:: Tuesday, February 24, 2004 ::

Web copy can make or break your site

A good writer should be able to adapt their print writing style to make it Web-appropriate. But this does require understanding the differences between these media. And the differences aren’t small.

The very fact that a Web site has an interactive function makes it a completely different entity with its own set of rules. When writing for the Web a writer must take into account why visitors access the site. Merely viewing a Web site is no longer the point in and of itself, as it may once have been when Web sites were a novelty.

Web site visitors access the sites they do with a specific purpose in mind. This should be reflected in the style, tone and content of the text. Long, flowery copy will only be viewed as an obstacle to get past in order to accomplish an objective – the reason they came to the site in the first place.

Gerry McGovern’s article What Makes for a Great Web Site? on Marketingprofs.com discusses how focus, clarity of purpose and active tone make a great site:

“A great Web site is unpretentious. It doesn’t pretend to be what it is not. It never wastes your time, because it always gets to the point. A great Web site helps you to act.”

McGovern includes some solid examples to illustrate this point, and explains how not to commit one of my biggest Web pet peeves:

“You don’t need to be told, ‘Click here for more.’ It is obvious from the text that this is something you can click on. The text itself is compelling you to click.”

:: Jennifer 12:56 PM [+] ::

Who's reading your press releases?

B.L. Ochman provides a great list of tips for writing and sending press releases that will get published. The shift to e-mailing releases has necessitated big changes in the way they are written. Gone are the days of the expansive release that includes paragraphs chock full of boilerplate information that should instead be easily accessible via a link to the company Web site.

Ochman’s tips are great guidelines if you are new to writing press releases. But they also serve as a helpful reminder for those who’ve been in the business awhile.

I recommend using the following as a standard checklist for releases:
· The lead paragraph of the new Reality PR release states its point in 40 words or less. Of those 40 words, no more than six words are used to describe what the company does.
· The body of the release is 300 words or less, in 5 short paragraphs.
· Consider using the bulleted points "Who? What? Where? When? Why?" as paragraph headings.
· Write only two to three short sentences in each paragraph.
· Above the headline and/or at the bottom, be sure to provide a contact name, phone number, e-mail address and URL for additional information.
· Never send your release as an attachment. Send the lead in an e-mail with a link to the full story on your site.

:: Jennifer 7:55 AM [+] ::

Measuring your Web site's success

Tracking Web site visitors and measuring the effectiveness of a business Web site can be daunting to many business owners. And yet, to ignore the statistics that are available to most Web site owners is to ignore a valuable tool in developing your business.

Travis Reeder’s article How (and Why) to Read Your Web Statistics and Analytics is a great overview for the Web site owner who doesn’t know where to start. Reeder covers the basics including visitor tracking, referrers and search phases, as well as revenue, campaign and conversion tracking. Don’t worry if you don’t know what these terms mean. Reeder explains it all in plain English. Reeder also concludes with some good advice on selecting the right web analytics service.

:: Jennifer 8:43 AM [+] ::

Creative ideas for business blogs

There is a perception among many businesspeople that blogs are not to be taken seriously, that they are not compatible with corporate Web sites because they are too informal and lack direction and substance. While there are many blogs written by teenagers using the medium as an online diary about their personal lives, the medium does not dictate the message.

Jennifer Kyrnin addresses the perception of blogs as useless to the business world because they are too personal and informal, in her article A Blog Can Help Your Business Even if You Don’t “Blog.” Kyrnin offers some great suggestions for how to use a blog on a business Web site to increase pageviews and attract customers.

Kyrnin writes: “Blogs are a powerful tool for marketing and promotion. Because the entries are short, and often full of links, they are more keyword heavy than standard articles often are. Plus, being short, they are easy for your customers to read (and you to write), so they are more likely to come back daily to see what you might have to say on that day. If your company is very formal, a blog is a place to show your customers that it is made up of people just like them. You can do this without becoming too personal or diary-like.”

Kyrnin’s suggestions include a blog for frequently asked questions, a blog to highlight promotions, one featuring daily contests or games, and a blog to announce when new information or features have been added to your site. The rest of her suggestions are worth checking out and may even spark other ideas for a creative business blog.

:: Jennifer 9:15 AM [+] ::

Be careful what you blog

Here’s an example of how blogging can get you into trouble with your employer – even when you host your own blog on an independent server. Microsoft fired a full-time temporary employee because of a photo he posted on his blog in an entry titled Even Microsoft wants G5s.

Hanson, the ex-Microsoft temp employee writes: “It seems that my post is seen by Microsoft Security as being a security violation. The picture itself might have been permissible, but because I also mentioned that I worked at the MSCopy print shop, and which building it was in, it pushed me over the line…More frustrating for me is that, having read stories here and there on the 'net about people who had for one reason or another lost their jobs due to something on their weblogs, I thought that I had done what I could to avoid that possibility. To my mind, it's an innocuous post.”

Since employers do have the right to fire you or not hire you based on what you post on your blog, it seems that the only way to safeguard your career while exercising your freedom of speech is to leave your employer out of your blog posts. And of course, it’s always a good idea to include the standard disclaimer – something to the effect that the opinions expressed in your blog do not necessarily represent those of your employer.

It’s unfortunate that while blog technology allows such easy access to publishing personal thoughts and ideas, unrestricted writing in this medium can come with a penalty.

Thanks to Timothy for the link posted on Slashdot.

:: Jennifer 11:07 AM [+] ::

Topic-driven blogs

Neil McIntosh’s article Why blogs could be bad for business, published in the Guardian, discusses the obstacles in terms of blogging in a business setting. McIntosh writes:

“The notion that more than a few companies might relax their external relations strategies enough to allow weblog communication, willy-nilly, between staff members and the outside world, is absurd, no matter how many consultants insist such communication might actually have a beneficial effect on a company’s image.”

He also discusses potential internal pitfalls of blogging about an individual’s secrets of their success:

“There are plenty of areas of business where people are judged on their knowledge, and the competitive edge – and thus the safety of everyone’s jobs – is the thickness of a single good idea. Share it all on a weblog, with competitors or (worse) an office rival? You must be kidding.”

What McIntosh describes is reality for more companies than not. I encourage professionals in business settings, where it won’t work to blog about the company business, to think about industry-specific blogs that might not be affected by the same issues that a business blog would be.

For example, a communication professional working for a healthcare corporation could start a “health in the news” blog and post links to the most interesting health-related news articles of the day. Or they could focus on different health conditions or diseases and provide links to the best online resources for information about these conditions. There’s a lot of room for creativity here. An employee at an interior design firm could blog about the latest design trends or post links to design news about celebrity home designs.

If done well, an industry-specific or topic-driven blog, while not providing direct information about the organization itself, would position the blogger as an expert in terms of finding pertinent topic-related information. It may in turn, reflect positively on the blogger’s employer. And if readers become accustomed to looking to a specific blog for information about a specific topic, they also may go to that company when they find they want to purchase services or products related to that topic.
:: Jennifer 4:31 PM [+] ::

Blogs and journalism

Mark Glaser’s article Weblogs Are Pushing the Newsroom Envelope on Writers’ Spontaneity published on Online Journalism Review highlights an important difference between blogs written by journalists working for publications and blogs written by individuals in their spare time.

Glaser discusses the recent controversy in the blogosphere over the change in procedure and editorial process for columnist Daniel Weintraub’s blog California Insider. Weintraub used to post to his blog and send his post to his editor simultaneously. That changed after a controversial post. Now all content goes to the editor first. Glaser includes links to some of the protests in the blogosphere from outraged bloggers who feel that Weintraub is being censored.

To me, this is a case of the medium not dictating the message. While journalist bloggers use the same software to publish their blogs that individual, unaffiliated bloggers do - there are rules governing what they post that do not apply to all bloggers.

I would argue that even if a journalist’s blog isn’t held to a standard editorial process, the writer still engages in self-editing or regulation any time they are receiving a pay check for posting. Journalists’ editors read their posts whether they do it before the posts are live, or after. And whether formally, or informally a journalist’s blog will be considered part of their work performance when they blog for a publication. The same holds true for any writer blogging on the job.

On the other hand, an individual blogger posting on her or his own time is beholden to no one. The independent blog has no restrictions and no editorial process other than the goals, opinions and ideals of the blogger who publishes it. Maybe it’s time to start categorizing different types of blogs with rubrics that distinguish them from each other rather than assuming that the use of blogging technology means that all blogs follow the same standards.
:: Jennifer 7:47 PM [+] ::

For more communication tips, take a look at the archives.