How to Write Web Content – Part 2

Keep it Short, Be Direct

To get your readers attention, you need to tell them what’s on the page within the first 15 seconds.  If you don’t, they’re on to the next webpage.  So what do you do?  You write clearly and directly.  In other words, you keep it short.

Know exactly what message you’re trying to get to your reader.  You can brainstorm or write pages of thoughts to help you find your focus, but on the webpage, the focus needs to be clear, direct and immediate.  Don’t start with a story. Start with your point.

Once you have a strong draft, shorten it.  Then, shorten it again. Throw out at least one third, and as much as two thirds, of what you write.  If you can leave a word out, do it.  If you can shorten a sentence, shorten it. 

Use the right words to add clarity.  Don’t dig in your thesaurus for college level words, instead, use the language we speak, and think about the meaning of every word you use.  When things are shortened down, every word becomes important.  Use the right ones.

Use contractions, slang, sentence fragments, and conjunctions at the beginning of sentences. These common speech patterns keep your reader moving down the page.

White space on the page tells your reader that you’ll get them the information they need quickly without wasting their time. Short paragraphs, made up of two or three sentences, make the writing look short. 

Your word count should be between 300 to 500 words.  Search engines aren’t interested in pages that contain less than 300 words, and 500 words is about the most you can expect your audience to read. 

If you can’t say it in 500 words, don’t scare off your reader with a text-covered page. Instead add additional pages with links from your initial page. 

And whatever you do, make your content clear, concise and direct.  Then you’ll have a chance at getting your reader to the end of your page.

 

Judy Kane is a writer and editor at I Write The Words.  When not working on her novel, she’s working on web content and blogging for her clients.

Copyright 2010 - I Write The Words

How to Write Web Content – Part 1

Know Your Audience and How You Can Benefit Them.

Writing web content requires focus.  You need to get the message across to your audience - fast.   But how?

The first step is to know your audience.  Who are you trying to reach and how will they benefit by connecting with you?  Sure, you’ll benefit too, but your audience isn’t concerned about what you need, they’re concerned with what they need. 

The more clearly you can define your audience – income level, education level, type of business, geographic location, etc. – the better you’ll understand them, and the better you can target your message.

The second step is to explain the benefit of your product or service.  The easiest and best way to do this is to think about the features of your product or service and how this benefits your clients.   

Always focus on the benefits.  If you don’t show your audience the benefits to them, why would they hire you or buy your product? 

For example, I can write web content for you, freeing up your time to focus on your business.  But I can, and should, push this even further.  By hiring me to write web content that is Search Engine Optimized, I can improve your position on search engines, provide your website with more hits, and generate more business for you.

You know how your product or service helps your clients.  But if you can’t focus your message and explain the benefits clearly, how can you expect your audience, your potential future clients, to understand it. 

You need to clearly point out the benefits of what you do.  Show people who visit your site that you can provide them with a service or product that will benefit them.  Connect with them, so that they’ll take the next step.

Give them a reason to pick up the phone or click a button and connect with you.  Then your web content has done its job, and now, it’s up to you to close the deal.


Copyright 2010 by Judy Kane

Making the Best of It

I’ve been hearing a lot of people expressing what I’m feeling.  “This isn’t the way it’s supposed to be now. I’ve worked hard all my life, and I shouldn’t be having to deal with this.” “This” being job loss, reduced income, and financial uncertainty.

In other words, it isn’t fair. My mother always said that life wasn’t fair.  Then she made every effort to spend the exact same amount on Christmas and Birthday presents for my sister and me.  Still shaking my head on that one.

But no, life isn’t fair. Some people find their bliss in their 20s. Some people take until their 40’s and some of us spend our entire lives wondering about the what if’s.

Maybe if I’d found out earlier how much I loved writing, I’d have a best seller by now, and I wouldn’t be experiencing this economic adjustment with everyone else.  But I too am trapped in this world that we’ve created. 

We’re used to having money and spending it. We’re used to living the good life in a very consumer spending sort of way. But that’s changed.  We’re now all crunched between what money we can bring in and what money we were used to having to spend.

My parents were always cheap.  Okay, frugal. And questioned our spending habits. Yeah, Mom, we bought too much stuff, but we still weren’t as bad as some other people.  But this frugality didn’t keep my parents or their parents from enjoying their lives, friends and family. 

I remember my parents throwing dinner parties, but my husband and I always went out with friends.  My mother bought whole chickens and cut them up for the parts; I always bought the chicken breasts.  (Combine the dinner parties for 12 and buying whole chickens just to get the breasts, and you end up with a freezer full of chicken parts.) My grandparents thought a rib roast was a celebration, and generally ate less expensive cuts of meat  (remember pot roast); my family had steak at least once a week.  I didn’t even know how to cook a pot roast.

But that’s changed. We’re trapped in a world with prices that haven’t gone done and income that has, and we’re all feeling the pinch.  Right now, businesses are raising prices to cover the rents that were set years ago. But increasing prices in a down market is pretty much a recipe for disaster. In another five years, more businesses will have failed, landlords will have dropped rents and things will have, hopefully, settled out.

So, the pain isn’t over.  There will be more business failures, more layoffs, more foreclosures. Those who are barely hanging on may survive or they may give up and decide to move or declare bankruptcy. 

No, none of this is fair.  But we were living a life that was unsustainable. And now we’re paying for it.  I miss the way we used to be able to spend money. And I hope that in a few more years everything will be better.  But right now, I’m going to try to hang in there by my teeth and enjoy what I get to do now.

Throw dinner parties, cooking whole chickens and pot roasts, and save the rib roast and steak dinners for celebrations. 

The Financial Shift

In the novel I’m writing, my heroine enters a restroom where she finds a dead body. She feels as though the world has tipped on its axis, plummeting her into a nightmare where her life will never be the same. Of course, that’s a novel, but in many ways, what we’re experiencing feels the same way. 

The world has shifted; the days of extra money and easy living are gone, and most of us have added the stress of unemployment or job insecurity to our lives.  We wonder about tomorrow; hope that we’ll be able to pay the bills; realize the mistakes we’ve made and decide to change our spending and saving habits. We hope that when all is said and done, we really won’t mind the changes we’re being forced to make in our lives. 

Of course, what’s been dubbed “irrational exuberance” and permeated many of our lives is over. I look at the $700 drapes in my bedroom and know that I’ll never spend that sort of money on “window treatments” again. 

In many ways, the financial shift is bringing me back to my roots. How I was raised. I’m watching the pennies, looking for the bargains, realizing that I really can live without a lot of the things that catch my eye. This newly discovered financial caution may not last. But the more frugal me doesn’t mind eating leftovers and pulling old clothes out of the closet. I don’t even mind finding bargains at Goodwill. 

I just wonder if this is part of the adventure or the life that I will be living going forward. 

© Judy Kane 2009

STAMPS

I got out a stamp this morning and realize how much I hate having to deal with mailing snail mail. I know the Post Office is considering the idea of reducing mail delivery to only weekdays, and I wonder how I’ll feel about that.

I like getting mail. It comes everyday at about 2:30, and the dogs have a barking fit. Of course, the mail lady is scared to death of my dogs. But the dogs love the opportunity to raise justifiable hell for a few minutes.

We need mail and the Postal Service, but something makes me wonder about how much longer it will be able to continue. Most of us live on e-mail and spam rather than snail mail and junk. On the other hand, I can’t mail books without some sort of physical delivery process, and the cost using the Post Office’s media mail is very reasonable. Of course, there are always e-books.

© Judy Kane 2009

Now Is The Time to Change Proposition 13!

We need to use this recession to create positive changes for the future. One of these is to make changes to Proposition 13. No, Proposition 13 should not be changed to affect residential property. That idea is so unpopular that it can’t even be discussed rationally. Instead, now is the time to split the tax roles into residential and commercial properties.

Proposition 13 was passed by the California voters in 1978 to keep older homeowners from losing their homes because of the increases in property taxes due to the inflation of home values. Proposition 13 uses the purchase price or market value at the time the property was purchased, then limits the increase in the property tax valuation to 2% per year with a property tax rate of 1%.

Of course, property owners have the right to appeal the tax valuation if the market value is lower than the value on the tax rolls. But since residential property rarely lost value in California before the last few years, most homeowners didn’t know or need to know about the appeals process.

But since the value of commercial property, such as office buildings, shopping centers and warehouses, is based on the income from the tenants of the properties, the commercial real estate market is more volatile and fluctuates up and down in a cyclical pattern. Commercial property owners have always known about and used the ability to appeal tax valuations to reduce their property taxes. The problem is that once the appeal to reduce the property tax valuation is competed, the maximum increase in property tax valuation for any property is 2% a year, whether the commercial real estate market is booming or not. So commercial property uses this reassessment process to keep property taxes artificially low. Commercial real estate has been enjoying this protection since Proposition 13 was passed in spite of the fact that most people are not aware of this benefit.

Now is the time to adjust the inappropriateness of Proposition 13’s valuation protection for commercial properties. With property values already low, let’s adjust all commercial property tax valuations to the market value and let the tax valuations fluctuate with the market value of the properties. This would allow an increase in property tax income in good times from commercial properties, and with only a 1% property tax rate, without a hardship on the commercial property owners.

© 2009 Judy Kane

What Room Do You Live In?

According to Rumer Godden, we live in a house of four rooms: Physical, Mental, Emotional and Spiritual. In thinking about this, I know that I have friends and acquaintances who are always analyzing things - the mental room; always dragged down by worrying about things - the emotional room; or looking to the spiritual for help and support. Unfortunately, I don’t seem to know anyone who is in the physical room. Although when my husband gets on his running jag, he can be very dedicated. 

The more I thought about these rooms, the more I realized how being stuck or focused on only one room is so limiting. The people who analyze everything that happens don’t let themselves live in the moment and enjoy the emotion as they come. Those who are wrapped up in emotions, especially the negative ones, limit what they see, and don’t allow themselves to analyze their lives and rejoice in the good there. 

The spiritual, giving of oneself and looking to a higher power to help with everything, can be draining when overdone. And excess in exercise can be another form of escape. (“What are you running from?” I ask my husband. “A heart attack,” is his standard answer, but sometimes I wonder ...)

I don’t know why, but I do know that when I move from room to room, I’m more productive, happier, and, I hope, more balanced. If nothing else, I can stop and smell the roses (emotional and spiritual) while cutting off the dead flowers (physical), and determining when to fertilize again (mental).