Writing for the Web – A Quick Reboot!

If you are beginning to write for the web, be it for a website, a blog, or even an online discussion – you are writing for an audience that’s in a great deal of hurry. As a web content writer, you can best imagine your audience as someone who’s rushing from one shop to another, trying to find a specific item to suit a special purpose. Imagine this person scanning the signboards, the shelves, and the discount offers; while making a quick sub-conscious decision to either stop and look, or move on.

Now imagine your site or blog as that shop, and put yourself into the shoes of the owner – what is it that will make them stop, and when they stop what would make them browse, and finally after they’ve browsed what would motivate them to buy or pay another visit?

As a web content writer, you are responsible for the overall visitor experience, and not just the content. To meet these higher responsibilities, a web writer has to break some old molds and replace them with new ones. In fact, the web writer has to move beyond being just a writer…he or she has to become a logician and a manager. If you’ve been writing for the print medium, and have only recently begun to explore the web world, you will find the following discussion extremely helpful. There might be some thoughts that even the seasoned web writers may want to reflect upon.

So let’s begin.

First, let us crystallize the important (and relevant) differences between the two mediums. Next, we will look at some important tips that can help you write web content in a more effective and productive manner. Finally, we will discuss the importance of the deductive method of web-content creation, over the intuitive one.

For a writer, how is the web different from print?

Well…it is different in numerous ways…but the most prominent difference is:

A shift in Responsibilities:

As a writer who writes for the print medium, your responsibility extends only up to writing well. As a print medium writer, you can channel all your energy towards writing better. The responsibility of distribution rests under that paperweight on the publisher’s desk; it is the publisher who finds your book its readers.

When you write for the web, the responsibilities that were earlier your publisher’s, leap on to your shoulders! Suddenly, you are required to “change your way of writing” in a way that your content is more “easily” found. As a web writer, you are also required to make your content “stickier” so that the reader stays with it. After all, most of the web content is free…and what’s available for free is seldom appreciated – unless it hooks the reader!

And then, there are other differences too:

A Change in Scale:

On the web, all could read your content. The audience is wider…much wider than the audience of any printed material. If you are a good web writer, you will need to harden your shell and deflect criticism, as people will read what you write and it would churn emotions. (However, if you were a bad web writer – no one would ever know that you existed – and so you could plan a happy trip into oblivion.)

Another dimension of the change in scale is that you’d be read by a wide variety of people. While a print writer’s content is usually read by a select group of audience, who are willing to pay for the writing – and they are interested in reading all of what you’ve written; for your web content there would be a select few (the diehard fans of your writing) who would read the entire scroll – most would just scan the page!

A Different Scale of Measurement:

What’s important to note is that the most common measure of a web writer’s success is page views! Unique visitors come next. So, having say 3000 unique visitors per day who average 1 page view per head is better than 30 visitors per day who average 5 pages per head! Also note that there’s no measure for “content read (and digested) per page.” So even those who scan your pages without going into the details – count! It’s another matter that if you don’t support the scan-ability of your pages with good content, you wouldn’t find many repeat visitors – and in the long run, your page views too would suffer!

A Self-propelled Promotional Eco-system:

Promotion on the web is primarily driven by quality, which is great news for many aspiring writers. Though web advertising is gaining ground…if your content is good despite not being advertised, people will find it, and then they’d talk about it. The search engines too tune themselves to find good content faster (they follow the hits your content gets,) and so there’s a multiplier effect that begins to work in your favor. Over time, you see your site figure on the first page of most search engine results. Big organizations can often achieve this effect through advertisements, but as a capable individual you’ll find a great ally in the self-propelled promotion mechanism of the web.

So what does all this point to?

Well…if we carefully analyze the web as a publishing medium, we could formulate some simple rules for writing good content for the web.

Here’s a basic list.

Begin by providing a bird’s eye view of what the content would cover.
Of course, you’d want to generate the learner’s interest in the article first – but make sure that the gist of the content is given in the first screen view, and should be available for the visitor to read without scrolling. You need to do this to arrest the interest of the quick scanners.

Use the expected search strings and keywords in your content.
If you are just beginning to write content for the web, you’ll find it slightly messy…but then you’ll get used to it.

Use phrases/small headings.
Once again, this helps the scanners. They can quickly figure out where they could find what interests them.

Use simple, everyday examples.
To put your point across, use simple examples that most of us can relate to. Don’t use examples that may be difficult for the general audience to relate to – it would drive them away.

Use fonts and formatting judiciously / Use colors that don’t tire the eyes.
Use bold for headings, italics for emphasis, and colors for visual chunking of information.

Other Things:

• Create a list of relevant keywords for the metadata.
• Use hyperlinks to keep the information organized.
• Use graphics (for most audience groups – graphics work well.)
• Use small paragraphs/sentences.

Of course, the list is a long one, and each of the tips on this list is driven by logic. Part of this logic was once built into the structure of the web through interconnectivity and searchability; and part of it comes from an analysis of the typical website visitor behavior – holistically speaking, a web writer needs to be creative within the web publishing framework.

Many among us are born with the knack of writing. Some of us followed the beaten path of engineering, medical, and other disciplines that promised better job opportunities; some decided to stifle their creativity to shoulder the responsibility of their families. Many who had the ability to make people stop and read, put a lid over their passion to write, because to find a reader they needed contacts or money!

The coming decade probably would be labeled the decade of the web content writer, who found a voice and reached an audience through ability, intelligence, and knowledge. Period.

Author: Shafali R. Anand