Top Misc Content on Internet

Tools for Reader-Friendly Content
Mastering the Art of the Tweet
Blogging Can Be A Daunting and Intimidating Chore for Small Businesses
Content is King
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Posted: 13 Apr 2011 03:00 AM PDT

by Marni, My Web Writers Team Member

Marni, My Web Writers Team Member

The majority of online readers prefer documents whose layout makes reading efficient while remaining informative. Writers have many tools available to organize information-rich text in an accessible layout. The most effective tools are:

bolded font,
underlined font,
italicized font, and
bulleting / numbering, and
tabbing.

The following explains the uses of these tools while offering guidelines on where to incorporate these tools in the text.

Bolded Font
Of all the above mentioned tools, bolding is the most effective at catching readers’ attention because the added thickness makes the text stand out. Bolded text should be used to indicate the different major sections of a text. For example, this blog employs bolded font to set apart the discussion of the different tools used in rendering content more reader-friendly.

Underlined Font
Underlining is the most flexible of all of the tools. If one wants to set off different content sections in a less dramatic, non-bolded fashion, then underline the section headings. If one wants the section headings to be more prominent, then bold and underline the font. If the text has several layers of information then bold the major category headings and underline the subcategory headings. For example, a text discussing animal categories and subcategories could bold the category headings and underline the subcategory headings. The text would look like this:

mammals
bears
cats
whales
amphibians
reptiles

Italicized Font
Italicizing a word or words serves to differentiate them from surrounding text in a more subtle way. Italicizing works most effectively in setting off a direct quotation or in giving emphasis to a word or words within a sentence. For example:
The children yelled "Here comes the ice cream truck!"
The gentleman mistakenly got in the wrong car!

Another use for italicized font would be to set off ancillary text. For example, one frequently sees "quantities limited" after product information in fliers and catalogs.

Bulleting / Numbering
Bulleting helps to set off lists. Most people become familiar with bulleting text when writing a CV. Potential employers often receive hundreds of CV’s and need to be able to quickly identify the skills and experience of each applicant. For this reason, a successful CV lists one’s skills, education, and experience with bullets thereby allowing the potential employer to easily assess the qualifications of each candidate. Any text containing lists or ordered instructions should employ bullets or numbers. While making the information easier to wade through and follow, the offset bullets or numbers also helps the reader locate the information or instructions in the text. Notice how the bullets used for the initial presentation of this tools list informs the reader as to the text’s content.

Tabbing
Tabbing, or pushing the text deeper into the page, works best when incorporating a rather large quotation, setting off different category levels or providing examples of what one has just described in the main text. With respect to lengthy quotations, tabbing facilitates the readers’ ability to locate the beginning and the ending of the direct citation. With respect to subcategories or examples, occasionally bullets and numbers don’t mesh with the flow or the look of the text. In this case, tabbing works better.

Today’s internet reader approaches online content much differently than other texts. Online readers consult online content in order to locate specific information, scanning the text to get right to the area relevant to their search. In addition, readers cannot view the entire text at once due to screen size limitations. As the writer of online content, it is imperative to make the different areas of the content conducive to scanning and scrolling. For that reason, strategic use of bolded font, underlined font, italicized font, and bullets / numbers will assure that the reader will benefit from what you have to share and will return to your site because of the reader-friendly nature of your writing style.

Mastering the Art of the Tweet

Posted: 12 Apr 2011 12:06 AM PDT

It’s Not the Idea; It’s the Language

It doesn’t really matter how great your concept is, or the information you are trying to convey, if you don’t do it in a readable way. Tweets offer a particular challenge here. Though most of us have every capacity to parse the many abbreviations found in twitter streams, we rarely have the time or attention span to get that involved with reading tweets. We gloss over the unreadable tweets moving on to a tweet that makes itself obvious. Hashtags and mentions are problematic enough for the mental lexicon. Let’s not complicate things further.

Mastering the Art of the Tweet, or Twitter Mastery

There’s a whole new language art, the art of the tweet. It’s not as simple as we all think it is at first. Using Twitter effectively for Social Media Marketing requires special linguistic skills. Simplest first: excellent vocabulary. Second: the ability to manipulate syntax. Third: the ability to translate.

The Thesaurus & the Tweet

Don’t laugh, but I write tweets with a thesaurus at hand. For most marketing campaigns it’s important to stay away from trendy shortenings in your tweets that will make you sound like a high school freshman, such as ’2b’ and ’4evr.’ Twitter does give us only 140 characters to work with, however, some of which must be reserved for hashtags, mentions, and a link. So…how to cope? Many words have convenient stunt doubles, i.e. utilize → use. The trick here is to make sure that you are not losing the meaning that your tweet is supposed to convey, so sometimes it takes some work to find the perfect stunt double.

Fun With Syntactic Structure

It’s very often quite possible to reorganize your sentences in a way that eliminates unnecessary words and simplifies ideas. You can also often cut out determiners (the, a, an), pronouns, and other things. For example, instead of “reorganize your sentences” use “reorganize sentences,” or better yet “reorder words.” We just went from 25 characters to 13…a precious 12 characters that can later be used for a hashtag or two. The first sentence in this paragraph is currently 123 characters. But I need more room for hashtags, a mention and a url, so: Simplify ideas by reordering words to cut out extras. Now we have 52 characters, without losing the value of the statement and without using abbreviations that tweet readers will find more difficult to parse. It seems obvious but I’ll say it anyway: People need to be able to read your tweets easily in order to find value in them.

The Names Have Been Changed, But the Stories are True

Translation is really a concatenation of the other two, but very important in and of itself, most especially if you are tweeting on someone else’s behalf. It is vital to represent their ideas absolutely accurately with every tweet because it is their proprietary information that you are being trusted with, and their image that you are representing. To write great tweets, you can change the lexical and syntactic aspects of their sentences, but never their ideas.

Marketing

Taking the time and the care to tweet effectively and efficiently will make a difference in your Twitter marketing campaign, because it will increase the likelihood of your tweets being read, rather than ignored, turning a higher percentage of tweets into leads. Don’t turn people off by cluttering your tweets with hashtags and mentions either. It’s better to send out 2 identical tweets with 2 different hashtags in each than to send out one tweet with four hashtags.

Oh, one more thing. If you like language and writing, writing effective tweets should be a fun challenge. If you don’t…hire someone that does. You’ll both be happier.

Blogging Can Be A Daunting and Intimidating Chore for Small Businesses

Posted: 11 Apr 2011 03:14 PM PDT

Quite a few businesses today are challenged still by what social media marketing is all about. I spend my days absorbed in social media activities and most people that I seem to deal with throughout my day is somehow affiliated with something having to do with social media as well. To me it’s secondary nature, but to many of today’s business owners, they are still very much in the dark when it comes to social media and social media marketing.

I just recently attended a business networking meetup in Atlanta Georgia, I must say it was to my surprise that none of the attendees really knew much about social media, yes, they’ve all heard a little something something about this new and amazing online marketing media tool, but little could really understand that as far as marketing in today’s business world is concerned, social media is now common place and known as a staple in the new marketing mix. Still, the individuals I spoke to couldn’t get past the thought of blogging taking up too much of their time, and that seems to be one of the biggest challenges with small businesses, the amount of time blogging would take away from their schedules. My answer for these ones who complained about one of the most fundamental aspects of online marketing, and particularly if we’re talking about inbound marketing was, how much is it worth to you to invest in your company your time, to develop a vital part of your online marketing campaign that will be the online hub of your company to direct traffic to your website, and tell your clients, that you are the expert in what you do, and that by visiting your site they will be greeted by a host of practical and relevant information privy to your industry and when it’s time to purchase, you would have positioned your company to be at the forefront of their minds, and in return they will spread the world about your company to their friends, associates and colleagues and help you increase your bottom-line and receive a notable ROI. Whew, that’s a mouthful, and that is what social media marketing is all about.

You’ve heard the saying that nothing worth anything in this world comes free, and let’s add on to that, no pain, no gain. To many, especially those who are not creative writers, blogging can be very intimidating. Thank God for, the mother of necessity creating an outlet for you, there are a host of companies and individuals who freelance that specialize in blog and website content. You don’t have to go at it alone, but it is imperative to note that it will be in your best interest to search out ones who specialize in SEO (search engine optimization) so that your end product will be a quality optimized blog so that you will have a better chance being found by search engines.

Blogging is only the beginning of a comprehensive inbound marketing strategy. Although it was mentioned in the previous paragraph as being one of the most fundamental aspects of your strategy, it is by far more to it than quality blogging. For most companies, next to blogging being a challenge, is the entire strategy development process, which is still at this time a continuous work in progress due to the rapid growth and ever changing nature of social media marketing. For most companies looking to do it right and get a good ROI, it is best to seek out the help of a knowledgeable social media marketing consultant who can help you leverage your companies strategic goals with a comprehensive social media strategy that will drive more traffic, create more lead generations and ultimately convert into more clients/customers or awareness.

Content is King

Posted: 06 Apr 2011 02:30 PM PDT

At the risk of having stolen that title, the statement itself does ring true. Were it not for conten

Difference Between Savings Account and Checking Account