PB052: 10 Writing Tips to Help You Sound More Human

Note: you can listen to this episode above or load it up in iTunes. How to Use Your Writing to Build Relationships and Build Your Brand Today's episode is all about using your writing to build relationships and your brand. It's a special interview with Beth Dunn, Product Editor-in-Chief at HubSpot. In today's podcast episode, Beth shares really practical tips and strategies you can use for helping you sound more human in the way you write your blog content. In This Episode You can listen to today's episode above or in iTunes or Stitcher (where we'd also LOVE to get your reviews on those platforms if you have a moment). In today's episode: Why every word you choose affects how you are perceived by others 10 things you can do to make sure your writing portrays exactly what you want it to say How to write to show that you are human How to write to show that you are honest and trustworthy How to make your readers excited How to approach acronyms and formal language How to make sure mistakes don't slip through Why a style guide can be so powerful in improving your writing How to find an editor How to tap into the power of pronouns The power of imagining your reader in a really bad mood How to convey humour without accidentally coming across as snarky or sarcastic Further Reading and Resources for How to Use Your Writing to Build Relationships and Build Your Brand How to be a writing god: https://youtu.be/S8Q3vnPM6kk How to fix your writing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TzkXcZcayA0 More writing tips and resources from Beth: Conversational Contractions Lay Off The Exclamation Marks, Buddy Hubspot’s style guide The User Is The Hero You can connect with Beth and more of her writing at: bethdunn.com twitter.com/bethdunn instagram.com/therealbethdunn Full Transcript Expand to view full transcript Compress to smaller transcript view Darren: Hi there. This is Darren Rowse. Welcome to episode 52 of the ProBlogger Podcast. Today, I'm conducting my very first interview of the ProBlogger Podcast, an interview with Beth Dunn, who's the Product Editor-In-Chief at HubSpot.  I came across Beth recently at the Inbound Conference at Boston where she gave a fantastic talk. The talk was titled Use Your Words. The idea of the talk, in short, was the words we use in our content really have the potential to grow or pull-down and destroy our brand. She gives you 10 tips during this particular podcast interview to help you come across in a way that builds your brand. We just talked in an episode recently on Building Your Brand. While a lot of us know a brand we want to build, we still don't achieve building that brand through the words that we use.  Hopefully, in today's podcast, you'll get some really practical tips that you can go away and apply, both in the creation of new content of your blog but also looking at the last post that you've written. You may actually want to go back and do some editing on some of those posts once you've listened to this particular episode. There are some really great practical takeaways for you. You can find today's show notes at problogger.com/podcast/52 where there is a whole heap of links and further reading based upon some of the stuff that Beth talks about in today's interview. Thanks for joining us, Beth. It's so nice to finally be talking to you.  Beth: Delighted. Thank you for inviting me.  Darren: No problem. I think I first came across you earlier this year when I was invited to speak at the Inbound Conference which was run by HubSpot. I ran across a video from you speaking at HubSpot. Two videos, actually. One was called How to be a Writing God which grabbed my attention. The other one was How to Fix Your Writing, both of which grabbed my attention because I think I can do some fixing.