If you want people to continue to read your blog, you need to give people a reason why they should continue to read your blog.
The question is, how do you give them that reason why?
Writing content for the web is a critical skill. It’s not the same as other type of writing such as print, magazines, press releases and books. People approach the web differently and this means you need to write differently to capture and hold their attention. To help you do this, there are techniques you can … Read more
If you want people to continue to read your blog, you need to give people a reason why they should continue to read your blog.
The question is, how do you give them that reason why?
How great would it feel if you made a few simple tweaks to your writing to give you more credibility and authority in your business?
I know, silly question. It would feel great.
And the BEST part is, they are surprisingly simple. You don’t need to be Shakespeare – you just need to be aware of a few simple tips to make your words carry more weight.
Forget what you learned about proper writing techniques in high school.
Blogging is different.
Very different.
You still need to pay attention to basic grammar rules and writing flow but in the words of Seth Godin, your focus must be on the resource online that is so scarce: attention.
That means your writing has to be done in such a way as to CAPTURE and HOLD people’s attention.
Oops! I’m not meant to say that.
I mean, what would Germaine Greer have to say about that?
Actually, she would approve. When Germaine Greer, in “The Female Eunuch,” wanted to stress what a woman gave away in a traditional marriage, she used the passive voice.
Grammar zealots and classic literature writers, bear with me. There is a point to this.
Web usability doesn’t sound very sexy.
And writing web content for your readers isn’t always easy. One of our biggest challenges is to write content that is read and understood by web visitors.
I recently wrote a post about how to organise your web content to accommodate different online reading patterns. The key is for people to quickly digest the information you share with them and for your readers to read your content with ease.
One way to do that is to break up your text with subheadings. Well-written subheadings in well-organised text help readers to get a quick overview of the page and make the information less dense and more readable.