8 Writing Lessons I Learned After Writing Online For 2.5 Years

Save 100s of hours and your precious energy

Shailja Dwivedi
Practice in Public
4 min readFeb 23, 2023

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Photo by Cathryn Lavery on Unsplash

I’ve been writing for 2.5 years. Linkedin, Twitter, Medium, newsletter, Instagram, you name it.

After 114 Medium blogs, 200+ Youtube video content, 300+ LinkedIn posts, 10,000+ tweets, and 100+ threads here I am to share everything I’ve learnt.

To help you write better and get an engaged audience faster.

Live life on a cheat mode— Kunal Shah

Aka learn from others’ experiences. So let’s dive right in.

1. Be More Intentional Whom You Follow

When a person’s content doesn’t add value, unfollow right away. Contents in your feed should serve a purpose.

  • Bring insight
  • Teach you something new
  • Give new perspective on things

This creates a ripple effect. You follow their insightful posts and get more insightful posts in your feed. Also the posts they engage in.

A win-win strategy.

On a deeper level, these posts are thoughts you consume. At night your subconscious mind process all the thoughts.

And these thoughts, influence your actions.

These actions soon become your habits and habits become destiny.

Be mindful of what you pay attention to.

2. People Follow Cool People

Do cool things and create content about them with actionable bite-sized tips.

I wrote online for 2.5 years straight and I’ve learnt people follow cool people.

Cool people ain’t those who smoke cigars or binge drink. They are those who are building crazy stuff online.

They’re solving big problems. They’re pursuing their passion (despite zero views).

Cool people are doing cool things. And they create content around them, this is the reason why people are following them.

Because people trust them.

They didn’t plagiarize content because they talk from experience.

They are adding value because they’re sharing about their building phase “how they made$$$?” “how they closed 6 figure clients?”

And then writing about them. And this happens because they’ve mastered an important skill.

3. Storytelling

Storytelling is a tool to get more numbers, clients, money, customers, you name it.

Humans won’t connect with posts containing Generic platitudes.

However, they’d connect with a post sharing a story.

See the difference in this tweet I didn’t share my story but the one in which I shared my journey got more engagement.

Screenshot by Author
Screenshot by Author

So I’d highly recommend you learn it.

Here are some threads to help you build the skill.

10 Killer mistakes people make in storytelling

Tell a story with this little trick

7 simple strategies to become a world-class storyteller

11 storytelling formulas guaranteed to build brand loyalty

Facts tell, stories sell.

Onward.

4. Learn Human Psychology

Twitter's algorithm changed and I realized how unpredictable these social media platforms are.

One night your post does well and you feel elated. Another night the platform’s algorithm changes and you don’t know what to do.

So here’s the thing, understand and learn human psychology. It’s crucial because social media platforms’ algorithms will change.

Your best defence is to learn psychology. What ticks people? What retains their attention?

Even if the algorithm changes, humans don’t.

Here’s your guide to learning psychology.

Now that you’ve dug deeper into psychology, you should know how to get people’s attention. It’d be helpful when you learn about this important skill.

5. Copywriting

Copywriting is not a ‘get rich quick scheme’ but it’s an art.

The Art to get people’s attention. What words to use in your headline to get people’s attention without making it clickbait.

What hooks people and keeps their attention until the end of the piece?

It also teaches a lot about converting visitors into buyers. So here’s your guide to getting started in copywriting.

6. Invest In Relationships

If you are into business or plan to start one, you should not avoid conversations. Don’t let your introversion stop you from meeting interesting people.

Send them DMs, write emails. Interact and build relationships (without expectations).

I learnt this early on in my life, no matter what you do when you do something out of pure joy and without expectations, you get 1000% returns.

And it all happens without you expecting anything.

I’ve learnt this from my content creation journey too when you give, give and give you get 10x fold.

7. Model Initially To Find Your Voice Eventually

As a writer initially you’d suck and that’s okay. I’m here to tell you.

  • Model people you admire the most
  • Break down their contents
  • Look for patterns
  • Model them in your content.

When I was learning copywriting I’d break down 2 ads every day. This helped me gain patterns and insights I could use in my copy to convert more.

And I’m saying this from experience, it works.

Soon you’ll find your own style, flair, creativity and unfair advantages.

8. Don’t Stay Glued To Screens All Day.

There was a time I’d engage with people for 4 hours. Only to get 100 likes on my LinkedIn posts.

Learned the hard way you should never spend more than 1 hour on social media.

If you’re spending more, make sure you consume quality content.

Find the trigger that keeps you on the platform, block them and stay true to yourself.

You could watch this video where I explained how to stop distractions.

If you enjoyed reading this, consider subscribing to my newsletter Letters by Shailja. I share 5 Actionable tips to help you be your best version.

And If you got a landing page which needs more conversions, DM me.

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