About This Blog
Sara Lancaster here. Thanks for visiting the No. 2 Pen blog where I talk all things website content for small businesses. Have a question about your web content? Send it my way and I'll respond in a post.Project Hound
Learn more about Project Hound - discounted marketing services for animal rescue organizations.-
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10 Ways a Personal Website Can Get You a Job
Websites don’t have to only represent a company’s brand. Websites can represent a personal brand as well. In fact, personal websites can work so effectively that it might even help you land a job.
1. Prove your creativity
A nice design, clever content, and interesting photos all reveal a little bit about you as a person and as a professional. Let potential employers see how creative you can be. And if you aren’t creative, don’t fret. Hiring a designer or a writer is easier than you think.
2. Provide work samples
Create a page that links to samples of your writing, photography, design, lesson plans, or whatever portfolio items are required in your industry. Of course, not all industries will require a portfolio, but whatever you have done that demonstrates your abilities should be highlighted on your personal website. (more…)
12 Tips for Injecting Personality Into Your Website Content
Website content should not read like a user’s manual. It shouldn’t read like a prospectus either. Website content should have personality.
Making your website content sound like a human wrote it will take practice. You’ll also need to follow these 12 tips. No one said injections were easy.
Tip 1 – Choose your avatar
Marketers work with “avatars” to aid in speaking to their customers. Think about who you are trying to reach with your web content. Is it a 30-something-year-old woman who lives near a city center? Get a blank piece of paper, draw her face, and give her a name. Tape the picture to your wall and now start writing TO your avatar.
Tip 2 – Outline your web content
Create the architecture of your site. In other words, decide what pages you’ll have on your website and decide on three to five main ideas for each page. Your outline can only be a set of bullet points or it can go into more detail. Do what works best for you. (more…)
Reminder: Jargon Will Not Improve Search Engine Ranking
If you hope to rank high in the search engines, you need to write straightforward website content. Adding jargon will fill your pages with that essential amount of website content, but it doesn’t incorporate valuable keywords or the essential context around those keywords.
I’m not saying you should stuff your pages with keywords. Never! All I’m saying is that you should not waste valuable website space on meaningless words. Focus on words your customers can relate to and words that you just might rank for in the search engines. (more…)
Say No to Jargon – Delete These 7 Generic Statements from Your Website
We know you provide the best product for the best price, but what else?
In this second post in my series of posts on how to avoid industry jargon on your website, I’m assigning you a task. Delete the following generic statements from your website content.
1. Company dedicated to quality.
2. We are the best in the industry.
3. Services tailored to your needs. (more…)
A Campaign Against Industry Jargon
Your website called. It’s annoyed with all those buzzwords, acronyms, and six syllable words in its content. Your website said that it’s dying for creativity and language that the search engines can actually do something about. Most importantly, your website said you’ve scared away customers with all that jargon.
In the next several posts I’ll be talking about how industry jargon and buzzwords bring down your website and your marketing efforts. First up, let’s talk about what it all means. (more…)
A Guide to Social Media Planning
Over the last couple of weeks I’ve talked about social media planning and how small businesses need to think about their goals online. I’ve created a free, downloadable guide to complement those blog posts. The guide walks you through the process of developing a social media plan as well as providing a few tips on how to effectively use social media.
Download your Guide to Social Media Planning from my writing freebies page.
Reduced Price Marketing and Website Content Writing for Animal Rescue Organizations
Not long ago my husband and I adopted a beagle from The American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (ASPCA). We went from people who wanted more exercise and a cute companion to baby-talking idiots who couldn’t stop cuddling up to this guy.
Because we’ve realized how much fun beagles and other hounds can be, we’ve decided to offer specially priced marketing and website content writing services to hound rescue organizations through something called Project Hound Marketing. Please help us spread the word!
Social Media Planning, Objectives, and Buckets – Part 2
In the last post I left off talking about buckets in social media planning. A bucket holds everything that will go into achieving a single objective including the places you will hang out within social media (e.g., Facebook) and the tasks you complete within those accounts.
Fifth, decide who and for how much time
Maybe you are the person who spends 30 minutes every morning on social media or maybe you have several people in the office responsible for monitoring your social media accounts every day, all day. Whatever the case, keep it consistent. An abandoned Facebook fan page will have the opposite impact you are looking for. (more…)
Social Media Planning, Objectives, and Buckets – Part 1
If your business wants to incorporate social media into its marketing mix, then it must come up with a plan. All effective marketing is backed by a plan.
Do you have a social media marketing plan?
First, decide on your goal. Think about your mission statement. What is the one thing your business hopes to accomplish? Take that idea and pull it into social media. For instance, I want to help small businesses create killer web content. Using social media, I connect with small business owners to offer marketing ideas and my services. (more…)
Where to Find the Expiration Date on Your Web Content
Did you look on the bottom? What about the label? No expiration date anywhere?
You can’t find the expiration date on your web content, because it’s not there. However, there are a few ways to look at web content and decide on when it should be updated. But that’s probably not what you want to hear. You want to hear a concrete answer on web content expiry. I get that.
So before I get into the long “it depends” conversation, let me give you the short answer. Small businesses should revise there web content at least once a year.
That’s just the minimum effort. Now for the long answer. (more…)