For the optimization of a blog, the All in One SEO Pack should be considered a “must have” for blog writers. Fundamentals of the pack include in the ability to edit the title, description and keywords of a blog post. For new users of WordPress, this plugin provides out-of-the-box workability. After installing, a user can access main features immediately, without the need for additional configuration. And for an advanced user, it supports a variety of features to fine-tune its integration on a blog, such as canonical URLs and title formatting.

And for blog writing? Well, develop your personal blogging style with attention to a few tips found in this blog post. These can help out in key areas such as readability and tone.

All in One SEO Pack

Under the settings menu, there are options to edit the home title, description and keywords of a blog. This will allow for quick optimization of a home page, without the need to edit files. When writing a title for either a home page or a blog post, keep the message clear and to the point. As the pack suggests, search engines use a maximum of 60 characters in the title. Being able to provide a concise message, within the restrictions of character count, is one approach to writing effectively with this package.

Search engines use the description field to provide a snippet on a results page. Again, try to be clear and concise while ensuring that the description is below or at 160 characters. Writing effectively for both the title and description helps keep a uniform and clean format throughout a blog. And when search engine users find this content, the title and description will both adequately convey the topic and message of the post, while conforming to standards.

The All in One SEO Pack will also use keywords automatically with associated blog tags. However, this section is not as “mission critical” as ensuring that a clear and concise title and description are present. However, make sure that both the associated tags and keywords reflect the topical meaning of a post.

Blog Writing

Aside from writing the title and description concisely, it can take years of work at writing to develop fluency in tone, delivery and style. And to develop one’s own writing style, the best approach is most certainly hard work and commitment. A well-respected and prolific English novelist, Anthony Trollope, who was popular for writing The Eustace Diamonds, would dutifully write 250 words of a novel each day and would never skip a day of writing.

Trollope’s personal quotes reflect his feelings about writing,

“There is no way of writing well and also of writing easily” and “Three hours a day will produce as much as a man ought to write.”

As one starts to develop their style of writing, they will start to notice the intrinsic qualities of their style. They’ll be able to edit on the word and sentence level more aptly, to convey a concise and overarching message throughout a piece of work. As one starts to get better at writing and editing, they’ll be able to develop and refine their tone to reach and captivate a varied audience-but it starts with hard work, and a commitment to writing.

As you may know, writing for a blog is somewhat different from website content writing. To develop a style of blog writing, approach a target audience with informality and a conversational tone. Essentially, effective blog writing conveys your own conversational tone and a passion for a given topic. Once you are finished writing, read the post aloud and slowly, paying attention to the syllables of each word and their overall flow from one word to the next. For example, the following universal English phrase, “the rain in Spain stays mainly in the plain” flows well, reads well and has certain resonant sound characteristics, namely assonance and alliteration.

Flesch-Kincaid Formula

One can also gauge the grade level of their writing by looking at the Flesch-Kincaid formula. This assigns a grade level and score to a text, to determine the overall difficulty of reading. Generally, academia reads on a Flesch-Kincaid score of the low 30s, and print/magazine tends to score in the 50s, or at the high-school grade level. It is based on the syllable counts in the text, and the use of simple words versus complex words (monosyllable or disyllable words versus tri-syllable or more).

The Flesch-Kincaid formula is interesting to look at, but not the end-all of writing. Use it as a tool to understand how word usage affects the reading of a text, and how important that can be to determining the ease of reading. Microsoft Word has the ability to score readability statistics using Flesch-Kincaid, if you check “Show readability statistics” under the proofing section in Word options.

Cirrus ABS – Web design and copy from seasoned professionals…

And if you’re looking to have a team of seasoned and professional writers to craft exceptionally written Web copy, we can help. At Cirrus ABS, we meld our team experience into all aspects of Web design, development and copy writing, including the business process and marketing with our award-winning Cirrus eBusiness Suite platform.

Contact Cirrus ABS to learn about our unique Web approach. We’re headquartered in Fort Wayne, Indiana and have been in the business of Web solutions and NetCentered business strategy since 1995. ]]> http://www.cirrusabs.com/blog/writing-for-blogs-and-optimization/feed/ 0 http://www.cirrusabs.com/blog/oh-it%e2%80%99s-you-again-what-are-you-pitching-now/ http://www.cirrusabs.com/blog/oh-it%e2%80%99s-you-again-what-are-you-pitching-now/#comments 05/18/2010 Greg Newton http://www.cirrusabs.com/blog/?p=388

In this world of ever increasing value of all the different types of Social Networking available to business, it is vitally important that individuals of these Companies realize that CONSTANT discussion of their products and Services will only turn off potential clients and customers. When individuals use their Social Networking forums such as Facebook, My Space, Twitter, etc….to flood the airwaves with information and advertising on their Companies particular Products and Services, it will have the same effect as that irritating Cousin that goes on and on over the same topic,……In other words, you start to “Tune them out”, and  turn a deaf ear and eye to what they are trying to get across. This is Business suicide in the Social Networking arena. Properly mixing in your message from a business standpoint, as well as keeping the Social Networking “Social”, will help keep your audience engaged in you and what you have to say. This in turn will keep your potential clients from “Turning the Channel” when you put out a message about your Company or Products  on one or all of your Social Networking forums.

It is Very important to stay relevant and in front of your Clients and potential clients through all forms of Media. Social Networking forums are a tremendous tool that can, and should be used to accomplish this.  Just keep in mind the Proverbs quote……”Whatever you do, do it in Moderation”!

“BUT I DON’T WANT TO!”  Yeah, yeah, I know.  I’ve heard ALL the excuses as to why someone says they can’t do social media…literally, all of them.  I don’t have time.  I don’t have anything to say that anyone cares about.  I don’t care what other people have to say.  Social media is too complicated.  I don’t understand it.  It isn’t relevant to MY industry, but I get why it makes sense for EVERYONE else’s.  My kids understand it better than I do and it’s just so frustrating.  My clientele is too old to be using any type of social media outlet, like Facebook, LinkedIn or Twitter.  My dog ate my social media.

Enough with the excuses already!!!  I wish I could use the parental stand-by and say “Do it.  Because I said so.”  But since that won’t work…let’s talk fact.

As of the moment that I’m writing this blog, there are 5,367,117 people on Twitter.  There are over 12 million professional users using LinkedIn.  I just tried to find out how many people are on Facebook, and I’m not sure anyone really knows, other than to say A LOT—I am seeing numbers around 410 million, some higher, some lower.  There are approximately 400 million people in North America…not just in the US—all of North America.

Let’s just say for examples sake, I am extremely busy (okay, is that an “example” for anyone?), and I own a company but I’m a one-man show.  To make it interesting, let’s say it’s a fairly obscure company—I breed and sell horses.  I personally know nothing about horses…so if I say anything ridiculous about this, please forgive my ignorance…

If I told you that you could get your name in front of people who are actively looking for horses…how many people does that need to be for it to be worth your while?  One?  Ten?  One hundred?  5 million?  410 million?

Just to give you an idea, I jumped over to Facebook while I was writing this and searched “Horse Sale” and I found a livestock company with 1300 fans…would you be a fan of a company that gave you poor service, or in this case, a poor horse?  Looking at their fan page, I can see “testimonials” from past clients—from last month, all the way back…months! 

Now, like I said, I know nothing about horses or where to buy them in Fort Wayne.  So if I did want to buy a horse (I do not)—social media is probably where I’d start.  Not necessarily just searching for a company, right off the bat.  But I might go on Twitter and say “Anyone in Fort Wayne area know where I can buy a horse?”  I’m sure people are going to reply with companies I should and shouldn’t go to—along with links to their websites or social media pages.  And, if I have to Google them and find their social media feeds or the website—that’s okay, I’m going to look you up before I spend money on something like that. 

Do you look things up before you make a large purchase or hire a service company?  I do—every time.  You can find anything online, including reviews, and if I need to spend money with you, I want you to prove to me you are legit and others have been happy using your company.  Search engines now return social media results in the normal results.  When I just Googled a local company, I got their website and their last few Facebook and Twitter results in my results listing. 

To all you who say your clientele is too “old” to be using any type of social media, let alone assuming they don’t know what social media even is—you know what they say when you assume…  Just this weekend, I was at a concert in Fort Wayne and the MC came up to the mic and said “Now, for all you young folks on Facebook and Twitter, follow us by going to #bandname.”  My dad was with me, who happens to be on both Facebook AND Twitter—and he looked at me and said, “Young people?”  Dad, don’t kill me, you’re not THAT old…(kidding, he’s really  not)  Many of my friends parents AND grandparents are on several social media outlets simply because their kids and grandkids are…gotta keep tabs on us somehow, right?  All joking aside, they are not online just to stalk our busy daily activities—they are using it too, sometimes more than normal because they’re retired and have time to do it.  It may not be the norm yet, but we’re getting there—social media is growing for a reason.  In fact, the fastest growing market on Facebook is women, aged 55 and older.  According to one poll I saw, over 50% of all social media users are over the age of 35, with most being over 45 (*disclaimer: I do not think 35 OR 45 is old, please don’t hurt me!).  My point is not to say you should market everything to the older crowds, but don’t discount them either.

If spending a few minutes to create a Facebook fan page, LinkedIn profile or a Twitter account—and updating each maybe a few times each week is too time consuming—please weigh the potential benefits with the least amount of effort.  Would it be great if you could push news as frequently as Fox does?  Sure, but that isn’t realistic.  It doesn’t have to be too time consuming…even ten minutes a day—shoot, ten minutes a week if you’re doing nothing currently.  You can find time for that, even if you got one new client in a year, for ten minutes a week?  That’s 8 ½ hours over a year—one work day.  Seems worth it to me.  You could have set up a few social media accounts in the time it’s taken to read this blog.

If you don’t understand social media or don’t care to, call your kids—they’d probably be able to do it pretty quickly.  Call your grandkids, they can probably do it even faster.  Call Cirrus, we can help you with the strategy.  Sorry to step on Nike’s toes, but JUST DO IT.  And keep Rex away from your computer.

You picked your current web designer for a couple of reasons. Their portfolio looked flashy – they had some unique looking sites and great designs. Oh, and they were cheap; actually very cheap in comparison to some better known competitors. But do they have a business strategy behind their design? Do they understand web best practices? Do they have multiple departments specializing in areas such as search engine optimization, research and development, and business analysis or did you hire Bob from church, your nephew who is going to college for web design, or a 2 person show working out of a spare bedroom in their mom’s house? Or better yet did you just have your IT guy set up the site because he knows all about that “computer stuff” and he’s already on your payroll?  Now ask yourself these questions – would you let your nephew do the taxes or bookkeeping for your business? Is your IT guy well versed in online marketing or just tech savvy? Why do you let your website, your public face to the internet world, have any less importance to you than other aspects of your business? After all, research has shown we spend more time as a society on the internet than doing anything else, well, besides sleeping.

Here are 5 signs that your penny pinching may be costing you money in the long run in lost business.

Roadblocks

Do you have an “enter” page or a flash introduction to your website? If so, you might be deterring potential customers from ever finding out what it is that you do. As a consumer I want efficiency. I am lazy and when I want information, I want it now. When you put up an obstacle, another hoop for me to jump through, I get frustrated which makes me leave. Although you think that video intro is awesome, I could care less. Oh and that music you have in the background, it’s giving me a headache.

The Yuck Factor

Your site looks like it was designed around the birth of the internet. It very well might be because Bob, in fact, did design it and it looks just as bad as that mustard stain on his button down shirt.  The color scheme, pictures, and technology are outdated and hideous. Plus, unlike that Member’s Only jacket from the 80s that you have hanging in your closet, website design doesn’t come back into style. At least the internet hasn’t been around long enough for that to happen. Chances are if your website looks this way I’m either going to think that you’re no longer in business or that you’re a second-rate company that I don’t really want to deal with anyway. After all, the internet is all about image.

Huh? Your company does what?

I landed on your site because you came up on the search engines for what I was interested in. Plus your home page is sprinkled with some words and phrases that are hot buttons for me. Yet I can’t seem to figure out what it is exactly that you do. That and I don’t know what to do next because you haven’t told me. See as a consumer, I need to be told what to do. That’s why I pay $4 for a cup of burnt-tasting coffee at Starbucks and shop at Wal-Mart even though the grocery store down the street has a much better selection of produce. Proper communication is vital to my understanding and taking action. If you aren’t conveying your message appropriately or in a clear and concise manner then you’re probably doing yourself injustice and confusing me. With a less than powerful marketing message you’re falling short which means your website isn’t converting and I’m not buying.

Too Many Choices

Your homepage has way too many images, pictures, links, buttons, advertisements, banners, text, graphics, rotating flash, widgets, etc. You get the point. If your navigation is overly complex with an endless abundance of choices all you’re doing is confusing me. I don’t know what to pay attention to, what’s important, where to click next. Your site should guide me down an intuitive path of correct choices. Too much thinking causes indecisiveness and causes me, your potential customer, to lose focus; which equals you not getting the sale.

Playing Hide-N-Seek

Atlantis is supposedly the greatest civilization that has ever existed.  The problem is that nobody has ever been able to find it.  Your website could be the ultimate information and sales machine but if I’m not landing on it then it doesn’t really count for much. If you aren’t showing up on the first or second page of the search engines for keywords that I’m typing into Google or Yahoo, then what’s your site really worth?  You might as well be parked at the bottom of the ocean next to Atlantis because your company is just a myth. I have to be able to find your website in order for it to produce results.

If your website is suffering from any of these symptoms give us a call at 260-420-2222 or visit our site online at www.cirrusabs.com.  We can help you develop an effective website and strategy.

Since websites do not (correction… should NEVER) include audio that the user doesn’t start themselves, we have to look at the visual equivalent to yelling and how to use it properly. If you have one person in a room speaking loud enough for you to hear, you listen to them and understand what they have to say. If you have 8 people talking at the same time, it doesn’t matter how loudly they are talking, you don’t hear what they have to say. In fact, it makes you want to leave the room.

There are many versions of yelling on the web, so it can be easy to make mistakes that drive people away from your site. Think of elements of your website as voices that must be used properly to be effective. Make sure that the elements draw the attention of your visitor in to your message. If they are not used properly, they will draw the attention out to the visual elements and structure of the site. You don’t have a website in order to show off a design, you have a website to send your message to people you are trying to reach. If your audience sees your design, and not your message (unless your message IS design), your site is a failure.

Colors are voices. People enjoy seeing colors, especially colors that give the feeling of being comfortable with being at your site and match the content. Color can be overused and you end up over-stimulating the eyes of your visitors with something that is not even related to your message. Obnoxious Bright colors can be used effectively, if they are used as accents or for that call to action that you really want to drive your visitors to. As a general rule, try to incorporate no more than two colors in the overall design of your site or you run the danger of losing your message before the visitor even gets to your content.

Headlines are voices. If everything is important, then nothing is important. Your headlines should call attention to important points of your overall message. If there are too many, it tells your audience you don’t really have an idea what your core message is.

Content is a voice. Content is an important part of your message. Content, however, should support your message, not distract from it. Your audience will get more out of your site by presenting content in a reasonable, organized fashion. That usually means that extensive content will go on a different page other than the homepage. Make it easy to navigate to, but make sure the visitor sees it only after they’ve decided they want to commit to that level of research.

Whitespace is a megaphone for your voices. Whitespace is an area without defined content. It doesn’t have to be white to be whitespace. It can be any color or gradient or even non-distracting graphics. It’s just area around the elements of your site that does not have content. Whitespace is necessary to be able to let the voices of your site speak clearly, one at a time, to your audience. Just because there is space on your monitor without text or images, it doesn’t mean you need to fill it with more fluff. That only takes away from the core message you want to send.

Find your core message. Your website should explain that clearly and every element of your website design should not just reflect and support that message, but also clearly convey it to your audience. That is what will make your website a success.

You’ve heard people say it, particularly of political speeches: “It’s just rhetoric.” They mean, of course, that it’s B******T! – a bunch of grandiose, pretentious, self-serving, undoubtedly deceitful, and ultimately empty words meant to pull the wool over the eyes of all us rubes.

Of course, people apply that definition of rhetoric to most advertising and marketing copy, too – or would, if B******T weren’t so much more, well … colorful!

But is that all rhetoric is? Traditionally, no.

Aristotle gave rhetoric what remains its primary definition: the means of persuasion, or, as today’s American Heritage Dictionary has it, “the art or study of using language effectively and persuasively.” And how does one do that? By employing rhetorical devices such as metaphor, simile, allusion, paradox, personification, hyperbole, understatement, irony, ambiguity, rhyme, puns, symbol, synesthesia, anesis, antithesis, parallelism, chiasmus, zeugma, eulogia, paramythia, bdelygmia, and yadda yadda yadda. I know: Even if most of it weren’t Greek, it’d still be Greek to most of us.

Used properly, rhetorical devices lend power, grace, and eloquence to one’s words. They move people to think, to feel, to take a particular course of action. They persuade.

Used improperly … Well, even his day, Aristotle had to defend his definition of rhetoric, arguing that the use of what’s good for a bad reason doesn’t negate the goodness of what’s good.

So, really, rhetoric is a good thing – until a bad writer or speaker or someone with bad intentions turns it into B******T.

“He was born with a gift of laughter and a sense that the world was mad.”

There’s music in that line. Read it aloud and you’ll hear it. Read it aloud and you may never forget it. That’s the beauty of a well-turned phrase. It takes hold of you and captures your imagination not only because of what it says but also because of how it says it. And it’s the “how” that makes it memorable.

If you’re a literature buff, you may recognize that line as the opening sentence of Rafael Sabatini’s classic tale of adventure, Scaramouche, set at the time of the French Revolution. The line was famous once for its indelibly apt, concise, and eloquent description of the book’s protagonist, André-Louis Moreau. Today, given how little people read anything of substance, let alone classic literature … ah, well … (If you could see me now, you’d see me shaking my head in dismay!)

But I digress. Getting back to my theme …

Sabatini was a master storyteller – quite successful in his lifetime (1875–1950) – and a supremely gifted prose stylist. What’s noteworthy about that is, English wasn’t his first language. A native of Italy, born of an Italian father and an English mother, he was raised in England and chose to write in English because he believed the best tales were told in that language.

On the evidence, actually, a number of foreign-born writers who adopted English later in life proved extraordinarily expressive in it. Joseph Conrad (Lord Jim) comes to mind – as do Vladimir Nabokov (Lolita) and Isak Dinesen (the alias of Karen Blixen, famed primarily for her memoir, Out of Africa). The facility these authors had with the language is revealed in the richness, the liveliness, the playful experimentation of their prose. Theirs is writing that sings. And its musicality renders it at once compelling and unforgettable.

Certainly, other writers working in various genres and with different levels of diction exhibit a skill for writing “musical” prose. But not many. Skim just about any contemporary work of fiction or journalism and you’ll see what I mean. The writing is competent. It says what it means to say coherently and intelligently enough. Maybe it’s even emotionally engaging. What it lacks, though, is the kind of rhythm, meter, and melody that makes the message stick with you. That’s what prose styling is all about.

But is prose styling of any real value in marketing? Isn’t the kind of musicality I’m talking about better suited to poetry and fiction? Isn’t it a little too – what? – “froufrou” for copy simply meant to sell a product or service?

In a word: no. If more marketers paid attention to the musicality of their copy, they might actually make an impression on their audience that leads to more sales.

How does a writer achieve musicality?

First, you choose words not only for their denotative and connotative meanings (which should, of course, be your primary concern) but also for their length, their phonetic attributes, the number of syllables they comprise, which syllables are stressed – and how all these factors relate one word to another in a string of words.

What you’re doing is paying attention to the rhythm and meter – the “beat” – of each sentence you construct, as well as its melody, or pleasing sound (euphony). No, prose isn’t poetry. But it can produce poetic effects, which can be a great aid in reader comprehension and retention.

Take that sentence from Sabatini: “He was born with a gift of laughter and a sense that the world was mad.” Its construction is very poetic, exhibiting a marked and recurring rhythm. In metrical terms, the sentence consists of five anapestic feet and a closing iamb. That’s more than you wanted to know, right?

The point is (to state the case once again), that distinctive rhythm, that meter, that musicality is key to the sentence’s appeal and memorability.

Of course, the same considerations apply to the construction of paragraphs and pages of text. Rhythm, meter, and melody are achieved in this instance by varying sentence length and structure, mixing simple sentences – subject, verb, object – with sentences employing multiple clauses in differing patterns and featuring more-complex punctuation. Even the simplest text intended for the widest audience benefits from some measure of structural finessing on this order.

To sum it up, if you’re a marketer and you want people to pay attention to your message, if you want to motivate people to a specific action, then, by all means, pay attention to the music of your words.