Expert Bloggers Share Their Advice For Generating Incredible Business Copy
The good news is that writing for the web isn't a particularly difficult skill to master. However, getting it right takes a little knowledge and expertise.
You will probably have noticed at some point in your time reading content on the web, that articles themselves tend to be rather top heavy. The most important content is conveyed in the first few paragraphs of the post - or even the first couple of sentences - with the rest being mainly filler or background information.
The reason why journalists and bloggers tend to cram as much information as they can into the first few lines of their articles is that they want people to be able to glean as much information as they can, as quickly as they can, to prevent them from going elsewhere.
Know Your Audience
One is the most important criteria for writing on the web is knowing your audience. You need to be aware of the level of your audience, the type of material that they are capable of understanding, and the way in which they like to read. Some audiences will appreciate lots of breaks in the text and white spaces, while others will benefit more from facts and figures, tables, graphs, and photographs.
Sometimes you will find that you'll have to dumb down the content to meet the needs of a particular target audience. Other times it is beneficial to write at a high level in order to attract the interests of key influencers and people in your field. The way in which you write should always have your target audience in mind. You should still write for your target audience, even if you feel as if you are alienating some people who might come and read the content on your page.
Avoid Jargon
Storytelling is important on the web, as you can find out from Poet Media. But all too often, many businesses descend into using their own buzzwords to communicate with customers. They use words like “snackable content,” and “value added” which don’t resonate with the average user. It's a good idea to avoid all of this language and instead communicates with customers in a very basic way. You might think that your business is “industry-leading” but, in general, customers are fed up with this type of marketing speech.
Use Paragraphs All The Time
It is a good idea to forget what you learned about using paragraphs in school. Paragraphs on the Internet need to be short and concise.
Most paragraphs you will read from bloggers and journalists on the Internet are about two sentences long, perhaps even less. Short paragraphs are important for helping readers scan your work, and also helps avoid putting some people off who are freaked out when they see a big wall of text.
Shorter paragraphs also make your writing more concise.
Always Use Subheadings
Because people want to find useful information in your article quickly, subheadings are helpful. Subheadings are like an index that breaks up the text in your article and makes the whole thing a lot more manageable.
Having subheadings is also helpful for Google's web spiders because it allows them to better characterize what your content is about.