Words of advice about Content

An expert‘s view on writing well

We’ve been writing website content for more years than we care to admit. Something important happens to you when you’ve been doing it this long: it’s called the Bull***t Factor.

It drives you to cut out all the excess puffed-up words and really dig into the subject to show readers what has value.

An Example

Let’s start by looking at a short piece of confusing writing that nevertheless uses proper English. The name has been changed to protect the guilty:

GANICORP – Corporate vision

Ganicorp is committed to providing value-added services through the growth of personal and business relationships which translate into competitive profits, client satisfaction, professional growth and career enhancement for our employees and long-term viability for the company.

Can you understand what this company is all about? Is it talking to you, or just satisfying its own ego?

‘Value added services’ – we need to know specifically what these are.

‘Personal and business relationships’ – there is no human interaction that avoids this. Maybe they are doing something that builds stronger relationships. What?

‘Profits, satisfaction, growth, enhancement’ – these are universal and well-worn words can be applied to any kind of business. They are easily ignored.

‘Long-term viability’ – so the company knows how to survive? What’s the key factor contributing to this?

Ganicorp wasted an opportunity. It used 36 words in this short text and got zero impact when it could have used an expert in web content to create a strong company introduction.

As Content Experts, we need to ask many questions before being able to write something intelligent. We apply the BS Factor. Credibility relies on being specific and having the courage to provide details. That’s what impresses people.

Corporate Profiles

If you want a good idea of how good the writing is on a web site, go to the Profile or About Us page. This should give you a good insight into the nature of the business, its background, experience and special talents.

In truth, it’s a tough page to write because the content expert must constantly battle against this pervasive trend to lapse into generalities and use phrases such as ‘value added services’ that are devoid of any real meaning. We find that writing Corporate Profiles can take a few days while we review everything the company has written and perhaps interview some key managers to understand their approach.

We then have to go through several Drafts so that slowly a good picture starts to take shape and – often for the first time – presents an authentic view of the company’s true value. Excellent Corporate Profiles can then be exploited in many ways on the Internet to attract traffic to the client’s door.