How To Be a Writer in the Digital Age

May 13, 2019

We are living in the digital age. One of the greatest fears that all writers face today is that we’re coming to the end of what has been a glorious age.

Human beings have come a long way from the invention of the printing press. With its invention, humanity saw the scale of its ability to share information and knowledge magnified by many orders of magnitude.

A lot of historians argue that it really is the printing press that sparked the beginning of the Renaissance period. With the Renaissance came enlightenment and that sparked everything after, from the agrarian and industrial revolutions to the information age today.

For a long time writers of essay writing service reviews have helped to change the world. They’ve taught people things, expressed new emotions to them and changed their perspectives. Education, information, knowledge, and even spirituality have expanded to previously unforeseen scales because of the power of writing.

With the rise of the internet, however, there are other media of communication that have risen in prominence. With radio came the medium of sound, which began the paradigm of broadcast. Then television followed and the television set soon became a common fixture in households around the world.

The internet made all of these blow-up and even added other media. Today we have video, sound, photos, and, of course, text, on the internet. Another creature has also arisen that seems to combine all of these media in previously unforeseen ways: social media.

Because of the ubiquity of phones today, most people turn to their phones and the internet for information. Social media has also given them the opportunity to create digital personas and live their entire lives on the internet.

That’s what we really mean when we say we live in a digital age. In this age, print media is becoming less and less prominent. We are now turning to such things as online magazines, resources, eBooks and blogs for our daily fix of content.

The question is how do you survive as a writer in the digital age?

Changing Paradigms

“Such a world doesn’t exclude writers” – says an expert writer Charles Horton from MyAssignmentHelp. “It just requires that they change their paradigms. On the one hand, you find yourself in a world where you should be able to get your message across in 140-character bursts and have to add pictures and videos to increase engagement, which could potentially throw you off-kilter.

On the other hand, you get access to this vast audience that could read what you have to offer the world. All you have to do is figure out a way to grab their attention.”

People may consume a whole range of media online, such as videos, pictures, and podcasts. They get to synthesize all this information and use it to expand their perspectives on the world. But, despite the panoply of media on the internet, writing is still a constant. Videos come with captions, people microblog in the comment sections of Instagram posts, and podcasts are still transcripted.

On top of that, blogs, online magazines, eBooks, the digitalization of the most popular newspapers, and social media still use writing as the main medium of communication. In such a world, the writer is still king.

As a writer, therefore, it is your sole duty to find ways to improve your skills so that you are relevant in this world, but not to do away with writing altogether. For example, you could explore new fields where writing is still incredibly important, such as PR, social media marketing, blogging, best essay writing services and so on. These fields all have their own nuances and require specific skill sets you need to have to be successful in them. Again, the internet comes to the rescue here. There are tons of free courses online where you can learn all of this stuff and start your road to success immediately.

Start a Blog

You can also start a blog and just write about what you love. There is no better way to improve your skills than to begin to write about what you love. You should, however, follow your target audience and write in a style that resonates with them. Ask them what they want in the comments section.

Send them emails telling them about your blog. You can even send them surveys. By cultivating that relationship with your target audience, you will learn a lot about the kind of content they prefer and tailor your writing skills to match those preferences.

Forums and Social Media

Don’t forget the power of forums and social media either. There is something to be said about the skill it takes to effectively communicate in the digital age. It’s a world where you’re not only competing with other media but also need to adapt to the rapidly reducing attention spans of your audience. Open some social media accounts and post every day about the things you love.

Microblogging on social media is a great way to get your message across to audiences that would rather not read entire articles. It will also help you market your content to those that are open to reading more and to grow your network for future gigs as a writer. The sky really is the limit with social media.

Final Thoughts

Writing skills will be important for a long time to come. Even in the face of rapidly advancing technology, writing proves as resilient in its relevance as it has been through the millennia since its invention.

Being a writer in the digital age simply means growing with the times and expanding your perspectives to be able to better take advantage of the opportunities available to you.