How to Succeed as a Writer on Draft

Welcome to the Draft network! If you’ve made it this far, you’ve demonstrated that you’ve got great writing chops. However, writing for a business audience, especially the type that uses a service like Draft, might be different from what you’re used to.

We’ve put together a few suggestions on how to get good ratings for your work.

This article covers:

a. Suggestions and guidelines for succeeding as a writer on Draft

1. Avoid dense paragraphs

A maximum of 3 sentences per paragraph is a good rule of thumb, and don’t have multiple 3-sentence paragraphs together.

Play with shorter and longer sentences; that adds rhythm to your content.

2. Contractions are your friend

Yeah, I know your high school English teacher probably died a little inside (I know mine just did), but business writing is typically more colloquial in nature, so try to avoid “can not” and “have not”, etc.

3. Pictures and formatting

It's usually a good rule of thumb to throw pictures in.  https://unsplash.com ,  https://undraw.co/illustrations , and other free stock photo sites are your friends.

Don't copy-paste the images into the document you'll submit. Instead, right click -> Copy Image URL, and paste the URL into your article.

This makes it much easier for the clients to download the images and reduces your file size.

4. Before submitting your piece

Before submitting your piece, proofread it, and make sure you use  Grammarly  or  grammarcheck.net , and  HemingwayApp  (the lower the Hemingway grade, the better - aim for no higher than Grade 9 or 10 for technical pieces).

Grammarly will uncover typos, spelling, and grammatical erorrs. HemingwayApp will make sure your piece is enjoyable for your client's clients to read.

Frequent spelling and grammatical errors affect your rating.

5. Be mindful of the client's audience

The client will supply you with information about their audience. This will tell you how to approach the subject.

For example, if you're addressing "general audience," then avoid complex language and try to empathize with them to understand the problems they want to solve. Writing on Draft is all about putting yourself in the client's audience's shoes and writing from that standpoint.

6. First impressions count

In our experience, the intro needs particular attention. That’s really your chance to bring out some personality and it’s the first impression the client gets - avoid having an intro that’s too simple and generic.

Reference the problems the audience might be having in regard to this topic to create a connection with them, or simply start an interesting conversation. Pay attention to the audience, the tone, and the intent fields in the brief.

7. Add your sources

Add the sources you've used to find information for this article. Normally, you can simply link to them within your document. Avoid listing your sources at the bottom of the document APA-footnote style, unless specifically requested by the client.

b. Examples of great articles

We’d like to extend a few examples of what we think are excellent articles. These guidelines are what helped us launch Draft initially and score our first set of loyal customers, so we hope you find them useful.

Here’s a great before and after example to drive the point home:

Before:  https://docs.google.com/document/d/1d5mb28YH-Z6TAdo0uXw1sDvZuEM99YwgqTkojdHJhOc/edit?usp=sharing 

After:  https://docs.google.com/document/d/1EvpWhn1RLmMRK4F_xUj22lY5_QZZUGnUaEQw0Gh27-g/edit?usp=sharing 

And some terrific sample articles for your reference

 https://www.intercom.com/blog/preach-framework-for-customer-support-tone/ 

 https://www.shopify.com/blog/customer-thank-you-note 

 https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/early-adopters 

c. The mechanics of the platform

Preferred clients

After you've worked for a while, you'll likely get a few preferred clients (i.e. your regulars). They'll submit new content, and when they do, you'll be the first person who sees their content requests.

If you're interested in claiming the job, click the "Claim" button.

If you want to reject the job because of deadlines but you otherwise like working with this client, you can request deadline adjustments before you claim the job. Try to keep them in the 1-3 day range.

If you want to reject the job, click the "Reject" button. Please do so if you don't want to take on this piece as it allows our algorithm to route the job to other writers.

If you don't want to work with this client in the future, message us via live chat and we'll get you set up.

Messaging clients

Our in-app chat currently doesn't support links or files. However, if you are unsure about certain requirements in the brief, you can use the in-app chat function.

If you need to exchange files or links, contact us via live chat and we'll forward it to the client.

Avoid sharing personal information such as your email address because we can't protect you if you communicate off the platform.

Ratings

Your rating is based on a variety of factors, including:

If you are interested in your rating or feedback, reach out to us via live chat.

Client Google Docs

Sometimes a client may have a Google doc that they want you to use to input your content. In order to be able to complete the brief when you are ready to submit, please copy and paste your work in a separate Word Document to upload into the brief. This will make it possible to complete the brief and have your work scanned for plagiarism and readability.

Other questions? Reach out to us via live chat.