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| How It Works Online Copywriting |
How It Works Online Copywriting
When writing for the web, it does not mean that traditional approaches to copywriting need to be ditched. The foundations remain. The first step you need to take is to research your audience, understand their needs and write copy that solves their problems while engaging with them.
Knowing your audience will guide you in determining the topics that they want, and help you to organise information in a way that makes sense to your audience. It will direct the tone of your copy, as well as the content.
However, the Internet has lead to an audience of one (Price and Price, 2002). What does this mean? While your audience is not literally one person (and if it is, thank your mum for reading your web site, but spend some time on growing your readership), it is not a vast, vaguely defined crowd. Instead, online we have many niche audiences who are used to being addressed as individuals. Online, many of the individuals in our audience also exchange information via blogs, forums and other forms of social media.
Holly Buchanan of Future Now (www.futurenowinc.com) sums this up with three questions you should ask:
Who is my audience?
What actions do I want them to take?
What information do they need in order to feel confident taking action?
Knowing your audience will guide you in determining the topics that they want, and help you to organise information in a way that makes sense to your audience. It will direct the tone of your copy, as well as the content.
However, the Internet has lead to an audience of one (Price and Price, 2002). What does this mean? While your audience is not literally one person (and if it is, thank your mum for reading your web site, but spend some time on growing your readership), it is not a vast, vaguely defined crowd. Instead, online we have many niche audiences who are used to being addressed as individuals. Online, many of the individuals in our audience also exchange information via blogs, forums and other forms of social media.
Holly Buchanan of Future Now (www.futurenowinc.com) sums this up with three questions you should ask:
Who is my audience?
What actions do I want them to take?
What information do they need in order to feel confident taking action?
