Read More Books

April 15, 2011

Before I start any new website, I generally go to Amazon and buy a few books on the topic. Specifically, I buy maybe three or more of the bestselling titles. I do this for a couple of reasons. First, it helps me broaden and deepen my knowledge of the subject. Read a few well-written books [...]

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If/Then

April 14, 2011

This is a great way to catch a reader’s interest, and pull him or her into your content. Here are some examples of what I mean… If you like your coffee strong, then be sure to… If you are paying more than 12% on your credit cards, then you should… If you are sensitive to [...]

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To keep your readers engaged for longer, get serious about writing and managing related content.

April 13, 2011

Before I talk about the subject of writing and managing related content, I first need to make one point by way of preparation. Don’t create dead-end pages. I have written about this before. To put it simply, it makes no sense to write a great page of content, and then fail to provide links to [...]

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April 13, 2011

In a previous post, and in several articles over the years, I have written about the importance of never writing a “dead end” page. That is to say, never finish a page without providing the reader with a link to one or more other, related content pages. I try to follow my own advice, but [...]

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Media Attention

April 12, 2011

Yes, you should always be writing content with your readers in mind. But we also think of the other “audiences” we are writing for. We write for the search engines. And we often write with social media in mind, hoping our content is shareable. Well, there is another audience you can think about. The media. [...]

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Encourage Discussion

April 11, 2011

Hopefully your site enables your readers to write back, comment or contribute in some way. If not, that’s job one…to create the means for your readers to participate on your site. If you’re not sure how to do that, you could do a lot worse than using the Facebook comments tool. Whatever the tool you [...]

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Talking to Boomers?

April 8, 2011

Are boomers among your readers or customers? If so, do you keep boomers in mind when you write your site pages? Or even write some of your content specifically for boomers? It’s tempting to write for younger people, because they are the ones we associate with being on the web. Well, not so fast with [...]

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3 Headline Approaches

April 7, 2011

I know I wrote about headlines last week, but today’s post is very different. Today I want to make the point that while every headline can and should be optimized, you need to decide on a single purpose first. In other words, decide on the principle purpose of your page, and then optimize the headline [...]

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Challenge Your Readers

April 6, 2011

We spend a lot of time trying to please our readers. We want them to like us. We want them to like what we publish. We don’t want to upset or offend them. That all sounds good…but the net result can result in a somewhat bland and vanilla experience. Sure, you’re delivering quality information, but [...]

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Don’t give me dress-up new. Give me something really new.

April 5, 2011

Dear Blogger, Don’t get me wrong. I like your stuff. The topic you cover is important to me. That’s why I started reading your blog. And I really, really appreciate what I have learned from you. You have a fresh and useful way of looking at things. I guess you could even say I joined [...]

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Be a Collector.

April 5, 2011

I had an idea the other day for an ebook about web content. I know the ebook will include a number of examples of a particular type of web content. For what I have in mind, I think I’ll need 17 examples. In fact, the whole idea for the book came to me while looking [...]

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