Determining goals, format, and audience

To determine what kind of website you need and to start thinking about content, consider what you want to accomplish. Take a look at Chapter 11 where I discuss breaking down your goals. Consider also practicalities such as whether you want to sell your product or service on the site; whether you’re interested in a local, regional, national, or global market; and realistically, how many orders you can satisfy should you generate interest.

Websites have specific sets of goals, too. They need to: be findable by people with a problem you help solve; keep visitors on the site once attracted; educate people about the value of your service; communicate that you are trustworthy, understand their need, and are able to fill it; persuade visitors to close the sale or take other action; and keep them coming back. You also want to reach out to them directly in the future, so collecting contact information is high priority.

Planning a basic website

Are you creating or rebuilding a website without a business plan or a concrete marketing plan? You may find it either good news or bad news to know that building a good website compels you to develop (or update and refine) both in the process. A good website forces you to center all your business thinking. It’s why so many people pay those big bucks to website developers. Sure, the money supports good design and technical quality, but the heart of the process is strategizing the business.

Let’s assume you originate an idea for a service you believe is marketable. Your first thought is that you need a website. You have plenty of enthusiasm, but you don’t have a marketing plan or a business plan. Where to start? I show you how a practical process centering on a website can work using an invented service business as an example. The same thinking structure works for selling products or serving a charitable cause. And if you already have a website, I recommend trying out the following process to check if you find room for improvement.

Do your own plan in writing! Use this basic format. Writing is the only way to push your thinking where it needs to go.

• My business idea: Teach elderly and physically limited people how to use the Internet for entertainment, learning, and socializing.
• Why: My own grandparents live a thousand miles away and were obviously bored and lonely. I coached them and now they’re happy. They feel their world has opened up.
• Goal: Make a business of this and sell in-person coaching services.
• Audience: Elderly people like my grandparents and their children or grandchildren, who might want to give my service as gifts.
• But that restricts me only to local work. Can I think bigger? Why not …
  • Use online video conferencing or other media to coach people anywhere?
  • And how about senior citizen residences — can I offer group sessions?
  • And why not rehab centers for people with disabilities?
• I’ll need to investigate the practicalities for each new idea, and if they prove out, decide whether to pursue them now or make them part of a future plan.
• My core message: People with physical limitations don’t have to be bored and lonely. With today’s super-easy technology, and me to adapt the equipment if necessary, they can make friends, learn, play games, and be entertained. It just takes a little coaching, and I’m especially qualified to do this because … . (This is your value proposition. Use the process outlined in Chapter 9 to develop this important guiding principle. Think of it as an elevator speech for your business. Whom does it help? Why does that matter? Why you?)
• Strategizing the message — audience pain points:
  • Physically limited people confined to a small world are unhappy and bored
  • Loved ones feel guilty for not being there more
  • Group facilities are challenged to keep seniors cheerful and entertained

• Strategizing the message — audience points of resistance:

  The seniors, or their relatives, may think:

  • They are incapable of learning
  • The equipment will be expensive
  • The training will be expensive
  • The elders will fall prey to online scams
  • Online purchase is risky (why should they trust you?)

A good way to brainstorm pain points and resistance points is by using the talking points method I explain in Chapter 8. Look at both sets of statements as questions and answer them. How will your service address the pain points? How can you demonstrate your ability to do this? What are your best responses to the points of resistance? This gives you good content guidelines for the whole site.

To further crystallize your thinking, it’s wise to consider keywords and search terms at this stage. (See the sidebar on leveraging SEO principles and identifying search terms in Chapter 11.) Assembling a list will help you tell your story more concretely and concisely, and you’ll need to incorporate the words on every page. Better to build them in from the start rather than trying to graft them on after the fact.

Once you have your audience, goals, and central message in mind, you can move into building a site structure to embody and reflect these considerations.

Creating the site structure

The next step in creating a website is to think about what pages you will include on the site. Logic suggests:

• A Home page that has a concise magnetic message and supporting visuals to entice visitors to know more
• An About Us page that establishes your trustworthiness, skill, and experience, and introduces or describes other team members
• A Services page that describes specific options
• A How It Works page that explains what you do and how
• A Case Studies page that offers evidence of success
• A Contact page that contains full contact information and perhaps a special offer to grow your email list
• A Blog to establish expertise, make your business more personal, and keep visitors coming back

You might combine some of these pages, like “How It Works” and “Services” or “Case Studies,” and add others. Q&As and FAQs are popular with readers and search engines. Your type of business may demand a portfolio, and if events and media are part of your mix, you need an online newsroom. A resources page that links to other sites can support site optimization.

If you think I took the long way ’round to end up with a standard-sounding site plan, you’re right! This basic structure has evolved over many years and is commonly used because it works for many enterprises. Of course, you can adapt it to your own needs imaginatively.

But inventing a whole new architecture for a website is rarely a good idea. Audiences come with preset expectations and have no patience for figuring out what you’re about or where you put things. Better to focus your originality on what to say within the basic framework, how you translate your message into visuals, and how to use video or additional media with impact. Once your general plan is in place, content for the pages starts falling into place — and you will probably find some gaps in your planning to fill.

The clarity-first rule applies to all your navigation buttons, too. Don’t go so far astray of the standard naming customs (for example, About Us, Testimonials) that visitors don’t know what you mean, or where to find what they already want.

Assembling and writing a home page

No matter whether you’re working on your own or with a team of specialists, the first step for creating a home page is writing. If you have a designer on tap, explore your ideas in tandem and elicit his thinking. The back and forth between writer and designer produces the best communication in most media, definitely including websites. If you have a technology specialist, listen to her explanations of what is practical and ask for insights into what else is possible. It’s smart to ask both kinds of professionals for choices: different ways to accomplish what you want.

The “classic” way to compose a website calls for:

• Your business name, preferably in logo form, or something that looks like a logo
• A tagline amplifying the nature of your business so it is immediately understood
• A “positioning statement” that tells your target audiences they are in the right place
• A call to action — where to go next or something more specific — and contact information (some experts advise putting this on every page)
• An overview of the whole site, in image or words, and a clear way to access all the inside pages

The stumbling blocks for many people are the tagline and positioning statement. Paying attention to your keywords and search terms can help center you.

The tagline needs to identify your business as closely as possible. If your business name is self-explanatory, this is easier. For example, if your name is “Main Street Drop-off Service,” you have a lot more explaining to do than if it is “Overnight Apple Repair by Main Street.” And remember, you’re telling search engines as well as customer prospects who you are. In the case of the vague business name, you’d use the tagline to specify the actual work, such as “overnight repair of Apple products.” But if that’s already in your name, the tagline can move on to “24-hour turnaround on every laptop, desktop, and iPhone problem.”

Taglines are worth a lot of thought. But as an old advertising adage puts it, “Don’t be clever, be clear.” Suppose our theoretical senior coaching business is named “Golden Years Internet.” A tagline might read: “Personal coaching to help seniors and the physically limited connect to the online world.” Or “Open up the world. Connect. Enjoy.”

The positioning statement gives you another way to expand on what you do. It’s trendy to dispense with this, but ask yourself: Will the visitor I want, who may run across my site randomly (while looking for “nursing home entertainment,” for example) or because he was searching for my specific set of services, know immediately he is in the right place?

The positioning statement is a tool for making that match. Unless you’re a household name, take advantage of the chance. Actually, even household-name companies take pains to clarify that you’re in the right place. They may have numerous and complex websites, so must tell customers they’re in the right place to make payments, find information about a product, file a complaint, and so on.

Our Golden Years Internet positioning statement might say:

In-person in southern Georgia, or online anywhere: individual or small group coaching that empowers physically limited people to socialize, learn, explore, and be entertained online.

You might add another line to address the senior’s children (for example, “Give your loved one the greatest gift of all: today’s best way to counter boredom and loneliness by connecting with the world”).

And you could even address your third audience, managers of senior residences: “Entertaining people in their golden years is easy when they know how to use today’s inexpensive tools to open up their worlds by Internet.”

Another favored home page element is an irresistible offer of some kind — sign up for a free blog, newsletter, ebook, introductory conversation, and so on. This will further your marketing plan. Do you have such materials? Can you create them, and do you want to?

Once you are clear on your message, think about how to translate it into visual form. You can illustrate it with photographs, but make them authentic — not generic stock photo people but real customers and real staff members. Use video if you can to demonstrate a learning session and to present testimonials from happy customers. Consider introducing yourself to visitors as the warm, caring, expert individual you are.

Writing the About Us page

Did you know that after the Home page, About Us is the most frequently visited website page across industries? Often, it’s the make-or-break part of your site that keeps people with you or leads them to click away.

You want to be your best and most trustworthy self on the About Us page. Therefore:

• Write in first person: Use “I,” not “they.”
• Center on the problem-solving core of your business.
• Deliver your value proposition in reader-friendly terms — what your business provides that no one else does.
• Tell your story: why you founded the business, why you are passionate about it, what is satisfying to you, what audience success means to you.
• Translate your skills or product capabilities into benefits for the customer.
• If appropriate, say why the opportunity is special or why the timing is wonderful — for example, new technology opens up the Internet to almost everyone, affordably.
• Include a good photo of yourself, looking friendly but confident, and video of you in action if possible.

Cite evidence of your authority, expertise, and trustworthiness, but don’t lead with it — it’s probably boring. No résumé-speak! See credentials as a backup to communicating who you are and how and why you can help. Here is the place to present a vision of how much better life (or something) will be with you in the picture.

A good About Us page prompts the reader to look into the actual product by moving on to your Services, or some other page. It’s another good place to offer something free and collect email addresses, too: “Schedule a free 10-minute consultation now!” “Register for our webinar now!” “Ask for my free ebook!” “Read my free newsletter!” “Follow me on these social media!”

What if there is no “us”? Then “Meet Jane” or something similar is fine. But it’s not a virtual world for nothing: Most consultants have allies on call and occasional partners according to the gig. Our Golden Years Internet CEO might well notice when writing the About Us page that in fact, he does need to back up his qualifications with other people like an occupational therapist and psychologist. This team should also be introduced on the About Us page.

Writing the inside pages

With your Home Page and About Us drafted, move on to write the rest of the pages your plan calls for. Here are some of the pages most sites need.

• Services and How It Works: Use one, or both, to get across the concrete options and opportunities you offer. Describe your services in a lively, user-oriented way, and counter any predisposition not to invest in you — the “resistances” list you assembled earlier in this chapter. Our Golden Years Internet entrepreneur might need to explain the technology choices and why they are affordable and work for this audience; what handicaps can be accommodated; and different service levels, for starters. Try not to over-burden this section, however. Keep descriptions brief and down to earth. Use images as much as you can to shorthand your words.

• Testimonials: Some sites devote separate pages to first-hand endorsements. Some scatter endorsements everywhere, from the home page on. Some sites do both. In any case, be sure they are real: Never write them yourself, because somehow, they won’t be convincing. And you don’t know until you ask what clients actually value in working with you (see Chapter 9).

  This is a word-of-mouth era for marketing. We believe fellow buyers, not official company statements. Don’t overlook this resource and the value that video testimonials in particular can give you.

• Contact: Be real here, too! Use at least a first name for email, not an anonymous “info@” address; give a phone number if you can; offer phone appointments; cite your special irresistible offers; and collect contact information from your visitors every way you can.

You need to build keywords and search terms into every page of your website. And keep in mind that websites are global. If you have any interest in an international reach, you have even more reason to create easy-to-read and simple-to-navigate sites.

Graphic tips for websites

If you work with a graphic designer, refuse to be intimidated by her, no matter how good she is! A checklist of do’s and don’ts when thinking about the visual nature of your site:

• Go for an audience-centric design. An elderly audience, for example, generally prefers more neutral colors, clear type, big headlines, and, naturally, pictures of people like themselves. There’s plenty of research available on viewer preferences — check it out. Neilsen (www.neilsen.com/us/en.html) and the Neilsen Norman Group (https://nngroup.com) do widely respected research on site usability and media habits.
• Leave out the flashy introductions and music. Only include these flourishes if there are obvious opt-out buttons.
• Avoid tactics that interfere with easy reading. For example, tiny type, busy complicated designs, more than two or three main colors, and drop-out type (white type against a black or other dark background).
• Don’t use long, dense text blocks. If you have more than a few sentences of text, break it up into short paragraphs (one to three sentences each) and add visuals, subheads, or bullets. Build in lots of white space.
• Limit the need to scroll. People fade off. Break the material into separate pages as needed.
• Use photos, illustrations if appropriate, and video as much as you can to help minimize the words. But never use a visual for its own sake (unless you’re an artist or photographer). Viewers resent them.

“Usability research” is a big and expensive deal for large organizations. They want to know how users navigate their sites, identify stumbling blocks, and understand negative responses. They especially want to know viewers’ eye tracking patterns when scanning each page. But you can do this yourself!

Try This: Create your own focus group and test drive your finished or in-progress site. The Nielsen Norman Group recommends a do-it-yourself approach. Assembling one to six people (six is ideal) and friends is fine. Ask them to use your site and watch carefully where they pause, stop, and click. Observe their reactions. Then ask them to talk about their experiences and you should emerge with a blueprint for improving your own site, cost-free.

Always remember that today, more and more websites are viewed on smartphone screens and smaller. Every month a bigger percentage of viewing and buying decisions are made on our smallest devices. Yet more reason to get to the point fast — distill the message — and keep your interface simple and easy.

Finally, always look at a website as an evolving work. It’s never “finished.” To function as you wish, it must be constantly rethought, and you must invest in new fresh content.

Once our Golden Years Internet coach has his basic site planned, he must further develop his business plan with a program that will bring the site to his target audiences’ attention and expand his thinking beyond the website. New questions: What other tools and platforms can I adopt to develop my business: speaking engagements? Free workshops? YouTube video? Networking groups? What online channels should I invest in to cross-promote?

For many people, the first idea to consider is the blog, which we look at next.

Choosing your best subject

During a writing workshop for communication professionals, I asked everyone to create a plan for a personal blog and compile a list of ten topics. Some chose a cause, such as eating nutritiously with prepared foods or high-fashion dressing for overweight women. A number wanted to share their opinions about movies, books, television shows, or life in general.

One young man presented a “here’s-what-I-think” idea, and I asked him who he imagined would read such a blog, other than a few friends. Can this blog be so entertaining that people who run across it will care about his opinion? And how to build a following for something so amorphous?

A few questions later, it emerged that the young man had pursued a passionate hobby since his early teens that had paid his way through college. He worked as a disc jockey at parties. Could he think of DJ-related topics to write about? He instantly came up with a long list of ideas for sharing professional tools and techniques.

An ideal choice for your blog subject may be something you care about because it fascinates you, excites you, prompts your curiosity, or just seems important. Like the amateur DJ, you may have real expertise or ideas to share. Great blogs stem from a focused passion of almost any kind, joined with knowledge and a desire to share.

Will the DJ blog help the PR professional I talked about with his career? I think so because his special expertise makes him unique. Together with his other credentials, it may well link him up with PR for the entertainment industry. The blogger who focuses on her running is less unusual, but if she does a good job scouting new equipment and techniques, rather than just reporting her personal experiences, she has a better chance of establishing a following of people who trust her and a long-term soft sell.

How-to blogs are endlessly attractive and successful. Ideally, you can provide something new, or at least a new angle on the topic, but people also appreciate round-up pieces that gather good ideas and information for them. Give credit as due by acknowledging the source and linking to it.

When you’re blogging to support the organization you work for or your own enterprise, use the same criteria to identify topics. Explore subject possibilities such as:

• The part of the work or service you care about most
• Things to which you have special insights or access
• Inside tips and behind-the-scenes glimpses into organizations (particularly effective if the business or nonprofit boasts a fan base)
• Highly specialized information for your field’s geeks
• Announcement and analysis of new products
• Stories and examples of how customers have used or been helped by the product or service

I shouldn’t have to say it but I will: Don’t criticize your employer in a blog if you want to keep your job!

Developing tone and style

Write in a simple, straightforward, conversational way. Easier said than done, I know. Use the techniques explored in Part 1 to write clearly, tightly, and transparently. It takes progressive editing to strip the chaff and flowery language that annoy online readers. Don’t be surprised if it also takes careful editing to sound spontaneous, unless you have a natural gift for this. To sound informal but authoritative, substitute active, interesting verbs for boring ones and short words for long; and work for a rhythm that alternates long and short sentences and reads well aloud.

Don’t pontificate! You’re talking to friends. You may find you have a naturally individual voice. Or you may develop one over time. But don’t fret about it. If you’re delivering good content in a natural voice, in line with advice throughout this book, you’re just fine. Adapt tone to audience, of course. Lawyers and accountants, for example, have not yet noticeably lightened up as a group, so probably require a more formal tone than soccer fans or wannabe DJs.

Always be positive and upbeat when blogging — even if you’re writing critical reviews of a film, book, product, or idea. Be wary of criticizing anything or anyone personally, or at least be prepared for repercussions. And never attack or slur anyone personally. Doing so is bad manners and hurts you every time. Plus, you run an increasing risk of being sued.

Creating magnetic headlines

Headlines are critical to getting your post noticed by both readers and search engines. If you’re luring people in via email or social media, they must be explicit and a touch exaggerated. Keep them honest — but a little irresistible.

Start your thinking with how the information benefits the reader: Will they find out how to do something faster, better, cheaper? Improve their lives in some way? Observe what captures you and adapt the approach for your own writing.

Free is always a great promise: FREE business writing templates make you a star

Sharing secrets is great: What your doctor doesn’t share that can kill you!

Saving money appeals: 40% off monthly supplies of your favorite dog food

A promise to teach readers how to do something tempts: Learn to play the piano like a soloist in two hours per week!

A question can compel: Do you know what your girlfriend watches on TV when you’re not there?

Watch your inbox for grabbers. Here are a few that drew me to click and read today:

• Increase Digital Trust … the “Easy Way”
• How Experiential Marketing Works: 7 Enlightening Tips
• How Often Should You Wash Your Clothes?
• How to Recover from a Long Flight According to Flight Attendants

The first two are the ever-popular “listicles” — text organized around a list of ideas — that appeal by promising specific, useful information, in a compact and accessible way. The third sounded like fun, and I opened the fourth because I’m soon taking a trip. Timing can be everything — one reason why experienced bloggers recycle material with or without a new angle periodically.

Don’t use a headline to promise something you don’t deliver.

If you’re trying to reach a narrower niche than the casual scanner, you can be less sensationalist, but adapt the ideas for your purpose. Here’s how our friend who runs the Golden Years Internet coaching service might think. He’s already reviewed his goals, audiences, selling points, and client resistance points, so he needs a title and a set of topics. A tentative blog title could be, Internetting in the Golden Years, and some possible topics:

• The 6 best equipment choices for Internet explorers over 70
• Free! 10 online courses perfect for 75+-year-olds
• Citizen science: The amazing new way for seniors to help researchers
• How to recognize Internet scammers who prey on seniors
• Online games for seniors: From checkers to chess, mahjong to Go
• Exercise for seniors — the 8 best online programs

Using progressive subheads

Dividing your blog text with subheads serves many purposes: It helps organize your ideas, adds white space, and keeps people reading. If you use the listicle format you know in advance how to write your subheads, one for each of the listed points. Subheads every few paragraphs make the material look easy to read. What’s not to like? Even a short blog benefits. Alternatively, bold the first phrase or sentence of each item to produce a subhead-like effect.

Writing good subheads is also covered in Chapters 3 and 6, and see the section on writing strong leads, also in Chapter 6. And yes, search terms apply and should be front-loaded in your headline and lead.

Try This: If you need inspiration for potential topics and headlines, here’s a fun way to find it. Experiment with an online headline generator. Here are two I like and the results I received when I entered “business writing” as my topic:

• HubSpot’s Blog Topic Generator www.hubspot.com/blog-topic-generator
• The Worst Advice We’ve Ever Heard about Email
• Portent Content Idea Generator www.portent.com/tools/title-maker
• Why Business Writing Is Afraid of the Truth

Planning your Twitter program

Random tweeting produces random results. Consciously build a Twitter program that aligns with and complements your website, blog, video, other social media investments, and traditional media, too (your print materials and presentations, for example). Unlike formal media such as résumés, Twitter gives you the opportunity to show off your personality and individuality. But don’t go freewheeling. Try for carefully spontaneous. Make an active decision about who you want to be and make sure that persona is appropriate to your goals and target audiences.

Do you want to establish yourself as an authority in your field? Build a following? Draw people to your website or blog? Find a job? Connect with like-minded people — or influential ones? As with the social platforms I discuss in the preceding sections, strategize whom you want to reach, best content strands, and your degree of investment.

There’s never a good side to demonstrating bad temper, a mean spirit, or sarcastic turn of mind — no matter how terrific it feels for ten seconds. If you recognize yourself as someone who’s regularly tempted to send out angry or ill-considered tweets, use Twitter’s scheduled/delayed posting feature, or an app that delays posting until your better angel has a chance to take back the helm.

Guidelines for tweeting

As with other platforms, keep yourself up to date with trends and features. Twitter has become very “visual” as users find that photos, infographics, and videos exponentially increases the likelihood a message will be read and shared. For most people, being re-tweeted is the aim of the game because it’s how you grow your audience. Here are more guidelines for tweeting successfully:

• Do a good job on the mini-bio and try for a lively description that crystallizes your uniqueness and uses your key words. Twitter’s own Bio Generator helps you describe yourself for this medium effectively. And, do whatever it takes to provide a good photo of yourself as you want to be seen.
• Find people and groups that interest you. Twitter’s own search function enables you to find specific people, brands, customers and clients, jobs, hashtagged conversations, and news. You can also search Twitter to find search terms used in conversations you want to follow.
• Listen. Just as you hesitate to plunge into a party conversation before listening to what’s already going on, take time to acquaint yourself with what people of interest to you are saying to each other. Notice the conversation’s tone and content. Look for niches with which you’re comfortable — questions you can answer, for example, or a subject you can usefully comment upon.
• Promote re-tweeting. Keep tweets even briefer than 140 characters, in the 100-character range, to encourage others to re-tweet your messages with their own comments. Use bitly.com (https://bitly.com) to reduce the space needed to communicate links and URLs. Use hashtags (for example, #businesswriting) to identify your subject matter and relevance; this broadens your audience beyond your own followers.
• Share substance. Share anything — news, ideas, tips based on your expertise, insights into events, a snippet from a good lecture you heard, an insight from a conference, links to something of interest, re-tweets of other people’s messages — you believe others will appreciate. And share discoveries: blogs, articles, books, other people’s comments, an image, an inspirational quote.
• Repeat yourself judiciously. Many social media gurus recommend sending the same or somewhat different tweets out several times per day, because different audiences catch up and scout at different times. Use a management tool to schedule your tweets, which will also signal when you receive a response.

• Don’t constantly sell or self-promote. Yes, you can call attention to a new blog post, event, workshop, article, book, product, or service improvement. It also can pay dividends to let people know where you are — at a conference or when traveling, for example. But resist the temptation to promote yourself or your organization every time you tweet. You’ll quickly be discounted as a self-seeker. Some savvy tweeters follow a rule of thumb: Self-promote one out of four times, max.

You can also use Twitter in ways that big companies find valuable. To accomplish research that would otherwise be very expensive, run surveys, crowdsource. Want to test-run your new website copy? Or a contest idea? Invite your network to visit your website and comment. Need an idea for employee recognition? Or advice on which logo to adopt? Put out the word.

Research on social media and networking sites is intensive, in part because the digital nature makes it so easy to generate statistics. Studies even tell us the best time to use each channel. The most popular time to tweet is between noon and 1 p.m. — but tweets sent in the early morning are more likely to be clicked and re-tweeted. You’re more likely to send cheerful upbeat message then, too. Tweets are most often re-tweeted when posted between 3 and 6 p.m. because people are tired then and prefer relying on other people’s tweets.

Of course, you can write all your tweets when you’re in a good mood, according to your internal clock, and use a social media distribution service to feed them out over the day. Time zones are a complicating factor.

Engaging with social media

First, ground yourself with an overall strategy and select platforms based on the factors outlined in Chapter 11. Check out the analysis of generational characteristics in Chapter 2. It’s critical that your marketing demographics line up with your platform choices. If you want to reach people under 24, for example, Snapchat is your game. Know your message, as covered in Chapter 9, and then you are ready to:

• Invest time in the platform you choose. Absorb its style, observe the most popular subject matter, identify its conventions, and find and follow industry leaders and brands similar to yours. Find communities that relate most closely to your interests. What content do they favor?
• Explore content streams you can create. Your content should represent your brand in ways that connect with your selected audiences. What can you share that’s entertaining, amusing, surprising, thought-provoking, and/or educational in an interesting way? Rather than one-off posts, look for themes you can develop that will themselves suggest a flow of ideas.
• Practice the tools of your platform. Each platform provides some how-to instruction, but scads of helpful directions and hacks are available online, such as Try YouTube. Plan to use social amenities, like hashtags, which function across platforms, and embedded links to bring people to your blog, a special offer, or something of special interest.
• Create posts that deliver the message visually for Snapchat, Facebook, Instagram, and other platforms. How can you translate your ideas into visual formats? Infographics give you a good way to deliver written information on sites that are essentially visual, like Pinterest. Photos with captions superimposed lend relevance to images and audience pleasers. A mix of photos and video is popular.
• Create posts with substance. Aim to be relevant, entertaining, and interesting, but don’t collect likes for their own sake! Deliver something real that your fans will value and want to share with friends. Avoid obvious brand-promotion that users will shy away from. The best advice with all social networks is quality rather than quantity.

• Write your best! The words may ultimately be few, but make them well-chosen and correct. Social style is relaxed and breezy, concise and transparent: Get ideas across in simple, instantly accessible ways. You only have 5 seconds to engage people enough to stick with you even for a short post! If the platform provides space for brief biographies, review how other people write theirs and create one that’s appropriate. Include a good photograph when you can. Personalizing your identity is important. Showing some personality and humor helps with this, too.

• Build in as many ways as you can think of for people to actively participate. Conduct surveys and report on them; ask questions; invite photos and videos, especially if they offer selfie opportunities; encourage fans to offer opinions or share an experience; or ask them to suggest a subject themselves. Keep in mind that they want to be part of the story and invest their own personality and spin.
• Respond to comments, questions, input, everything. Remember, you’re joining a community or building one, and either way, you must earn entry and create trust. Look to start conversations and keep them going. Snapchat in particular is geared for fast response because posts disappear after 10 seconds, though options for extending this time frame have been introduced.
• Consider paid advertising. Increasingly common on social media, big organizations are investing more and more in advertising. If you want to do “native advertising,” which means promotional content presented in the platform’s style, it’s best to identify it as advertising or the impact will be negative.
• Review results systematically. Digital media give you unparalleled tracking power. Look at what has worked best for you in terms of responses, number of shares or likes, linking to your other media, and whatever else matters to you.

• Integrate your social media with your entire marketing effort. You may or may not like thinking of yourself as a “brand” personally, but the concept is helpful. It reminds you that you must always communicate in ways that benefit your reputation and give value to your connections. Social platforms give you good ways to lead people to your blog post, website, LinkedIn profile, and so on. Repurposing content for different media is fine, but adapt it to each one’s unique personality.

Exploring content ideas

It’s hard to generate ideas in a vacuum. Instead, spend time with the platforms of your choice and see what strategies other people are using that can be adapted to your purposes. And scan content you created for other uses to mine snippets and images.

It’s also a good idea to review any social causes you or your organization are involved with. The generations you want to reach through social media channels like and respect organizations that demonstrate ethics and community citizenship. If you work with a charity event, an environmental cause, or any initiatives that help people, you have prime themes to explore. Angles might include mini-stories and images of people who were helped, benefits organized by your staff, events, and so on.

Another resource that keeps giving: the people you work with, even if they are few, or collaborate with you on occasion. Social media users enjoy behind-the-scenes glimpses, especially if it’s a product they relate to. Show them how ideas are brainstormed, how something is made, what the Halloween party looked like, how individuals spend their spare time, their pets, and so on. Give a face to the organization every time you can.

Crowdsourcing is another ideal source of material. Whatever your business, think of photos or video related in some way and invite your followers to share with you. Opportunities for people to selfie-themselves at the scene engage their interest. Invite video and photos from an event. Ask people to vote for the best whatever.

Some more content ideas to spur your thinking:

• Invite photos and video from events.
• Show people using your product, especially in unorthodox ways.
• Show how to fix a problem related to what you do.
• Show unusual uses of a product.
• Connect to seasonal events and holidays.
• Demonstrate how to do something, from cutting up a mango to fixing a tire to executing a yoga pose.
• Present recipes with mouth-watering photos or video.
• Write inspirational quotes on an image.
• Tell a joke (that won’t offend anyone).
• Present educational tips.
• Offer advanced tips on a new product or event.
• Reward followers by showing photos or video of them enjoying your event.
• Introduce followers to staff members.
• Curate: Share other posts and snaps generously.

Working with social media successfully takes a special mindset. Immerse yourself in a platform and you may be surprised at what you come up with. Remember your strategic plan, but interpret it creatively and loosely: You want to communicate that you feel the same sense of fun as do the loyal followers you want.

Today’s online universe is in many ways a new one of sources and resources, media and platforms, opportunities and pitfalls. It changes so fast that approaches are at best temporary. At the same time, what will help you make the most of so many possibilities are your traditional communication tools — good writing especially — to think, plan, and present.

In the next chapter, I show you some persuasive writing techniques and how to apply them when writing as an independent worker.