Hi Jennifer,
It's a drizzly, windy, sunny then cloudy spring day in Oregon. As I'm writing and thinking about writing, I'm watching clouds come and go and looking forward to our predicted 70 degrees and sunny this week. Yay!
Writing counts even more now
I started in this business 40 years ago as a graphic designer. I'm still a visual person. But in today's marketing world I've found good, clear writing is essential ... and often more important than design. (But don't ignore good design, they work together!)
The right design grabs attention and frames the message. Yet it's the message that will compel people to read your blog or click through on your website. And a great message requires thoughtful, interesting and easy-to-read writing.
My blog post on 7 fatal flaws to fix when writing websites focuses on these issues and more, from not "baking in" SEO on every page, to too much "we we we."
Start with these 5 tips
Whether you're writing a blog post or your website, or writing ads to draw people in and send them to your website, how you write will affect your results. If your readers aren't interested in the headline, or the copy is cumbersome, wordy or boring, you'll lose them. Those readers you lose could have been new customers or clients.
No matter what you're writing ...
- Write for your reader, from their point of view—more "you" than "we"
- Score your writing using the Flesch Reading Test in Word. You'll discover the difference between active and passive and learn to shorten and simplify sentences.
- Stop with the big words, acronyms and industry jargon, please! Use common language and simple words. But also avoid the words that have been beaten to death and now have no real meaning—quality, service, innovative, solutions, utilize—you know what I mean.
- Use specific, interesting details that are unique to you or that explain your point. Statistics. Numbers and data. Examples. Avoid generalities, they're boring.
- Your thesaurus is your friend. It's easy to fall back on terms you use all of the time. But there might be different words that work as well or better. Explore, test, try out new terms and phrases. It will keep your writing interesting.
Write for your audiences. Write to inspire response. Today you only have 8 seconds (on average) for someone to scan your website's home page and decide whether to stay or click away. Kind of frightening, isn't it?
We've pulled together many of these tips and more you'll find useful in our 14 Tactics for Better Blogging download. They don't just apply to a blog. Use them to improve your website content and email results, too.
I hope you find our worksheet useful. Please share your thoughts or any questions by replying to this email. Or contact us for objective feedback and advice to increase response to your website, blog and marketing.
Happy writing! And Happy Spring!
Jennifer Larsen Morrow
Marketing Visionary | 503.883.4433
P.S. Don't forget the upcoming series of four 3-hour workshops on social media marketing, beginning April 21 in McMinnville, presented by Linfield College. Register here.
