Part 2 of the 'Content' EcourseThis part of the course takes you right to the heart of the website. The 'CONTENT'. Before you can even think about 'content', you need to understand who you are going to sell to! Build a customer profile. This is an excellent way to focus your selling efforts. Know your customer's needs and you will... * know what kind of content is wanted * know how to say whatever you say * have a firm picture of your audience * know how and what benefits to stress in your sales copy. Benefits, not features, connect with emotions. Most people rely on emotion rather than logic, when they are buying. The "feeling" has to be right before they will exchange their hard-earned money for your solutions. A good way to create a customer profile? Ask yourself questions. Who is my "ideal customer".., If I was looking for... etc.
The second item to think about before 'CONTENT', is the look of your website. This will decide your visitor's first impression... that all-important judgment call, which sets up the visitor to part with his, or her money. Clean, simple, and intuitive designs, ones that are appropriate for your specific type of customer, make a positive impression on your visitors. Cluttered, garish Web sites accomplish the opposite. If you find this difficult to believe, visit a few of the most popular sites on the Web. Yahoo!, Google and eBay are good places to start. They can afford the highest-priced graphic designers to creatively spruce up their Web pages. But they seem to like simplicity. What does that tell you? Beyond the design, add straightforward, simple navigation and usability. So many Webmasters put more emphasis on the mechanics and graphics of building a page, rather than on its 'content'. They devote huge amounts of time towards keyword research, page optimization, linking strategies, etc. Then they breeze through 'content' development. Big mistake... A typical example is the SEO expert who worries about tweaking keyword density etc. Even if he gets a Top 10 ranking, the 'content' is so bad that the visitor hits the BACK button about 3 seconds after arriving! For a good example of simplicity, and ease of navigation website, go to:-
Home Page This is not a game -- you're here to earn real money, so take every edge you can get. In order for you to sell your audience, your 'content' must be high quality, all the way. WORDS will drive your visitors the rest of the way to your key area, the end product you want to sell. How do you know if your 'content' is doing it's job? The best way is to ask some friends to evaluate your site. It's difficult to be objective about your own writing skills. No one likes to admit weaknesses, but this is business. You need to know. YOU are the ideal person to write the content for your Web site. Even a professional copywriter cannot bring the same sort of unbridled enthusiasm to a topic that you know and love. On top of that, a personal style can make a faster and stronger connection with visitors. Creating your own content may seem like a daunting task to you. The basic elements of good writing are easy to grasp and implement. The only tools you need are your brain, your favorite word processing program, and a dictionary and thesaurus as bookends. Good writing can be done by anyone. You just need to forget everything you learned about writing. Stop using complex language to impress, as we were taught to do. We write to communicate, not to impress. What happens when you write in a complicated manner to impress your reader? A large percentage of your audience will not understand you. Some will leave due to frustration and urgency. Others will perceive you as being an arrogant show-off -- they will mentally cross off your business. Ok, you now have the picture, "I have identified my audience, I have a good looking website, with good navigation, and now I need good 'content'", but what do I write about? In the next part of the course, we will investigate, 'How to write good content'. Here's to your success, Bill Ritchie http://www.thehomebusinessprofessor.com email: rabbie2@btinternet.com
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