Writeyness :: Info to snack on

Sadly, despite the obvious importance of the words on your business website (see this previous post) many people think they can stick some copy and content up themselves. Often at the last minute. And usually with very frustrating results.

This is backed up by the experience of Flyte web development company — “Content Creation is Painful” — who describe their experience with customers who decide to write their own copy as follows:

Before the job starts:

“I’m just going to take the content from the current site.”

“This stuff is going to write itself.”

“I expect to knock it out over the weekend. After all, this is my business.”

After the job ends:

“That took twice as long as I thought it would.”

“That reminded me of sitting in the dentist’s chair during the Novocaine shortage of ‘94.”

“You Web monkey bastards! You told me writing content was easy!”

No matter how much you love your job, no matter how passionate you are about what you do, writing content is going to be much more work than you think.

It’s funny because it’s true.

Ease the pain.

(Shameless plug alert.)

Hire a writer.

In the new edition of the classic “On Writing Well” by William Zinsser, the author updates his introduction to tackle the growth of online communications.

This quote stands out:

“Millions of email messages every day give people the information they need to do their job, and a badly written message can do a lot of damage. So can a badly written Web site.

“The new age, for all its electronic wizardy, is still writing-based.”

From attracting search engine traffic to selling products and services, there’s no doubt that good content and copy can help your website be more successful and, as Zinsser wrote, badly written copy can hurt it.

Yet, despite this, the creation of the words that will guide visitors through a website, describe the products or services and do the selling is still treated almost as an afterthought when businesses first develop their sites.

In many cases, a writer is later called in to add essential missing content or repair poorly-written copy that could have been costing a business who knows how much in lost revenues during the intervening weeks… months… years.

And often just a few tweaks will produce immediate results.

Shameless plug: Click here for a free review of your home page’s copy.

East Stirling, bottom of the Scottish Third Division, may be the worst football team in Scotland, but no other professional sports club’s website (that I’ve seen anyhow) can touch The Shire’s site at www.eaststirlingshire.com. Even if the team only get a couple of people and their dogs on match days, the site deserves a wider audience…

Search Engine Land is the new venture of Search Engine guru Danny Sullivan.

There are a couple of excellent posts on the blog just now looking at two issues relevant to any website looking to improve their search engine rankings:

Google’s Tips On Duplicate Content Worries looks at how Google views duplicate content.

Stop The Freak Out Over Linking looks at the dos and don’ts of using links to give your ranking a boost.

Anyone involved in working on their business’s website should keep up to date with search engine developments, and Search Engine Land is another great resource to add to your list.

Don’t know your “404″ from your “LSI”?

SEO Book has an excellent Search Engine Marketing Glossary.

Writing for the Web is different from print and other mediums because, on the Web, people are actively searching for information – possible related to your products or services. And you have the opportunity to direct those people who fall within your target market to your site.

That’s why content is still king online — image-heavy and Flash sites do look great as an online brochure, but they won’t draw in extra traffic. So that’s why your website should include keyword-rich copy, i.e., copy containing keywords used by your target audience to search for information.

Finding the right keywords — and how best to use them on your site — is a very involved process I won’t go into here, but it’s very useful to get an insight into how people — Internet users — search for stuff on the Internet.

It’s easy to forget — especially if you’re pretty Internet savvy yourself — that a lot of people out there think Google (or Yahoo for that matter) IS the Internet. And the fact is, people search online in a large number of ways. Many people don’t use the address bar at all and instead type things like eBay.com or even Google into the search box. It’s quicker to do this and click on the top link than type the whole URL into the address bar! I do it myself.

There’s a great post on the Morget Designs blog — How Do People Use Search Engines — that talks about this, including a link to a video to a talk given by Google research scientist (now there’s a job title!) Dan Russell. There’s also some discussion on this over at the excellent new SEO blog, Searchland — Why do People Google Google?.

The fact is, not everyone searches for “[My widget’s name and model number]”. So you have to think creatively when compiling a list of keywords.

A great starting point is to do a little user-study of your own. If you want to sell a particular product, ask friends and family to search for information related to it and look at what words they use, in what order, and so on.

If you already have a site, you should also look at your website stats to see which keywords people use to find you. It gives you a clear insight into the thought process of your target market, and can even generate ideas for new products.

Still on viral marketing, MarketingSherpa has an excellent list of their top 12 viral marketing campaigns here, covering a variety of businesses. Good for idea-sparking.

And I strongly recommend you sign up for MarketingSherpa’s free email newsletter while you’re there. It’s a mine of tips, case studies and other marketing goodness. They also produce some very thorough studies and run some excellent conferences — I attended their Email Marketing one in Chicago this year and found it invaluable.

I’m over in Scotland right now — Edinburgh to be exact (back to Vancouver on the 27th) — and it’s clear that Internet usage in the UK is on the up, mainly down to the spread of broadband over the last year or so. There are various stats that have been released showing huge Internet usage growth in the UK, but even just from driving around the city I can see the signs — literally. Compared to my last visit a year ago there are far more URLs on the storefronts of small retailers.

No matter where in the world your “bricks and mortar” business is, having even a small Web presence with a memorable URL allows passing traffic to take a note of it and check it out later.

The “About” page is one of the standard navigation links that people now expect to see when they enter a website. It’s the place to provide a little more detail about your business and the people behind it — to humanise it.

Why? Well, this famous New York Times cartoon says it best…

“On the Internet, nobody knows you’re a dog.”

To see an example of the kind of thing I’m talking about, go here.

It’s good to know that in a world of big box stores, global brands, and huge corporations there’s still room for the little guy.

And nowhere is this more true than online.

In fact, the Web is made for the smaller business. It gives a big friendly hug to the one-man/one-woman show. It embraces the targeted niche market. And it positively drools over products or services that can cross borders and leap continents.

A big part of any successful website is its tone of voice. Some small businesses try to appear larger than they are by using corporate-speak. I think this is a mistake, because one thing many websites lack is a human touch. And smaller businesses actually have an advantage here, in that it’s easier for them to make their sites more personal and friendly than large, anonymous online retailers.

So don’t be afraid to talk directly to your customers and potential customers, and reassure them that there’s a real person behind the pixels.

An essential strategy when marketing a business online — no matter how big or small — is using email to keep in contact with your visitors. It commonly takes around eight contacts with a prospect before that person feels comfortable enough to buy from you. And the best way to maintain this contact is through email.

However, you first need to collect the email addresses of people who visit your site. That’s best done by offering them something in return. By far and away the best, and most cost-effective, incentive is to offer free information in the form of an informative white paper, an instructive email course or an ebook containing information relevant to your target audience.

Not only does this act as an incentive for people to give you their email address, but the information you give away can be designed to show off your experience, build your credibility and indirectly promote your services.

All you need to do is set up a simple web form, upload the file to your server and provide your visitors with the download link.

To see how this strategy works, feel free to download my free ebook “10 things your website must do: A checklist for doing business on the Internet”.

I’ve written a number of these types of opt-in offers for clients, ranging from a two page report to a 20 page ebook. The length isn’t important — it’s the information that counts. Make it valuable to your target audience and they’ll thank you for it. Everyone I know who uses this strategy raves about it.