Posts Tagged ‘information’

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No to under construction sites

Saturday, November 5th, 2011

I honestly thought most people online know that an ‘under construction’ website is not a good move. Search engines don’t give any credibility to sites with nothing more than a ‘coming soon’ message and people don’t like wasting their time on such sites.

As I posted about in my ‘starting a website’ series, it is very easy to put a simple web page as a temporary site while a full site is being developed. This way you can get onto search engine lists, provide some interest and begin marketing efforts.

So I was very surprised this morning to visits a site I had received an email about.

The homepage has a nice background but twice stated ‘under construction’ as well as ‘temporarily unavailable’ and ‘coming soon’ – that’s a lot of repetition in eight short sentences (one of which was ‘please be patient!”) Other than the business name as a heading, there was no information about what the business does and no real content.

Given I was making a decision about the company, this wasn’t good marketing for them. They didn’t include contact details but at least there were links to their twitter account and email.

Oh, there was no twitter user name or email address attached to the links, so their credibility fell further.

However, the biggest shock was when I clicked on the link in the footer which I assumed was their designer but thought may give me some information. It wasn’t their designer but a site selling ‘under construction’ themes for blogs! People are spending money on pretty backgrounds to put up words that may hurt (and certainly won’t help) their online reputation.

If you’ve been online for a while, does this shock you as much as it does me?

If you are looking at getting your business online, please don’t waste your money on a template or designer offering under construction pages. A plain page with an introduction and contact details will work much, much better.

What did you do while your site was being developed?

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Posted in blog content, business info, marketing | 4 Comments »

Getting lots of questions

Thursday, October 20th, 2011

Have you ever experienced a LOT of questions from your suppliers?

I aways lots of questions about new writing projects – less so for existing and long-term clients – and some people are amazed by that.  Usually amazed and appreciative, but amazed none the less.

Could you imagine going to a doctor or lawyer and not have them ask questions to clarify the issue and find the best solution? Would you trust a doctor who said hello and handed you a script?

As far as I am concerned, I like my suppliers to ask questions to show interest in the project (rather than the dollars) and to be sure they understand what I actually need.

As a writer, I don’t feel I can’t write good content if I don’t know much about the topic of the piece. I know I can’t write effective content if I don’t know who the target audience is or the purpose of the piece. So I ask lots of questions before I write or edit any content.

Although it make take you more time than you expected to hand over a project if the supplier asks many questions, it is usually worth it for the quality of the final result.

Some reasons to appreciate these questions are that the supplier:

  1. is interested in doing the project as well as they possibly can
  2. will clarify any parts of your instructions they don’t understand
  3. learns the purpose of the work and can tailor it to suit
  4. is able to make appropriate suggestions and recommendations
  5. has the knowledge to give a different perspective
  6. gets an understanding of you and your business as well as the specific project
  7. knows who to target the result at (if relevant)
  8. may notice other things you can benefit from (for example, when I read a client’s website to learn about them, I sometimes find a typing or logic error that I will point out so they can correct it)
  9. is being professional and showing attention to details which presumably will carry through into the project itself
  10. is gathering information from the best source rather than making assumptions or using less reliable sources

So be warned – if you ask me to write for you or help with a communications project, you will be asked a number of questions!

How about you – how have you reacted to suppliers asking questions in the past?

Do you respond differently to ‘dumb’ questions compared to a supplier gathering useful information?

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Posted in About Word Constructions, business info | No Comments »

Is your website shallow?

Monday, October 17th, 2011

What is the content like on your website?

A new term around at the moment refers to shallow website content, meaning content that meets any minimum expectation without any additional information or resources.
Consider the contact us page on most sites – there is very little content other than contact details. That is shallow content – although highly appropriate for a contact page!

Imagine that level of information on other pages of a site – for example, I followed a tweeted link today to a blog post that was purely a title and a link. It can be very frustrating for a person wanting to learn something if a page gives so little information, but shallow content has worked in the past for getting search engine results.

One of Google’s plans, apparently, is to make information-rich pages rank better than such shallow pages. I say bring it on!

So before Google makes that change, maybe now is the time to build up the content on your website. Even adding depth to a page a week or fortnight will improve the experience for your site visitors so what have you got to lose?

So, is your website shallow? Are there obvious questions people would have that you are not answering?

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Posted in web content, writing | 3 Comments »

Sharing restricted links

Friday, July 15th, 2011

Yesterday I wrote about only linking to public material, but what happens if you find a great resource and can’t easily share it?

Here are some ideas on how you may be able to access that information to share it with others:

  • simply ask the owner of the article/site if you can copy it then add it to your newsletter or as a guest blog post
  • pick out key points from the article and summarise them in a blog post or across multiple tweets – it is courteous if you mention the inspiring source rather than just copy their ideas
  • make the link public but include mention of the restrictions (eg ‘only paid members can view’)
  • ask if a public-access link is available somewhere, or if one could be created 

Depending on the structure and intent of the person restricting access to the article, these techniques may be approved and therefore you can share that great information. If not, maybe just tell people that it exists and how they could access it.

Have you ever tried finding a legitimate way of sharing restrictied information?

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Posted in blog content, social media, web content | No Comments »

You are making an impression…

Thursday, June 16th, 2011

Sigh. That’s my immediate response to a blog post I just read – sigh.

Doesn’t give a good impression of that blog or writer does it? Every time you write something that goes public, it affects how people view you – yet some people just don’t seem to get that. What’s worse is that this was a guest post on another blog so I assume they didn’t review it before accepting it. Silly as I closed the site after this post, and the rest may be great for all I’ll ever know…

I started reading the post in good faith but the poor expression made me skim the second half rather than read it which is never a good sign. I honestly only kept reading because I hoped the content would improve and justify it’s existence on a site I was reviewing. It didn’t.

Although appearing to be an article giving information, it was a poorly disguised ad for why company X is a good choice for design work – namely because they are young designers. I commented back as I don’t believe all young designers are good, nor all experienced designers lack passion.

Had I been given that article to edit or at least comment on, my suggestions for this article would have been:

  • make sure it all flows and that each sentence make sense
  • give balanced information (eg “while an older designer has experience, remember that new designers are keen to impress and may be passionate about their work” or “new designers have a lot to offer and you may find they charge less to get experience”)
  • introduce any specifics in the article, not just the heading (in this case the heading mentions web design but the article starts with ‘designing is a creative field’ - designing is more than websites)
  • use good grammar and punctuation (“give you the brand image as promised because; they want to earn a good name” does not need any punctuation in the middle and certainly not a semi-colon)

Just as I was leaving the page, I noticed the writer’s bio and sighed again. Nearly every word started with a capital letter (which is so annoying and completely unnecessary) and he claimed to be a ‘professional content writer’. With that example of his writing skills, he is not making a good impression for himself or the web design company paying him to write this article.

How do you respond to such poor examples of work?

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Posted in bad writing examples, blog content, writing | 1 Comment »

Does it make sense?

Wednesday, April 6th, 2011

I just read a blog post that jumped topics so I thought I’d give you a quick reminder to watch the flow of anything you write.

In the example I just read, one paragraph was an overview of a business change and the next paragraph commented on how a specific target seemed hard at the start. The target hadn’t been mentioned before so it didn’t make sense to me – a sentence or two in between these paragraphs would have explained the target and made the post flow nicely.

The reminder is to always check you haven’t skipped anything important for someone else’s understanding.

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Posted in blog content, newsletter content, web content, writing | No Comments »

Growing your blog readership

Thursday, March 17th, 2011

Starting a blog may have sounded like a great idea (and it often is!) but is maintaining it harder than you expected? What do you find particularly hard about it?

I think a key to having a useful business blog (personal blogs have different measures of success so it may be very different) is frequent posts. From personal experience, I know the number of people viewing my blog are higher when I post every few days than when I miss a week or so – even when the popular posts at any given time are not the most recent ones.

So here are a few tips from me on building a good business blog that people will keep reading:

  • post regularly – if it suits your style, choose particular days to post so it becomes habit which also helps your readers know when to look at your blog
  • remember that posts don’t all have to be long – the occasional short one can be effective for variety and to maintain the frequency
  • link to other information from your blog – previous posts of your own, your own website, blog posts by other people, relevant websites. This gives people further information, shows your commitment to sharing information (rather than just chasing a sale) and also has search engine advantages. Note this doesn’t mean having a big blog roll…
  • encourage a community within your blog – ask questions, answer comments and share other input (for example comments from people you met in real life)
  • how much do you promote your blog? Just having a blog and writing in it won’t get you hundreds of readers – you need to let people know it exists which you can do in many ways, including joining blog carnivals, commenting in related blogs, using keywords effectively, getting listed in directories, adding your blog URL to signatures and business materials, and being a guest blogger.

If time is a big hurdle in your blog development, consider delegating some of the tasks so it builds momentum without relying on you as much.

If finding things to blog about is causing you worry, set aside an hour or so and brainstorm potential topics. That list can then be used any time you need inspiration.

If you have been blogging for a little while and are worrying about its popularity, think about these points:

  • a niche or tips blog will have fewer readers than a blog associated with a major newspaper or movie star so don’t judge your success against blogs that are totally different to yous
  • depending on your topic and style, people may read your blog but not comment – either your audience is not the type of people who want to comment or perhaps your topic just doesn’t inspire comments (for example, a controversial news story will generate discussion but if you are giving 5 tips on how to care for your lawn, not as many people will have anything to add)
  • in a business sense, a successful blog could have a number of purposes – building credibility, developing trust, sharing expertise, bringing in more website traffic – so look at more than the number of comments as a marker. Other factors such as number of new leads, visits to your main website and number of time-wasting emails may show you the effectiveness of your blog

Back to my original question though – what do you find hard about maintaining your blog? Let us know and you may just get some solutions to rocket your blog success!

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Posted in blog content, writing | 5 Comments »

Blogging for promotions

Thursday, July 16th, 2009

Thanks to some external limitations, I found some time to catch up on some blog reading this morning.

Let me start by saying I do believe in blogs as a promotional tool in business – they are a great way to keep a site fresh, to build a relationship with clients and build your credibility. Yes, there are many social media choices now but I don’t think they are replacing blogs. Personally, I learn more from reading a good blog post than a tweet for instance!

A blog on your domain is going to give more SEO advantages than other social media options, too.

Des Walsh blogged about some survey results about blogs and business. He wrote “Companies with 10 or fewer employees are 30% more likely to use social media for public relations, branding and understanding customers. And they are twice as likely as large companies to use social media for lead generation.”

It certainly didn’t surprise me that small businesses use more social media than large ones – there is the obvious budget differences meaning small business owners need to find more affordable ways to interact with potential customers. I also think that many small businesses do well because they provide a personal service (no account managers or moving customers between departments, and a stronger sense of ownership) and social media depends on the personal side of a business.

If you are a sole trader, the approval process is easy; if you work in a large company, especially if it is heavily regulated, the effort of getting blog posts, tweets and so on approved can be huge – and the time involved takes away form the immediate nature of social media anyway.

From the blogs you read, would you agree that small businesses use more social media than their bigger counterparts?

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Posted in blog content, business tools | No Comments »

Finding more blogs…

Thursday, March 12th, 2009

I just came across a blog directory site I hadn’t heard of before which includes a business section. I am going to make some time next week to sit and look at various blogs in that directory  – I might find some great blogs or at least some inspiration for more posts and articles of my own!

Have you listed your blog in any directories to increase your exposure? Has it generated a lot of resposnes for you?

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Posted in blog content, business info, Useful sites | No Comments »

Make blogs interesting, not advertisments!

Saturday, February 7th, 2009

Some time ago, I wrote about avoiding a sales pitch as your blog ending. I was recently reminded of this when reading a post on a new blog.

The post was about others not having enough skill to offer professional services, which is a fair point (and one of my pet hates, too!) However, a middle section of the post was “Others wrongly offer a and b. Our business offers x and y”., and expanded on what they offer.

Instead of explaining their point of view so I could learn something, they told me what they can do – I still don’t know why they think their way is better than anyone else’s way. Consequently, I gained no knowledge and they gained no credibility.

Blogging is not just a form of cheap advertising – it is about building a community where people share information, ideas and opinions. The more you give through your blog, the more likely that people will start trusting you and valuing your expertise. That is how blogs bring you customers – not by boring them with lists of your services.

Here’s to interesting blogs to read!

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Posted in blog content | No Comments »

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