How to do Web Content
January 26th, 2008 | by Brian Queenan |
While adding content is not the hardest part of putting your online business together, it is definitely the most work. Open your favorite word processor. All of your content should be written using a word processor before it is added to your website. The reason that you want to write everything down using a word processor instead of writing it directly from your website is the tools that a word processor provides helps you catch spelling errors and will help you to use better grammar so that your content is easier to read and understand.
Before I help you to put your content together let me inject a little message here. If you are thinking that you can’t write you are wrong. Here are a few questions to help you come to the conclusion that you can write.
- Can You Communicate?
- Do You Have Conversations With Your Family And Friends etc.?
- Do You Talk On The Telephone?
- Do You Send Emails?
- Have You Written Letters?
I could have listed many more but there really isn’t any need to. The above five should do the trick. Writing is simply the ability to communicate using the written word. If you can talk, you can write. Chances are you are already writing with the letters that you write, or the emails that you send. You may not be a great writer but you don’t need to be. I’m not a great a writer but I do know how to communicate. You do too. The good news is that the more often that you write the better you will get at it. Think of it as talking to the person on the other side of your computer screen because that is all that you will be doing. You are simply writing down what you are talking about. Do you still think you can’t write? I know that you can. Everyone can.
Here are a few tips just in case you have trouble getting started. Make sure that you find a quiet place with no distractions before you begin writing. Ideally you should be all by yourself. No tv, radio, or music, it should be just you and your keyboard. Just start typing anything. It doesn’t even have to make a whole lot of sense. Get accustomed to typing. You will be surprised at how the ideas will come, and your writing will begin to flow. Before you know it you will be typing up a storm and writing the content that you intend to write. Most people get intimidated sitting down and writing something on a blank page. Typing something, anything at all, makes that person feel less intimidated. The page is no longer blank. It doesn’t matter how you start, just start. The rest will take care of itself. You are going to find that you are a better writer than you thought you were in the process. Try just writing anything, this will help prepare you to write.
Of course I can’t tell you what to write. I can only help you to begin.. There are some things that you need to be aware of so that your content is formatted in a way that it can be easily read by your visitors.
People read web page content differently than they do when they read a book or magazine. They will quickly scan through your content reading bits and pieces of it as they go. The reason your visitors will scan through is because they are checking to see if your content is worth looking at. If he/she likes the content from their initial scan of your pages, they will then take a closer look at your information in a more conventional way. The funniest thing about it is that we all do it without even realizing it. I think it is a built in mechanism to protect us from all of the garbage that we’ve all read out there on the Internet. 
That’s why it is so important to have a content rich web site. Content rich does not mean that you have to have a lot of content. It means that you must have good content that is clearly written and delivers the information that the web visitor came for. Throwing a bunch useless content on your site will hurt it, not help it. It is far better to deliver a small amount of content that delivers high quality information. Depending on your business theme you may only need a page or two to get your web site up and running in the beginning. Do not use one or two web pages if it does not complete your site. For example: Because of the nature of this website, I simply could not just throw up a couple of pages, like the main page and the introduction page and leave it at that. The site would be incomplete and devastating to my online success. The point is, if you can complete your business theme with a couple of pages, go ahead and do that. Do add more pages later on though. The more quality information that you have the better your online business will do. Adding content to your site should be a continuous process. That’s how your web site will get noticed and how it will grow.
Use paragraph breaks often. Make your paragraphs short. You should never use long paragraphs because it makes it very difficult to read. Given the way that your visitors will initially read your content by scanning through to see if it is worth taking a closer look at it makes it even more important to do this. Start a new paragraph when you change your train of thought. Do not go on endlessly talking about a bunch of different things on the same paragraph. It will only confuse your visitor and make your content impossible to read which will make your visitor click away from your website. Lots of white spaces are the rule of thumb to follow.
Talk to your visitors rather than at them. It is very important that your content talks to your visitors and not at them. If you approach your writing as if you are communicating with your visitors you will avoid talking at them. No one likes to be talked at. You wouldn’t talk at a friend would you? Don’t do it in your writing either. Talk to your visitor in your writing as if you were having a conversation in person. Write as if you are talking one on one with your visitor. Never broadcast. Never write as if there is a room full of people in the house. It’s just you and your visitor no one else. Make this person feel special. This adds a personal touch to your content.
Keep the language in your content simple. Don’t use words that your visitors cannot understand. You are not writing a college thesis. You are giving your visitors simple information in a very simple way. Write it in a way that everyone who visits your site can understand. Keep it real. Don’t say things that are not true or you are unsure of. It is better to leave it out if you don’t know it well enough. If you find that you do need the information in question for your content to work, go research it so that you can add the real information. If you add something to your content that is not true someone, at some time, will call you on it. You cannot defend content that is not true. When you have finished writing be sure to proof read everything. Make sure there are no typos especially the contextual ones that your spell checker won’t find because they are not misspellings. Words like the ones below.
- They’re
- Their
- There
- You’re
- Your
- It’s
- Its
Those are just a few and are very common errors that people make. Be sure to use these types of words in the right context or it could make your content misunderstood or not understood at all.
Proof read to make sure that your content makes sense.. Can you say certain things in a clearer or better way? Are there things in there that you really don’t need? Continue to refine your content until you have something that contains a lot of great information and is easy to read and understand. You may be surprised at how many times that you will need to make changes before you have what you want.
