“You can’t replace reading with other sources of information like videos, because you need to read in order to write well, and you need to write in order to think well.”
— Paul Graham
I know several of you follow Farnam Street, which is where I stole this quote from.
Nowadays when people ask for advice on how to become a better content writer and copywriter, i tell them 2 things.
1. read a lot of good stuff
2. write regularly.
that’s it.
Social media is the perfect platform for the latter. It’s not so good a ground for the former, for reading; even though a few people write exceptionally high quality posts… but your main source of reading should not be social media.
Focus on books, articles and long form direct response copy like landing pages and emails from the masters.
One of the major benefits of reading and writing is being able to think better and argue better.
Writing forces you to structure your thoughts a lot more than speech. Spoken word is a more forgiving environment than writing. Writing creates clear thinking.
