eMarke&ng:

The Essen&al Guide to Marke&ng in a Digital World

Wri$ng for Digital

What youll learn

The principles of writing for your web audience
Which types of web copy are available to you
The basics of HTML for formatting online text
How to write for search engine optimisation (SEO), focusing
specifically on keywords
The best practices for successful online copywriting

Knowing your audience is vital

It will guide you in developing your content strategy, determining the
topics they are interested in, and help you organise information in a way
that makes sense to them.

Who is my audience?
What actions do I want them to
take?
What information do they need in
order to feel confident taking
action?

Audience research
When you are researching your audience, there are two
useful concepts to bear in mind:

The audience of one

Personas

Audience of One
According to Price & Price (2002), audiences used to be thought of
as a vast and vaguely defined crowd. The web giving a platform
to individuals and niche groups have changed that.

Not literally audiences of just one

person
Instead, people are used to being
addressed as individuals on the
web
Identify that individual, and write
directly to him/her

Creating Personas
When trying to get a better picture of these individuals
you are writing for, it helps to create a profile to
embody the characteristics of your target audience.
Male or female?
Age?
Demographics/Psychographics
Purchase decision-making
process?

Communicating effectively
Content needs to be:

Clear and concise

Easy to read
Well written
Well structured

Types of web copy: short copy

On the web, writers often have very little time and space to get a
message across to a visitor, and entice them to take action.

Call to Action
Titles and subject lines
Search adverts
Social copy

Call to Action (CTA)

Users scan webpages for clues of what to do. Tell them.
Use active verbs
Clear instructions
Resonate with visitors at each step in
the conversion process
Resonate with action to be taken, not
the technical function performed.
Consider the context

Titles and subject lines

Often part of long copy, they are so important so as to be
discussed separately. The reason? Consider them the gateway to
your copy. They tell the reader whether to read further or not.

Subject lines should:

Persuade
Entice
Inform
Excite

Search Adverts
The space and time to get the message across is short. And there
is plenty of competition for readers attention.
Limited character count
Heading

(25 max)

Two lines of advert copy

(35 max)

That can be displayed on one line (35 max)

www.DisplayURL.com

(35 max)

Social Copy
Social media is where brands can have a conversation with
consumers.

Research is NB: get to know your

community members and their
interests
Remember you are participating in
a conversation
Write sharable content
Avoid promotional content
Have communication protocol in
place

Types of web copy: long copy

It allows you to provide more information and encourage the reader to
convert. Long copy gives you an opportunity to form a relationship with
your reader.

News releases
Articles for online syndication
Emails
Blog posts
Advertorials
Website

News Releases
The staple of PR, originally to provide information for journalists, online
news releases are increasingly being read without going through the
journalist first.

Written in brand tone

Accessible to general public
Optimised and formatted
Compelling headline

Articles for Online Syndication

Articles that do not directly promote your brand, but provide
information and valuable content to readers, related to your
product or service.

Submitted on online directories &

republished
Optimise for SEO
Interesting, informative
Position brand as expert,
demonstrate authority and thought
leadership

Emails
An ideal medium to build long-term relationships with readers, and
provide value, such as:

Humour and entertainment

Research and insight
Information and advice
Promotions and special offers

Blog Posts
Excellent way to communicate with staff, investors, industry
members, journalists, and prospective customers. Blogs foster a
community around a brand, and provides an opportunity for
feedback.

Convincing headlines
Valuable content
Give company a voice & personality

Website Copy
An effective structure will make users want to engage.
Easy to scan
Meaningful headings and sub-headings
Highlight and bold key words
Bulleted lists
One idea per paragraph
Cut the fluff
No redundancies

Writing for mobile

Creating digital copy for mobile websites that encourages
interaction and achieves marketing and business goals:

Get to the point

Put the important bits up front
Condense information to its
simplest form.

HTML for formatting

HTML tags tell browsers how to present content.
Here are some basic HTML tags:
To bold: <b>phrase you want to bold</b>
To italicise: <i>phrase you want to italicise</i>
To underline: <u>phrase you want to underline</u>
To list: <li>lines you want to list</li>
To create a paragraph: <p>paragraph text</p>
To insert a line break: <br>
To insert a link: <a href=page url>phrase you want to link</
a>
To insert a heading: <h1>Level one heading</h1>
To insert a sub-heading: <h2>Level two heading</h2>

Static website or CMS

A static website stays the same over time

and no new content is added
CMS stands for content management
system. A CMS is used to manage the
content of a website. If a site is updated
frequently and if people other than web
developers need to update the content of a
website, a CMS is used

SEO copywriting
Optimising for human and machine. Research your key phrases
and include them in the following:
Page title
Page URL
Meta description
Meta keywords
Headings and sub-headings
On-page copy
Links to your optimised page
Images: Alt text and title tags

Best practices for online copywriting

Does your copy convey a creative idea?
Does the layout of your copy make it easier to
read?
Is your meaning clear and direct?
Does the copy convey the features and
benefits necessary to make your point (if
applicable)?
Will your readers clearly understand the
content of your writing?
Is the content of your message structured in a
logical manner?

Conceptual copywriting
Copy should also be creative, beautiful and thought
provoking.
Express an idea that grips readers
Make an idea memorable merely by using
words to express it
Use clever wording, smart ideas and
thoughtful copy
Make the reader pause, think, and want to
engage more deeply with your idea

Layout and legibility

On the web, readers tend to scan text rather than read every word.
As a result, online copy is judged on its layout. It needs to look as
if its easy to read before a user will choose to read it.

Use:
Clear and concise headings
Bulleted and numbered lists
Short paragraphs
Bold and italics
Descriptive links

Language
Your audiences attention is limited (and often divided),
it is best to keep it simple and tailor your language to
your audience.
Tone
Active voice
Neologisms and buzzwords
Features and benefits

Features and benefits

Features = actual properties of the product or
service
Benefits = the positive outcome for the user
For example:
Feature: Quick-heating oven
Benefit: Bake amazing cakes in half the
time

Employ logic
Online, visitors need to decide quickly whether or not to read a
page. As a result of this, the most important information needs to
be at the top.
The headline, usually containing the most
important bit of information in a story,
comes first.
Start with the summary or conclusion the
main idea of the article.

Encyclopaedia Britannica Online

Encyclopaedia Britannica increased sign-ups by 103%
by applying web copy best practices.

The problem
The web page on which users could sign up for the free
trial was performing adequately, but it was bogged
down by structural and copy mistakes.

The solution
Encyclopaedia Britannica completely transformed the
copy on the free trial page of the website. Some of the
changes made included the following:
Heading
Copy
Benefits
Images
Call to Action
Form

Encyclopaedia Britannica Online

To make sure that the experiment was working, the new
page was tested alongside the original in an A/B split
test.

hGp://www.marke$ngexperiments.com/website-op$miza$ontranscripts/2012-08-03.pdf

What happened?
The new version of the page had a clickthrough rate of
2.03%, compared to just 1% previously
103% increase in conversions more than doubling the
number of people who signed up for the trial version
Aside from this, the brand was able to communicate their
offer and express their value proposition upfront, leading to
greater clarity

Thats all folks

You can also read about:

User Experience Design , Web Development

and Design, Writing for Digital, CRM, SEO,
Search Advertising, Online Advertising,
Affiliate Marketing , Video Marketing, Social
Media Channels, Social Media Strategy,
Email Marketing, Mobile Marketing, Data
Analytics and Conversion Optimisation.