Archive for the 'Content Writing' Category
Creative Commons
Worried that your good work could be plagiarised or that someone’s going to steal your thunder on the Internet and not reference your writing appropriately? There’s a solution to every problem and this one comes in the form of Creative Commons. An offshoot of a US non profit organisation, Creative Commons was founded in 2003 with the help of the University of Ottawa Law and Technology Program and the Canadian Internet Policy and Public Interest Clinic.
The service allows you to license your work easily and at no cost. With various different license offerings based on how much freedom you want to give people to use your writing and in which forums, Creative Commons steps you through an easy process to find the right license and then you simply download some HTML to your web-site and your covered like so:
This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.5 Canada License
People using the works are then morally and legally obliged to use them accordingly (or not at all if you so choose). Whether or not people act appropriately remains to be seen and there’s also the issue of the global reach of the Internet with different laws governing different jurisdictions but if this plagiarism is a concern for you then Creative Commons is definately a step in the right direction to protecting your work.
Highlights from An Event Apart Seattle
One of the things I love about being a web designer is that there is always more to learn, be it from other web specialists or your clients. Last week at An Event Apart Seattle Christine and I had the chance to learn from some true experts. The speakers were not only masters in their fields, but engaging and generous with their knowledge.
Here are some highlights:
- Watching Eric Meyer write CSS (you know you’re a geek when…)
- Jeffrey Zeldman’s talk on “Writing the User Interface” confirmed my experience: the words in a web design matter much more than you might think and can really make a difference in how visitors use your site. So long as it invites clicking, it matters more what a button says than what it looks like.
- Peaking into other designer’s processes, from beautiful sketchbooks to user research.
- I enjoyed Jeff Veen’s succinct message which shows the benefits of doing your design research up front vs. the cost of changing your mind partway through the build. He also discussed why web design is so much more complex now than it was in the early days of the web, when everyone using the web were of the same type (geeks).
- Shawn Henry shared insights for ensuring your site is accessible to varying abilities; from folks who read the web with braille or speech readers to limited vision users — who magnify screens to an amazing degree, but want the same site that was designed for regularly sighted users. Bottom line: there is no substitute for engaging disabled users in the design process if you want to build truly accessible sites. Her book on accessibility is free online.
- Andy Budd shared how a delightful user experience is worth more than the sum of it’s parts in the loyalty that can create.
Not keen on copywriting? Satire works well at TeamSnap
Testimonials on a website can sometimes be a bit cheesy and even look suspicious. Can you really believe what these people are saying? Via Mike Davidson I discovered TeamSnap. TeamSnap allows you to manage your game and team schedules and communicate with your teammates. Not only is this site great to look at, very well designed and well laid out, the testimonials are hilarious. Whoever wrote this had a blast.
Linking is the Foundation of Every Quality Website
Want to write better Web copy? You’ll be off to a good start if your follow Gerry McGovern’s advice.
Free Keyword Suggestion Tool
When your potential customers search the web, what keywords are they searching for? Wordtracker has launched a free Keyword Suggestion Tool that can help you determine the best search-engine friendly words to use on your site. It has two key benefits:
- lists some similar phrases which, used on your site, increase your chances of showing up when those customers are searching
- estimates how often people search for keyword phrases
Try it out - you might be surprised how a little word-tweaking will make your site more relevant to how customers are thinking.
Cheap at Heart: Search Optimization
Web Content Management consultant and author, Gerry McGovern offers us these valuable tips when writing website content with search engine optimization in mind.
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The Web is Changing how we Write and Read
Who would have thought that the emergence of the Web would have initiated a text revolution? Never before have so many people read and written so much.
Now that the Web is fifteen years old, Web Content Management consultant and author, Gerry McGovern looks at how the Web has changed the way we read and write.
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What updates can you make to keep your website fresh?
Keeping your website up-to-date is essential. Not only does it give you credibility, it also increases your chance of repeat visits and helps with search engine optimization. Here are a few ways to keep your content fresh:
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Don’t use “Click Here” as link text
When writing website content it’s tempting to use the phrases:
» to download this document click here,
» for more information click here or
» to download our software, click here.
Even though click here is a call to action, it’s a pretty meaningless call to action.
When reading webpages, the majority of us scan them. Headers, bolded words and links are the items that jump out on a page. Imagine if your page has three or more click here. They won’t help your user at all and they will have to read the page carefully to figure out why they need to click here.
When calling the user to action, it’s best to use a brief but meaningful text. You should explain what one will discover if they click the link.
Referring back to our examples above, the following links would be more informative.
» Download document.
» Read more.
» Get the software.
Think about your links and stop the plague of click heres.
The Power of the About us Page
Does your site have an “about us” section? Do you have one simply because everyone else does? What’s the real value of such a page? Do you know how to maximize its value?
Bryan Eisenberg at Click Z has provided an interesting article that explains how you can make the most of your about us page and informs us of the top 4 “About us” page mistakes.