I'm a content writer for a tech company. Here's what I learned about writing after 6 months on the job

[danish14]

Not to shit on the formal education system, but it blows my mind that I've learned more about writing in just 3 months on the job compared to my 3-year English degree.

But it could also be because my degree focuses on professional communication instead of writing. I don't know.

Anyway, this writing lessons has 4 parts.

1. Article writing
2. Cold email/DM
3. Sending survey question
4. Improving landing page copy

Article Writing​

1. Ditch the business speak​

If you write for your company, there's a chance you have a writer’s bio where your face is there. But why do you still write inhumanly and completely devoid of personality?

You should write like how you talk. You need to show personality and have a voice of your own because people buy from people.

Boys like Nike because of Cristiano Ronaldo and Neymar. Men buy Sauvage because of Johnny Depp. Women buy SKIMS because of Kim Kardashian.

Not that I want to say you have that kind of a big influence, but human touch is important. That’s why businesses hire celebrities or influencers. One of the reasons is because they want to humanize their brands.

Whenever you write, imagine you’re talking to a potential customer. Do you talk to them in real life like this?

In essence, customer data enrichment refers to the process of enhancing existing customer information with additional data points, thereby converting raw data into actionable business intelligence.

Or like this?

Simply put, customer data enrichment involves adding new data to your existing customer information to transform it into more valuable insights.

Don’t think your work will get ignored because you write in plain English. John Caples, one of the greatest admen, said

Even the best-educated people don’t resent simple words. Because they are the only words many people understand.​

2. Short introduction​

I've noticed that many writers tend to start with lengthy introductions. It's not wrong, but shorter intros are better in my opinion.

They're straight to the point and most importantly, save your readers’ time because in SEO articles—the Top 5 diarrhea, Here's how to talk to girls type of articles—people just want to know the solution quickly.

Those long introductions are usually just you “clearing your throat.” Once you've done that, take some time to analyze and you can actually see that most of what you just wrote are fillers, and deleting them will make it more effective in hooking readers.

Here are two intro examples. One long, one short.

This long introduction is like the Turkish ice cream man. Each end of a paragraph feels like you've finally got your ice cream but only to get bamboozled. Then the start of the next paragraph pulls you back into the man’s trick, making you wait more.

But in this short intro that I wrote, you immediately get what you want. No games. No tricks. No Turkish ice cream man.

Cold email/DM​

If you have sent cold emails/DM or are planning to, please read this carefully so you’ll not make a fool of yourself and be used as a bad example.

1. Keep it short​

There's a CEO who sent an absolute abysmal of a cold email to my work inbox.

341 words, 2229 characters, 13 paragraphs. Talking about his product and nothing about me. It's literally an essay

Probably one of his writers or PA wrote that. Poor guy.

This is the email.

I didn’t even read this until I had to censor the company’s name. Plus, there are more sentences that don’t fit in the screenshot lol.

The problems with this email:

1. Too long
I’m guilty myself as I’ve written a long cold email before. But when I started receiving tons of them, I finally realized I don’t read cold emails, I skim them.

So remember, people don’t read cold emails or DMs, people skim them.

2. Not being straight to the point
If I cannot know what the email is about in 5-10 seconds, you’ve lost me. I’m sure I’m not the only one who feels this way.

Imagine you’re cold emailing high-level executives, it’s not unusual for them to receive gazillions of cold emails per day. They’ll go berserk if they read each one thoughtfully.

So to protect their sanity, they screen the emails as quickly as possible so they can finally move on to more important tasks.

3. Sounds unnatural
Being formal is okay. But as I said earlier, human touch is important.

---

Meanwhile, a great cold email I've received is just 41 words.

• No introduction
• Relevant personalization
• Show intent to share my article
• Then, ask for collaboration

If not because my company doesn't do content collaboration, I would've replied to him to reciprocate his intent to share my article.

Here’s why this email is great to me:

1. Short. It’s skimmable and straight to the point.
Here’s how to keep your readers glued with simple writing.

2. A compliment but it can be improved.
The “spot-on” feels template-y. A simple “I like your article about [topic]. Haven’t read something that helpful in a while” would be better.

Please be genuine. If you don’t have anything to compliment, then don’t. Just go straight to stating your intent to help.

3. The intention to help me first (I’d love to reference). Then, ask for something (How about we collab?).
This technique triggers reciprocity.

2. You don't even need to let the recipient know who you are​

The first email boasts about the company. Please remember that nobody cares about your company’s achievement as much as you do. Also,

It’s useless because the email already has a footer stating the company he works for. If I want to know about your company, I’ll Google it.

The second email is smart because he doesn’t say anything about the company at all. Probably he knows if I’m interested, I can just Google it or ask him in future replies

---

Recently, I sent a cold DM on LinkedIn to sell my book using the three reasons I mentioned above. And I got a reply.

1. Short, skimmable, and straight to the point.
2. A compliment.
3. The intention to help first. Then, ask for something

Here's the DM I sent.

Although it’s not that short, it’s still skimmable and straight to the point. Will only take less than 10 seconds to read through.

I talked about his experience so he knows I took the time to know about him first.

Then I showed the intention to help him improve his copywriting game. After that, I showed how I could help him.

Easy.

Sending survey question​

1. Only one question​

I’m going to be transparent. Here’s what I wrote asking for surveys a few months ago.

It was shit!

It’s shit because I asked 4 questions. I sent this email to 100+ customers. The result? Only two people replied.

I conclude that this is because:

1. I asked too many questions. I should stick to one only
2. Asking more than one question creates friction
I’ve realized that if I were getting 4-5 survey questions, my mind immediately calculates and concludes that it will take a long time to answer them.

2. Include incentive​

One more reason I failed is because there’s no incentive. The two replies I got were hoping for something in return which are free credits & new feature.

Maybe if I offer free credits then I’ll get more replies. I learned this the hard way.

So, if you’re asking people to do something, promise them something beneficial in exchange.

For example,

• Free credits so your users can increase their usage of the software without spending more money
• Free e-book about your niche so your subscribers can learn more (I don’t like this because I always sign up for an email list and immediately unsubscribe after I get the e-book. Sometimes, I use disposable email.)
• Discount code so they can buy your product at a lower price
• Free audit

---

My company just rolled out a new product called Sapiengraph recently. To gain feedback from our existing customers, we gave them two months of free credits.

The result? Our inboxes were flooded with replies.

Incentive is a superpower. Also, we only asked one question which is their experience with the existing product, Proxycurl.

Here’s what we sent using the CEO’s email.

Improving landing page copy​

No matter if you’re a senior writer or just starting your career, this is the easiest way to convince, maybe impress, your bosses or clients that you know your shit.

1. Give reasons
This is a must because none copywriters will never see the details that come when writing a copy.

Without the reasons, they may look at the copy and confidently say, “I can write this too.”

​

Being able to give reasons also proves to your potential clients that you know your shit and this is why they should hire you.

Below are the work examples I’ve done during my first month at my job that amazed my marketing manager.

That's it​

Hope you learn something useful you can use at your job or for your business.

Follow me on Twitter, @notsuckwriting. Let me know you're from BuSo and I'll follow you back.

 

[BakerStreet]

Nice intro guide to writing. Good for the specialist rank. But if you want to move up in the world, here's my tips:

• Move up from content writer to content manager. So you need to learn how to make content briefs and give out work.
• Then you want to learn more SEO and move to content marketing manager, where you would be responsible for all content on a site, how the content is written, and who gets hired to write the content. Companies hire you, to get their content written, updated, and taken care of. Their asset is their content and their SaaS. Pay increase is much higher than simply a writer.

and... the crazy thing is that you can do that in like 2 years. Not gonna lie. The amount of knowledge you need to know is not much more. You can check salaries here: https://builtin.com/salaries/content/content-marketing-manager. Seriously, double your salary in a few years doing this.

 

[danish14]

@BakerStreet tbh I would like to pivot into advertising/direct response copywriting. I started getting into writing because I was inspired by David Ogilvy. I was fascinated by how words can generate millions of dollars.

But content writing seems the easiest to break into compared to advertising, so I go that way first to establish myself and fill up my resume. Maybe in 2025, I'll apply to work at any advertising agency, preferably Ogilvy

Any tips, tricks or advice I should know?

 

[BakerStreet]

@BakerStreet tbh I would like to pivot into advertising/direct response copywriting. I started getting into writing because I was inspired by David Ogilvy. I was fascinated by how words can generate millions of dollars.

But content writing seems the easiest to break into compared to advertising, so I go that way first to establish myself and fill up my resume. Maybe in 2025, I'll apply to work at any advertising agency, preferably Ogilvy

Any tips, tricks or advice I should know?

Not my area of expertise. I'm more familiar with tech companies and content marketing.