One of the ways for a business to stand out in this world of far too many messages competing for too short attention spans, is to learn how to write well for the internet. Those who do, enjoy greater success and popularity in the online world, with their readers eagerly awaiting their next post or article.
Know who you’re writing to. This is very much back to basics Marketing! A mistake many publishers of email newsletters and blogs make is trying to be all things to all people. If you were speaking to a prospective client, what you said would be different than if you were talking to a friend, colleague, supplier, or even to an existing client. Your tone and the words you use will change according to your audience. So when you’re clear who they are you can compose your message with them in mind.
Choose a topic or theme and stick with it. I know it sounds obvious but it can be very tempting to go off topic and confuse, or even lose, some of your readers. Indeed, the main reason given by people who unsubscribe from newsletters is ‘relevancy’. If your business is graphic design, your blog and newsletter articles need to be related to graphic design. Start talking about cookery and your audience will click away. They subscribed because they wanted to learn about graphic design after all! If you want to write about your hobby or an unrelated topic, start a separate blog or newsletter.
Get to the point quickly. Save the long ramblings and suspense-filled endings for that book! Internet readers are so overwhelmed with the sheer number of articles in their inbox or RSS reader, that they simply don’t have time to keep scrolling down. Not only that; keeping your place when reading on a screen is harder. Write short sentences and paragraphs and use bolded sub-headings to break up the text and let the reader know what’s coming next.
I hope this has been useful. For more tips, here are our previous blog posts about writing for the web.
