writing

Our exploration of utilizing content to increase conversion rates began with analyzing statistics to uncover opportunities for improvement, followed by how to create and implement good content to compel visitors to take action. The natural next step is testing.

The horrors of war and the odd perversions of the Victorian era might be a little much for an eight year old. But Twitter, blogging, podcasting, and Wikipedia might just be the 21st century ticket to learning. Educators in Britain are mulling proposed changes to primary school curriculum that would require kids be taught modern Web-based communication and information retrieval skills instead of teaching them about World War II. War they can learn about in high school.

So, Merriam-Webster broke down and let "w00t" into its dictionary. Yeah, well, they're trying to stay relevant. That doesn't mean anybody should ever use this word outside of World of Warcraft or, at the most, instant messaging. How long do you think it will be before w00t is as silly as gnarly, tubular, radical waves (can you see the zinc-oxide on my nose, dude?) or those ridiculous Hammer pants?Word to your mother. Right, homey?

Recently I re-read a business book (written by some PhD's who counsel people to improve their careers), and each chapter struck me as salesy -- as if it were primarily crafted to speak to the 1% of readers who might be likely to follow up as consulting prospects.

It would be annoying for me to link to grokdotcom every day, so I don't. But if you don't have it in your regular rotation of RSS feeds, what are you waiting for? Here's a great example—a post that pulls together over a dozen great articles on writing winning Web copy. It's taking some of us a while, but we're finally figuring out that Web marketing can really depend on your words.

Writing for the Web is tricky business because there is no audience more diverse. Writers, especially purist writers (I'm pointing at myself both accusatorily and guiltily), are stubborn, especially ones honed in a print world where the appropriate audience finds you or rejects in distant silence, and writers (secretly) want you to bask in their brilliance.

People have debated whether content is really king for some time, and for content producers, it seems a no-brainer: create quality content and the audience will come. That's the way it's always been, that's how it will remain. A survey about blog readership conducted by Vizu confirms that mantra, and reinforces the importance of good writing.

It pains me to suggest this, but we must ignore (one of) the teachings of Strunk and White.  We must turn our backs on a number of other writing guides.  And we must break our own habit of writing out numbers as words. Instead, we should represent numbers with numerals - a recent eye-tracking study suggests that they’re much more likely to capture online readers’ interest.