iGeeks

October 31st, 2003

Content Writing

In school , my teacher used to tell me all the time. “the newspaper is not your confessional!”
But it was. Most of all, I learned that personal writing gets attention. I don’t know why. Maybe it’s an innate thirst for personal experience that we all share. Maybe it’s just literary rubbernecking. Whatever it is, it draws eyeballs like nothing else.
The one thing I know about presenting words in a way that makes an impact. So whether you’re publishing an annual report or your grandmother’s pickle recipes, here are a few basic tips for making the writing on your Web site leave more of a mark. The tips fall into two categories: design and content. Content
There’s a horrible urban legend floating around that says, People don’t read on the Web. That’s just silly. Of course people read on the Web - the Web is mostly comprised of text!
The truth is, people don’t read on the Web when they can’t find anything interesting to read. Although your writing style should vary depending on what you’re writing and who the audience is, here are some basics to keep in mind:
Edit, Edit, Edit: Since Web publishing is cheap, easy, and infinitely changeable (unlike a magazine, which is printed once and then set in stone), often the first thing to go is the editing. Don’t let that happen.
I say to you now: Befriend your editors. Buy them chocolates and roses. Tell them they’re valuable and believe it. Because they are.
If you run your own site, ask your friends to read your text before you post it. You’ll be surprised at the things they catch. If you’re running a Web site for a company or an organization and you’re not employing someone to quality-check the words on your site, you’re perpetuating a major reason why your users aren’t getting everything they could out of your site.
Write in the Active Voice: If you’re writing for the Web, think about the users reading your words. Now think of their hand, poised on the mouse, itching to click. Your challenge is to keep those readers interested enough to stay.
One way to do that is to write actively. That means cutting out the passive voice (”One thing of which I have become aware …” becomes “I’m aware of …”). If you get really good at this, you’ll see your word count go down and your clarity level go up.
Pay Attention to All Words: When I talk about words on the Web, I’m not talking about just the stories. Pay attention to all the communication on a page: navigation text, headlines, titles, status bar messages, everything. The user is taking all these elements in at once. You need to read your pages that way too.
Consistency: Finally, aim for a consistent level of quality. When users read something valuable on your site, you can bet they’ll be back for more. If you don’t disappoint them, your hit count won’t disappoint you.
One college journalism teacher was right, of course. The newspaper isn’t a confessional. But if you pay attention and you follow some of the rules outlined here, your writing can be as riveting as a confessional.

Hemant