; it can increase readership; it can diversify your content; and it can do so much more. Examples of collaborative blogging include guest blogging, blog swaps, joint posts, interviews, joint blogs, joining a blog network, chatting on IM or e-mail, and participating in discussion forums. Trying a blog swap (switching blogs for a day with another blogger) or joining up with another blogger to write interview posts about each other can liven up a boring blog.

There’s no way to lose with these helpful strategies, so show your savvy by making some immediate improvements to your blog with win-win collaboration.

This is a guest post by Lisa Shoreland. Lisa is currently a resident blogger at Go College, where recently she’s been researching merit based college grants as well as how to apply for scholarships. In her spare time, she enjoys creative writing, practicing martial arts, and taking weekend trips.