These days blogging is an essential marketing tool, so on top of your day job you need to be a writer as well. Most people can be taught how to blog, it’s just a matter of finding your inner blogger…

Listen to the voices

For me, the blogging process starts with a voice in my head. The voice takes ideas and formulates them into complete sentences and the only way I can get it to stop is to write down what it’s saying, so that’s what I do.

If you have this voice too, start listening to it. When it pipes up with, ‘Hey, wouldn’t it be brilliant to tell all my regular clients how much I just helped Mrs. B today?’, listen to it.

Make sure you always have a pen and notebook or an ipad handy so that you can jot down what the voice says; that is your inner blogger speaking to you.

Some people’s inner blogger is hidden a bit further down. So how can you find it?

Step back and observe

When people write fiction, comedy, soaps or films, what they are doing (to a greater or lesser extent depending on the genre) is observing. Blogs may not be fiction but they are about observing too.

Step back from your business and try to see it objectively. The questions below are designed to help you:

Why are you blogging?

• Because you heard it’s what everyone is doing these days?
• You want to grow your business?
• You want to build your reputation?

I would suggest that you only start blogging if you know why you’re doing it.

Why do clients or customers buy from you?

• What do you offer? Is it unique? Is it the best?
• Do they understand what you do?
• What benefits do you give? Time? Money? Happiness? The alleviation of stress, pain, poverty or sadness?

Who are your clients?

• Are they individuals? Business owners? Mums? Teenagers? Over-60s? Large corporations?
• And how should you speak to them?

As a rule, stay away from jargon and business-speak whoever your clients are.

What should you blog about?

•  Anything relevant in the news?
•  Your expertise and experiences?
•  Stories about business successes?

The sky’s the limit with topics and you’re going to need a lot of topics to blog about so don’t keep the focus too narrow or you’ll struggle to come up with them. If your blog does have a narrow focus, make sure there is plenty of suitable material to draw on or that you know your subject in-depth.

When should you blog?

• Once a day? Some people do and it’s great for their SEO (Search Engine Optimisation).
• Once a fortnight? Once a month?

Don’t blog less than once a month or you won’t achieve much. You’ll reap the most if you blog regularly and frequently.

And the big one, how?

• What information can you use to sell your company, services or product (in a non-salesy way)?

Can you hear the voice starting in your head answering these questions…

‘Oh yeah, we are the only company in Derbyshire that uses this in our widgets, that’s why they are better than anyone else’s.’

‘We helped Mr. J increase turnover by 40% last year, I’m sure other people would love to know how we did it’.

‘I remember learning about that in my training, everyone should know the correct supplements to take during pregnancy’.

‘I had such a great day at work today, I’d love to tell people what it’s like to work in a design agency’.

Once you can hear your voice:

1. Write down your ideas as bullet points.
2. Flesh it out into proper English and add any research, stats or quotes you need.
3. Edit your writing, cut away unnecessary words and correct any mistakes.
4. Add an image to your post and make sure the layout is web-friendly.
5. Publish it!
6. Engage with your readers – ask for feedback if you want to and always respond to any Comments you get.
7. That’s it, you’ve found your inner blogger!

If everyone has a book in them, everyone has lots of blogs in them too, I hope this helps you find them!

If you would like to ask or add anything please feel free to Comment below.

Thanks for reading.

Sally.

Sally Mayor is a successful web writer and helps businesses grow, enhance their reputations and build their brands. She provides blog training for those with an inner blogger and blog writing services for those without! You can get in touch with her by emailing Sally@wordnerd.co.uk , read her blog at www.wordnerd.co.uk/blog and connect with her on Twitter @WordNerdSally

This is part 2 of my mini series on writing copy for your website.

Part 1 – Five reasons writing your website copy is hard

I said in the first post that one reason writing your copy for your site can seem like an uphill struggle is that you find you are just “Scared of getting it wrong“.  That client of mine really was in agonies over every word, and he really did take a LONG time to get the copy to me. I could see he was almost unable to move forward and in fact the site was never finished.

Maybe you feel like king Ashurbanipal on a royal lion hunt (guess what the lion represents here…)

Relax – where is this pressure coming from? Perfectionism? Is all that talk about rankings, key words, “Meta tags” leading to paralysis? Are memories of so called “Creative writing” at school giving you self-doubt?

Perhaps you’re like me. My biggest problem is … can’t think of what to say! People who know me understand that my shy and retiring nature make it hard to write. Right! When I stop stressing over it then the words just flow.

So the answer is…

In the old days (like 5 years ago!) if you wanted to alter your text you probably had to contact a web developer and have them do it. This was time consuming and expensive.

Now, with a content management system such as joomla or wordpress you can easily change the content of your text  in literally a few minutes – I always say to my clients that if they can edit a word document, they can edit their website.

Relax. You don’t need to agonize over every word when you know that you can alter it in moments, and then alter it again. And then again.

And there’s more relief. Search engines used to take quite a time for changes to be reflected – sometimes weeks. I recently re-created a site for a client and found that the content was appearing in much, much quicker. I also advise my clients not to think of google as a one step process – its a slow burn that is effected by many factors. Don’t allow fear of your rankings to stop you writing.

Here’s a surprise…

Nobody knows your business like you do. You wouldn’t need a website if you didn’t have some level of passion about what you are doing. Easy to say, but just be yourself. Write it down. If you follow a few simple rules, and always think about your readers first (and not google!!!!) then you’ll be ok.

So, hopefully you can afford to be a bit more chilled about it. Maybe you were anyway! No need for perfectionism. The ease of updating, and the speed of google et al means there no need to be a perfectionist anymore!

Read part 1 – five reasons why writing your website text is hard

I love those people that wont give up on problems till they solve them. Edward Eldon, that would be you. Vicky, STOMP management 16/1/13

I have done work for the STOMP school and STOMP management group for a number of years. They have an ancient, bespoke system for maintaining profiles of all their students – which suddenly rolled over and died.

In fact, they found that suddenly they couldn’t update their photos anymore – everything else was fine – just black rectangles where there should have been images of happy, smiley pupils.

Can SOMEBODY help me?

“Help” Vicky says. And so, since I enjoy a bit of bug-discovery, I pick up my tools.  After about half a day of php de-bugging I got it down to one measly function (image_resize) that just wouldn’t work. But why? It used to work afterall. I couldn’t see it – the pesky bug was defeating me. I suspected that somewhere on the server some library had been updated causing a conflict…

I thought. I pondered. I drank lots of coffee. Days past (not with me working on it all the time you understand!) Eventually, I dejectedly deleted my echo statements, closed down dreamweaver, and put my coffee  mug in the dishwasher.  I wrote Vicky an email saying that, whilst I hated to admit it, in this instance I just couldn’t get it working.

There’s a time to give in … this is it is it?

The next day I found myself thinking along these lines – “I hate giving in. For sure I have done many times more hours than I have quoted for, but hey money ain’t everything. One more look”. Fresh coffee, DW open again and … hey presto, half an hour later the whole thing is working. Image are uploading. Smiley pupils are looking back at me.

Here’s the FB comment that Vicky wrote:

Geeky bit – here’s what I think happened:

The line:

$source_type = get_mime_type($source_image);

used to just return “image/jpeg” but had recently started returning “image/jpeg; charset=binary”. I suspect this was due to a server update of some sort…

Anyway, this meant that an if statement that used to pass was now failing, and so the whole thing came tumbling down like a pack of cards. Altering the condition in the if statement solved it.

From:

if ($source_type == ‘image/jpeg’) { …

To:

if ($source_type==’image/jpeg; charset=binary’){ …

Many clients appear daunted by the prospect of writing their copy, the “Words” for their site. Few of them have the option of employing a copy writer” or the luxury of a “media department”.

This post is the first in a short series, currently planned at being four in number, aimed at helping my clients to write the copy for their site.

Why can it seem like climbing a Mountain?

Writing the text for you website can be quite an uphill climb. I have know clients who have absolutely agonized over it, spending hours (yes hours) over their 200 homepage words, tormenting themselves over every phrase. I can’t think of a example of the other extreme to be honest. Most clients are aware that its important, but seem a bit, well “Scared” of it.

Why is this?  I’d be interested to know what you think? Did you find it really easy? Did the words just “flow”?

Here’s are my top 5 reasons why writing web site text is not a viewed as a walk in the par! Its not meant to be exhaustive though! In later posts ‘ll look at ways through the problem.

Don’t want to get it wrong. This is a biggie. The agonized client I mentioned above was almost petrified of getting it wrong. What if I say the wrong thing about  my business? What it people who come here simply leg-it because I messed up the text? I can understand this, you’ve given a lot of time and commitment to your business, you want to reflect it accurately. We’ll look in a later post at just “What is wrong” anyway.

Google oh google. Much paralysis is caused by this one. People worry that getting the text “Wrong” will seriously affect their ranking in google. Many have heard conflicting things about how search engines work, and can sort out their “tags” from their “keywords”. Relax, its not that hard for most cases.

Don’t know what to say. A recently client of mine had a really good idea about what pages they wanted on their site. “Great”, I thought. Very soon the text arrived for those pages, consisting of a respectable 20 words per page. Not great. Despite running a successful business for several decades this client couldn’t think of anything to write. With a few simple pointers however, they came up with some great content.

Got too much to say – this is the opposite problem. Some people want to write huge amounts of text, detailing every aspect of their service. Its a bit like one of those sites that is trying to sell you a “book and a cd and a lifestyle” for £99.99 – you know, were you scroll down and down and down getting more and more bored. Too many words dilutes the message and can be really annoying. Click.

You don’t like writing. I have great sympathy for this one – some people find writing plain hard work. I hated writing for most of my life. It was a necessary evil to me. But “Hard work” is often a good thing… The aim of this series, as it appears, is to help the hard work bear fruit.

Help is at hand.

Good text makes a great difference. I believe that its within everyone’s reach too.

Why not subscribe to this blog to get the “Help pages” when they are ready. I plan to release them on a weekly basis (roughly).

I’d also really love to hear your stories – were you like my client above, plain scared – or did it just flow out of your fingers as you typed in confidence!

Pete came to me with one of those “I must I a site up and running within a week” type of requests. I hear this quite often, but for once it really was true and what’s more, it actually happened.

Here’s what Pete wrote about working with ee-web design.

We contacted Edward about producing for us, a new website for an upcoming event we were running. Budget and time were very tight, we needed something ‘live’ in just a few days. The new site would need to be very easy for people to use, navigate, find out information about the event and book tickets. The site also needed to ‘work’ on peoples’ mobile devices. Edward produced a very good, stable and clear website, and delivered on all our requirements. He also gave us all the tools needed to add information, and update/maintain the site ourselves.

We are now working with Edward in overhauling our main site!

You can see the Tabernacle website site or view a “Problem” vs “Solution” analysis.

Maybe you have thought “I wish I’d acted sooner”. Its not too late – ee-web design can be a bit of an emergency web design ad development service!

Here’s part of the testimonial Claire from Robin Hill Plumbing wrote for ee-web design:

Will be recommending you to our friends and contacts. Pleasure to work with and great value for money

I often get clients who say something like “My uncle’s cousin’s daughter did a 2 hour course in web design at playschool and they built a great site for my business out of lego but it doesn’t ….”

Oh brother!

However, In this case, the site was really well built – and a pleasure to work with!

So what’s the problem then …

Read more…

I am really pleased to say that www.jomartingfitness.co.uk is launched. Jo runs  pre and post natal classes for mums and mums-to-be in the Ealing and Chiswick areas. Jo came to me via a recommendation from another client – so I was especailly pleased to work on her new website.

Here’s what Jo had to say at the launch of the project:

My website www.jomartinfitness.co.uk has just gone live and I couldn’t be happier! Edward is great to work with, good natured, flexible and patient, he has also been great in helping to recommend a logo designer, web hosting company, company to help create email lists….all great for a first time website owner like myself!
You really can’t go wrong with ee-web design!

When Jo “arrived” she didn’t have a logo, so I asked a designer I work with to create one for her – and very professional and stylish it is too!  I used the logo colours to create a colour palette for the site, and gave Jo several designs to choose from. One of the mums took the photos so the site is full images of the real thing, rather than stock photography showing the usual, generic, dull images of super slim mums with neat little bumps that look like photoshop has saved the day  …… I think the site is much stronger for them.

Once again the site is based on the content management system know as “Joomla”, since Jo naturally wants to take control of the day to day running of the site herself.

I usually like to meet my clients  if possible. However, I have never met Jo – the whole process has been carried out via email and the occasional phone call. Even the training will be via skype!

As well as being constructed to be SEO friendly, easy to maintain and logical to navigate, Jo’s new site was designed to be easy to grow as her business expands. Phase two for the site is already being planned,with the addition of a mailing list.

Its been a pleasure to work with Jo, and I look forward to supporting her with the site as it develops!

I am pleased to say that the launch of the “Love Your Doorstep” site went off without a hitch – it was really, really exciting.

At 9.00pm on the dot Emma, the brain behind “Love Your Doorstep” announced it to the facebook group and then it went viral – well, maybe not in the same way that  photographs of a certain young prince did yesterday… but it was one of the biggest things on the net I’ve personally been involved with. Post after post after post saying what a great idea the site was, how useful the reviews were going to be and what a simply marvelous job everyone had done! And do you know what, they were right!

What a Privilege

It has been a real privilege to be involved with this project. Lucy of Lucyswebdesigns called me in for some technical advice. Next thing I know I am meeting Emma, and am really going at this site. She had a tight deadline, and a huge drive - it’s  been great to work with two people who are so committed to getting a site up and ready.

One of the most exciting features of the site is that local businesses get a “page” to publicise themselves (for a small fee). You can add text, images, links etc etc. But that’s not all – the really  interesting bit is that people can then write reviews of the various businesses. I shall certainly be watching how this develops that’s for sure. That was were I came into the project really – setting up the jReviews plug-in – and what a plug-in it is – complicated? Oh yes. Powerful? For sure. “ Took some time to get my head round how it works, since it added a whole new layer of complexity to the content management system. Really, we’ve scratched the surface - so - Expect the unexpected” as Douglas Adams said.

So, are you finished then?

Somebody once said “A website is never finished, only abandoned” – there comes a time when you just have to “Publish and be damned” – kind of anyway!  The beauty of this type of “Community” based site is that it will do what it says on the tin – encourage people to “Love their Doorstep” – and if you’re local you’ll know that part of the zeitgeist round here.

There’s a lot more that can be done yet and no doubt Emma will want to build on the initial success. From a web developer’s perspective, there’s tonnes more potential for this great project. I can’t wait.

You need to get involved.

If you’re a local business you really should get involved.  Why not visit www.loveyourdoorstep, contact Emma and get involved?

A labour of love over the last 3 months or so has produced what we think is a DRAMATIC improvement to the homepage of one of our biggest clients – Coin Street Community Builders, down on the South Bank.

The old homepage that we created around 3 years ago was beginning to look a little tired – it was working well of course, but there have been some big changes in the way the internet has been used in those years – most notably of course the embedding of Social Media in the brains of anyone under 30….

So we draw up plans, created wire-frames, and developed the new homepage on our development server. And on Tuesday evening, I made several coffees, stayed up late, and transferred all the new material over.

Ta Da!!! Launched!

What are the highlights???

The biggest aim was to provide many more routes into the content – there’s a whole pile of great content buried in the site and we wanted to pull people in

• All social media links moved to the header
• Image rotator made longer and thinner with captions added to the images
• Latest news given a much higher profile
• Facebook and Twitter feeds bought to the front
• Six highlight panels.

We think that the new social media will make a big difference. CSCB activly promote their facebook profile – we expect to see a big increase in visitors coming via FB and TW now!

 What we didn’t do!

At this stage it was decided not to make the  site responsive for mobile devices that was quite an involved decision – its going to come though!

What could we do for your homepage? Why not contact ee web design to find out?

A potential client came to me recently saying something like “I have a website that works ok. I made it myself using *******…”

In case you can’t guess ******* stands for one of those “Off the shelf packages” that promise the earth for virtually nothing, whilst tying you in to contacts, derivative designs, helpful service and … putting web professionals out of business in the process.

The client went on “Only it doesn’t work on the iPhone. A white thing appears all over the text, its illegible.”

I know what’s coming …

Its no surprise

“I called the support line” continued my potential client. I wanted to butt in and finish their sentence. I was convinced I knew where this was headed.

The clients voice became laconic in an attempt to imitate the help desk - “All they said was ‘Our software works across all platforms’.  They were no help at all “.

Bingo! No surprises there then! It probably does work across all platforms in the sterile testing world. But make a human, attempting to  run a small business responsible for implementing the “Off the shelf wonder-solution”  and the world is not that pure. Sounds like another job for “Super Web Professional“.

Maybe you have had a similar experience. I’d love to know you stories of unhelpful help desks.

Dear “Potential client” can I respectfully suggest you read … “Why you probably need a web professional”

NB – it looks as the the “Potential” is  morphing into “Real”…