Wording Up Your Website by Glenn Murray

Wording Up Your Website by Glenn Murray

Back to basics. Forget funky design, good copywriting is the key to a clear and intuitive website.

Are you losing business because of your website? More and more customers are logging on to the Web to decide where to spend their money because it is quick and convenient, and they can jump from site to site instead of walking from store to store.
Web savvy customers don't need to be patient, studies have shown that you need to engage a potential customer very quickly by giving them easy, fast access to the information they need. Otherwise they will simply move on to the next site.

Appealing design and speedy functionality are important but they don't ensure that your site is well structured (intuitive) or well written (clear).

Write First
The real message on most websites is in the writing, and so it makes sense that the writing should determine the structure. Unfortunately, this is not the usual case. Most businesses choose the structure and design of their site first and then try and fit the writing around that structure. This flies in the face of commonsense. When you speak to someone, you structure your speech around your message, you don't decide on a structure then change the message to suit. So you need to plan what you want to say before you create the site. Maybe even write the whole thing first and then use the message to determine the structure.

When deciding what to write, think about what your customer wants to know rather than what you want to say. It's a subtle difference, but it is the key to engaging a potential customer.

Most customers will want to know the basics:

What do you do?
What benefit can you offer them?
Why should they choose your service or product?
What does it cost?
How can they contact you?
Where are you located?
Brevity & Clarity
Your website has to communicate a lot of information and to make matters worse, you are going to have limited space. Ideally, your customer won't have to scroll on any page (all your information will fit in a single window) and that single view will need to contain more than just words. The design and navigation elements take up about a third of a window, and you should leave a bit of room for white space (you don't want to overwhelm the customer). As a rule of thumb you should expect to have about half the window free for text.

How you are going to fit all your information in such a confined space? This is where writing skills come in - choose your words very carefully.

Websites can be an extremely powerful piece of marketing collateral. You can reach millions of potential customers for as little as a few hundred dollars. Unfortunately, your competitors are all doing the same thing - it's a level playing field but there are a lot of players.

It is important that your message is structured and well thought out, otherwise your site will be a mess and no-one will bother to read about your business. If your message is clear, your site will be simple and easy to use. It's all in the words.

* Glenn Murray heads copywriting studio Divine Write. He can be contacted on Sydney (02) 4334 6222 or at glenn@divinewrite.com. Visit www.divinewrite.com for further details.


About the Author
* Glenn Murray is an advertising copywriter and heads copywriting studio Divine Write. He can be contacted on Sydney +612 4334 6222 or at glenn@divinewrite.com. Visit http://www.divinewrite.com for further details or more FREE articles.

10 Tips on How to Cultivate Relationships with Editors by Elizabeth Kirwin

10 Tips on How to Cultivate Relationships with Editors by Elizabeth Kirwin

10 Tips on How to Cultivate Relationships with Editors

If you are an aspiring writer, or you simply want to augment your professional qualifications by publishing material related to your field of expertise, listen up. Here are a few tips that will help ingratiate you in the hearts and minds of editors. Once youve established a positive rapport with an editor, you may find the publication to be an excellent outlet for your workand if youre good enoughyou may be invited to submit more work.

1. Editors prefer e-mail correspondence above all elseespecially when submitting query letters and final articles. If you e-mail a story, make sure to paste it into the body of the e-mail, just in case the conversion of an attached file does not go smoothly. E-mailing correspondence and articles means the editor can cut and paste it into the publication, without having to retype. Digital delivery saves the editor lots of time.

2. If you promise an editor somethingan article, a short bio, or a high resolution photomake sure you deliver it. Always follow through with your promises, and that editor will remember you as reliable.

3. Before submitting a story, remember to fact check accuracy of dates and the spelling of places, names, and geographic locations. Most editors will revise your work even further, because thats their jobto make the work even better. But few editors will continue to work with a writer who submits sloppy material that needs to be fact checked or heavily rewritten each time. Worse yet, you dont want to submit something with factual errors in it.

4. Have a short, three to five sentence bio on yourself ready to submit to editors. Not all publications provide information on authors with published articles, but when they do, you want to take advantage of the free publicity. Dont EVER submit a one page or one paragraph bio to an editor, unless they specifically request this much material. Theyre being gracious by providing some space and most editors will not want to take the time to carve a bio down.

5. Have a publicity photo of yourself ready for publication and in digital format. For print media publications the dots per inch (dpi) should be a minimum of 300. For newspapers 150-200 dpi will suffice, though you should ask the editor or graphics department which they prefer. DO NOT send print media editors 72 dpi, or low resolution photos. This resolution is usually the standard setting for a digital camera, and is acceptable for publication on the world wide web, but is not appropriate for print media. Once a photo is shot, chances are very good that not much can be done to improve the dots per inch, except shrink it to 3 times its former size.

6. If you choose to telephone an editor to pitch them a story, remembertheir time is valuable. First, ask them if its a good time to speak for 10 minutes. If its not, then ask them for a convenient time to call back. If they can speak, limit your pitch to 5-7 minutes. No editor wants to be on the telephone with someone for an unendurable length of time. Do not start telling them about all of your publication credits or credentials unless they ask. Stick to the pitch for your story idea, and focus your conversation accordingly. If they like it, you may continue the conversation for longer than 10 minutes. If theyre not interested, politely end the call.

7. Deadlines are important to editors, because they need written material before they can make decisions about visual materials, ad space, and layout and design. If you have promised an editor something, do your absolute best to submit it by the agreed upon deadline. If something has come upin your personal or professional life or in the process of writing and interviewing for the story, communicate the need to slightly extend the deadline to the editor in advance. Most editors will work with you on deadlines, provided they are not under the gun themselves. Newspaper editors usually do fly by the seat of their pants, so keep this in mind when asking for extensions.

8. Engage the editor in a short e-mail about your story prior to writing it and he/she may come up with a few guiding sentences to help you. This is a chance to try to get a feel for how the editor would like this written prior to writing it. An editor may help you frame a story, give suggestions for potential interviews or subjects, or cause you to look at the story in a totally different way. Dont despair if you receive no response. The editor may be busy and not have enough time to reply.

9. Do not write stories or articles that are just barely disguised promotional pieces for your business associates, friends and family, or your own business. Its OK to mine these contacts for story ideas, but make certain the content you present is not OVERTLY promoting anyone. Any seasoned editor can smell a promo piece a mile away and will not publish it.

10. Try to write in subject areas you feel passionate about. For example, if you are passionate about hiking, write for some outdoor magazines. Editors are drawn to freelance writers who have a knowledge base for the material theyre submitting. This is an excellent in with any editora well-developed knowledge base is a good foundation for any story. If you have a passion, pitch the right editor your idea. GO For it.

About the Author
Elizabeth Kirwin has published work in national magazines and newspapers. She is co-owner of Sidhe Communications http://www.sidhecommunications.com in Asheville NC. She develops web sites, newsletters, brochures, and other marketing materials for companies and health care ogranizations nationally.For more information, e-mail ekirwin@bellsouth.net.