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3 Top Tips to Improve Your Online Writing
This week’s Nonprofit Marketing Guide webinar is Online Writing: Dos and Don’ts of Writing for the Web and Email (Thursday, 4/24/08, 3 pm ET, $35). I’ll be talking about these three tips and many more.
Answer readers’ questions. Yahoo! and Google are the most popular sites on the web because people are searching for answers to the questions they have. The ubiquitous “FAQ” page is so popular on websites because it directly answers those questions. There’s an important lesson here: Your website content should be focused on the needs and interests of your site visitors. Write your content with your audience in mind at all times.
Write in chunks. Your website is made up of pages and those pages are made up of paragraphs. Each page and each paragraph should be about one specific thing. Organize your text into small, manageable blocks (chunks) of information. Read more of my tips on chunking specifically. Chunking also makes your site easier to skim, which is how most people actually read online.
Cut everything back. Online writing must be much shorter and tighter than what you’d traditionally write for publication on paper. The general rule of thumb is to cut your print text in half when putting it online. Shoot for headlines that are 4-8 words and sentences that are no more than 20 words. Limit paragraphs to six sentences and articles to 500 words. Of course, these are just guidelines, but they’ll help you get closer to where you need to be.
Learn more during this week’s webinar.
