Writing For The Internet

When you’re starting to plan your website design the first and foremost thing to consider is your words… your content. Not your colors, or your layout, or picking a catchy domain name. How you write for your visitors carries a lot of weight.

Consider why you go to the Internet. It’s usually to find information, right? Maybe to research for products and find out what other people have said about a certain item. Maybe to find stories of how others have solved your particular problem.

Quite a few small businesses fail on the Web because they set up an “e-commerce” website and expect to collect money, before they have provided what their visitors are searching for…information. These small business owners build a website to sell and somehow figure that traffic will just show up and want to buy whatever it is that’s in front of them. (How we wish it were that easy!) We’ve made this mistake ourselves.

Wrong thinking…wrong process…no results! In Ken Evoy’s words:

“It’s like pushing a string. You have to pull instead–pull targeted visitors into your site, PREsell them. Then, and only then, sell.

Before you write to sell, take an order, clear a credit card and ship a product…

You need traffic. PREsold traffic.

And sales copy does not do that.

That is why effective “Netwriting” is really a two-step process… PREsell, then SELL. And that requires two different kinds of writing…

1. Write to PREsell.
2. Then, and only then, write to SELL.

The most important step (#1) has been virtually ignored by all who write about writing on the Net.

Download Your Free eBook About
Writing For An Internet Audience

The Netwriting Masters Course is the first and only course that shows you how to get the whole process correct.

Site Build It! offers a great free resource for writing for the internet. The Netwriting Masters Course.

You just need to follow the right process, the correct steps. And that requires you to make the critical offline-to-online business mindshift from “location, location, location” to…

“What If I Have A Technical Audience?”

Let’s say you’re selling something technically-related, either service or product. But, you don’t want to end up “talking down” to your audience. Your subject requires a certain degree of technical terminology.

Great! This approach can work with a field that’s technically-oriented, too. The basics of PRE-selling remain the same.

You know your field, you know the technical lingo, you know how to read technical reports. Use that, don’t abandon it. Just don’t over work it. Don’t be too verbose (er… wordy) in writing your content or you could win some awards for making your visitors yawn.

Use enough technical jargon to adequately and accurately describe your goods and services, but write simply enough that your visitor can get the main points relatively quickly.

Think of “slowing down” your visitors, not “stopping” them to get them to read in-depth writing. THAT kind of writing is best left to JAMA or Nature or even Scientific American.

Think Content Doesn’t Matter?

Surfers are looking for information and solutions. But they usually don’t know exactly who or what can provide it.

So they rely on search engines to source possibilities that are worth their effort to visit. It’s through the Seach Engines that you need to reach your visitors.

You must honestly convince each search engine that your page is the most relavant for each keyword that you target and thus deserves a high ranking. If you trick the search engines, your success won’t last long, and when it discovers the trick, it will ban you (your website, actually).

Why? The answer is not complicated.

The seach engines are in business, too. Their product is the quality of their search results. Help them make their product better and they’ll love you.

That’s why the “art” of Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is ultimately about writing quality content and using quality linking to other quality websites. “Quality” means great content.

Playing to What People Want
Instead of What They Need
(Or, How to Play to Their Ego)

Here’s an excerpt from an article by Rebecca Hagel, When Did This Become About You? Rebecca talks about how to write sales copy that triggers people’s emotions. It’s highly recommend you read the whole thing…

“You’ve heard it plenty of times – find a market with a problem, find their solution and throw yourselves in their path so that they throw their money at you. For the most part this is good advice. However, let’s break this down further since essentially what we are referring to is meeting a customer’s wants and needs.

You see, the problem is that it’s easy for our ego to get in the way when we start a business. We may know what a customer needs and so we set off to create the product or service. Them we are completely befuddled when no one is buying our product.

What happened? We didn’t create a product that people WANTED.

If you decide to create a business that meets people’s needs, you better also be sure that these people want your solution.”

Essentially, if you can tap into a basic human emotion of wanting to be liked, admired and loved, you’re well on your way to triggering your most wanted response: a sale. In doing this you have to shift your business focus from selling your product to helping the client fulfill and realize their wants and desires. Admittedly, this is not an easy one to do.

For the most part your website content will be informational, but it’s also helpful to keep in mind how you can bring them information that they want… not just need.

5 Basic Parts to Writing

If you want to start with the basics in your writing, this is a good structure to start with. This will generate a short, succinct article or essay that gets right to the point. This is a tried and true 5-paragraph format:

In the end my Dad would always say: “There’s no such thing as good writing… only good re-writing.” Essentially, just start by getting something on paper, then over a period of a few days or weeks re-read and tweak it.

Nothing to it

Make Your Words Sell

Here another great free ebook from Site Sell. Make Your Words Sell was formerly selling for $29.95, but is now free!

This is easy-to-follow advice on writing for your Internet audience. Also some great advice on writing headlines that draw interest without being cheesy and overbearing.

This ebook was created by Ken Evoy and Joe Robson over an 8 month period. It’s well thought out and researched. This is definitely no quick-written ebook pretending to teach you about Internet writting… it delivers.

How can you go wrong with free?

A Final Thought On How To PRE-Sell

Which one of these people would you respond to?

We know which one we’d go with… and which one we’re instantly turned off to. Which one do you want to be?

Write as though you’re talking to your friends about something that you’re really impressed with. By writing for a niche you know and love, the content is easy.