Tips for Effective Writing on the Web

Tips for Effective Writing on the Web

By Wayne D. King

Writing for the Web is just not the same as writing for a publication or penning the great American novel. Let’s face it, the medium is much different. The average Web browser wants information . . . and wants it quickly. Unlike the reader who sits down before the fire with a great book, your visitor wants you to convey your message personally, directly and fast.

However, don’t get the impression that words don’t matter. In fact they matter very much. It is simply a matter of which words you choose that dictates the success of your Website.

Here are 10 tips for writing effective web copy:

1. Give them Substance in “Web Bites”.
You’ve heard of “sound bites” before. It is the phrase used to describe how a political figure or a public figure phrases a message quickly. The message has substance, but they know that they have only a few seconds on TV or the radio to give you that message so they paraphrase what they want to say. Your relationship to your Website visitor is very similar to the public figure’s relationship to the camera or mike. Your visitor will give you a few seconds, but if you don’t deliver, he’s likely to be gone.

Keep your paragraphs and sentences short and interesting. Try to minimize the number of words and maximize the reach of your point. You are trying to communicate, not impress.

This does not mean that your Website has to be a vacuous lump on the Web (as so many sites are). If you want to be more detailed or flowery, go ahead, just place this content deeper into your Website. Those who want the more detailed information will drill deeper and those who don’t won’t run away.

2. Keep it Real
There is a rule of thumb in fundraising and development that a letter soliciting donations should have the word “You” peppered throughout it. This applies to effective Web writing as well. Make your writing more personal, as if you were writing to a friend.

3. Remember your Mission
Your visitor has come to your site for a reason. Perhap to make a purchase, perhaps to find something out or to subscribe. Keep driving them toward fulfillment of their mission: Give them quick links to more information, keep them interested, invite them to drill deeper into your site.
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4. Content is King
Remember. The average Website visitor is still connecting to the Internet with a dialup account. If your Website is filled with all kinds of cool graphics, animation and large images, many people are just going to move on before the even see your message. Unless you are speaking to an audience that you are sure employs high speed connectivity, it is best to keep the mega-giga-cool-stuff to a minimum.

5. Walk a Mile in Their Shoes
It is a useful exercise to place yourself in the shoes of your potential visitors as they open their favorite search engine. What are they likely to type into the search box if they are looking for a service like yours? Program those keywords into your page. More importantly, use them in the content of your message. Weave them into your phrasing.

6. Headlines Matter
Did you know that the headlines in a newspaper are almost always written by an Editor and not the writer? This is because Editors know how to write, but more importantly, they know how to sell newspapers. The headline of your page is the first thing that will catch the eye of your visitor. Make them interesting and they will keep reading. Bear in mind the advice about keywords above as you write your Headlines.

7. Titles Too
When you open a Webpage, the wording at the top of the page is the title. It is programmed into the page during its design. Most major search engines use title information as their principle source of cataloging information. Be sure to get important keywords into the title, without making it too cumbersome.

8. Reference other Reliable Sources
Referencing reliable sources is always important to creating and maintaining your credibility. Make your point at the same time. For example, if you want to demonstrate how many people visit New Hampshire during the course of the year, you don’t have to quite an entire report from the Institute for NH Studies. Give your visitor the meat of the information and then create a link to the Institute’s site, and in particular the page that provides your support. Engage other sites in the process of sharing reciprocal links with you.

9. Your “Webside Manner”
If you are selling products or services on your site, emphasize the personal benefits of the product rather than the finer technical details. Place the technical details on the Website, just don’t make them the first stop. Your visitor wants to know how your product can change their life more than they want to know how fast, big, and nifty it is. Don’t forget to use the word YOU.

10. Proof Read
Even the best writers have editors and proofreaders. Don’t assume because you can write will that you can also edit and proof read. Aha . . . caught you. The above sentence escaped the beeping of my sophisticated spellchecking software. So let’s try again: Don’t assume because you can write well that you can also edit and proof read. Use spell and grammar checking software but don’t rely solely upon them for proofing. Have others read your copy and don’t be defensive about it.

About the Author
Wayne King is a recovering politician, political commentator and President of Moosewood Communicaions in Rumney, NH. He blogs from his space in the Blogosphere, Unified Visions: UnifiedVisions.Blogspot.com where he advocates for a post-partisan approach to governing; and from the Moosewood Communications Blog MoosewoodCommunications.blogspot.com. 

King holds a BS Degree in Environmental Conservation and a Masters Degree in Earth and Space Science Education from the University of New Hampshire, Durham. 

A three term former State Senator from New Hampshire, Wayne King was the 1994 Democratic nominee for Governor. King is also the founder of The Electronic Community, a group of social entrepreneurs working on social and development issues in Africa. 

Senator King has served on the Board of Directors of many state and local organizations: he was a founding member of the NH Community Loan Fund, and a long time member of the Common Cause NH Board of Directors. Additionally he served for almost 15 years on the board of the Northern Community Investment Corporation, one of America's foremost Community Development Corporations. 

King is also an accomplished photographer. His images can be found in galleries from Maine to California. His images are a celebration of life, blending the real and the surreal to achieve a sense of place or time that reaches beyond the moment into a dreamlike quintessentialism designed to spark an emotional response. Using digital enhancement, handcrafting, painting, and sometimes even straight photography, King takes the viewer to a place that is beyond simple truth to where truth meets passion, hope and dreams. His photoblog is Photoexpressionist.blogspot.com.



Electronic Community Moves West African NGO's into the Information Age

Electronic Community Overview

The allegory is as old as human memory and translates into any culture . . . a father shows his son a stick and asks him to break it, which he does easily. Then he brings forth a bundle of sticks and asks the son to break the bundle. The son is unable. The father’s lesson: in unity there is strength.

In 1998, 24 nonprofit organizations in Nigeria – known as NGO’s, or non-governmental organizations – joined together in an electronic community to enhance their effectiveness. With the help of the Ford Foundation and the Boston-based East West Foundation, they began a journey into the future that today has them communicating with one another and the world on a regular basis.

With few exceptions, they had not ever used a computer or surfed the Net. Yet, they could see the future and knew that despite the divergence in their missions there was an important convergence taking place within the world.  They knew they needed to understand and embrace this in order to effectively carry on under conditions that in most parts of the world might be seen as impossible.

2 years later their dream is finally beginning to bring results. Each organization now has at least 1 computer with access to the Internet. Each organization now actively participates in the Electronic Community – which has become their official name. Each organization has learned to use technology to further its mission and its reach – and to help build relationships that reach across mission to common ideals and dreams. . . economic prosperity, justice, peace, hope.

The Nigerian Environmental Study Action Team (NEST): Now online with its own Website, (www.NEST.org) NEST is rapidly  becoming one of the premier environmental research organizations within Nigeria. Since they established an on-line presence, requests for NEST to participate in strategic alliances to provide in-country research on broader global environmental projects have increased dramatically, not only helping insure NEST’s future but providing valuable insight into global environmental issues for International organizations.

The Farmers Development Union (www.FADU.org ): Numbering more than 1/2 million members FADU had one - rarely used - email address and no access to the Web when the Electronic Community began. Today they use email to communicate between field offices, track loans on their financial accounting software packages and are using computer aided design to develop plans for their new central office building where all work stations will be networked with access to the Internet and integrated with regional offices and the newly established Finance Division destined to provide a profit center for the organization to reduce its dependence on outside sources of funding. Visitors to the FADU Website (www.fadu.org) can even choose to make their philanthropy work for private enterprise by makings an online commitment to provide low interest loans to small indigenous enterprises through FADU’s micro-credit program. 

Girl’s Power Initiative (GPI): Armed only with a commitment to elevate the status of women and the enthusiasm of its staff at the start of the Electronic Community project, GPI now uses the computer and training received through the EC to seek grants, communicate with supporters, send news releases and, most recently, to provide advice and help to other members of the Electronic Community. This past month, the Electronic Community, in its biweekly emailing to members,  featured a tip for sending a fax by the Internet from Ese Amadasun GPI’s technical support person.

These are only some of the success stories of the Electronic Community, which according to former NH Senator Wayne King, director of the project, hopes to become the information and technical support resource & Web portal for NGO’s throughout West Africa. With a fulltime presence on the ground in Nigeria and hopes of adding the same in other countries, King sees the opportunity to use economies of scale and technology to assist NGO’s in West Africa and beyond. Including the establishment of a technical cooperative that provides technical resources that today are unaffordable to the majority of NGO’s in Africa.

“Our pilot technical support cooperative in Nigeria has been incredibly effective”, King said. “Providing semi-annual site visits to each of the participating NGO’s, intended to build technical capacity from the ground up and the vision to utilize technology effectively from the top down in addition to technical assistance with any equipment that is not functioning properly. Additionally we have help desk and Web based support for the organizations to assist them between technical team visits.”

“Our vision,” said Osita Aniemeka, a member of the Nigeria based technical team, “is to demonstrate to NGO’s that they can work together more effectively AND reduce overall operating expenses while continuing to expand services. It’s a tall order, but we are convinced that these organizations are demonstrating that they understand.”  For each of these organizations to hire the kind of technical assistance that the Electronic Community provides through the cooperative would just be out of reach to these organizations. By combining forces with initial funding from the Ford Foundation we are demonstrating that this kind of assistance is affordable and effective. We expect that within a few years these organizations will be putting the technical cooperative directly into their own budgets and funding their own participation.”

For Nigerian-born, and now US Citizen, Dr. Chidi Nwachukwu, the Electronic Community project is a dream come true. . .an opportunity to reach out to the country that he loves in a real and meaningful way. Nwachukwu, a member of the Electronic Community Team, is the President of Uconnet.com an Internet Service provider in Milwaukee, Wisconsin and a digital entrepreneur. He sees the Electronic Community as his opportunity to help his native land reach for the prosperity he knows it can have. “Ethical Leadership and Hope”, says Nwachukwu, “are the key ingredients for creating prosperity in Nigeria. No force is better organized in Nigeria to provide that leadership than the NGO sector. But until now these NGOs have operated as individual entities focusing only on their individual missions. The Electronic Community creates the opportunity for each organization to view itself as part of something larger than its own individual mission. An entity where the whole is much greater than the sum of its parts.”

Kip Bates, Senior Systems Administrator at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and technical guru of the Electronic Community team readily admits that his initial involvement stemmed from an old friendship with college chum King (They attended the University of New Hampshire together). Now, however, Bates speaks like someone on a mission from God. “Technology can help these West African nations overcome centuries of economic marginalization and deprivation,” Bates says. “In just two short years we have seen the evidence of its power and we believe the best is yet to come. As these organizations become more and more comfortable with technology and strive to be more self-sustaining and effective we believe they will have the power to move mountains within their countries . . . whether that means stemming the ravages of AIDS, protecting important ecological resources or providing micro-loans to small business enterprises that would otherwise be without capital, these organizations will work together to change the course of history in Africa.”

None of this success has come easily. The telecommunications and power grid  infrastructure in West Africa alone presents challenges that to others might seem insurmountable. But the Electronic Community Team, with the unflagging support of the Ford Foundation, West Africa and Dr. Adhiambo Odaga the program officer who is the spark behind the Community, have been willing to accept failures as learning opportunities and successes as lessons to build upon and in doing so have overcome the odds that others fear to face.

“We’re not ready to declare victory yet,” said Anddy Omoluabi, a member of the Nigerian EC technical team, “but we are certainly ready to declare that we have something very special – of which we are very proud. There are many miles yet to tread but this journey of a thousand miles is now well on its way.”

News Release

February 2000

Contact: Wayne D. King

603-786-9378

TheElectronicCommunity@gmail.com