10 tips for effective blogging: effective online writing #2

How quickly does it take you to blog? During a recent training session, I set everybody the task of writing a blog in less than 2 minutes. And they did it, much to their amazement!

Apart from how speedily it can be done, the other thing that people were struck by was how much of a difference it makes if you write with a particular someone in mind. If you know who your audience is – and if you can picture someone you know who fits that profile and write as if you’re chatting to them, it really works.

As usual, the download is up on the Sue Fidler website if you’re interested. 10 tips for effective blogging on: http:www.suefidler.com/resources

Next week: More about writing online...

10 tips for writing effective web copy: effective online writing #1

One of the areas I cover with Sue Fidler Ltd is writing for the web. Having recently run some training with WOMANKIND (now there’s a great charity) on the subject, I came across a great article online and it set me thinking about the subject all over again. It wasn’t anything any of us – including them - didn’t already know, of course, but there’s something about gathering it all together in one place...

What struck me most as we worked was how hard it can be to keep text brief. And simple. Especially with the kind of material many of us have to upload. But that’s clearly what works and we ignore it at our peril.

I find it helpful having some specific figures in mind when I’m writing or editing: for example, aiming to keep sentences to a maximum of 15-20 words & paragraphs to a maximum of 3-5 sentences. It’s a good check on my natural verbosity!

Anyway, as an aide memoire I prepared a 1-page handout for them to keep afterwards. And I thought you might find it a useful reminder, too. So it’s up on the Sue Fidler website where you can download it if you’re interested: www.suefidler.com/resources

PS The article I mentioned is definitely worth a read: http://www.imediaconnection.com/content/28354.asp

Next week we'll be sharing some tips on effective blog writing.

JustGiving’s Adword launch... do you understand the implications? (now postponed a week)

On Wednesday JustGiving emailed their charity clients to announce they are going to start advertising using Google Adwords from Monday the 14th (Feb) unless the charity opts-out of the scheme.


This concerns me for a number of reasons. JustGiving do an excellent job and facilitate a huge number of people to raise money for the charity sector. However, this move to use Goodge Adwords has a number of implications for charities that I believe need to be more carefully considered:

• Any charity already using paid for or free Google ads will need to consider whether to opt out so they don’t compete with JustGiving. In the majority of charities the JustGiving contact will be somebody in donor/supporter services or the events/donor team and they are highly unlikely to a) know whether their charity spends money on Google Adwords or b) even realise the significance of this development, giving JustGiving an unfair advantage.
• Even if a charity doesn’t use Adwords already but has worked on their Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) or just naturally has good search engine ranking, it is very possible the JustGiving advert with appear above the charity or stand out more than the charities’ natural search results. This will mean that people are more likely to click through and donate to the charity on JustGiving than on the charities’ own donate page.
  
  JustGiving say that all they want is to raise more money for charities, but no charity who has a decent donate page would rather have their donations go through JustGiving (and pay their fees) than have them give directly to the charity.
• The charities get no say in the advert copy or placement. JustGiving will be choosing which keywords to bid on and building the ad. The majority of marketing people I know want a say in how their brand is marketed and which search words represent them.
• And finally, while JustGiving have emailed a “service update” the email went out Wednesday, giving the person who received it just 3 working days to receive, open, understand, check with colleagues and then action the opt-out. It probably only takes a moment to make the change on the system, but three days is not much time to have reacted and decided to opt-out.

So, sorry JustGiving. I appreciate that you want to increase donations to charities (through JustGiving of course) but I really think you need to give them longer to react, made it clearer in your email that the recipient should tell the person who does the website, given the charity a veto over keywords and copy, and most important, made it an opt-in service.

How To: Social media basics #5

Social Media Tools online

We’ve pulled together – courtesy of the forums we’re part of (thank you, everyone) and a load of research – a page of social media tools that are available online.

There’s something for everyone: stuff about getting started, tools that can help or even do most of it for you (paid and unpaid ones) and analytics tools, too. We hope it’ll prove useful, no matter what stage you are at with social media.

Take a look at Social Media Tools Online: www.suefidler.com/207.asp

Is there anything we should add to the list? Please let us know.

Next week: The start of a new series about online writing skills - 10 ways to make your web writing as effective as possible