This article has been provided by Jane Lynch of Giraffe Marketing, Specialising in Marketing Solutions to Grow Your Business. Jane writes an e-newsletter full of practical and actionable Marketing ideas, for further information visit www.giraffemarketing.com.au or email This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it

"Creating exciting content for your website doesn’t have to be hard, but it does have to be good" says Jane Lynch of Giraffe Marketing. "If you only have the eyes of a prospective customer for 5 seconds you must grab their attention…remember we want them to scan, stay and interact."

Have you read any good websites lately?

Probably not, we are too busy and we don’t have time. Research says that people spend  5 seconds to a page on the web.

We skim through the highlights and decide if we want to find out more.

This makes it even more important to understand how to write keyword rich content for our websites. We want our customers scan and stay to learn more or take action.

We must start by thinking about who is our website for?

It’s not for us or our family and friends.

It’s for our customers. It’s about giving our customers something of value and having them take action.

To be able to do this we need to look at our business and our customers.

What information do we need to begin, let’s consider some of the key points about our businesses before we start?

Taking the time to do this exercise it will help you to define your business, you will be able to use this information for all your Marketing and to create the content for your website.

The business overview

Describe your business and your product in a few short sentences.

What does your business do, who buys and why?

Try creating your elevator spiel, imagine that you are in an elevator…the person next to you says what do you do? And you only have a minute maybe less to answer… try creating a message that gives an insight to your business and makes the person ask “tell me more”.

Who are your customers?

This is the most important step in creating content. We must understand who our customers are so that we can write our website information just for them.

Can you describe your ideal customer?

Think about the customers you have, are there some similarities, what age are they, can you estimate the average income, do they live in a particular area, and do they have a certain type of occupation?

What are the common characteristics?

Once we understand these points about our customers we can create content that talks to our customers.

What’s the problem?

Now think about what is the common problem that you are solving for your customers? What need are you satisfying? This is the key reason that customers look for your product or business.

Why should someone buy from you?

What makes your business different to your competitors? What makes you more unique, valuable and visible? Do you fill a special niche in your industry?

This will be one of the most important points for you to use on your website. Just make sure you can deliver the promise.

Writing Tips for the Web

Now that we understand who we are writing for and what is our message, we need to think about how we write.

Writing for the web is different than writing for print. We need to stand out and be noticed. We need to talk in our customer’s language and not use our own jargon.

Writing for the web is unique; it provides an interactive experience for the reader.

On the web we use an inverted pyramid style of writing.

This simply means you should put your most important point at the start of the article, followed by the next most important point and so on…

This will help you get your message across faster.

To do’s

• Use headlines that grab attention
• Use subheads/mini headlines to break your content into manageable pieces
• Use familiar, everyday words
• Be direct and to the point, short simple sentences
• Cut out unnecessary words
• One topic per paragraph
• Use dot points
• Write 200 -300 words per page
• Create a good first impression – spelling and grammar do matter
• Create interesting information that sets you apart from others
• Ask someone else to read it and ask ‘so what’
• Remember the WIIFM (what’s in it for me)

Creating exciting content for your website doesn’t have to be hard, but it does have to be good. If you only have the eyes of a prospective customer for 5 seconds you must grab their attention…remember we want them to scan, stay and interact.

Article provided by Jane Lynch of Giraffe Marketing, Specialising in Marketing Solutions to Grow Your Business. Jane writes an e-newsletter full of practical and actionable Marketing ideas, for further information visit www.giraffemarketing.com.au or email This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it