business writing: write today

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Writing business content for the Web means that you’re writing for the search engines. Your Web content needs to be indexed the way you want it to be indexed, otherwise your target audience will never reach your site.

Write for humans first
While writing for indexing is important, it’s more important to write for your site visitors. They’re the people who will, you hope, be taking action on your words.

Make your words as clear, as interesting and as persuasive as you can FIRST - then search engine optimization and marketing (SEO and SEM) touches later.

Keep it simple. Vital SEO tips: Don’t go overboard with keywords, but ensure that your preferred keywords are included in the page title, and in the H1 tag. Limit yourself to two keywords (or a maximum of three) per page.

Technorati Tags: Web writing, write for the Web, SEO, keywords, links

“Tell ‘em” is the easiest strategy ever for getting a document written fast. There’s no glamor with this one, it’s basic. However, it’s also powerful.

Here it is:

1. Tell them what you’re going to tell them;

2. Tell them: one paragraph per item;

3. Tell them what you told them.

The big benefit of Tell ‘Em is that it ensures clarity, because it straightens out your own thinking. Most people try to cram too much into a document. They wander off on tangents and the main points are buried deep in the document. This ensures that the document is NEVER read.

You can use Tell ‘Em on many different types of documents, anything from an ad to a complete Web site. It’s especially effective when you’re writing the summary for a proposal.

Try it.

Technorati Tags: reports, proposals, memos

If you’re in marketing, chances are that you’ll be asked to contribute to the company blog. Blogs are becoming much more popular with businesses of all sizes. So how do you write a blog?

A blog is a conversation with your customers

Write your blog in a casual style. Unlike most forms of marketing, a blog is a conversation, so your blog should have a friendly intimate writing style, so that people feel free to “talk” to you on the blog via the Comments feature.

Ensure that you have the Comments feature on your blog software enabled - on some software it’s disabled by default - so that your readers can leave comments, beginning a conversation.

For more on blogging, visit my Blogging For Dollars blog.

Technorati Tags: business blogs, writing a blog, business writing for blogs