VAs & OBMS: Five Signs that Your Writing Skills are Limiting Your Success

You don’t need to be an expert writer to be able to help your clients.  By just understanding the basics, and understanding your client, you can support them with all kinds of day-to-day writing tasks ranging from autoresponders, to blog posts to ezine content.

This article was written by Linda Dessau, an editor, ghostwriter and writing coa’ch. Linda is one of our experts in the Virtually Successful Telesummit.

You may not think a lot about it, but writing is a part of your work life as a VA or OBM. Writing issues like grammar errors, procrastination, misused words, typos or readability problems can have a detrimental effect on the success and growth of your business.

Writing is so intertwined with your daily tasks that the work you’ve been so passionate about is turning into an ornery chore.

If that weren’t serious enough, consider this: You are often the last stop between your client’s words and their audience. Are those words put together in
a way that will achieve their intended result?

Here are five signs that your writing skills are limiting your success:

1. You spend a lot of time emailing back and forth with clients and prospective clients.

Whether it’s to hash out times for a meeting, clarify project details or re-explain your terms of service, you could be sending the wrong message—that working with you will be time-consuming or frustrating. People may wonder if you really do know your stuff.

2. When you (or your client) send an offer to your mailing list you get no replies.

A mailing list won’t do you any good if you don’t reach out and offer your help. But if your writing is bland or confusing, your offer won’t do you any good, either. And even a well-worded offer could flop if it’s diluted or masked by competing content.

3. Your mailing list (or your client’s mailing list) is shrinking.

Everyone loses the occasional subscriber, but if new people aren’t discovering you there is no place for your list to go but down. Great written content gets passed around because it is so valuable. Without new content, there are no new reasons for someone to get in touch or stay in touch with you.

4. You spend so much time perfecting your writing that your other work is falling behind.

Whether writing is a struggle or you actually really enjoy it, it’s taking up too much of your precious time. You’re constantly running up against phrases that just don’t look right, but you’re not sure how to fix them.

5. You’re embarrassed to send people to your website because it doesn’t reflect the quality of your work.

Maybe you’d rather talk than write, so your website features audio, video, presentations, you name it! But there are still some basic details that people want to read on your website. Beyond the basics, you’re missing countless opportunities to draw your reader in and encourage them to take action.

If you see any of these signs in your business life, take the steps now to address your writing skills. You can take a class or check online for resources—and don’t forget about the library or bookstore. If you’re willing, you will find lots of help out there. Your clients will thank you, your business will thank you, and your old English teacher will finally stop haunting you.

Linda Dessau, CPCC, is an editor, ghostwriter and writing coach. She is the author of The Customizable Style Guide for Coaches Who Write, and the editor of VOICE, the newsletter of the International Association of Coaching. Linda has been writing for the web since 2003, and created “You Talk, I’ll Write” in July 2005 to combine her passion for coaching with her gift for writing.

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This entry was posted on Wednesday, March 31st, 2010 at 8:57 am and is filed under Free Goodies, VA Training. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.