Writeyness :: Info to snack on

When I started as an 18-year-old trainee reporter at The Dundee Courier with dreams of uncovering corruption at the highest levels of Government (a la All The President’s Men), I was told that readers should be able to get the main points of a story just by reading the headline and first paragraph. And they should be able to just scan the front page to get a handle on the day’s most important news.

The conclusion comes first, and the rest of the story is fleshed out from there — the opposite of many other styles of story-telling that start slowly and build to a climactic ending.

This is known as the “inverted pyramid” style of writing, although the craggy old journo who gave me this advice would rather have stuck pins in his eyes than use such a jargony term as “inverted pyramid.”

And before the Internet took over the world, newspapers were the main outlet for this writing style.

Not any more.

Copywriting for the Web is a lot like writing for newspapers in terms of the overall structure. Your home page is the front page. And, just as newspapers have clearly-labelled departments, so websites have clearly-labelled sections.

When it comes to individual pieces of copy, just as newspapers try to grab the attention of readers with eye-catching headlines, so Internet pages need to grab the attention of browsers — and quickly — with similar headlines or offers. And just as newspaper readers are often pressed for time — preferring to browse the paper first, then dig down into the stories that interest them when they have more time — so you have to be conscious that the clock is constantly ticking on how long a visitor is prepared to hang around on your website.

That’s why you have to know your audience and target them well.

Then grab their attention and get your main points across. The details come later.

And no, I didn’t get my Watergate-style scoop. Sadly, the closest I came to uncovering corruption was questioning a referee’s offside decision when covering a football match.

I once worked a couple of shifts as a sub-editor on the sports desk of The Scotsman newspaper in their swanky new offices in Edinburgh (steps south of the new Scottish Parliament money pit / architectural wonder, and west of the craggy, er, Crags).

“Subbing” involves pulling a news story off the “wires” and editing it down to fit snugly in its allocated space in the newspaper layout. The sub-editor also has to add a headline and picture captions.

In front of you is a screen with your allocated page space, and you have to chop away at the article until there is no overspill.

Sometimes, if the original writer has fallen victim to a serious case of “writeyness” and ignored any length guidelines, this can involve hacking 1000 words down to 200 or 300 or less. And you could have as little as 20 minutes to do this in — all with a desk editor breathing down your neck.

It’s a great exercise for any writer in finding the meat of a story and cutting off the excess fat. And I’ve found it an invaluable skill to have when it comes to writing short, concise Web copy, and when editing copy supplied by clients.

Quite simply, Web copy has to be leaner than a butcher’s dog. And “lean” doesn’t necessarily mean short. Your copy should be as long as it takes to get your main points across in the most effective way.

If you’re worried that your copy is showing a little weight around the middle, click here for a free home page review. (No strings).

As I mentioned in a previous post, headlines are important. And it’s interesting to see how traditional news outlets handle the unique challenges posed by the Web. Many, such as The Guardian, will put a factual, to-the-point, more Web-friendly headline on the main page, and use a longer, more detailed, creative or amusing one on the actual story page.

Others, such as CNN, use subheads on the story page to expand on the main headline. (Subheads are also a great tool for stressing secondary benefits in sales copy.)

Of course, when it comes to headlines, you should try to avoid any embarrasing slip-ups, like these:

• “Juvenile Court to Try Shooting Defendant”
  “Man Struck by Lightning Faces Battery Charge”
  “Stolen Painting Found by Tree”
  “Astronaut Takes Blame for Gas in Space”

While the Web and clever headlines may not always be a good fit, puns are still alive and kicking in the print media. And by far the best proponents of puntastic headlines are the British tabloids. Love ‘em… hate ‘em… eat your fish and chips off ‘em… the old Red Tops can spot a pun coming a mile off.

So, to end with, here’s the best headline in the world ever (in my opinion), from — who else? — The Sun. It appeared after Inverness Caley defeated Celtic 3-1 in a Scottish footballing shock result:

Genius. (And, just in case any of you didn’t see Mary Poppins as a child, this link should clarify things.)

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.

I went to see Billy Connolly (still as funny as ever) the other night. One of the Big Yin’s best lines was…

“If you go into a house and they only have one book, get the *bleep* out of that house!”

Really I just wanted an excuse to get that line in, but it did get me thinking — if I had to choose one writing book to keep out of the ones on my shelf, which would it be?

I’d have to choose On Writing Well by William Zinsser.

Others making up a top 5 would be:

- Networds by Nick Usborne
- On Writing by Stephen King (yes, the Stephen King)
- The Elements of Style by William Strunk and E.B. White
- The Copywriter’s Handbook: A Step-by-Step Guide to Writing Copy That Sells by Robert W. Bly

I would say all are required reading for anyone who wants to improve their writing.

I mentioned it before (here), but it’s worth stressing again. On the Web, less is very much more.

I often review and edit existing copy for clients. And it’s amazing how often you can edit 10%, 15%, sometimes as much as 75% of the copy down without hurting the tone, readability or messages of the piece.

In fact, the message becomes more powerful as a result.

So it’s good practice for online writers to make a habit of returning to each completed draft and slashing it by at least 10%.

Long and short copy on many websites — especially ecommerce sites — can benefit from a trim.

Find your main point, get to it quickly, and get on with the job of building your credibility and selling the benefits of your products or services. Then get back to your main point, stress the benefits once more, and ask for the sale, the phone call, the “click.”

Of course, there’s a lot more to successful online copy — long or short — but that, in a nutshell, is what it needs to accomplish.

I’m a bit of a newspaper junkie to be honest, to the point that I’ve bought foreign-language ones in other countries, despite not understanding a word. (By the way, other newspaper addicts should check this site out… www.newseum.org)

However, as I covered in the previous post, this obsession does come in handy in my current work — in this case when it comes to writing good online headlines.

A newspaper headline has to identify the essence of the story and summarise it within just a few words. Depending on your paper’s style, you may also be allowed to get creative and indulge in a little punnery or other wordplay.

When writing headlines for The Scotsman (see the previous post), I had to fit the headline within the alloted space above the body copy — for example, three columns across and two lines deep — and try to make it fill as much of that space as possible.

It involves a lot of word juggling and is no easy task, and it’s fantastic training for writing for the Web, where — because you have so little time to grab your visitors’ attention online — a concise, descriptive and eye-catching headline is an incredibly useful device.

An effective online headline should primarily:

1. Focus on the main benefit of your product or service

2. Be compelling and address the main problem faced by your target audience

3. Include keywords your target maket uses to search for information relevant to your site

Obviously it also has to make sense! So the trick is to find a delicate balance of all these elements.