Editor’s note: This post was submitted by Muhammad Saleem.

Before you can start writing easily retainable content, you need to understand the kinds of people that will be reading your content.

Active, Reflective, Visual, and Verbal Readers

There are four main kinds of readers that we will be optimizing for.

Active readers are those that will understand and retain your content most when they are actively engaged. These readers prefer the opportunity to see things in context, in action, and the ability to discuss the content with others. They make up most of your commenters.

Reflective readers, on the other hand, prefer to take their time with what they are reading and like to ponder it on their own before (if at all) participating in a discussion.

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As the world becomes increasingly digital, writing becomes more important. This is especially true for non-writers. If you work in an office, the majority of your communications are made with text by email or IM.Whether you like it or not, your ability to exchange ideas, collaborate with others, and ultimately succeed, hinges on the ability to write effectively.Earlier this week, K. Stone laid out a process to help you write faster, better, and easier. To follow up, here are 10 timeless tips to help you improve style and substance, straight from the pens of humanity’s finest authors.

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If you are a writer, you’ve probably wished that you could write faster, better, and easier. I have too. I’ve been writing for many years now and I’ve found some tricks that help. They just may help you too! Everyone has their own system, but sometimes learning about another person’s system can flip a switch that enables you to improve your writing.

This system is about being organized and prepared. This will allow your ideas to flow at their fastest rate. It doesn’t necessarily mean that they will flow at lightning speed, but I think you”ll find this allows them to flow at their maximum speed.

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The sheer number of blogs in existence makes a writer’s most difficult task distinguishing themselves from the pack. From an informational standpoint, this is practically impossible. Somebody, somewhere, is sharing the same knowledge you are, and odds are they’ve been doing it longer and have more authority. How then, can a beginning writer break through the wall of anonymity and attract a large audience?

The answer is style. Writing is an art form, and although it can’t be taught, it can be learned. Understanding the principals of this article will help you channel your inner author and attract a devoted following.

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It’s been nearly 6 months since the first post was published at Pick the Brain. Over the course of 97 posts and 1602 comments, traffic has grown to over 3,000 unique visitors a day, over 2200 readers have subscribed to the RSS feed, and several articles have been featured on the popular pages of Digg, Del.icio.us, Reddit, StumbleUpon, and Netscape. It isn’t the most amazing start (there have certainly been bumps along the way) but I’m proud of what I’ve built and optimistic the site will continue to grow.I want to share what I’ve learned, but it’d be pointless to try explaining it all. Rather, I’ve compiled a list of the 27 most important lessons.

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90% of writing published online isn’t worth the server space it’s stored on. This is due to lack of purpose and underdeveloped style. Many writers fail to take themselves seriously. Perhaps they underestimate the validity of their ideas or the power of the medium.

Effective writing can be learned by practice and observation. The purpose of this article is to encourage the creation of forceful, passionate writing, the sort of writing people love to read.

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In our society, the study of language and literature is the domain of poets, novelists, and literary critics. Language is considered a decorative art, fit for entertainment and culture, but practically useless in comparison to the concrete sciences. Just look at the value of a college degree in English versus one in computer science or accounting.

But is this an accurate assessment of value?

Language is the primary conductor between your brain and the minds of your audience. Ineffective language weakens and distorts ideas.

If you want to be understood, if you want your ideas to spread, using effective language must be your top priority.

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Want to attract thousands of visitors? If you are a blogger struggling to succeed on the social sites, this post is a must read.

Up until three days ago I hadn’t been able to get much traffic from any of the social sites (Digg, Reddit, StumbleUp, etc.). I’d been frequently submitting to all of them but nothing stuck. I wasn’t sure why. I knew my content was good, but for some reason people weren’t going for it. I finally made a break through, and I’ll tell you exactly how it happened.

The Stats

On Friday, January 26, I wrote a post titled “The Two Types of Cognition”. I posted it to Reddit, StumbleUpon, and Del.icio.us and attracted a grand total of 100 visitors in the next two days.

The average time spend on the post (6:11) was great, so I knew the people who read it liked it. The problem was people weren’t seeing it.

On Saturday, my friend Greg came by and told me he liked the post and that I should try to promote it. This planted the seed of curiosity. On Sunday I decided to make an effort to promote the article.

I realized that my original headline sucked. I’m new to copywriting, so I normally want to use headlines as labels. ‘The Two Types of Cognition’ is a perfect description of the post and it includes the main keyword, but it doesn’t give the reader any incentive.

My breakthrough was galvanized by the discovery of Steve Olson’s post, “How This Blog Attracted 100,000 Visitors in the First 30 Days“. Through Steve’s post I discovered “5 of Your Headlines Remixed” by Brian Clark. If you want traffic READ THIS POST.

After reading Brian’s article and some of the other links from Steve’s post I resolved to concoct a new headline and resubmit to the social sites.

I came up with “Learn to Understand Your Own Intelligence“. A bit more provocative isn’t it? I submitted to all the same sites, made it up to the second page of Reddit and got a few del.icio.us tags and stumbles. Reddit brought in some good traffic, but it really took off with StumbleUpon.

As of this moment that article has attracted 4,930 unique views. Not bad for a site that normally averages a couple hundred visitors a day. As a bonus, people started stumbling one of my other pages, leading to even more traffic.

Here is a chart depicting how rewriting a single headline has affected this site’s traffic.

I didn’t write this post to brag. Many other people attract many more visitors over the social sites everyday. I wanted to point out that content is not always the biggest issue. The EXACT SAME ARTICLE had drastically different results all because of a headline. And it isn’t even that tough. Read the posts I linked to earlier, take the lessons to heart, and start putting a lot more effort into your headlines and opening paragraphs.

Don’t let your great content go to waste.