When writing for the web

Almost regardless of what kind of website owner you are it is almost certain that you need to produce some type of articles.

Maybe you have a web site that needs fresh articles, or you need a press release or sales copy to help promote your service.

The art of writing for the web is all about writing what you really want to say. If I was telling you that if you trust a chimpanzee with a banana he will eat it and what I really meant to tell you actually has something to do with why I think President Bush should focus on domestic instead of foreign problems, then I should tell you the latter.

Writing for the web has other important aspects than writing offline. Users read less and scan content rather than read each line, making this kind of writing an entirely different area. The writer must be aware of the scanning habit of the readers and place the most important stuff at the right places so that the quick, online reader can understand the meaning. This is how to do it for managing your website. You should use plain language in writing content for your website.

Here are a few things to keep in mind:

Website pages or areas need to be self-contained to a large extent, as users may not "read" the site in a linear way, like they might a print brochure for example. Websites have become common marketing tools for companies to use to showcase the virtues of their products and services. Since the popularity of websites is fairly recent, it is not a given to find many people who are trained to effectively write copy for the web.

Content of Web pages, particularly for an educational Web page, must be well-researched and accurate. Content creators must not fall into the trap. Visitors are goal oriented, so they care much more about the ease with which they can extract information from the page.

Online you may have to cope with your content being displayed in other places than where you originally published it. Content that is syndicated is significantly re-contextualized, stripped of many of its original framing effects and conveyed into another context (most likely and RSS reader of choice). This means that the end reader will probably not see the full story, or all of the framing effects of the blog, but often just a headline, summary text, and perhaps a picture, unless they choose to view said blog post.

This is a very basic overview and there are certainly many more advanced aspects to article marketing. But when you first start out, knowing the very basics is very important.