When it comes to content writing for your website it is important to keep things brief, direct, and informative. For instance, nearly every website has a “What We Do” or “Our Services” or some section along those lines. In this portion only write about what the heading indicates. Don’t fill it with fluff or long winded wording, get to the point and keep it short.

It is important to be direct when writing web content because most viewers only scan anyway. You want all the information to be there but you want it to be precise. Thousand word sections simply won’t work, viewers won’t take the time to read them and they will likely leave your site. Just write something quick that will tell them what they need to know and nothing more.

Overall, if you want viewers to give your content a chance save the fluff for another day and be specific. Provide only necessary information so that they can easily find what they need. Anything more is overdone!

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Topic Selection

First things first – you need a compelling topic. Sure, you can write about anything you want, but make sure your content aligns with your overall messaging. Don’t forget to keep it fresh for users – double check that your topic hasn’t already been covered from the same angle.

Article Formatting

Is your content being presented in the proper format? Does the content flow naturally guiding readers from one idea to the next? Big chunks of text should be broken up with paragraph breaks and headers to allow easy scanning and skimming. Can bullets or numbers being included to increase this ability further? Have accompanying images been resized or compressed so that they don’t slow page load time?

Writing

Your content and voice should be interesting, entertaining and educational to keep users engaged. After all, you are telling a story. Does the introduction draw readers in and encourage them to keep reading? Don’t forget to proofread. It’s not enough to simply check for errors, you should read your content from the perspective of your user – does it flow naturally?

Title Selection

The title makes the very first impression. Create accurate, compelling and engaging headlines. Keep it simple, concise and brief – the goal is to get them to read the actually content.

Search Engine Optimization

Maximize views by optimizing your content. This starts with keyword research and understanding. Once you identify the right keywords, incorporate them into titles, headers and the body. When optimizing the body content, focus on the intro – make sure it provides an alluring, clear description to appear on search engine results pages.

Finishing Touches

Did you include internal links to other resources or relevant blog articles that may interest the reader? Have you promoted this content on all social media channels? Check spelling and grammar. Then, check it all one more time.

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While there are endless theories on why colors evoke associations and emotional states, everyone agrees that hues do affect us. Savvy marketers never underestimate the importance of color psychology. There’s more to color selection than what “looks best.” When designing your site, pay attention to the perception you want to give users.
 
 

Reviewing the Rainbow

Color association is hardly a science, but formal market research and personal experience can confirm some basic ideas about colors, perception and the emotions they create.

Red: Strength, power, passion, energy, determination. Mood: Excited, intense, angry.

Blue: Dependability, trust, confidence. Mood: Calm, soothed.

Green: Harmony, growth, health, renewal. Mood: Calm, refreshed.

Purple: Wealth, royalty, wisdom. Mood: Calm, reassured.

Yellow: Warmth, attention, energy. Mood: Joyful, agitated.

Orange: Success, heat, creativity. Mood: Excited.

Black: Elegance, evil, mourning, death. Mood: Calm, consistent, mysterious.

White: Light, innocence, peace. Mood: Cool, emotionless.
 
 

Color Caveats

Can you relate to the above list? Probably not completely. Many things can alter color psychology: personal experience, regional biases, environmental surroundings, etc. For example, white represents death instead of black.

Experts also believe that our emotional response to color is a function not only of its inherent properties, but also of how well it reflects the intent of the message. For example, a yellow sun-shaped graphic is a perfect pairing of color and image. A purple sun? Not so much.

So, although the use of color must be viewed as an art rather than a science, take the time to understand the implications of the hues you choose. The correct selection will help you build a memorable brand and deliver messaging that affects your audience on multiple levels.

Now, go enjoy a Coca-Cola.

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Facebook is the social networking site that has the most familiarity – it has been around the longest, bursting at the seams with users and ads, and keeps growing. Facebook may not be the latest shiny form of social media, but it is the classic brand that every business, big or small, should use to its advantage.

Just last week, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg surprised users with, “We just passed an important milestone. For the first time ever, one billion people used Facebook in a single day. On Monday [August 24, 2015], 1 in 7 people on Earth used Facebook to connect with their friends and family.” What business can afford to ignore that size of an audience?

Most people check into their Facebook account daily. In fact, many report starting and ending their day with a scroll through the site. Facebook is not going away any time soon. In fact, it’s doing the exact opposite. With one billion daily Facebook users, businesses would be making a huge mistake by skipping a Facebook marketing strategy. The sooner you use Facebook to your advantage, the sooner you will start to see an increase in numbers.

Get Involved with Facebook Pages and Groups

Facebook provides these features to make it easy to interact with many different communities. With literally just the click of a button – liking or joining a page/group – you can easily contribute and follow threads being posted from other users that may be interested in your business.

Establish your reputation as an expert in your field by getting your name out there with the online community and create multi-dimensional conversations with your key audience. Tip: Always remember to limit over-posting and spam. Excessive or irrelevant posts turn off people.

Share Videos via Facebook

Photos add some color and life to Facebook, but it’s easy to pass them by, making them less likely to reach an audience than a video. If you want to increase your reach to your audience, videos are the way to go. Facebook reports that videos create a 135% increase in organic reach. Let’s face it, Facebook is a business too, they understand the power of online video going viral and they need something to help them steal market share from YouTube.

Not sure why Facebook vs. You Tube? In uploading a video straight to Facebook, rather than linking it in from YouTube, you can tracks the amount of views, likes, shares and comments you get from your friends and followers. As always, the higher these numbers, the more Facebook will share your video with your key audience.

Utilize Facebook Ads

According to Facebook, “more than 1.3 billion people use Facebook to connect with what matters to them, and 64% of them visit Facebook everyday. Relevant and engaging photos, videos, and links make Facebook Ads a powerful way to find new customers and build brand loyalty.”

Every single thing you do on Facebook is tracked, monitored and used for user data and cookies. Facebook uses the data to determine what their users like and how to target them, fueling the Facebook’s advertising platform.

With Facebook ads, you are able to reach a target audience of the right people whether that be location, demographics, interests, behaviors or connections. Chose the right messaging and Facebook ad success can be yours.

As a Way of Communication

The pros of using Facebook Messenger are extremely beneficial – allowing you to connect to anyone in the world through your conversations, use phone calls and video chat, send large files, group message, and even safely send money to your connections.

In a time when many companies are struggling to find a reliable messaging platform that can segment audiences at a reasonable cost, Facebook stands out. It is straightforward, effective and completely free.

So, rather than getting turned off by Facebook’s constant changes and evolution; why not make it your best friend. Take full advantage of everything Facebook has to offer. The sooner you utilize Facebook for your business, the sooner can reach record-breaking numbers like Zuckerberg.

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The Path to Personas

Keep asking questions about your customer to reveal the individuals to whom you market. Not the actual people, of course, but what are referred to as “buyer personas.” These personas outline very specific characteristics of the types of people you are trying to reach. Understand a target buyer persona and you greatly increase your odds of success. Ignore them, and, well… your competitors will gladly reach out to them.
 
 

You Don’t Know Jack

In our example of the computer server business, sales are made to company but you seal the deal by impressing multiple influencers within the organization. Jack is the server technician who monitors and manages all the company’s hardware. He’s looking for equipment that comes online easily and runs flawlessly. His boss has asked him for a recommendation. If Jack’s not onboard, you’ll have trouble closing the deal.

Christine is a mid-level finance manager driven by number-crunching power for her her data-intensive monthly reports. Reassure her that your product will help her achieve her goals and your proposal will get the green light. You get the picture – attract the gatekeeper and sell the bully with the juice.
 
 

The Persona Payoff

Researching and developing your buyer persona takes time and effort, but it pays off in a variety of ways.

• Engagement. Prospects who see and hear themselves in the problem/solution scenarios you describe are much more likely to request additional information.
• Insight. Understand what motivates each buyer type, provide helpful information on ways to improve their product or service, and fine-tune how you promote it.
• Focus. Knowing who your prospects are helps you understand who they are not, allowing you to concentrate on the right targets.

 
 
So, how detailed should your buyer personas be? As detailed as you can make them! Everything from documented purchase behaviors, to educated guesses on motivation can help bring this person to life.

Susan is a 45-year-old, Senior VP with a master’s in computer science. She’s a wife and mother fully committed to her career. She’s often torn between her loyalty to the operations side of the business and her desire to please the executive team. Susan is business savvy, but her real strength is her technology background, so she will recommend a product that improves process efficiency to directly affect the bottom line. You may even want to choose a stock photo to represent this person so that everyone on your team has the same image of your potential client.

Ultimately, the better you are at addressing the challenges of real people – as represented by their vividly imagined personas – the more successful you will be.

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Have no fear. While often unbearable, writer’s block is not unbeatable. Use one or more of these strategies to get your creative process back on track.

Take a break. Yes, it feels counterintuitive, but walking away from the work you desperately need to complete can relieve the pressure you’re feeling and help you get into a creative groove. During your break, talk or think about anything other than your project.

Get some exercise. Sometimes it takes more than just walking away to get you out of your slump. Running, cycling, swimming… anything that increases your heart rate and triggers “feel good” endorphins will make a difference. And even if it doesn’t eliminate your writer’s block, it’ll eliminate some calories.

Talk it out. Many experienced writers find that talking about a topic brings up different mental associations than simply thinking about it. State the facts. Ask yourself questions. Answer those questions. Whatever it takes. And, yes, you may want to use this strategy when you have some privacy.

Switch your scene. Lost your groove while at your computer – try an old school approach of pen and paper. Sometimes that tactile change can have a big impact. Want to get really crazy? Try spending a few minutes writing with your non-dominant hand to really shake things up.

Eat, drink and be creative. Have a healthy snack, drink a glass of water, wait about 20 minutes and then return to your task. Hunger and dehydration have a way of putting a damper on creativity. This is especially true for those who do their writing late in the workday.

Alter your writing routine. Do you typically write in the afternoon, at the office, at your desk? Try writing in the early morning, at home, at your kitchen table. New sights, sounds and other stimuli can help get your creative juices flowing.

Go stream-of-consciousness. Turn off your internal editor and let the words flow. Jot down anything and everything that comes to mind about your project – in any order or in any form. Sentences, phrases, fragments, words. Don’t worry at all about spelling, grammar or punctuation. Seeing all your mental “raw materials” in front of you can turn your writing task into a more free-flowing puzzle assembly project.

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Connect Back to Business Goals

Your social media goals should compliment your pre-existing business goals. Audit your social media performance and set goals for performance improvement. You should also set goals for page visit conversion through social media along with leads driven by social media. Vanity metrics such as “likes” or “retweets” may seem important because they make you feel good, but they don’t hold much value as far as ROI is concerned. Valuable Metrics include: reach, site traffic, lead generation, conversions, and revenue generation.

Use a Social Media Analytics Tool

Once you’ve set your goals, you’ll need to use tools to measure your ROI. In addition to implementing analytics tools, you may have to add tracking codes to URLs, or build custom landing pages. Several analytics tools to consider are; Google Analytics, Salesforce, or Hootsuite Analytics, just to name a few.

Calculate Your ROI

Frequently check your social media ROI to adjust your campaign as needed. You should anticipated having to make occasional changes to adjust to the ever evolving mobile and web world.
Improve. Once you learn what works – do more of that. However, understanding (and admitting) what doesn’t work and why could be the most important part of maximizing ROI. Don’t be afraid to make mistakes – those only cost you money if you don’t react to them and tweak your approach. Making changes for the better and tracking your social media ROI will hopefully help you increase its value over time.

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Most of your communication with your target market is in written form, including your website, marketing materials and much of your social media output. Having a clear, well-defined personality in your writing helps you stand out amid all the other marketing chatter. It also emotionally connects you to prospects and usually converts listeners into customers.
 
 

Who Are You?

Would customers describe your company as formal and scholarly? Relaxed and friendly? Witty and irreverent? How do you want them to describe you? It’s quite possible your vision of you and their vision of you may not currently line up. Repair any disconnect by defining or refining your voice.
 
 

Rolling the Dice

Some companies adopt a voice without ever acknowledging that they have done so – they naturally begin speaking effectively to users. Others officially sanction a certain style of communication, without any research or reflection. This approach usually results from a directive from upper management to “sound cool and confident” like another competitor.

Voice Lessons

The most successful companies take a different, more strategic approach. Voice selection involves a process of determining mission statements, defining customers and how to reach them, consideration of effective tone and developing message consistency.

• Identify your values. Your company’s mission should directly reflect its presentation. For example, if you’re mission is to end childhood hunger, a sassy, snarky voice will not likely help you connect with your audience.
• Consider your competitors. While you don’t want to mimic them, having a sense of what works (or doesn’t) for others in your industry can be very informative.
• Listen to your audience. Specifically, understand how they talk to one another. From the vocabulary they use to issues that stir their passions, be sure you can accurately and effectively inject your brand into their everyday lives.
• Test your assumptions. As you begin to zero in on your corporate voice, do some testing. Your target market’s reaction to your blog posts, emails and social media updates can help you understand successes and identify where to refine your messaging.
• Document your voice. Once you find your voice, produce a detailed description (guidelines) for all written communication to follow. Include lists of key words, phrases and topics that are encouraged as well as a comprehensive list of what NOT to do.

 
 
Once you’ve identified the ideal voice for your company, you can speak clearly, confidently and persuasively to your eager audience.

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Guess again. While it may pain you to hear it, your work has just begun. If you want that sparkling new website to help you generate more business, there are a number of things you can – and should – do, today.

Search Engine Optimization – Of course you developed content with SEO in mind, but you must think of “optimization” not as a one-time thing, but an all-the-time thing. Products change. Industries change. Prospects’ needs change. If your site doesn’t change with the users, you’ll find yourself losing ground to competitors who stay on top of these subtle (or sometimes not so subtle) shifts.

Pay-per-Click Advertising – Not every company uses PPC campaigns to generate business. Some feel that a well-optimized website will bring in all the new leads they can handle. In rare cases, that proves to be true. More often, the company leaves revenue on the table. The beauty of PPC is that you can control, down to the dollar essentially, how much you want to spend each day. Unless you have a good reason, you would be foolish not to at least dip your toes into the pond and use analytics to measure the ripples.

Content Marketing – Like SEO, content marketing must be an ongoing process. Even if your site has an extensive library of informative and intriguing content, prospects will still ask, “What have you done for me lately?” Give them a reason to come back. Rather than waiting for content to expire, create an ever-growing shopping list of topics. Don’t simply churn out new content, reinforce your value by updating existing pieces.

Update the Onsite Experience – The apps you can use to educate, amuse or otherwise engage your website visitors constantly evolve. Tools that let a prospect configure their own product on-the-fly or generate customized marketing materials to share with their peers, for example, get better all the time. Ensuring that you understand them and implement or update them as needed is critical.

So, rather than seeing your website as a completed work of art to be put on a pedestal and admired, think of it as living, breathing animal that requires constant nurturing. Art is wonderful, but once you’ve seen a piece, you’ve seen it. A majestic beast, on the other hand, will continually bring people back for another look.

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