Great copy is in the edit, not the drunken first draft. I’m guessing you don’t have your own copy chief to help you polish up your work? No. Well fret not. There are a few other tools I’ve found that will help the solo writer.
Here’s my workflow for any type of copy. That includes Facebook posts, emails, blogs and more overt sales pieces…
1) Write 1st draft in writer.bighugelabs.com, or dictate longer pieces via Rev.com App.
Writer has this old-school green screen and pings like a typewriter which is really relaxing. I’ll let them off the fact that they’ve mixed up two different technologies.
2) Edit in Hemingway App. Aim for 5th grade or lower. 3rd grade isn’t really me, and I get enough “run Spot, run”. at home.
I can write like I swallowed a thesaurus sometimes, and that can get in the way.
Even if your audience is full of MBA students, keeping it simple will help get your message across. Plus, if you can’t explain your point to a child, you don’t really understand it. I don’t write in the app though. I’d spend too much time correcting rather than creating, and lose the flow.
3) Paste into WordPress and do any formatting.
– Facebook would be better with subheads
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# Did you know this is a Johnson box? #
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4) I have a secret weapon plugin that turns blog posts into formatted emails that I can suck into my email tool.
6) Over the next few days, copy to Medium, Facebook, LinkedIn as appropriate. Link back to the original blog post from Twitter.
That sounds like a lot of changes, but every time you put your copy into a new tool, its far easier to see it fresh.
You’ll find more improvements and corrections with each step. Just the column widths of each tool will mean the words aren’t grouped together the same way. The fonts and colours will make it look like a new piece. Added to that, coming back to the post over a few days actually helps you remember the good bits. It’ll help you and find more topics for your next post.