Prof Web Marketing

While reading a new book, it gave me the inspiration to write this post.  Already, I have used to the 1st paragraph to go against what I’m writing about.  Well, This is MY blog after all so I have the right to write about me don’t I?

Ever been on a date with a person that did nothing but talk about him/herself?  Do you think your readers want to be on a date with you like that?

If you are still reading this after the first paragraph, do you really want to hear about me?  Most likely not.  You probably won’t read much further unless you see how this post can benefit YOU.

Chapter 2 of Your Attention Please is titled ‘Focus on “You”.  This is probably one of the biggest pieces of advice to follow while writing.  Be it a blog post or a landing page selling a product, you should always write informing the reader of the benefits to them.

If this is what we should do, why do so many people do the opposite?  It’s easier! It takes more work to figure out what your reader/customer wants to hear takes work and many of us are lazy.

With the information age comes information overload.  People are simply overwhelmed with the amount of information being directed at them.  This has made people’s attention span very short.  We simply don’t have the time to read everything that comes at us through our e-mail boxes, instant messengers, TV, radio, and on and on.

This is the reason you have less than 10 seconds to grab a visitor’s attention before they hit the back button.  You better write an attention grabbing headline if you want your reader to listen to what you have to say.  Want to keep their attention after the headline?  You should also use images throughout your post.  Also use bold fonts and lists to grab the attention of visitors who just scan your post.

More on the use of images.  Since we tend to scan, we are, in a sense, learning to “read” images, so you want to make sure your images are relevant to whatever your are writing about.  Web 2.0 icons catch ones eye very easily.  There are tons of free icons to use, here are some I found at the Freebies Round-Up: Icons, buttons and templates.

There is much more I could add to this article, but I know you don’t have a lot of time to read this so I highly recommend getting the book mentioned above.  If you have anything you would like to add please so so below.