So you’ve made the plunge! You’ve made the decision to have your website redesigned or created! You’ve signed the contract, have ideas for photos and have gone through all the paperwork. Now for the hard part: writing the content.

If you’ve ever found yourself sitting in front of a blank screen with no ideas…this blog is for you.

Think about your customers!
Your readers are highly distracted. What do our readers want? What do they expect to find?

If you’re not excited about the content for your website, your customer definitely won’t be either. Write as if you were the customer. What would excite you?

In Copywriter’s Blog on How To End Writer’s Block Forever they suggest to ask your customers! Surveys, blog comments and good old fashion phone interviews let you know what your customers are confused about, what their expectations are and how they have branded your company in their mind.

Read read read!

And you thought that once you graduated college the reading stopped? Ha!

Writing great web content is about reading great web content on a regular basis. By doing this you will learn quickly what is fluff and what is quality. When your brain is full of quality writing material, good will come out. Just like your mom always said when she would try to get you to stop watching Tom and Jerry cartoons and start getting you to watch PBS “Garbage in, garbage out!”

Getting it Done Quickly

Reuse your content. Content from fliers can be put on your website, blog, in case studies, newsletters. Don’t get overwhelmed. Use the good content you have and put it out on different mediums as suggested by Holland Mark.

Just start writing– This is typical advice for writer’s block of any kind. I have one MS Word document where I jot down all my ideas for blogs. I write a paragraph, ditch it and come back a few months later when I’ve learned more about a certain subject. It doesn’t have to be perfect the first time.  Like our old friends at Nike say ..just do it! (sorry I just had to refer to at least one overused slogan in this blog).

Promotion and Persuasion

Two approaches to promoting:

• “Chest beating” self focused approach –only talking about your own product or yourself personally- Ineffective
• Reader focused approach- talking about their problems, solutions, and the results - Effective

How to persuade without being obvious:

• Discuss trends to push for a change
• Identify problems facing readers to build credibility
• Show how things have evolved
• Suggest solutions without selling by speaking objectively

Other Tips about Content on the Web

• Don’t be afraid to offer some of your thoughts for free. Give a good sample of content through a free white paper or article.
• Be sure on your landing page to have a very basic information collection form.  Think Best Practices.
• Don’t be afraid to give a quality free sample. When people get hooked, they will come back for more.

Ask for Help

• There are professionals out there who specialize in writing web content. For a cost, you can hire one to help you.
• Your web design company should offer this as a service. See IT Hands Web Consultation process. Or contact us for a quote on content writing.

I was inspired to write about quality web content creation after hearing a webinar by Michael Stelzner, the white paper expert.

For more on Content Creation ask IT Hands Team of professional writers or see our Portfolio for examples of great content.