B2B Content Marketing: 10 Tips to Level Up Your Writing Skills

Typewriter on Faded Blue Wood Background Image

What is the biggest challenge a writer faces?

Nothing.

Well, by “nothing,” I mean a blank white screen and a blinking cursor.

It mocks you with its unlimited potential. It fills you with fear that anything you put on that screen won’t be an improvement over its pristine emptiness.

We content marketers have to face this challenge nearly every day, and somehow find a way to write content that connects, engages, and persuades.

I’ve spent my entire adult life working in the content trenches — first as a comedy writer, and now as a content marketer. Here are a few tips I’ve picked up that can elevate your writing and make that blank screen less daunting.

10 Tips for B2B Marketers to Elevate Their Writing Skills

#1: READ

In his excellent book On Writing, Stephen King says: “If you don’t have time to read, you don’t have time to write.” And if one of the world’s most prolific and celebrated authors can take time to read, we can, too.

Read marketing content, for sure, to see what the competition is up to. But don’t stop there. Read poems, novels, fiction, nonfiction, good stuff and guilty pleasures. Anything you read will help you continue to develop a distinct voice — even a bad example can show you what not to do.

#2: Be Aware of Rhythm

Now, I’m not saying you should write blog posts in iambic pentameter (but if you do, please link me). But it’s good to keep an eye on the rhythm of what you’re writing.

For example, watch out for parallel structures. In time, these will bore your reader. Soon enough, they’ll tune out completely.

Notice how all three of those sentences in the last paragraph have the same cadence? The same goes for short sentences. You put them one after the other. They’re all the same.

Vary the rhythm in your sentences — string them together with punctuation; let one stretch out like a rubber band. Then, snap! Put in a few short ones. Maybe a fragment, even. See how the writing comes alive?

#3: Practice Introductions

For many writers, just getting started is the hardest part of writing an article. Many will even write the entire body of the text and add the introduction after the fact.

Too many of us were scarred by high school English class, where an introduction had to introduce every point we were going to talk about, and had to start with something like, “Throughout recorded history,” or “Webster’s dictionary defines…”

Practice writing introductions that break the mold: