“Everybody writes” by Ann Handley

The author 🖋

Ann Handley is a Wall Street Journal bestselling author, consistently ranked as one of the most influential marketing experts and a pioneer in the digital marketing industry.

She’s also the Chief Content Officer and a partner at Marketing Profs, a marketing education company with over 600,000 subscribers.

Key takeaways 🎓

1. Write for your audience

The most important aspect of writing is to write for the reader.

In order to do that, we have to understand their needs, interests and pain points.

Then tailor our writing to meet those needs.

This ensures that our writing is relevant and engaging, increasing the likelihood of it being read.

2. Don’t worry about perfect

Handley advises to embrace the "ugly first draft" as the starting point of the writing process.

The first draft isn’t meant to be perfect.

It’s just to get our ideas down on paper.

She even recommends stepping away from it for a while before editing to approach the content with a fresh perspective.

3. Be yourself

Authenticity is the key to building trust with our audience.

Maintaining a consistent tone, style and voice across all of our writing makes it more trustworthy in the eyes of the reader (because they know it’s the same person writing).

Being genuine and real are the things that establish brand identity.

Closing thoughts 🧠

The book is filled with actionable advice from one of the top experts in the field of writing.

Reviews describe it as a "go-to guide" that is "funny, insightful and profoundly transformational".

Oh and Ann’s got an incredible letter called Total Anarchy (she calls it "her fortnightly shenanigans 😅)