Mamas On The Web

Writing for the Internet

June 6th, 2006

My mother started her career at our local newspaper as a reporter, then eventually became a successful news editor for ten years. During that time, she’s written countless stories and edited many books. Needless to say, she knows how to write.

In the past little while, I’ve been trying to convince her to write for the internet and start her own blog. She started off with a long article which I thought was really good and would interest a lot of people, but I found I had to show her a few tips to get more people to read the whole thing.

First of all, readers on the internet are completely different than traditional readers. When you pick up a book, you read every word. When you read an article in a magazine, you usually read the whole thing.

Internet readers are actually more like ’scanners’. They scan headlines and skim paragraphs for phrases, but generally don’t read every word on the screen. In many cases, they don’t scroll down to read a full article.

To keep your readers (or scanners) on your website or blog, you need to make sure your content is internet friendly. To do this there are a some things to keep in mind:

• Use bulleted lists with short and descriptive sentences (like this).

• Use sub-headlines to break up long content.

• Use bold, underline and italics when appropriate.

• Keep paragraphs short, about 4-5 lines.

• Pay attention to your headlines - make them enticing for the reader.

• Add photos or graphics to spice up articles.

• Get to your main point right away before the reader loses interest.

• Connect with your readers using words like ‘we’ and ‘you’, instead of ‘they’.

• Keep sentences short and easy to understand.

• Don’t let your lines go for more than about 65-70 characters.

• Don’t ‘pretty’ up your site with distracting backgrounds.

• You don’t need to sound like a rocket scientist. When you write, imagine you’re writing for someone in grade 6-8.

• Don’t be afraid of being casual and friendly in your articles.

• Use fonts like Arial or Verdana for your text. It’s easier to read.

• Always, always, always proofread for spelling and grammar mistakes. The occasional slip-up is usually forgivable, but too many gives the impression that you don’t care.

I come across so many sites and blogs with really long articles and bland looking content. It’s almost painstaking to read every word, but headlines and bullets would have made it more interesting and easier to follow.

From now on, make sure your own content is internet-friendly and if you already have articles published, go back and edit them. If you have sales copy for your own product or an affiliate product, now would be a great time to tweak it and raise your conversion rates.

You don’t have to be a best-selling author to be a successful internet writer. However, it’s important to be able to see your content through your reader’s eyes. Always proofread your copy, then ask yourself if you would find it interesting and informative if you had read it for the first time.

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Entry Filed under: General