Content marketing is something all website owners should work to perfect.
This post will give you some pointers. It contains a few gems I picked up recently on the how-to of creating great web content.
It’s all about how to say more with less.
Last week, I heard a great talk on content marketing called “How to Write Website Content That Attracts Your Ideal Supporter” by writer and communications consultant, Rachel Kurzyp, of RK Consulting.
Keywords have been the dominant feature of all my research into online marketing recently. It occurred to me that they are the number one driver that connects businesses to customers or audiences. This has huge implications for the creation of web content because keywords need to be at the very centre of it.
There are four main ways that a web user will find a website. People may arrive at it directly if they know the web address. Or they may be referred from another website that has a direct link. Then there’s paid search, which are search results from advertising. And finally there’s organic search. Over 90% of adults use search on the internet and thus it is the dominant director of traffic on the web. Continue reading
We all do it. Use acronyms that is. But they’ve really found a life of their own in this digital age – and in particular instant messaging. I’m old enough to remember the days before SMS when teens used whole words to communicate. So I read this article with some amusement. Maybe this FBI manual will come in handy for parents keeping a watchful eye on their children’s behaviour!
Rerty
Like everything to do with computers and the internet, the devil is in the detail. And in this case it’s one space or two. In terms of code if you miss one semi colon or one forward slash or angle bracket it all breaks, right? Similarly when there is one too many of something problems can arise. And in this case we’re talking about one too many spaces after a full stop.
I chuckled when I read “The rule stands: One space after a period. Period.”, because I recognised right away that I was in error and I now know why. It talks about whether to use one space or two after the period at the end of a sentence. Like the author, I grew up on the two-space principle and right up until writing this blog post, I would actually track back through my copy and put a second space if there wasn’t one. Now I’m actually making a conscious effort to only put one space. After years of habit, it’s actually taking some focused concentration to ensure that I don’t automatically type that second space.
And why have I realised the error of my ways? In terms of web copy, one too many spaces can cause havoc when a sentence ends at the edge of the article because the new sentence on the next line is indented by one space. Not a pretty look!
I found it interesting to discover the two-space convention stems from out of date technology. It now seems ludicrous that it’s continued for so many years since.
It looks like I will have some relearning to do at the end of each sentence I write from now on.
The rule stands: One space after a period. Period. | Articles | MainAbout six years ago, an editor at Ragan sent me an e-mail asking me to stop using two spaces after my periods when submitting my columns to The Ragan Report. In a “voice” dripping with superiority, I sent him a reply that said I was following the rule for proper spacing after a period, which is to put two spaces, thank you very much.
