Freelance writing is quite popular nowadays. Due to the huge boom of digital marketing and content marketing, writers are in high demand. However, that doesn’t mean that just anyone can get hired for a writing job.

Writers need to be very skilled at their jobs in order to survive in the current landscape. With over 4.4 million new blog posts getting published every day, competition is intense. To make your mark and be heralded as a successful writer, you will need to put in a lot of time and effort. 

In this post, we will look at some tips that will help you write content to make your career successful in the near future.

Do Thorough Research

Always do your research. Now that may sound like common sense to a lot of you out there. But here’s the thing. Writers who have grown comfortable in a particular niche stop researching actively.

They start thinking they already know what they need to know and can write good content from just that. That can be true in some capacity, but our world is always changing at a rapid pace. Things that are considered new nowadays won’t remain new a few months later

When you make it a priority to do research, you will always be up to date with the latest trends and technology. And people are always looking for the most up-to-date content they can find. 

Researching and being knowledgeable about your subject matter will always help you when writing about it.

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Always Cite Your Sources

As a professional, never make the rookie mistake of failing to cite your sources properly. When you do not cite your sources, then that is known as source-based plagiarism. Professional writers have to face severe repercussions for plagiarizing. 

Their entire career and reputation can be destroyed with one incident of plagiarism. Not to mention, plagiarizing other people’s work is wrong and unethical.

Citing sources adds credibility to your work.

How will people realize that a particular article/blog post has been well researched?

There are two ways i.e.,

a) the information provided in the content would be very well structured and easy to understand.

And, b) they will see that you have cited your sources.

Citations also protect you from committing plagiarism. Remember, using someone’s words or research in your own work is allowed as long as you give the original author their due credit.

Check For Plagiarism

Plagiarism is like a pest; it can creep into your content even if you don’t intentionally commit it. Thus, it is only natural that you should always be on the lookout for it. 

Plagiarism has many types and most of them are malicious in nature. However, there is one type of plagiarism that can occur in anyone’s work. This is called ‘accidental plagiarism.’ 

Accidental plagiarism can happen due to several reasons.

A few reasons are:

• A writer unintentionally copies the style and wording of another.
• Long-time writers can accidentally copy their older works (also known as self-plagiarism).
• Improper citation of sources.

In such a case, while there is no intention of committing plagiarism, the consequences are still the same. Hence, it’s really important to always check for plagiarism in your work. You can use online tools, and for a professional, there are many paid tools available at affordable prices. Paid tools are much better than free tools with regard to user experience and features.

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Utilize Content Optimization tools

Professional writers and freelancers have to write a lot. In fact, they have to write so much that they can get burned out. Burnout is a state in which a person has exhausted all their mental capacity to do a particular task. Burnout occurs when a person has to do a particular task over and over without any considerable reprieve. Content optimization tools can help writers experiencing this state of ‘burnout’.

Now there are plenty of health experts who have expounded on the many ways that burnout can be dealt with, the most notable being “Take a vacation”. Unfortunately, taking a vacation is not the most affordable thing and writers might have a lot of workload with tight deadlines.

In this situation, content optimization tools can help out a ton. Idea generators and paraphrasers can help with finding titles for new posts.

A paraphraser can also remove the repetitive behaviours that seep into a writer’s work due to writing about similar topics over and over. Paraphrasers add some freshness to the writing style of a burnt-out writer.

There are many content optimization tools available for free online while paid versions of these tools also exist at affordable prices.

Proofread and Edit Your Drafts

Writing for a living can be difficult. If your write-up has mistakes in it, then your draft is rejected by your editor. That can be disheartening and demotivating. That’s why you should always proofread your draft by yourself too. 

You would be amazed at how many mistakes and problems you can find in just one proofreading session. Finding your errors yourself and correcting them makes the job of your editor easier as well. Of course, you won’t be able to find them all, but correcting the most common mistakes (that can be classified as silly mistakes) is still very useful.

Of course, during this part, you will do a plagiarism check as well, and then you have to edit the duplicated parts as well. Proofreading and editing your draft a few times by yourself will increase the quality of your write-ups.

Conclusion

You can use these five tips to increase the quality of your writing and increase your value as a professional/freelance writer.

Doing your research and citing your sources makes your content very interesting to read and gives it an air of authenticity.

Checking for plagiarism using some online tool helps you remove any copied material your work might have. 

Using content optimization tools helps writers deal with burnout. These tools can be used to get new ideas and remove repetitive behaviour from your work. 

Proofreading and editing your content yourself improve its quality, and you can do some self-assessment and identify your common errors and mistakes.

Hope you find these tips helpful.

Thank you for reading, See you in the next blog. This blog has been written by Inessa Patrov.

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