I wrote this presentation a while back for attorneys. I've now re-written it as a general guide for all professional services folks. Have a look, and as always, let me know if you have questions.
2. I know what youâre thinking.
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3. Engage! Converse! Write gooder!
Oh, great. Hereâs another
jackass to tell me all the
stuff I hear 30x a day, like
âengage your audienceâ.
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4. Ianâs Life, 1990-2011
Not true! Iâve spent 16 years now 150000 Hours
150000
testing, experimenting and learning
what kind of writing works best
online.
So weâre gonna get specific.
112500
75000
50000
37500
15000
0
Law School Writing & Marketing Parenting
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5. Iâve had to use this learning writing
copy to sell, teach and promote stuff
like the Tacoma Domeâs roof, the
importance of colon cleansing, and
rubber grommits.
Yeah. Iâm livinâ the dream.
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6. Writing for conversion
But I digress. Iâm not going to give
you platitudes. This is about writing
for conversion. And make no
mistake: Everyone coming to your
blog post should somehow convert.
Iâm not talking about deception, or
selling, or anything else âcheesyâ. Iâm
talking about making sure readers
keep reading, or subscribe, or
otherwise stick around. Thatâs the
kind of conversion you want.
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7. You need to fill the top of the leads
I nd/read your post âfunnelâ. Thatâs what the blog is for. Itâs
not to get folks to hire you.
So your job is to get folks who read your
I subscribe
stuff to this point.
You keep in touch
I hire you
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8. Blog = Top of funnel
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9. 9 rules
Iâve got 9 basic rules I use whenever I
write for online consumption. Follow
them and you maximize the odds that
you can get readers to convert.
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10. No one cares.
Write accordingly.
1
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11. me.
mememe
you. no... me.
me. me.
People are self-interested. On the web,
theyâre more distracted, less attentive and
less willing to stop for a second than a
preschooler who just ate a bag of M&Ms.
Beg, plead, bribe. Youâll get nothing.
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12. Tell people why
they should read.
So, you need to put whatever youâre writing
in their terms. Why would they want to
read your post?
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13. For example:
âDonât let an uninsured loss devastate
your project. Look out for these
insurance policy gotchas.â
If Iâm a general contractor, guess what? I
worry about this all the time. So this first
sentence tells me why I should read this post.
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14. Around tax time, this one will grab me, too:
âCheck your payables or you may
end up with IRS penalties.â
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15. Donât write a white paper.
Whatever you do, donât write the staid, white
paper. First, most of the readers arenât lawyers,
or accountants, or engineers, or whatever.
Second, even the nerdiest of us will have a hard
time not going into a coma when you start
throwing white papers on a blog.
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16. ect nt
hit ta
arc oun
n- cc
no -a
a on
a n -lawyer
an on
Answer this: Why should I care?
Answer this question: Why should someone
outside your profession care about this post?
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17. Sell the page.
Sell the page, not yourself.
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18. Write for a blank sheet of paper.
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19. Your headline must, when written on
a blank sheet of paper, explain your
post to a complete stranger.
ânuff said.
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20. Headlines get taken out of
context, all over the place.
Hereâs the headline on a
post I wrote a while back.
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21. And here it is, in a search
result.
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22. Headlines show up in feed
readers, too.
My point: Any headline you write - any title for any post - must be fully
descriptive. It must stand on its own, because itâs going to have to.
Ignoring this rule leads to all sorts of tragedies...
Friday, February 17, 12
23. This is from an Anderson Cooper article. What
the heck was he writing about? I dunno.
Come on in, the waterâs ne.
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24. This one probably touched off an
international incident.
Karzai pardons Taliban
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25. Ewwwwwwww....
Royals Get a Taste of Angelsâ Colon
(itâs about baseball, by the way)
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26. And my personal favorite.
Supreme Court Tries Sodomy
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27. Clickthru from headline/titles, by type
Clever Descriptive
40%
Weâve tested this over the years.
Descriptive beats clever, every time.
30%
20%
10%
0%
Search Feeds Twitter E-mail
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28. Be fully descriptive.
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30. Active voice should always
be what you use.
Er, yeah. Use active voice,
Er, yeah. Use active voice,
not passive voice.
not passive voice.
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31. Use active voice.
Ah. So much better.
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32. âA study of propertiesâ
Lose the âofâ.
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33. âA properties studyâ
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34. âTrend higherâ
Can you think of a better
way to say this?
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35. âgrowâ
Yep.
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36. âSkill at communicatingâ
Again, lose the âatâ.
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37. âCommunications skillsâ
Much better.
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38. âThe manner in whichâ
Can you think of a better
way to say this?
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39. âHowâ
Uh-huh. Donât use 4 words
where 1 will do.
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41. âThis will be too hard to readâ
âI wonât understand itâ
âItâll be the same stuďŹ I read everywhere elseâ
âIt will be a waste of my timeâ
Know the reasons people give
themselves for leaving your blog
post. Most important: You have
to constantly reinforce that this
is a fantastic use of their time.
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42. Donât write like a lawyer.
(until youâre billing someone)
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43. âDonât write like a #$#@!@ lawyer!!!!!!â
-Steven Reinhardt, 1992
Judge Reinhardt is brilliant, and
super-liberal. He also called me a
fascist, and told me the above.
He got the latter right, at least.
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44. In the event that = âifâ
Not less than = âat leastâ
Thereafter = âlaterâ or âafterâ
Subsequent to = âafterâ
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45. http://www2.law.ucla.edu/volokh/legalese.htm
A brilliant classmate of mine at
UCLA is now a professor there.
He wrote the above list. You
should print it and tape it to your
monitor. Itâll improve your
writing in minutes.
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47. Donât sweat the keywords.
I wonât belabor this: Just donât
worry about search engines that
much.
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48. Do be fully descriptive.
If youâre fully descriptive in your
headlines, you provide a good
clue to search engines that lets
them classify your post.
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49. Do link like with like.
If you write 3 posts on a similar
topic, link them together. Thatâs
not just for search engines - it
also helps your readers.
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50. Do keep tags to a minimum.
If your blog or site uses tags, use
no more than 3-4 tags per post.
If you donât know what tags are,
donât worry about it - you wonât
have any issues, because you
wonât add any tags.
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51. Put on the breaks.
You need to break up your writing.
Itâs hard to read online. People
tend to scan the page, first. Make
your pages scannable.
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52. 6-8 lines/paragraph.
Keep your paragraphs short.
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53. 3-4 paragraphs per âchunkâ.
And never have more than 3-4
paragraphs before you place a
subheading or an image.
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54. Subheadings.
Speaking of subheads, use âem.
Your blogging software lets you
add a âlevel 2 headingâ or an âh2â.
Use those as subheads.
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55. Use bullets and lists.
Use lists for three reasons: They help
people scan the page. They make
your points more obvious. And they
help you organize your thoughts.
Use lists for three reasons:
1. They help people scan the page.
2. They make your points more obvious.
3. They help you organize your thoughts.
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56. By grouping lists and subheadings,
you can turn a massive post (this one
was over 1000 words) into an easily
readable page.
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57. By grouping lists and subheadings,
you can turn a massive post (this one
was over 1000 words) into an easily
readable page.
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58. Images.
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59. Images are a great way to break up
the page, too. And they add detail
your readers can take in at a glance.
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60. Images are a great way to break up
the page, too. And they add detail
your readers can take in at a glance.
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61. Use images wisely
Images are great, but they can really
screw up a blog post.
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62. First, they can be too large. This image is
115 kilobytes. In plain language, that
means itâs going to take a really long
time to download to your readersâ
computers. Will they wait? I doubt it.
115 kb
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63. Hereâs the same image, compressed to
18kb. You can use any photo editing
software to get the same results. If you
donât know how to do this, have
someone else do it for you, or use a
service like Picnik, which is owned by
Google and wonât send you viruses.
18 kb
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64. Scale images using that same editing
software. Donât scale them using the
height and width attributes.
oy. this is
very
cramped.
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65. Good ALT attribute: âSheep say web 2.0â
Bad ALT attribute: âWhat the heck?â
Write a fully descriptive ALT attribute for
all images. Your blogging software lets
you enter a photo description and,
depending on how itâs set up, an ALT
attribute. Fill out those two fields and
youâll be setting a good ALT attribute.
Friday, February 17, 12
66. Have a call to action.
Finally, have a call to action. Ask folks to
do what you want them to do. And that
call to action doesnât have to be âhire
meâ. It should be an action that brings
them into the funnel.
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67. Invite subscriptions/follows
How about asking folks to follow you on
Twitter, or subscribe to your blog using
an RSS reader?
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68. First, have a link that reads exactly like
this:
You should follow me on Twitter.
This wording gets best results as far as
building followers.
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69. Get in touch on LinkedIn.
Maybe have this, too.
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70. Social media = rankings
If youâre wondering, âwhy botherâ, well,
thereâs more to social media sharing than
warm tingles. Social media shares help
content rank higher in search results, too.
And they build the kind of authority
search engines and social media sites use
to rank and filter content.
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71. 25
SEO: B+
108
SEO: F
Look at these rankings. These guys have
no business being #3 for âlaw firmâ. They 11
only rank there because they have far SEO: C+
more followers on Facebook. Social
shares matter, a lot.
44
SEO: D-
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72. Subscriptions = visibility
And, of course, every subscription you get
builds visibility: Itâs one more user whoâll
remember you, and potentially come
back.
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73. Chain your content.
Finally, use one piece of content - one
blog post- to draw the reader into
another.
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74. For example, ask folks to register for a
webinar, or sign up to download a related
white paper.
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75. For example, ask folks to register for a
webinar, or sign up to download a related
white paper.
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76. blog post 1 By âchainingâ a series of posts together you
can build your authority and trust, and
then get more folks willing to provide
their information to get a more in-depth
piece. That gets folks deeper into the
blog post 2 funnel.
blog post 3
e-book/whitepaper/
seminar
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77. I read your post Thatâs how all of these tips work: They fill
the top of the funnel. Then they help
readers make a good decision about
whether they should subscribe to your
blog. If they keep in touch, theyâre more
I subscribe likely to hire you.
There you have it: Inbound marketing,
without a hard sell.
You keep in touch
I hire you
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78. If youâve got questions:
ian@portent.com
@portentint
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Editor's Notes
\n
I know what you’re thinking as I stand here.\n\n
You think I’m going to stuff ridiculous rules about writing for the web down your throats. \n\nNope.\n\n
My history, in a graph.\n\nIn this time, I’ve invested a lot of work in testing and measuring different kinds of writing, marketing and otherwise, to see what works best.\n
And before you say “Oh, but you get to write about all sorts of exciting stuff - this is law. No one wants to hear about it.” \n\nYeah. No.\n\nI’ve had to write articles about reroofing the Tacoma Dome, the importance of colon cleansing, the magical moment when you select just the right rubber grommit for your HVAC unit, and I’ve had to impersonate a pleasant bride-to-be writing about her bridesmaids.\n\nI’m picking on me, too, by the way.\n
What I will be talking about: Everyone who comes to your blog post should somehow convert. That’s the perfect world. And you can write to make them do that. I’m not talking about deception, or selling, or anything else. I’m talking about writing that makes the reader want to read the next thing you write, at a minimum.\n\n
This is the cycle.\n
\n
\n
No one cares about you. They care about them.\n
Readers on the web are more distracted, less attentive and less willing to stop and actually read the words on the page than a preschooler who just ate 10 bags of M&Ms. You can beg, plead and bribe. You'll get nothing.\n
\n
\n
\n
\n
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\n
\n
Search engines use the title tag. On any given page, the title tag is the strongest signal of a page’s relevance. The words that come first in the title tag are the words for which you have the best chance of being found.\n\nAnd, search engines display the title tag at the top of the search ‘snippet’. So once you show up in the rankings, the title tag is the strongest signal to the reader that this is a page they do or do not want to read.\n\nIf you look at this example, the title is ‘Captain Crazy Pants and the Flight to Nowhere’ with some other stuff after it. If you search for ‘captain crazy pants’...\n\n\n
...this article is #3 out of 2 million competing pages, beating sites like YouTube. That is, in large part, because of the title tag. I only use the phrase ‘captain crazy pants’ one more time on the whole page.\n\nI know what you’re saying - that’s just some nonsense phrase, Ian. We’re real journalists. We don’t write about drunk Google engineers who harass innocent SEOs. This will never work for me. But nice job presenting the best possible case. Loser.\n
Feed readers use the title tag. A feed reader is a tool many people use to subscribe to a site’s latest stories. When I subscribe to a web site’s RSS feed, I get a list of titles from the latest stories. It’s convenient, because I can review the latest stories from many different sites, all in one place. Then I can decide which stories I want to read and click through to those sites. \n\nIf your headline becomes your title tag, and your title tag is the first thing someone sees in a feed reader, then your headline determines whether they’ll click through to your site.\n\nThat’s pretty important.\n\n
\n
\n
\n
\n
I couldn’t get permission to share specific client data, but we’ve tested great, clever but not fully descriptive headlines against fully descriptive headlines that aren’t as clever. The fully descriptive headline wins every time, without fail, usually by 2:1 or more.\n\nAnd that’s not just in search!!!! Clickthru from feed readers, Twitter ‘tweets’ and other ways of forwarding a story to others perform better, as well.\n\nNow, a couple of examples...\n
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It’ll be too hard to read.\nI won’t understand it.\nIt’ll be the same stuff I’m reading everywhere else.\nIt will be a waste of time.\n
\n
Be the one attorney everyone can understand, right off the bat.\n
Be the one attorney everyone can understand, right off the bat.\n
\n
\n
Don’t ignore them. But understand that search engines are awfully good at what they do. If you follow the blank sheet of paper rule you should be fine. So don’t “write for search engines.” Leave that to the professionals.\n
If you’re fully descriptive, the rest will take care of itself.\n
If you’re fully descriptive, the rest will take care of itself.\n
If you’re fully descriptive, the rest will take care of itself.\n
\n
If you’re fully descriptive, the rest will take care of itself.\n
If you’re fully descriptive, the rest will take care of itself.\n
If you’re fully descriptive, the rest will take care of itself.\n
If you’re fully descriptive, the rest will take care of itself.\n
If you’re fully descriptive, the rest will take care of itself.\n
If you’re fully descriptive, the rest will take care of itself.\n
If you’re fully descriptive, the rest will take care of itself.\n
\n
First, if you are responsible for formatting your images, compress them! Look at this image.\n
Then look at this one. It’s 18 kb. Almost 1/4 the size. It’ll load faster, which means more people will use it (because they don’t have to wait). It also means search engines are more likely to index the image.\n\nThis isn’t really part of fully descriptive or properly classified, but it aids in both. Slow loading images don’t perform as well in the rankings, and they sure don’t get as much love from your readers.\n
You also need to resize images in a photo editor, not using the height and width attribute.\n\nI see many cases where an image that’s 300 x 300 pixels (dots) on a page is actually a 600 x 600 pixel image that’s been scaled in the HTML itself.\n\nYour content management system probably lets you scale images by a % or specific dimensions when you insert them into your articles. But most of those systems don’t actually resize the image - they don’t take the original file, smush it down, and then save that as a new, smaller file. Instead, they wedge the original file into a smaller space by using some code: The height and width attributes of the IMG element. I won’t nerd out about it - you can look that up if you need to.\n\nWhen that happens, the page still delivers the humungous image file. Visiting browsers and search engines have to take the time to download an image that’s larger than necessary in both dimensions and file size. \n\nAnd, visiting search engines can’t properly classify the image. Google and other engines classify images by dimension. If you scale your images in the HTML code, you’re forcing the search engines to take an extra step. Why do that? Don’t!\n
And, make sure you fully describe the image in its ALT attribute.\n\nThe ALT attribute is literally the alternate description of an image. It’ll show up if, for whatever reason, a visiting browser doesn’t download the image. It’s also used by search engines to categorize images. \n\nRemember the blank sheet of paper test? If you write your ALT attribute on a blank sheet of paper and show it to a stranger, they should know what the image is about.\n
No one cares about you. They care about them.\n
Chain content. Make a blog post the entry point for the reader to get a whitepaper, or to sign up for a webinar, or to just subscribe to the blog. Then they get more content. You get the idea.\n
Be the one attorney everyone can understand, right off the bat.\n
Be the one attorney everyone can understand, right off the bat.\n
Those shares are more than just a happy feeling. They help your firm and your blog rank higher. This is an opportunity for you, cause your competitors aren’t doing it.\n
Be the one attorney everyone can understand, right off the bat.\n
Those shares are more than just a happy feeling. They help your firm and your blog rank higher. This is an opportunity for you, cause your competitors aren’t doing it.\n
Chain content. Make a blog post the entry point for the reader to get a whitepaper, or to sign up for a webinar, or to just subscribe to the blog. Then they get more content. You get the idea.\n
Chain content. Make a blog post the entry point for the reader to get a whitepaper, or to sign up for a webinar, or to just subscribe to the blog. Then they get more content. You get the idea.\n
Chain content. Make a blog post the entry point for the reader to get a whitepaper, or to sign up for a webinar, or to just subscribe to the blog. Then they get more content. You get the idea.\n