I have just come back from a holiday where I was incommunicado with the outside world. Prior to going I was worried about my addiction to Twitter, my crackberry and my laptop. Addiction? What addiction. It was heaven. Maybe you should try it some time. I can certainly recommend it.

While I was away Marketing Magazine very kindly profiled me if you want to take a read.

What makes a great website?

What are the essential traits of a great web site? After you visit a site and you browse through it for a while, what makes you stay? Great design helps. Amazing graphics are eye catching. But the fundamental trait that makes a website work is the content.

The content or copy of your website is critical. This is where you hold the attention of your audience. Your word choice and grammar are critical. Misspellings and poor grammar are a quick turn off. If your content isn’t easy to read people will go to other sites to get information and buy.

Copy writing is often one of those jobs that people think they can do themselves but probably shouldn’t. We often help clients with their web copy to assist them in the creation of a professionally written website.

Tips on writing effective website copy:

Keep it short
While choosing the right words is important, keeping them to a minimum is equally important. The length of your copy online should be about half that of the print version. Re-work your original, including succinct sentences and short paragraphs. Dot points are often a great way to achieve this.

Chose your words carefully
Try to avoid words that are too descriptive, colloquial or flowery. Descriptive words often don’t tell readers much and are a waste of words.

Understand your audience and write for them. Just because you have a well versed vocabulary doesn’t mean your audience does. At the same time by choosing colloquial language you often dumb down your website and limit credibility.

Read more tips on writing effective website copy.

Media monitoring with Google Alerts

Most businesses don’t have the budgets to pay a media monitoring service to track their coverage in the media. They would prefer to use the budget to generate coverage rather than track it!

We encourage our clients to use Google Alerts which are email updates of the latest relevant Google results (web, news, blogs etc.) based on your choice of query or topic.

We have one for each client name and spokesperson so we can track their coverage. Obviously this only applies to coverage that has been posted online so don’t rely on this to track coverage in trade publications.

Some other handy uses of Google Alerts include:
• monitoring a developing news story
• keeping current on a competitor or industry
• tracking stories in other blogs
• tracking stories/topics in your industries

To create a Google Alert:
Go to www.google.com/alerts
Fill in the ‘form’ by adding your search terms. The Type dropdown let’s you choose from News, Blogs, Web, Google Groups, and Comprehensive. The Comprehensive option will search all options - which is what we use.
Select how often you wish to receive the alerts - once a day, as-it-happens, or once a week.
Hit Create Alert and you’ll start receiving emails with your alerts!

Creating online authenticity

Social media is all about authenticity, Rohit Bhargava, of Ogilvy USA explained at a recent Frocomm event. Here are a few topics he discussed in his presentation.

Media is circular
News is no longer just generated by journalists. With the help of social media, media has evolved to become a circular process. Individuals are looking to the media for stories, but at the same time, the media is looking online for stories and trends.

Unlock the passion of accidental spokespeople
One of the most noticeable effects of social media is the emergence of the ‘accidental spokesperson’. This concept is that employees or customers of organisations are fast becoming accidental key voices or spokespeople.

Speak with a human voice
Social media is providing organisations with the chance to humanise and authenticate their organisation. With the emergence of blogs and sites such as Twitter, businesses have been given the opportunity to bring their organisation alive by delivering a vivid personality through a spokesperson such as the CEO.

Faceless doesn’t work anymore
Consumers are no longer OK with being put on hold or talking to recorded messages. They want to talk to a real person and get a personal reply to their individual questions. Social media is allowing organisations to do this.

Virtual trust trumps all
Current research has shown that consumers are starting to trust online reviews over recommendations from their friends and company produced product information. This highlights just how important online reviews are for your organisation.

Read the full article on our Public Relations Sydney blog.

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