Archive for the ‘writing’ Category

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Unique content

Thursday, August 12th, 2010

Do you have the time or inclination to read the same information presented the same way over and over?

I’m pretty sure your answer is no – when we want to find something out we don’t want to read the same article we found last week. In itself, that’s enough reason to provide unique content on your website, in your blog and so on.

Unique content that is obviously yours (not just a PLR article copied across, an RSS feed or worst of all plagiarism) shows your knowledge, your generosity in sharing information and helps your search engine results. People will learn to visit your site/blog/newsletter for a fresh perspective on relevant topics; many copied articles and they have no real reason to bookmark you rather than the others posting the same writing.

Private Lable Rights (PLR) articles can be useful for filling a site quickly but they are not truly showcasing you or your business. Some people edit their PLR articles to make them a bit different to others’ versions of the articles, which is useful, but if you are going to so much effort why not just write your own to start with? Or get someone else to write it for you (given the editing time you may be surprised at which is cheaper in the long run).

When you do use PLR articles (edited or not), add something to it. For example, if the article is on travel insurance and you cancelled a holiday last year, add in a story about how travel insurance saved you $1,000. It will personalise the article, build your credibility and offer something new.

Likewise, openly using other people’s articles can be a valuable addition to your own content, but it works best when you introduce it appropriately to make it relevant.

What success have you had with PLR articles? Did you make them ‘yours’ before using them or not?

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Surprise mention in survey

Saturday, July 31st, 2010

I did a survey today which was ok on the whole but question 5 had a surprise element in it. Note I did not know who was behind the survey (deliberately to get unbiased answers).

The question was in effect “Are you primarily a business or personal customer of these services?”

The answer options were “personal/business/equal/I am no longer a customer of Company X”

So the anonymous-to-get-unbiased-answers aspect was thrown out the window with that answer which is not so good. It also didn’t mean a lot as I never said I had been a Company X customer, nor even acknowledged I’d heard of company X before. The fourth answer didn’t even answer the question so was completely irrelevant.

The lesson is to read every answer with the question before you finalise a survey or any other multiple choice list – this also applies for a bulleted list in that each point must complete a sentence from the introduction.

From the above example…

“Are you primarily a business or personal customer of these services?” “personal” works
“Are you primarily a business or personal customer of these services?” “no longer a customer of Company X” doesn’t work.

If you are writing or editing a survey, ensure you read each answer with the question in this way to get a polished, sensible result.

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Proofreading tips

Tuesday, July 20th, 2010

Ok, proofreading is boring – not many people actually enjoy the thought of reading their work over and over again to find errors. It’s a bit better proofreading someone else’s work, but most people still don’t want to do it.

However, like many things in business and in life, it is necessary. Necessary that is if you want a professional finish to your written materials anyway.

So here are my tips to make it as easy and painless as possible:

  • hire a proofreader! Ok, I added this point for fun although it is a valid option
  • get someone else to read it for you – fresh eyes are more likely to spot errors and other issues
  • use a spell check to find the obvious typos (e.g. teh and yuo) BUT do not rely on it alone as it will not pick up the wrong word (e.g. know and now are both real words) and may not use your local or preferred spelling (e.g. color vs colour)
  • leave as much time as posisble between writing/editing and proofreading (or subsequent rounds of proofreading) – a few days is ideal but overnight is a minimum. If time really is short, do something else in between so your mind has ‘forgotten’ some of the details
  • read it out loud – your tongue often trips over things your eyes would accept
  • read it backwards – that way you will read the actual words instead of the sentences so spelling errors are more obvious
  • print it rather than read it on a screen – not only is this easier on your eyes, it gives a different visual perspective and you can even read it away from your desk
  • change magnification of the text – seeing it bigger sometimes makes words stand out more

Some tips will suit you more than others, some will be more appropriate for particular documents, too. However, using a range of techniques (especially for more important documents) will help you achieve a higher quality document.

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Short and sweet

Saturday, July 3rd, 2010

Do you remember writing essays at school where you had to make up content to fill the required word count? Do you prefer to read a long book over a short one?

In business and website writing, the cliches ‘short and sweet’ and ‘less is best’ are better options than writing a lot for the sake of writing.Why keep text short?

  • people are busy and want to get the information fast
  • it tends to be clearer and simpler
  • it looks less intimidating so more inviting to read
  • it is easier and quicker to proof read!

Keeping it short means short words, short sentences, short paragraphs and short result.

So ‘about’ instead of ‘in respect of’; ‘Accountants advise businesses’ rather than ‘business get advice and recommendations from peeople experienced with accounting’; and ‘stocktake sale’ rather than ‘reduced prices at the end of season to reduce our stock levels’.

Of course, short in the extreme is not the answer either. I use the idea of ‘if it can be done with fewer words, then do it’ rather than making everything short. When keeping text short, remember

  • it must make sense
  • all critical information must be included
  • keep it easy to read and suited to your audience (for example, ‘because’ is actually longer than ‘due to’ but is used more commonly in speech so is often the better choice)
  • avoid jargon your readers won’t know

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Consistency includes contacts

Saturday, June 26th, 2010

Consistency is an important aspect of building your brand. It is easy to remember to always use the same colours, fonts and logos, but you also need consistency in the details you provide.

For instance, I recently received an email where the sender’s email address was different to the one in the signature (and I mean completely different – names and domains varied!) and both were different to the URL of the business! I didn’t try any of them and deleted the email…

Contact details are not only important for branding and consistency, they are also crucial in building trust. A business that uses a different email address to what they advertise or refuses to give any contact details on a website and so on can give the impression of hiding something – not a great way to establish trust.

Personally, I also notice when people use an email address that doesn’t match their URL. For one thing, why lose the promotional advantage of using your own domain name? And why promote someone else’s business instead? Using a different domain to your own also looks unprofessional – especially if it is a hotmail address.

What do you think of a business that doesn’t have contact details consistent with your domain? Does it impact on your sense of trust?

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Check questions are answered

Wednesday, June 9th, 2010

Clear writing needs to flow so that each statement or each point you make follows on the previous one. As soon as your reader has to stop and think about how the ideas connect or gets confused from a jump in topics, your message is weakened.

It is especially important to directly answer any questions you may raise at the start of any communication*. For example, if the title to your article is ‘retire now or later?” then the article must give information about when to retire; if your article is really about building your super by retiring later, use a title such as ‘super and delayed retirement’ or ‘retire later with more super’.

Likewise, if you include the question ‘should I have a blog?’ you need to include positives and negatives to help a reader make an informed decision; if you just want to list advantages to blogging, use ‘ 10 good reasons to have a blog’ as the topic.

As well as being effective writing, answering questions you raise

  • gives you the opportunity to show (and share) your knowledge
  • allows people to quickly find what they are after (which they appreciate)
  • gives you a structure that makes the writing easier
  • avoids annoying readers with irrelevant information and misleading titles wasting their time

* Of course, this applies to informative writing – if you are asking questions to gather interest, don’t give an answer but you still need to ensure the question and following information are obviously related. For instance. “Too busy to cook from scratch?’ needs to be followed by ‘our recipes give you quick, nutritious meals’ or ‘our flavour sachets save you time and effort’, but not by ‘Whatsit Saucepans are dishwasher friendly’

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Maintaining the flow of ideas

Sunday, June 6th, 2010

Writing with disjointed ideas that don’t flow from one to another is not easy to read and not a good advertisement for you. So how can you make your writing flow?

  1. My first tip is to proof read everything you write – preferably after a decent break from it and by someone else for anything important. It is easy to write down things as they occur to you but reading it later will show the lack of flow
  2. Qualify any alternative perceptions, usually words such as although, however, despite and but will help things flow better. For example “I think chocolate is best. Caramel has more flavour” doesn’t flow as well as “I think chocolate is best although caramel has more flavour.”
  3. plan your messgae before you write it – if you know what each paragraph is about before you start,  you are less likely to include irrelevant material
  4. Remember that you don’t have to include everything you know about a topic in one piece of writing (even a thesis will have appendices and refer to external material!) Trying to include every fact and all points of view often leads to disjointed results so just include the details relevant to your purpose
  5. Check each paragraph covers only one idea and then review the order of the paragraphs so that information builds on itself and related ideas are in subsequent paragraphs. The beauty of word processing software is that you can move paragraphs and sentences around easily until they are in the right order for ideas to flow – not as easy to manage with pen and paper or a typewriter!

Is maintaining the flow of ideas in your writing something you consciously work on?

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Keep ideas flowing

Friday, June 4th, 2010

Have you ever read something and found a jump in ideas that distracts you?

I find it really annoying when the ideas don’t flow in a piece of writing – the change of topics or tense or perception may not seem major but if it makes me have to reread something to understand what happened, I tend to loose interest in the whole thing.

I came across the following example of this on a website where it is promoting cheap ‘reports’ to help small business people; the errors give me the impression of low quality pdfs rather than informative reports – what do you think from their description?

Too often I visit the site of a business mum to find there is only a contact form! The main reason I visit the site is to see where they are located as, where possible, I prefer supporting local business mums. There are a lot of different reasons for the lack of contact details.

This weeks *** report will look at five different contact methods you may want to put on you site as well as options for phone numbers, fax numbers, postal address and email address.

Yes, there are various reasons for not including contact details but how is that relevant when you are telling me how annoyed you were at not seeing any contact details! It also has no relevance to the next paragraph so makes the whole thing very disjointed.

I suspect they are attempting to not offend people without contact details rather than standing strong with their own argument. However, it has backfired with poor writing and an indication of weakness that detracts from their ‘expert’ stand in the report.

Here’s an alternative version that won’t offend, sound weak or be heard to read*:

Too often I visit the site of a business mum to find there is only a contact form! I understand they may have their own reason for not including contact details, but the main reason I visit the site is to see where they are located as, where possible, I prefer supporting local business mums.

This weeks *** report will look at five different contact methods you may want to put on your site, as well as some low-risk options for showing phone numbers, fax numbers, postal address and email address.

Having said poor flow of ideas is distracting, my next blog post will include some tips on how to maintain the flow…

*My changes are in blue to improve the flow plus some necessary improvements to the second paragraph so it makes sense. I didn’t totally rewrite it as I would for myself or a client!

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Posted in bad writing examples, writing | 1 Comment »

Work like ours…

Tuesday, May 25th, 2010

How would you react to a website like this?

“we treat the floor and work like ours. We are trying to keep it in cheapest price. If you online quotation we give you 5% discount.”

As key phrases about their benefits on the homepage of a website, the above statements really need some work.

What’s worse is the page title for their homepage includes ‘ploors’ instead of floors.

We came across this site as potential customers, and to be honest we’re reluctant to even get a quote after seeing such errors (trust me, there are many , many more with the site!) They are local and we’d prefer to usea  local small business so it just proved to me again how big an impact bad writing can have on your business.

In this case, I suspect English is not their first language and I understand it isn’t an easy second language. At the end of the day, though, do they want people to accept their limitations in English or do they want more customers via an attractive website?

If you struggle with written English (because it is not your first language or any other reason), it really is worthwhile getting someone else to check your writing and edit it for you.  An English speaking friend may not get it perfect, but will probably do better than the website I mentioned above. Then get some professional help as soon as you can afford it – even if you have to do it in stages.

Oh, the above sentences would be much more effective as “We treat your floors like our own. We keep our prices as cheap as possible. Get an online quotation for a 5% discount!”

So would you try this business based on their website, or would you go elsewhere?

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How not to start an email

Friday, May 21st, 2010

I just received some spam which started with:

You are receiving this email becasue we wish you to use our Website Design Services.

Did someone really think that approach was going to win them any business? They went on to explain about their company and what they offer (so say their subheadings anyway – I didn’t read it!) but frankly who cares?

What’s wrong with this opening?

  • there is no attempt to be polite or engage me as a human being, let alone being personal
  • there is no attempt to gain my interest
  • there is no attempt to show any understanding of my issues, let alone suggestions of how they can help solve them
  • they didn’t even take enough time to check the spelling in the first line of their email! How can I trust their attention to detail?
  • they attempt to further their importance by using capital letters when describing their services – unnecessary capitals of course
  • and the big one – how does what they wish have any relevance to me or me receiving unwanted emails?

So when starting emails, remember it is a person reading it so write to them!

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