Finding Your Web Content Voice
Posted by Rhiannon Louise on May 29, 2007
Filed Under Writing for the Web
Alice Seba from InternetMarketingSweetie.com sent out a great email the other day – she was talking about reaching your audience with compelling content and the style you should write in. Alice suggested that it can be appropriate to write like you speak – i.e., be personable and approachable, and personally I couldn’t agree more.
Simply put, finding your web content voice is critical if you’re going to be able to reach and entertain, compel, convince and retain your readership. Mind you, I might not be the most appropriate person to write this article – you see I have multiple writing personalities but I can just about stifle the more excitable ones when I’m writing a detailed report for one of our sites because I know I can move on to a less serious section soon!
So, how do you go about ‘finding’ your web content voice and what if your natural way of writing is not appropriate for your readership?
Well, if you’re a natural communicator you’ll probably find that however much you try and structure your posts, articles, reports and comments in a certain formal way, your great natural ability to really relate to your readership will keep popping up and you’re going to have to give in and relax and let your style develop into a more chatty way of corresponding and communicating.
Despite what anyone else says, a great swathe of the internet is largely about communication in the written form in my opinion, and therefore those who can relate in a natural way to their readership will get the most loyal followers – so if communication comes easily to you, you’re one of the lucky ones.
If you’re still not convinced then consider this - depending on what you’ve chosen to write about or communicate, you’re likely to be at least a mini-guru in your chosen field and guess what - you’re going to be sharing your findings, opinions, facts and ideas with many like minded readers as well as introducing interested persons to your world…
So, what do all of these people have in common with you?
Your chosen theme…about which you know plenty and have lots to share - so don’t be scared of your own voice, your readership are going to want to hear what you’ve got to say!
If on the other hand you find communication in the written form difficult or at least challenging, you’re going to need to face the challenge head on in order to find a web content voice that you can at least comfortably (if not confidently) use for communication purposes.
May I make a suggestion? Begin by imagining who you can picture reading your words.
Think about the person in the singular, perhaps you’re thinking about someone you know or have met in the past who has been interested in what you have to say about your chosen theme – how have you communicated to them, you’ve likely spoken to them naturally and openly, fluently and fluidly about your chosen topic.
Alternatively, imagine sitting down in a café with a coffee in front of you and an interested interviewer at your side who has asked you in an open and friendly way to talk to them about what it is you do.
Hear how you speak…
If it helps you, get a recording device and talk out loud about your niche, about your passionate topic, about your thoughts and opinions and play back to yourself what you say.
It’s important that you learn how you communicate through speech and then adopt a similar style in your written work. The closer you can get to writing in a relaxed and natural way, the easier it will be for you to communicate with your readership and the easier it will be for your readers to relate to you, your theme and your ideas.
In the beginning you might want to read what you’ve written out loud to make sure it doesn’t sound affected or pretentious, stuffy or stilted - and if you’re still struggling to communicate effectively, engage a third party to read over what you’ve written and give you some constructive criticism and feedback.
A few final tips – if you want your web writings to be read and absorbed they need to be pithy, punchy, they need to flow and scan (many readers on the web scan through an article or a post rather than reading every single word)…so, drop extra letters in favour of apostrophes (i.e., write ‘who’s’ instead of ‘who is’, ‘don’t’ instead of ‘do not’ and so on), jazz up your use of punctuation, don’t be afraid of breaking grammar rules – who says you can’t start a sentence with ‘and’, ‘but’ or ‘because’? When we’re speaking and communicating out loud we break grammar rules all the time.
You can’t use hand gestures and facial expressions to emphasize and underline your commentary on the internet, so be creative with the way you use grammar and punctuation and with the way you lay out your text…and keep paragraphs short!
If you try and imagine who you’re writing for when you’re writing for them, you stand a very good chance of finding the most appropriate web content voice.
Finally - the more you write and the more you practice this approach of keeping your readers in mind, the easier it gets I promise.
