Writing Blogger

The quandary is pretty much the same across websites. The kinds of content that really grab our attention as readers of print publications and viewers of television and movies are narratives, stories with a beginning, middle and an end. But online, content is almost never expressed that way — for business and commercial sites, anyway.

So how do we do it? How do we communicate ideas and thoughts in a way that fits in within our natural receptiveness as humans to narrative stories? This will be the first of a few posts that will explore that theme, and feel free to chime in with ideas of your own.

Summaries at the top of your Web pages enhance the usability of your site by giving users a way to quickly understand what content will be displayed on a Web page, and whether it is relevant to them.

As Web usability guru Jakob Nielsen has written many times, Web users don’t like to spend any more time than they need to scanning pages for the content they’re looking for. They want to find what they’re looking for quickly and easily, and anytime you can make that task easier for them, you’re making your site exponentially easier to use.

That’s why page-top summaries of the content that appears in greater detail below are a particularly effective way to make your site more usable. For an example, check out CNN.com’s Story Highlights, which you can find on any full story page on the site.

Summaries can be bolded (like the one above) or simply placed into a bulleted list, or even highlighted with the introductory title “Summary” placed before them.

Have you ever read a blog post or an article online that started out strong — meaning, you guessed from the beginning that you were going to learn something that could benefit you or your business in a concrete way — only to be disappointed once you reached the end?

It’s a common trap writers get themselves into. We work so hard to make an impression with the lede and opening paragraphs that we allow the middle and especially the ending of articles or posts to simply trail off and die, figuring that few readers reach the end anyway.

Just because it’s common, however, doesn’t mean that it’s okay. To keep your readers/online viewers focused — and to give them a quality experience at your site that will keep them coming back — you have to anticipate and meet their needs. To do that, follow these two simple rules:

Avoid making vague & unspecific claims, predictions or assertions

For an example of what I mean, take a look at this post on SiteProNews. The author of the piece discusses an important topic in the world of search engine marketing and optimization — the impact of personalization — but allows her article to drift by the end into vague pronouncements about how personalization may impact SEO in the future.

Now, don’t get me wrong; it’s interesting. But only in an academic sense. It contains little to no useful, actionable information on how I, as a site owner, might interpret the writer’s message and change how I optimize my website for search engine traffic as a result of the rise of personalized searches.

Offer concrete steps or actions users can implement

Instead of offering vague assertions about what may come in the future, provide steps or actions users can take to influence their own futures, with respect to your topic. Offering users concrete, actionable steps makes your writing more credible because it leaves the impression that what you’re writing is well thought through; it’s not simply a rant that some blogger rattled off in fifteen minutes after his morning coffee.

Making your content useful, purpose-ful and actionable also implies a sense of caring about your users’ fortunes. Simply warning them of the dangers of some future trend isn’t enough; providing signposts on how to handle trends is what provides value to your users, and will bring them back for more.

Tuesday’s Wall Street Journal has a fascinating piece about how the term “bucket” has come to replace “silo” and “basket” as one of the business world’s most-used words, both with clients and customers and internally among employees and managers.

I’ve never really understood why, but I’ve always been fascinated by how terms like these get into the bloodstream of the business world and seem to permeate everything, becoming a catch-all word or phrase for virtually anything people want them to mean.

As the writer of the piece, Christopher Roads, explains:

The blossoming of bucket comes as no surprise to Anthony Aristar, a professor of linguistics at Eastern Michigan University in Ypsilanti. When words — particularly those centuries old — become popular in new and different ways, that often indicates a gap in modern language. In this case, business has become organized in so many different kinds of subdivisions that no one quite knows what to call them all.

The result: Old words like bucket are being revived in a “metaphoric extension.” Bucket, he explains, “still means a container for something, but now in a metaphorical context. You see this all the time with words.”

Back in the late 90s, when I worked as a technology consultant, “getting people out of their silos” to work with one another more creatively and more productively was the mantra then, along with chestnuts like “synergy,” “flat organizations” and others. (I’ll also never get through my head why the corporate world is in love with words like “utilize” over the clearer — and, ironically enough, more useful — “use.”)

I write this not just out of a pet peeve but also with the idea that business writing, above all, should be clear; as we all know well, it so often is painfully and obviously unclear. As Warren Buffett famously said once, “if I read an annual report and come across an accounting footnote I can’t understand, it’s not because the writer ran out of words in the dictionary to use. It’s because he didn’t want me to understand it.”

Good point, and well said. You can read the whole WSJ piece here (subscription required).

That’s the surprising conclusion — to say the least — from a new eyetrack study released this week from the Poynter Institute at the American Society of Newspaper Editors conference.

Among the findings were that when Web users read a story online, on average they read 77 percent of the story, compared to 62 percent for “broadsheet” newspapers and 57 percent of a typical story in a tabloid newspaper.

This survey appears to fly in the face of much of what we’ve conditioned ourselves to believe about online copywriting and Web usability in general. While it will take more careful reading — and may apply only to online news sites, perhaps, rather than to Web sites in general — this study is definitely worth a look.

You can see the full report from Poynter here.

I’ve stumbled across a book recently that seems promising/interesting, Republican pollster Frank Luntz’s Words That Work (It’s Not What You Say, It’s What People Hear). Not that I’m in agreement with the author on a lot of things, but I’m intrigued by his arguments on how the words and phrases we as writers use influence the things readers and consumers think, buy and say — both in the sense of understanding what makes for the most effective communication techniques and in how to use those techniques responsibly.

In the book’s chapters on “The 10 Rules of Successful Communication” and “The 21 Words and Phrases for the 21st Century,” it looks like Luntz will likely veer to what works in the political realm. But I think there is value for business writers as well, particularly in his advice on how to structure writing & communications. Once I’ve finished it, I’ll post a more complete review, warts and all. Until then, enjoy.

It’s Friday, and for me this day of the week always seems like it’s time for reflection. Lately I’ve been reading Po Bronson’s What Should I Do With My Life?, a collection of essays/interviews/stories with about 70 people on how each struggled to find — or failed to find, or still was struggling to find – the path they felt was meant for them in life. Some followed traditional career paths and found them deadening, others followed far less conventional paths and found them lacking as well.

The common thread that I find running through the book is that, contrary to what I imagined as a child and a teenager, maybe we can’t find that one single thing that we can love to do every single day, that will make us happy for the rest of our lives if we keep doing that one single thing (which, for me, was playing center field in the major leagues, of course).

What keeps us interested and alive, on the other hand, is following our intuitions and enthusiasms — seeking out the new, the interesting, the out-of-left-field and constantly expanding our range of possibilities. Which also got me thinking to how that applies to the work I do — it’s difficult for me as a writer to do the same kind of work over and over and over, ad infinitum. Variety is essential. And if I’m not able to take on new and different kinds of work, I find myself growing stale, and not producing work of the same caliber.

This isn’t so much a week-to-week shift or a month-to-month shift, as it is something that happens every few years. There’s that need to reach out and find new ground that always asserts itself, sooner or later. And, I find that when I return to types of work I’m already familiar with, I bring a new freshness and energy to them if I’ve taken the time to follow my enthusiasms and bring something new to my work/writing life.

I had given thought to actually leaving the world of freelancing and returning to the seeming safety and security of a corporate job. But now I’m feeling (thanks to Bronson’s book) a new energy and enthusiasm for what I’ve already been doing, an energy that I don’t know I would have found without seriously considering throwing it all away. Maybe that’s what it takes: a willingness to say goodbye to something before you can really embrace it.

Ahh, well… I’m waxing philosophic now! Interested to hear your $0.02.

Crikey!!! I’ve been away for two weeks now from the blog, so please pardon the lack of posts. I’ll be back on top of things soon, as I’ve been a little underwater with work (a good problem to have, I’m sure you’d agree).

In the meantime, check out this news from Google on their new pay-per-transaction online ad model. Though I haven’t written much on this blog about Google’s AdSense or AdWords programs, I’m a subscriber and earn a little money on the blog through the ads I have posted at right, and it’s something of a hobby of mine.

I’m very interested to see how a possible shift to a pay-per-transaction model will change the way Web publishers write for their sites, versus how they tend to write for them now (heavy on the search-engine-friendly keywords, for example). Will publishers write more about the benefits of products/services/whatever is being advertised? Will it lead to more value for Web users, vs. the proliferation of “Made for AdSense” sites we see so much of on the Web today?

Interesting questions…

Ever since the dawn of the Internet age a little over a decade ago, the most common prompt to get users to view another page on millions of sites across the Web has been the ubiquitous “click here.” No matter how many Web consultants have railed against them in work for clients large and small, those two words have stubbornly persisted and continue to flourish even today.

There are good reasons you should almost never use them in your link text, however, beyond the simple fact that using “click here” implies an amateurish, 1995-era approach to Web writing.

Web users mostly scan, rather than read, text online

As the volumes of research by Web usability pioneer Jakob Nielsen have demonstrated, most Web users don’t consume online content in the same way as print content like magazines and newspapers. You’ve probably noticed this behavior yourself in your own Web use habits, that your eye tends to dart around pages in search of relevant text or content relating to your interest at the moment.

That means that link text containing “click here” can get overlooked easily by many Web users. Instead, use the page or document title of the content you’re linking to, so that it can be quickly spotted by Web users who have little time to view the content on your pages. You’ll save your users valuable time, and provide them the value they’re looking for by quickly directing them to the content they want to see.

Google rewards link text with terms relevant to user searches

When search engines like Google crawls the Web in search of links to the billions of sites on the Web, they look for a wide range of things we’ll probably never know all about. But we do know that they look for the number of links pointing to a given site, and how relevant those links are to that given site.

When the text in a link uses words that are similar or identical to common user searches on a particular topic, search engines like Google consider them highly relevant links, and rank them accordingly. That makes it critical for you to use link text within your site that gives Google the right “clue” for the content you’re linking to — which means using the page title in your link text rather than “click here.”

Relevant link text makes you look more professional

If nothing else, taking the time to write informative, search-relevant link text gives the impression that you have taken the time to consider the needs and wants of users, rather than casually and hastily slapping your Web content into your site without giving it a second thought. It adds to your site’s credibility, a commodity that’s in rare supply across much of the Web.

Back to the “almost” part…

Now, I know as well as you do that occasionally, we all lapse into writing habits that are less than optimal and that you’re going to have terms like “click here” slip into your content here and there. No need to panic.

Just be sure to minimize its use whenever and wherever you can, so you don’t have to scratch your head and wonder what “click here” links to.

If you’ve ever been tasked with editing, re-writing or writing from scratch copy for a corporate Web site, you’re familiar with what a daunting task it can sometimes be. Often, corporate writing contains little concrete, usable, practical information that you can get your arms around, so to speak, and it’s often difficult to decipher exactly what it says.

But you’ve been hired by your client to bring a fresh eye and a new angle to what they’re communicating, right? As tough as this can be — especially when you’re completely new to your client’s industry — there are some practical steps you can take to get yourself up to speed relatively quickly.

Interview Your Client

One of the best ways to get at the essence of what you want to communicate with a site or a particular page is to interview your client, extensively if possible, about their company and their business. Ask what, in your client’s mind, is the problem or need she is solving with her product or service? What happens in her customers’ lives that brings them to her doorstep? Where do her customers want to be?

Research Your Client’s Industry - But Don’t Go Too Far

Putting yourself “in the mix” of current events in your client’s industry is an excellent way to absorb the language used to describe it, and how to use that language correctly. Ask your client for examples of Web sites they read regularly to stay up-to-date, as well as samples of other brochures or sites they would like to emulate.

However, it is often tempting, especially for writers who love learning new things, to dive into researching a client’s business area with gusto, reading up on articles in the Wall Street Journal and Business Week, and convincing yourself that you’re spending your time wisely.

As pleasurable as it may be to do the research, you have to keep in mind that your time is limited, and you need to keep your research limited only to relevant areas and topics. Tangents are fun to explore, but you need to spend your time efficiently — especially when you’re on a client’s dime.

Write an Outline, and Review It With Your Client Before Starting The Copy

Feedback on the structure of each page you write — or least the first few pages, if you’re beginning a new assignment with a new client — is critical to delivering effective copy for your client. I’ve had the experience in the past of writing with a certain direction in mind and feeling that I’ve nailed the copy, only to find that a client has a different idea when they read it. To me, that makes writing an outline an essential step before you’ve written a word of actual copy.

An outline will show the flow of a page, reveal the main points and ideas it wants to express, and explain how it concludes its argument. When you look at the “bare bones” of your Web content ideas with your client, suddenly gaps you didn’t see before are clear, and you can brainstorm new ideas for a page.