Tag: writing

Maximizing your web content

It takes time to write a new blog, or add new content to your website. There are some ways that will help you to maximize your time and effort and get the most visibility for your thoughts and ideas.

Maximizing Content
Maximizing Content

One of the things that I find helpful in creating new content is to listen and look at the comments and questions that people ask you about their website.  A big question is about content and time.  It takes time to write a new blog, or add new content to your website.  There are some ways that will help you to maximize your time and effort and get the most visibility for your thoughts and ideas.

 A few content areas that you may be using include:

  • Your website
  • Email Newlsetter
  • Blog
  • Facebook
  • LinkedIN
  • Twitter
  • Articles

Here are a few suggestions on maximizing your efforts:

  • Use your blog to write about topics of interest to your clients and prospects
  • On your blog add a “SHARE” button that makes it easy for readers to post something of interest on their own social networks
  • Add a “FEED” from your blog to your website. 
  • In Facebook – setup a “Networked Blogs” in the Facebook Applications – register your blog and in the setup area set it to pull new postings from your blog onto your Facebook page.  You can invite your Facebook friends to sign up to receive notices and you can send out messages to those signed up.
  • Setup your Twitter account to pull new postings from your blog.
  • Add the “BLOG” app to your LinkedIN profile.  Then register your blog – this will pull your posting and display it in your LinkedIN profile
  • When you are writing your email newsletter – look at your blog and identify topics you might want to include in the newsletter – then give exerpts and links back to your blog to read the full posting.
  • Review your blog postings when you write your articles for ezine Articles or other article posting sites. 

These are just a few suggestions for maximizing the reach and value of your content.  Feel free to send any other suggestions.

Writing and organizing your website content

Steps and tips on organizing and writing your website content.

Here are a few suggestions that I have found to be useful in organizing and writing the content for your website.

These are useful when you are first building your website or if you are doing a redesign.

  1. First – decide on the structure and hierarchy of the website.  What are your top level pages?  Your website navigation will depend on how well you organize the information. Make your top level headings general enough that you will be able to continue using this structure – and add additional pages as you need them as sub pages.
  2. I will be using MS WORD as an example of the word processing program to use as this is most common.  If you are using something else look for similar tools that you can use.
  3. Start a new document in MS Word
  4. Click on VIEW – and put a check mark next to “Document Map”  – this will then show you on the left a view of your document as a map.
  5. Click on FORMAT – STYLES – and this will show a pane on the right side of your document with a list of styles.
  6. Next – type in all the top level pages and sub pages.  Just use normal text and dont bother adding any formatting.
  7. Then click on a top level page – and highlight HEADING 1 on the styles menu and click on it.  This assigns the level 1 style to this and you will see that heading appear on your Document Map.
  8. Continue doing this for all the Level 1 headings (the top level of your structure)
  9. Then do the same thing for all the SUB PAGES – assign them as a Level 2 style.
  10. Now you have a view on the document map on the left pane, and you can easily click and access the specific pages.
  11. You now can easily move through the document and add content on the pages.

A couple of other useful things

  • Add a Table of Contents at the top of the document.  This will be a good view for people who see the print out.
  • Do the editing and draft of your content in MS Word – and then add this to the draft view of your new website.  Read it again to see for any fine tuning needed on the editing.

Remember that it is a good idea to review and update your website on a regular basis.  This helps with your website traffic, and makes sure that your website stays current with your activities.

Please contact me with any suggestions and tips that you have.