Master the art of writing for web

Writing for web is remarkably different than writing for print, as the attention span of people on the web is pretty short. You need to write using bullet points, headings, subheadings, images, etc.

Master the art of writing headline

A headline is very important in increasing the open rate of your content. You may get the best ranking for all the keywords, but if you do not have an attractive headline, your article will not get read. You should know how to write killer headlines.

Learn a bit about keywords and SEO

A little knowledge of SEO and keywords is required for all online writers, as keywords are the basis on which the entire web is organized. You should educate yourself on these two.

Prepare a portfolio

Writing is an art, and you are an artist. And an artist who does not have anything to show cannot support his claim of producing a fantastic piece of art. You should, therefore, prepare a portfolio keeping everything that I talked above. This will be your asset that you will need to show your clients.

Write a cover letter

A cover letter is like a direct sales letter. It either persuades your prospective clients to see your portfolio, or it can bore them to death. Many a freelancing assignments are made or broken at this level only. So spend good deal of time in creating a killer cover letter that can literally pull your clients with hands and make them read your sample articles.

You should follow the above given suggestions to start a freelance career. You can add some more items to your preparation, but you should not remove any. Each one of them is important. Very important!

Detailed yet interesting

Brochure writing is a detailed affair, yet crispy. Modern brochure writing style is crisp yet very effective. A brochure may run over many pages or consist just 3-4 pages, depending upon its nature. Make sure you include all important information like company’s history and description, CEO’s message, mission and vision statement, product or service detail, achievements. Since brochures are long in nature it will be all inclusive yet crisp.

Keep the style same

Irrespective of brochure’s total number of pages, keep the writing style same all over. If you are talking in passive voice, talk in the same style throughout. Don’t switch on and off between styles. If you have taken a poetic style of writing maintain that throughout. Sign off with the same flavor. Even keep your font style same.

Understand the purpose

There’s no set formula of brochure writing. Brochure writing style may vary depending upon the purpose of writing. A technical brochure or a product brochure; corporate brochure or sales brochure, each calls for a different style and purpose of writing.

Don’t overstuff

Often marketers are tempted to stuff a brochure with maximum amount of factual data. It certainly bores the reader. Don’t overstuff a brochure with data. Keep it light, crispy yet all inclusive. Touch upon all important points needed to be conveyed, and elaborating in short only most important parts. If you are mentioning product features, make sure you convert those features into benefits. Translate each feature into functional and emotional benefit. Break the paragraphs into bullet points when needed, else into short paragraphs. Don’t write a page full, in one single paragraph. Make sure you leave enough blank space or space for images on a page. It makes reading interesting.

Put quotations whenever applicable

Quotations are always appealing. While you craft a brochure page, try to put some quotations wherever they are applicable. It can be some words from the company’s chairman or some famous quotes or simply few lines you wish to emphasize. When the brochure page is designed such quotations can be nicely used in bold and bigger fonts. It easily grabs attention.

Running over pages after pages

Don’t make a CV running over pages after pages, unless you have 30 years of professional experience. Make sure your CV’s length doesn’t exceed more than two to three pages preferably. A long resume not only disinterests the interviewer, but he also doesn’t consider it that important to devote time on. So keep it crisp in length, yet all inclusive. You can’t miss out important details that your resume needs to convey to the interviewer. Rather than curtailing points to be included, curtail length of elaborative detail.

Avoid paragraphs

Write your resume in bullet points instead of writing in long paragraphs. No one likes to read textual detail in form of a paragraph. Bullets make eye movement easier and also details are easily conceived without much concentration and difficulty. Whether it’s your professional or educational details always write in points instead of paragraphs.

To difficult words

Don’t get tempted to put extremely difficult words in your resume. It’s always advised to use simple, commonly known and easy words in your resume. Too difficult words may confuse interviewer and also convey ambiguity. If you are not a writer and not opting for any writing job, adhere to simple vocabulary. Make sure your choice of words is simple, yet effective and powerful.

Wrong order

Often people write resume in wrong order of sequence. Last or current job experience or last educational pursuit should be on the top, followed by earlier experiences. Often people first write their first experience, followed by the latest ones. It confuses interviewer regarding present experience.

Don’t forget to include objectives

Start your resume with your objective. Don’t start a resume vaguely without any clear mention of what you wish to do in life and what you are looking forward to from the applied job.

Your copy or content has to perform in this chaotic world. Wouldn’t it be too much to ask your content to do without providing it the weapon necessary to cut through the clutter? Those weapons are scannability, keywords, and short paragraphs. You need to keep following things in mind when writing for the web:

1. Keep the paragraph short. You are not creating a literary piece, so there is no need to make the paragraphs long. 3 to 4 sentences long paragraphs are enough.
2. Divide your articles using headings and subheadings.
3. Use important items as bullet points.
4. Use keywords in H1, H2, H3, and other heading tags.
5. Use primary keyword as early in the title as you can.
6. Use important keywords in the first 50 words, or at least in first 100 words.
7. Use headings and subheadings to communicate key ideas.
8. Use standard font in the blog or article you post on your website, so that most of the people can read the items.
9. You can also insert images and tables in an article or blog post to make the article scannable.
10. Keep the sentences shorter.
11. Do not confuse your readers by addressing too many issues in a small article. Keep it simple.

Your article or blog post should be constructed in such a way that your audience gets the central idea in the first 30 seconds. This is the amount of time one has for any online item. The visitors may stay longer if you succeed in retaining the audiences’ attention within this time limit.

Prepare a structure for the article

Before you begin writing, you should create a structure of the article. When you undertake this exercise what you are basically doing is creating a skeleton which you will later fill with flesh, blood, and muscles. The structure of an article provides it a basic framework that will later be developed in a full grown article.

Divided the contents in subheadings

Once you know how your final article will look like, you need to divide your articles into sections and sub-sections using headings and subheadings for better readability. To break an article into sections and subsections apply the rule of thumb given below. The rule of thumb is: always put the important ideas into headings of an article, so that people know what individual paragraphs will talk about, and what the article, as a whole, is about.

Write down main points

Now it is time to add some flesh to the structure you have created so far. Under each headings and subheadings, write 2 or 3 bullet points that summarize the central idea of each paragraph, and which add up to make the complete paragraph.

That is it. You are done. Now only the filling up step is left, which could be done anytime, even after one or more breaks.

As said, the final step in the process is to write content beneath headings and subheadings using the main points (bullet points) that you have listed. By following this guide, you will be able to write good quality articles even when you take frequent breaks.

Well, the answer is that not all the copy writers are cut to be equal. Some of them are far, far better than the crazy wannabe-copy-writer jerks out there, and rest of the aspirants are just that — aspirants.

Like copywriters, not all the website copies are equal. Quite a many websites — more than anyone can overlook — have badly written copy. They openly seem to violate the basic rule of copy writing, and most of the elements of a good website copy seems missing from there.

What are the elements of good website copy?

A website copy has to have the following elements ingrained into it. Mess with one of them and you will ruin your chances of getting conversion.

1. Snappy, catchy headline to attract viewers’ attention.
2. High quality relevant image to give fodder to people who think visually, and content for image-search.
3. Explanatory body copy to build on the promise made by the headline. The body copy with the help of relevant images will build desire.
4. Powerful call to action button and words at appropriate places.
5. Keyword rich headings and sub heading.
6. Attributes and benefits listed at bullet points.
7. Different font styling — different font sizes, color, attributes (like bold, italic, and underline, etc.).
8. Trust seal, and other trust factors.

You should judiciously use each one of the element in the website copy that you write. You should also add testimonials in boxes on the home page and other relevant pages. Testimonials work wonder because it is third-party endorsement of the services you are promising to offer. Another thing that you should keep in mind while writing website copy is that you are writing it for human being not for search engines, so do not stuff the pages with keywords.

Better Website Copy Writing Tips

• Your copy should not be visually heavy. Make the copy easy to scan. You can do that by dividing copy using sub-headings, and bullet points.
• Keep one eye on the target audience and another on the matter you want to convey. It is necessary to strike a balance between the two.
• Always remember, in writing style is so important that at times style, in itself, becomes substance.
• Add relevant “call to action” at important junctures in your web pages. This will help you increase conversion.
• Do not talk about attributes, talk about benefits.
• Build the story until it reaches to climax in the last line where you should add the ultimate call to action.
• Do not make pages multi-focused.
• Define model target audience of the website before writing copy for them.
• Use short sentences and short and simple paragraphs.
• Keep the content jargon free.
• List the benefit.
• Make the benefit as clear as possible.

Copy is what determines the future of the website. The more time you will invest in creating the copy, better will be the future of your website.

Right?

Wrong!

All types of writing are not cut to be equal. The style, mood, tone, use of words, arrangement of paragraphs, objective, target audience, and even length of different types of articles are different. The article that may work for one medium may not work on another. For example: the article that you post on your website will not be same as the article you posted last night on ezinearticles.com.

Talking of ezinearticles.com let me explain how you should write for article directories.

Writing for article directories

Make it visual

No one likes reading text-heavy articles, not at least in article directories. Make your article visually scannable through the end by adding bullet points, and making the important keywords bold. The things that you have highlighted should give away the central meaning of the article.

Do not make it too long

An article between 250 and 800 words work like a charm in article directories, anything shorter or longer than that gets overlooked by the reader. I will recommend using 350-400 words articles.

Practice brevity

None of the paragraphs should be longer than 3 to 4 lines, and no sentence should be too long. Short sentences and simple words are easy to understand, which help you increase the readership of the article. Do not write complex sentences.

Proper grammar

I am not among those who are strict about the grammar usage, yet I recommend reviewing the article for obvious grammatical and punctuation mistakes. You must review it before submitting to the directory.

Follow the guidelines

Do not take guidelines set by article directories lightly. By doing so, you risk rejection. Read the guidelines carefully and follow them.

Follow these principles and you will get desired results from the articles.

Why List post?

1. 1. List post is scannable: People find it easy to scan through the list post. And ability to scan (or read) a post quickly is one of the major goal of your visitors. There are so many things on the Internet putting demand on their time that they do not afford to go through a heavy post, and that is where a list post steps is.
2. 2. It works as a great source for reference: An all-encompassing list post is often bookmarked by the reader for future reference. Readers often come back to the bookmarked list post to see the information they seek. This way a list post will build a possibility of repeat-visit in your blog.
3. It adds up to your resource list: If you have succeeded in creating a timeless list post then you can add the URL of that list post in the resource box so that new users can benefit from that. A good list will provide depth to your resource box, which in itself is a big reason why someone will come to your blog.

These are three core benefit of a list post. How else do you think a list post helps a blog? Tell everyone reading this blog, why you think a list post is necessary. I know everyone can come up with different exciting ideas. Waiting to hear from all of you.

It will not be wrong to say that the online media is more or less an action media from where we gather information and put to our day to day use.  Therefore, the content produced for this media should be different from the content produced for any other media.

Nature of online content

• Instead of reading each word people tend to scan through the material they see on the screen. Hence, the article should be easily scanable. We need to break an article into sub-headings and supply bullet points to make the article easy to read.
• Do not use impersonal pronouns like one, someone, they etc. Use ‘you’ instead of he, she, or one.
• Use conversational language, and do not beat around the bush. Be direct.
• The attention span of individuals surfing net is quite divided; therefore, supply images, tables, and lists to make the article easy to read.
• Holding readers’ attention is the key. And the lighter the article will be to the readers’ eyes the more time they will spend scanning the article.
• You just have ten to fifteen seconds to grab the readers’ attention. So the opening sequence should be powerful.
• The title of your article should build curiosity, which the content of your article should satiate.
• Do not use close- ended assertive questions in your titles which could be answered in ‘yes’ or ‘no’.

The web is a participatory medium. And your article is a way to start a conversation. Do not provide all the answers, leave scope for discussion. The more people will interact with you, the more involved they will become. This is how we build community on the web.

• S – Strength
• W – Weakness
• O – Opportunity
• T – Threat

Strength and weakness are internal elements, which mean they are inherent to the product or organization. And opportunity and threat are external elements, which mean they are not inbuilt in, but are outside of the product or organization.

Opportunity is presented by the market, whereas, your competitors (both direct and indirect) can be a threat.

Benefit of SWOT analysis

• It helps you find out the opportunity that you can use to maximize the market penetration of your product or services.
• It helps you gauge your competition, and tells you what to avoid.
• It also brings the weakness of your product on the table, which you can eliminative before reaching to the market.
• SWOT analysis will help you make a better decision.

How to do SWOT Analysis?

Step 1: Find the strengths of your product

Step 2: Find the weaknesses of the product you are offering.

Step 3: Find the need gap (opportunity) in the market, based on the strength of your product.

Step 4: List the potential threats that you might face, if you cash in on the opportunity.

Notes:

1. 1. Always Use Bullet points to do the SWOT. There is no need to write long descriptive points.
2. 2. Do not reverse the order. Always start with analyzing S and W elements of SWOT followed by the analysis of O and T elements.

A parting thought

SWOT analysis is just a tool, and how well you use the tool will decide what result you will get from it. It is easy to get biased towards one’s own product and organization, but you should avoid this trap. Stay objective and stay focused when doing a SWOT analysis of your product or organization.

Stages of writing

The process of writing can be divided into three stages. These are:

• Pre-writing
• Writing
• Editing and Proofreading

Let’s discuss each one of them in brief.

Pre-writing

Pre-writing is the phase in which we ideate about what we have to write. We prepare a structured layout of the piece we have to write. In this stage, we accomplish the following things:

• We find the topic to write on.
• We research the topic.
• Read some articles on the topic.
• We brainstorm and jot down in bullet points the things that should go in writing..
• Prepare a layout of which point will go where. It is in the pre-writing stage that most of the writing happens.

Writing

This is the phase in which you give shape to the ideas generated in the pre-writing phase. In this phase, concentrate on the writing only, do not go for editing or anything like that. Write through the end without worrying about the errors in this phase.

Editing and proofreading

This is the phase in which we give final touch to our written piece. We make the changes if required, proofread it for grammatical, structure and punctuation errors. You can also shift sentences or paragraphs up and down to make the article more cohesive.

Any writing, no matter what you are writing, follows these steps. Some writer follow these steps intuitively, i.e., in their minds, while other have to use paper and pen to go through these.

Step 1: Research the subject matter

Before beginning to write, gather some key information related to the topics you are going to write about in the article. Do not waste your time in finding every aspect related to the subject at hand. Find only what is necessary to explain what you want to write. Once they are handy, stop researching.

Step 2: Remove all distraction

Switch off your cell phone or put it in silent, remove your landline cord (if you cannot put it in silent), log out from your mail as well as social book marking accounts, log out from all instant messaging services, and also remove the internet connection for the time being.

Step 3: Write down the bullet points

Be quick and write down the bullet points that you are going to cover in the article. It should not take much time, if your pre-writing research is in place.

Step 4: Do not write and edit

Avoid using backspace and delete key when you are writing. Leave the editing work for later. Right now focus your energy on crafting the piece.

Step 5: Edit

Do not waste a life time editing an article. This is nothing but a sheer waste of time, unless you are sending your article for some research or academic journal. Remove the issues you had while writing the article.

Conclusion

Follow these steps and your writing will be quick. Do you wish to know how much time did it take me to write this short piece? Well it took me 9 minutes to write all this. It could have been 6 or 7, if I had not fall prey to editing while writing. Hope, you will not make the same mistake that I did while writing this, and get the work done real quick.

Draw and Outline and follow along

An outline is very important for writing. This is a time saving device that also helps in organizing your thoughts. Make an outline of the article or academic paper that you area about to write, and use bullet points to map what all you are going to cover under what heading. Writing will be much easier after this.

Edit, Write, Edit, Edit, Edit, Write

Does this remind you of the way you do the actual writing? Well, if it does then congratulations, and if it doesn’t then you need to work on it because no one is perfect and everyone tends to make errors while writing. Hence; you should be editing your work once you are done writing. Never consider the first draft a final work. Editing will help you remove unnecessary fat from your article.

Is it passion that you are missing?

C’mon what the heck passion has to do with writing?

I have often heard this line of reason. Tell me something, have you written a love letter to your girl friend? I know it is a pretty old concept, so, if you haven’t go and ask your parents or someone older than you who loved in the time and age when the Internet, cell phone or pager was not around.

In those good old times, people wrote letters, and they will tell you how many hours they invested in crafting one letter, sometime even days. They did it because they were passionate about the person who will receive the letter. Do this with your writing. Write on the subject you are passionate about and see the difference in the quality.

Are you here?

Live in present and observe your surroundings. This will give you more stories and inspiration then even the greatest book can. Ask questions, if you do not understand, and listen intently.

Take a break

You should take some time off before you begin editing your written work. Take some time off, and go for a walk or listen to music, that is to say, do whatever you think is good to keep you from thinking about the work that you have just finished. Come back after 20-30 minutes and edit your work.

A PowerPoint presentation with objective data, three-dimensional colorful graphs, round-cornered table with drop-shadow effect, and picture of an attractive female provides useful information, which if understood well can fetch the desired outcome. This “if understood” have a big “If” which never get resolved because data, graphs, tables, bullet points, and unrelated pictures fail to make a connect with the audience, and these things can be blamed for the failure of countless meetings and numerous PowerPoint presentations.

Various studies in neuroscience, psychology and human cognition has proved many time that human mind is not a machine fuelled by logic and rationality. On the contrary, it is an organic entity overfilled with the emotionally charged synapses and is flooded with various chemicals that get charged up by the things happening in our surrounding. A good story increases the flow of these chemicals by drawing cues from the immediate environment of the audience, and thus getting the response the storyteller seeks.

A good story helps you cut through the clutter and reach your intended audience with the message you want to deliver, whereas, a PowerPoint presentation, with graphs, tables, bullet points, etc. just adds on to the clutter. A well-crafted story helps you connect, and it will elicit the response that even hundreds of PowerPoint presentations, and reams and reams of objective data working together will not get.