Jun

Five Tips For Writing Online

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Five Tips For Writing Online

The internet has profoundly changed the way we consume information. Gone are the days when one would read a 5000 word article in a magazine; today, we wall want fast, quick information in as concise a form as possible (look at the popularity of Twitter). If you are writing online, you need to change and adapt your writing habits to meet with this demand.

1. Do away with the Shakespearean English. While good prose is always appreciated, online, you are writing for an audience that may include PhDs as well as middle school students from non-english speaking countries. Not only that, few people have the patience to look up difficult words online. Keep your vocabulary limited to commonly used words and avoid littering your writing with jargon. Your prose shouldn’t be flowery or extravagant; keep it clear and concise.

2. Large blocks of text are terrifying to an average internet user. Lists are your friends. They ease out the burden of reading on a computer screen, display information in an easy manner, and make for quick reference. Look at a news aggregation site like Digg.com that is littered with lists (even this article is like a list!).

3. Craft solid headlines. While headlines have always been crucial to drawing the reader’s interest, online, their importance is multiplied manifold. If you really want to grab the reader’s attention, practise creating solid, interest-inducing headlines. Browse the headlines used by popular blogs and websites on Twitter, where the 140 character limit really brings out the best in headlines.

4. Place your most important content right up front. People online are looking for information. Very few are there to read extensively on a topic in florid prose. Keep the most important information you have to offer right up front. Resist the temptation to bury it deeper down in your content. The more informative your content “looks” to a reader, the more enticed he will be by it.

5. Practise SEO writing. SEO, or Search Engine Optimization, is crucial to increasing your site visibility. Goog SEO writing basically involves repeating your target keyword phrase (such as ‘cheap car insurance’ or ‘online health insurance’) every one or two paragraphs, and crafting your headlines in such a way as to include the target keyword phrase. Good SEO writing is not the equivalent of good writing (although it can, and should be), but it is vital to ranking well in the search engines.

You may lament these changes brought on by the internet, but fact is, there is no escaping them. As a language purist, I am, at times, appalled by the demands brought about by the internet on writers, but at the end of the day, we all have to adapt and change our habits or we risk being irrelevant in a new age.