Writing for Online Readers

by Mark Bloom | Sep 10, 2018 | Content Provider

Or What Happens When You’re Reading Online

If you’re a Baby Boomer, part of the largest generation ever to inhabit the earth at one time, you can easily remember a time before the internet. You remember when “the media” included just newspapers and the three main television networks. You remember when a long-distance phone call meant an extra charge. You remember when all the reading you did was from a paper page printed in ink.

As a Boomer, you still may consider a smart phone a newfangled device, cool as it is. Touch screens still feel a little like science fiction. Yet most people are reading online these days. While many Boomers still get the daily paper delivered, that’s becoming a quaint custom instead of a necessity, sort of like it was to get milk delivered in days past.

A New Way of Reading

When words are on a page, and that page is bound either into a physical book or as part of a physical newspaper, your brain processes it as part of the whole. If you’ve read any literature, as most Boomers have, you know the challenges of Kafka or Dostoyevsky. Long-winded sentences, full-page paragraphs, chapters without end. They were wonderfully rewarding and terribly complex.

When you read online, however, your brain sees only the words on the screen. You tend to rush through a page to find what you’re seeking — the answer to a question or the pertinent point. Few read great literature on an electronic device, unless the device is specifically branded as a “reader.” As a result, reading online actually changes the brain chemistry.

The Consequences of Reading Online

A new book from Maryann Wolf, as summarized by Angela Chen, explains how reading everything online programs your brain to expect immediate payoffs and easy access. You can lose patience for reading in-depth. Try reading a 19th-Century classic after spending eight hours doing online research or even six hours on Facebook. You’ll discover how difficult it seems.

Is it changing the way we absorb information? Will it affect how we relate to each other as human beings? These are questions beyond the scope of this blog post and this writer. They are, however, interesting questions to ponder.

Writing for Reading Online

The writers and editors at Ray Access understand the differences between reading online and reading offline. We employ techniques that help people read online — that’s one of the things we do that sets us apart from our competition. Our tips to write for online readers include:

Write short, crisp sentences. You can’t write run-on sentences and expect readers to keep up. Keep sentences short, and let ideas flow more easily, one to the next.
Limit your vocabulary. In stories and novels, you can let your imagination soar. It’s important to find the exact right word, and if your readers don’t know what it means, you can assume they’ll look it up. Not true with online reading. Make everything understood the first time through, or your readers are liable to click away to another website.
Keep paragraphs short. A long paragraph is a big block of text on the digital screen. No matter how wonderfully written it may be, it looks daunting on a web page. And it does nothing to help readers find what they’re looking for. By keeping your paragraphs short, you provide white space that helps your readers’ eyes, too.
Place images to forward your ideas. Like short paragraphs, images — photographs, charts, infographics, whatever — break up the text and provide variety on the page. And if the image adds to the meaning of your content, so much the better.
Create short sections. Short sections of two to three paragraphs, broken up by bolded headings, increase white space. Formatting your page this way also aids readability and scanning. If online readers tend to scan, you make it easier for them to do that. Short sentences, short paragraphs and short sections introduced by illustrative headings all play important roles.
Use a large font, spaced appropriately. Baby Boomers, no matter how good their eyesight, appreciate a larger font size, generous kerning and significant leading.

These tips aid reading online for anyone, but especially if any part of your audience includes Baby Boomers. And Boomers, born between 1946 and 1964, are sure to comprise at least some of you target audience. If they don’t — they should. They’re the ones with the money today!

Ray Access is a content marketing firm that delivers targeted words to empower your business. Contact us about your specific project to receive a quote or discuss your needs. We write website copy, blog posts, e-newsletters and more. Everything we do is thoroughly researched, professionally edited and guaranteed original.

Agencies, Entrepreneurs and Their Websites

by Elle Ray | Sep 4, 2018 | Agency Advice

How Often Should You Update Your Website?

For some business owners, one shining moment of inspired insight leads to decades of discovery and innovation. Henry Ford is a good example. He figured out a way to make cars quickly while maintaining a certain quality. His inspiration for the assembly line continues to influence manufacturing today, although modern-day assembly lines rely more on robots than people, making the costs of goods even more affordable.

When you came upon the grand ideas that launched your company, you too most likely relied on less efficient means initially to produce your service or product. So like the introduction of robotics to the assembly line, there comes a time when you need to elevate your approach and update your website to make your company more efficient and profitable.

Age-Old Questions

Entrepreneurs like you or agencies like yours tend to be industry leaders. But you can’t be an expert in all things. If you’re a web designer, you may leave hosting for someone else. If you’re an SEO consultant, you may want to contract out the content you need. The same is true of your website.

Even if you’re the head of an agency that offers website development, you may not schedule time to work on your own site. So you may wonder if you should update it when you think of it or when industry experts recommend. It’s an investment to update your website, but one that can provide a good return if you time it right and do it properly.

Some decisions are best left to professionals who get big bucks for keeping up with the trends. Unless that’s your role, you need to focus on running your business. Call on an expert to let you know when it’s time to make a change and update your website.

Trend-Setting Web Developers

A website that looks old and outdated reveals a lot about your business — very much like what the state of your living room says about you when you’re trying to sell your house. If it’s dirty and cluttered, for example, buyers may assume you don’t take care of anything else in your home either. By the same token, if your website is old, potential clients may believe your product or service is out-of-date too.

If you haven’t taken the time to update your website in the last five years, stop now — because it’s long past due. Other clues that signal a need to update your site include:

Old technology. You don’t have to know back-end coding or web development to recognize outmoded protocols. If your pages are loading from a PDF or are relying on Flash, you need to throw out your fax machine and update your website already.
Confusing navigation. If visitors have difficulty finding what they’re looking for on your site, you’re losing sales. Frustrated visitors will leave for a site that’s easier to get the answers they seek with just a click.
Not SEO-optimized. Take advantage of search engine optimization strategies at every turn to keep your site updated and to help potential customers find you in their searches. Make sure your keywords are in your page titles and file names.
Slow loading times. Consider loading speed when updating your site. Visitors won’t wait more than three seconds for your page to load, especially when your competition is just a click away.
Not mobile-friendly. Every website today needs to display well on every device, from the largest computer screen to the smallest mobile phone. A site that doesn’t easily convert to mobile devices will chase away more then 50 percent of your potential customers.
Sloppy and unprofessional content. Your content can’t have errors. And your site needs to provide the right prices, correct store hours and the correct email and phone numbers. Your About page should represent the real you, as your company is today.
Old photos. Use recent photos and graphics of your team and your business location, if it’s important to you. Understand that flashy photos don’t sell what you do — they’re merely vehicles to guide visitors to your content. It’s your content that carries your message and calls to action.
No manageability. When you ask your web developer to update your website, make sure you can tweak it much as you desire. With today’s technology, don’t let a developer hold your site hostage; it’s just not necessary anymore.

Website Hosting Basics

by Mark Bloom | Aug 28, 2018 | Small Business Advice

The Hosting You Choose Affects Your Website

Learn website hosting basics to see through the haze

Your company website provides not only a virtual storefront or salesperson all day, every day, but it also sets the tone for your online presence. Sure, social media campaigns help spread your gospel and online ads promote your goods and services, but all those posts and clicks ideally link back to your website, where website hosting basics come into play.

Your website is the base of operations for your business on the internet. Optimizing your website means keeping it responsive, mobile-friendly, up-to-date and welcoming. The more accurately your site hits each of these targets, the more likely your company is to benefit from your online presence. The best websites actually make money for their companies by generating leads that turn into customers.

What Your Website Needs

Every website requires three things to operate efficiently:

Your unique content
A unique website domain name
A stable website host

Your content is how you connect to your visitors. It includes the words, the illustrations and the links that tie all your pages together. Without effective content, your website is nothing but an empty shell. You can either craft your content yourself or hire a team of writing professionals to write it.

Finding a domain name may be the easiest of the three steps, but it’s no less important. Imagine if Coca Cola had called its website carbonatedsugar.com instead of coca-cola.com. It would likely have been much less effective. A domain name can make the difference between memorable and forgettable.

Finally, for website hosting basics, a website host is the company that houses your website files and makes them available to everyone on the internet. You can spend thousands of dollars on designing and developing your website, but if you opt to go with the absolute least expensive host, you’re limiting how effective your website can be.

The Skinny on Website Hosting Basics

To get the best deal and the best results from your website hosting company, it helps to know what to look for. The features that matter most depend on your specific needs, but common things to inquire about include:

Price, usually per month or per year. You may even get a discount by paying annually. Find out what’s included for that price. Some companies charge extra for each request!
Platform-readiness. If you’re building a WordPress site, for example, make sure the host supports that platform without any hidden fees. That’s one of the big website hosting basics.
Uptime support. How responsive will they be to your requests or to emergencies? You may not need 24/7 support, but then again, if your website is your business, any downtime can cost you money.
Speed. Some hosts cram as many of their smaller clients as possible onto a single server. Your website stays up, but its load speed slows way down due to the load. A slow website doesn’t encourage visitors to remain on your site. No matter how well designed your site is, if it’s slow, it’s not going to be effective generating customers.
Security. Does your host offer secure sockets layer (SSL) security? That puts the “s” after the “http” and adds a layer of security that Google for one now expects. Your host should also do more to protect your data, like protection against hackers.
Backup and recovery. Find out how frequently they back up their systems, including your website. Ask if they can restore your whole website or even a single file from a previous version.
Storage space. Some hosts limit the amount of space you can use on their servers. It may seem like a large amount when you’re starting out with a six-page website, but as you blog and add pages and images, you may need more and more space. Make sure you won’t have to pay extra.

All Website Hosting Is Not the Same

Website hosting basics include learning how each company differs. When you know what to ask, you not only get the best deal, you get the best service. It’s your business. Make sure you get:

The fastest servers
The most up-to-date software
Lots of space on the server
No competition or sharing for server processing
Servers that don’t crash
Backup servers to ensure your website is always online
Protection from hackers
Prompt response to queries

The Importance of Editing

by Elle Ray | Aug 21, 2018 | Editing

Get Your Message Right Before You Send It Out

It’s true that the eye often sees what it wants to see, despite evidence to the contrary. Voters read into campaign promises that they’ll end up with a better society if they elect one politician over another. Lonely singles see the perfect mate in a loose collection of bad habits with a pretty face. And writers see a Pulitzer Prize in every word they put on paper.

The importance of editing can't be understated

As it turns out more often than not, none of the above scenarios turn out very well. In fact, when you don’t rely on a second pair of eyes — or detailed scrutiny and background checks — the results can be disastrous.

Who You Gonna Call?

Let’s avoid further pontifications about love and politics. Like religion, they’re topics ripe for meddling or preaching instead of instructing. Rather, we’ll stick to our first-hand knowledge about the importance of editing for clear communication. That’s where our experience lies, after all.

In the past, we’ve written about how to become an editor (see parts one, two and three) and what goes into the secret sauce of editing. But when it comes to the importance of editing for getting your true intentions across to your readers, certain aspects of the art and science cannot be overstated.

You Said What?

In face-to-face communications, how you say something plays a bigger role in messaging than what words you actually use. For example, imagine someone approaching you:

Shouting in anger: “How long is that going to take?”
Softly, with a smile: “How long is that going to take?”

While the verbiage is exactly the same, both encounters end up portraying very different meanings. So too can the tone of your writing convey completely different messages. In writing, however, when you don’t have the luxury of bringing your other senses into the conversation, the differences are often more subtle. Consider these variations and how they strike you:

“Getting a facelift is a big expense.”
“Getting a facelift is a big investment.”
“Getting a facelift taps your resources to change your life.”

Each sentence is saying basically the same thing — that it costs a lot of money to get a facelift. But each has a different style. And while you may think this kind of language is just a marketing ploy that you learn in advertising school, think again. You’ve likely seen how punctuation can change a simple call to action: “Let’s eat, Grandma!” or “Let’s eat Grandma!” Make this mistake once and you’ll come to appreciate the importance of editing.

When Edits Matter Most

Maybe you don’t worry about the importance of editing. Perhaps you may believe that your audience understands your intentions. You share your message — on your website, in your blog posts, through employee and customer newsletters, in emails and letters.

The importance of editing shows up in the results of your writing

But you may not realize how many people lose trust in you — and unsubscribe, delete or even block — when you miss an important mark. Sometimes, mistakes seem minor: an inappropriate exclamation point, a misspelled name or even the wrong verb. Sometimes, mistakes or missteps in tone and style can be so unremarkable that readers don’t even recognize why they’re turned off. But they are.

Accept the Importance of Editing

To reach your business’s audience, you need to accept that a second pair of eyes — preferably professionally-trained eyes like those of Ray Access editors — can help you shape your message so that it’s understood. Editing is more than proofreading. The words you choose matter. And editing makes sure you use the most effective words. Ray Access edits at half price.

Say what you mean and mean what you say. But let your editor check it out before you hit Send, before you click Publish and before you go to press. You’ll be so glad you did. Just like the politician who has to backtrack and the lover who doesn’t show up for the wedding, forgiveness sometimes comes too late. You have to live with the fallout. You’ve not only lost a sale, you’ve actively turned people against you.

What’s the importance of editing? You may as well ask what’s the importance of communication. Why have a website, write blog posts or send newsletters and emails when you aren’t sure you’re getting your message right? Get it right the first time — because that’s often the only chance you get.

The Difference Between a Web Page and a Landing Page

by Mark Bloom | Aug 14, 2018 | Content Provider

Why Writing Landing Pages Is Inherently Harder

Given that a search engine can theoretically serve up any properly keyworded page for the right query, how can there be a difference between a web page and a landing page? Isn’t every page a landing page, since anyone can land on any page at almost any time? Theoretically, yes. Practically, no. If you’re confused, you’ve come to the right place and asked the right question.

Who can tell the difference between a web page and a landing page

Before you read any further, let’s define the terms. Learning the difference between a web page and a landing page requires that you be able to tell the two types of pages apart. Here are working definitions:

Web pages, according to the TechTerms dictionary, are the documents that make up the World Wide Web. They’re written in HTML (hypertext markup language), PHP, Perl, ASP or JSP. Your internet browser translates the document’s code into what you see on your screen. Every web page needs one or more files stored on a host computer, reached through internet protocols.
Landing pages, per Hubspot, are standalone web pages, created specifically for a marketing or advertising campaign, that let you capture visitor information and attempt to convert that visitor into a future customer. When an online ad delivers a curious visitor to a targeted landing page, the page calls the visitor to act — usually to purchase a product or a service.

Simple, Right?

Simply put, all landing pages are web pages, but not all web pages are landing pages. But when writing a page, the difference between a web page and a landing page is much more complex. Web pages can be about almost anything. Their purpose can be to:

Inform
Entertain
Persuade
Sell
Fundraise
Pontificate
Rant

The only purpose of a landing page is to coerce a visitor into action. That’s it. So, the real difference between a web page and a landing page is one of intent. Not every landing page wants to sell you something, but every landing page wants you to take another step toward a goal.

Writing Website Pages

The web pages on your business website (or your clients’ sites) each have a specific goal, based on the page. Web pages may provide office hours and contact information, share your company’s competitive advantages, detail the benefits of your services or products and even identify the type of customers you serve.

Ray Access has written about the techniques for writing specific web pages earlier, and you can catch up on some of our advice here:

Know the difference between a web page and a landing page before writing

Writing Landing Pages

Landing pages, on the other hand, may have to do everything a website needs to do — connect with the visitor, build trust and explain the benefits of working with you — on a single page that also persuades the visitor to act. That’s a hefty order and a lot of responsibility for one page. That’s why there are so many poorly constructed and ultimately unsuccessful landing pages online.

Most landing pages, however, have one inherent advantage that other website pages don’t have, and you’re encouraged not to overlook this difference between a web page and a landing page. When you’re writing a landing page, you’re writing to people who already have an interest in the company’s products or services. They did a targeted search or clicked on an advertisement to get there.

Learning the Difference Between a Web Page and a Landing Page

Anyone can write a web page. All you need are a domain, a host and a rudimentary knowledge of HTML. You may need something to write about, but even a vague opinion may be enough to get you started.

Writing a landing page takes skill. Marketing is an inexact art and science. Different experts offer different advice when it comes to writing landing pages vs. writing web pages. Ray Access has its own advice, based on experience for ourselves and for our clients. Your results may vary, but here are our best practices for writing landing page content:

Length doesn’t matter, but focus does. Each landing page can have just one focus. (But keep it reasonably short.)
The content has to be scannable, powerful and enticing. This is rhetorical writing, writing to persuade.
Social proof — testimonials of real, existing customers, complete with photos — helps visitors overcome their doubts.
The right call to action — a briefly worded phrase that encourages the visitor to act — makes all the difference. Cut to the heart of the matter. What do your visitors want the most?
Your contact form shouldn’t be too onerous. Ask just for the necessary information, so it’s as short as possible, but no shorter.
Remove all other links from the page. That means a landing page should have no menus, no sidebar, no extraneous content at all. Its entire focus is to get the visitor to act.

You can learn the difference between a web page and a landing page, but learning how to write for each one takes practice and guidance. An ineffective landing page is a waste of bandwidth. A successful landing page pays for itself in no time. If you’re still struggling with the difference between a web page and a landing page, contact Ray Access for expert content, no matter what your purpose.

Kick It Up a Notch

by Elle Ray | Aug 7, 2018 | Small Business Advice

5 Steps to Take When Your Enthusiasm Wanes

If you’re like many small business owners, you were full of enthusiasm and spirited motivation when you first started your business. If you weren’t, it never would have taken off, much less soared into the stratosphere — or however high you’ve managed to push it so far.

Small business owners: how high is your launch?

The more clients you added, the more stable your company became, the more excited you got about your initial investment of time and money. Small business owners are nothing if not dreamers and inspiring leaders. Everyone either envies your success … or wants to join your team.

Risk vs. Reward

Small business owners share a number of characteristics. Among the most common traits, they:

Love the thrill of risk-taking
Are always full of new ideas
Possess a strong need for challenges
Get a kick from beating the odds
Are fiercely independent
Bore easily and need stimulation

Depending on how you look at it, these common traits can be positive or negative. Risk-taking gives you a big shot of adrenaline, for example, which can be addicting. You may end up seeking out those risks, which can lead to rash decisions. But if small business owners were afraid of the unknown, no new businesses would ever get started!

You may value your independence, but often that impedes your desire to ask for help. So, while new ideas and innovations are prized qualities because they lead to discovery and foster growth, these same qualities can cause you to make hasty, imprudent decisions. And so a virtue becomes a vice that hurts your business.

Keeping Yourself in Check

An effective tenet for all small business owners is to get in the habit of keeping a watchful eye on your emotions and your thinking. In other words, objectively watch your own inner workings as closely as you watch your bank statement and your employees.

“Physician, heal thyself” is not a mantra designed strictly for doctors. In fact, it aids anyone, no matter what you do for a living. When you pay attention to your thinking, you shape your future. As the great philosopher Anonymous once said:

Watch your thoughts for they become your words.
Watch your words for they become your actions.
Watch your actions for they become your habits.
Watch your habits for they become your character.

All your actions first begin in your mind. Think it and make it so. Small business owners are acutely aware of this mental phenomenon — you know that your business, your inventions or your innovations first came from a tiny seed planted in your subconscious. Knowing this, it should be easier to accept that the end of your business — whether it’s your imminent demise or your successful transition — also comes first from your thoughts.

The Choices Are Yours

So what are small business owners to do when the thrill is gone? To whom do you turn when your latest new ideas are threatening to blow off the top of your head if you don’t act on them? Where do you go when you just need another challenge or you’re bored?

Get ideas for small business owners here!

Like the many small business owners who’ve found themselves in this situation in the past, one of your choices is to scrap the whole enchilada and start over. But that option typically leads to regrets rather than continued success. Consider these five more effective approaches to scratching your itch:

Start a hobby. After years of devoting all your time and energy to your business, look to other enjoyable pursuits to challenge yourself and provide unpaid suitable risks. For example, you can try whitewater rafting, learning to fly a plane or taking up yoga.
Take on a second job. Once your business is running smoothly, you may be able to step back, an inch at a time, until your daily input is no longer as vital as it once was. Follow your bliss to another income-producing gig, such as writing a book, teaching or creating a new app.
Sell the business. Getting your company ready for a sale takes time. Talk to a business broker for tips about how to prepare, explore markets and find the highest bidder. The whole process of selling your business will be enough of a rush to keep your adrenaline up for a while longer.
Expand your current line. Promote some of your best workers to management while you pursue other avenues of products or services you might offer. It may feel like you’re starting a brand new business, but without all the stress that small business owners take on to feed the need for something new and exciting.
Find new markets. In the same vein as the above tip, work within the existing structure that you worked so hard to create. Take a trip overseas to look for new clients. Open an office in another city. Franchise your idea and spawn a new generation of entrepreneurs.

The Definition of Fake News

by Mark Bloom | Jul 31, 2018 | Communication

A Nonpolitical Look at Language and Learning

You can learn to recognize fake news

Fake news is apparently everywhere. On television. In print. Online. You can’t help but trip over it every day, no matter where you get your news. It has invaded our culture and perverted our political system.

At Ray Access, we’re not interested in writing about politics, but we are passionate about language. So, these questions kept popping up: What is fake news, really? How do you define it? According to the Cambridge Dictionary, fake news is:

“False stories that appear to be news, spread on the internet or using other media, usually created to influence political views.”

In other words, fake news is propaganda, which the same dictionary defines this way:

“Information or ideas that are spread by an organized group or government to influence people’s opinions, especially by not giving all the facts or by secretly emphasizing only one way of looking at the facts.”

Definitions, Please

The reason the term fake news has caught on — or gone viral, as the saying goes — is that it’s succinct and catchy. It’s just two common words, but two words that until recently were never joined together. Everyone, even a child, understands what fake means. And most adults realize that news is more than an acronym for North, East, West and South. So, let’s examine each word for its meaning:

Fake. Not the real thing, an imposter or substitute. Margarine is fake butter. Naugahyde is fake leather. Cubic zirconia is a fake diamond. Of course, these examples can be proven fake fairly easily.
News. Information published or delivered as meaningful and relevant. The weather is news, although you could successfully argue that tomorrow’s weather is mere speculation. Sports scores are news, as is current traffic and this week’s lottery numbers. News is, by definition, a report of past or current facts.

Putting the Ache in Fake News

When considering the term fake news, based on the definitions above, you may think it contains facts that aren’t real. But real news is a reporting of something that’s already happened. The games are over, and the scores are in. No one disputes that. The stock market rose or fell by a certain percentage. It’s the same number regardless where you look. Doesn’t that make it real?

The issue that the term fake news raises — which is both brilliant and chilling — is not the reporting of facts, but the interpretation of those facts. Is it fake news to declare that the stock market rose or fell because a popular sports team won or lost? Suddenly, the cause-and-effect logic of reality skips a beat, and anything seems not only possible, but probable.

fake news: one plus one is three

What’s in a Report?

Fake news also plays on people’s base fears that the media or the government can’t be trusted. If you buy a dozen eggs, and one turns out to be bad, you may not want to try the other 11. If you visit a distant city that seems just like your hometown, suddenly every city is the same, and it doesn’t matter where you live. Similarly, if you pick out one quote from a newscast that is proven false, you no longer believe anything on that channel.

Additionally, while the definition of fake has stayed relatively stable over the years, the term news has morphed again and again. Today, celebrity gossip is delivered as news. News isn’t just what a person said, which is all that actually is real, but what he meant by it, which is pure speculation. Today’s news has a spin, and it may be classified as fake if it spins away from the direction you lean.

Stopping Fake News

The simplest way to stop fake news is to question the term itself. When a report is labelled with that phrase, ignore the words and ask questions to determine what about it is fake and what about it is news. You may learn that it’s fake, but it’s not really news, as this article defines it. You may learn that it’s not fake and it’s not even news. Whatever you learn, you’ll have learned more than if you had simply accepted the label.

The more complex way to stop news that’s fake is not by shutting down newspapers or censuring speech. There may always be lies, just as there may always be poverty, crime or taxes. The way to ultimately stop fake news is not to shut the mouth that speaks, but to change the eye that sees and the ear that hears. Learn to discern facts from speculation. Learn to be wary until facts emerge.

A Transferable Skill

What does this topic have to do with a small business that writes website content and blog posts? Why write about fake news at all? It’s simple, really: media literacy is a transferrable skill. Media literacy is the ability to comprehend what a news report is really saying. If you can learn to tell real news from fake news, you’ve become not just a better citizen, but a smarter consumer as well.

Media literacy is a skill not many people cultivate today, but it’s a skill that benefits you every day, especially online. When you’ve read as many websites as the team at Ray Access has, you get a sense of what’s real and what’s fake. Is a promise genuine or an attempt to sell you something? When you can determine the answer to that, you won’t need anyone else telling you what’s real and what’s fake news.

The Difference Between a Blog and a Web Page

by Elle Ray | Jul 24, 2018 | Content Provider

What You Need to Know When Website Writing

Most people understand the distinctions between a novel and a biography. They know how a newspaper article and a love letter differ. They can tell a business memo from a shopping list. But few can offer up a definition that explains the difference between a blog and a web page.

Trying to figure out the difference between a blog and a web page

While you may not be able to tell the difference between a blog and a web page, you instinctively know it when you see it, even if you can’t put your finger on what makes each stand out. Don’t feel bad; some professional content writers have a difficult time explaining the difference between a blog and a web page. But the difference has broad implications.

What’s on Your Website?

Almost every business has a website today. And most forward-thinking companies have a blog on their sites. But every website also has other pages, where the business introduces itself, explains its products or services and states its case.

All websites are evergreen, meaning they have no expiration date. They need to be just as relevant in two years as they are today. As a result, the content of most business websites is static. It doesn’t change often because once it’s up, it’s working. Why change anything?

Why a Blog?

Blogs are different. An active blog gets a new article every week — or at the minimum, every month. Blog posts always include a date so readers can reference them appropriately. They’re presented in the context of a specific time.

One difference between a blog and a web page is timeliness

Blogs are perfect for time-sensitive material, which is another difference between a blog and a web page. For instance, your blog can announce:

Trending styles or shifts in attitude
Industry updates
Relevant insights and information that jive with the news
Annual, seasonal or dated events

Consider Search Engines

Search engine optimization (SEO) drives online traffic to your website. Search engines, like the behemoth Google, reward website pages with long-form content — 800 to 1,000 words minimum. Web pages should be authoritative, sharing information about your business and industry. Don’t get too creative when writing a web page.

Blog posts can be as short as 350 words, but often fall in the 500-word range. That’s one more difference between a blog and a web page. Blogs also can provide long-form content (like this one) when the topic calls for it, but they’re generally easy to read. While they’re meant to be informative, they may be entertaining. Another difference between a blog and a web page is that blogs need a great lead-in to draw readers.

Blogs Attract; Web Pages Inform

People search the internet for two reasons (other than to be entertained):

To find information
To buy something

If you’ve answered your visitors’ questions clearly, succinctly and completely, they’ll want to know who you are and what you do. That impulse leads them to your website pages. They may not be ready to buy anything right away, but they will remember you. When they’re ready to purchase what you sell, they’ll be back.

A good blog makes your readers return

Differences in Tone and Style

Blog posts are articles about a single topic. They may have links to other pages on your site and other authoritative websites. Website pages, on the other hand, contain many calls to action. They’re written more like a news article with the important information at the top. They’re geared to inform and inspire contact. To learn the difference between a blog and a web page, consider:

Blogs don’t send a marketing vibe. Blogs are:
- Good reads
- Interesting
- Useful
- Regular additions to your website content
- Great to post on your social channels
- Provocative, creating discussion
- Platforms to offer your knowledge and passion
Website pages are:
- More formal
- To the point
- Transactional
- Descriptive
- Explanatory
- Informative

Blogs Are Uniquely Yours; Websites Cover Everything

When you know the difference between a blog and web page, you have a clear and definitive path to follow when you sit down to write. Your opening sentence in a blog post may be challenging or questioning, whereas the first line of a web page needs to answer the title.

For instance, let’s say you’re an herbalist. The first paragraph of your weekly blog post may start out like this: “You’ve tried everything to rid yourself of that nasty headache, only to have it return an hour later. You don’t have to suffer in silence or keep taking harmful medications; consider instead the many herbs that have been used for centuries to cure headaches.”

You wouldn’t start a web page like that. Your home page might start with: “Herbs provide a natural source of spices for your dinner table and remedies for your medicine cabinet.” Subsequent pages can go into detail about specific herbs, natural treatments and your background as an herbalist. Each page offers a link to a contact page for more information.

Capitalize on the Difference Between a Blog and a Web Page

Blog posts focus on one topic, trend or title. Website pages feature your company, services and products. Don’t confuse the two. Learn more by reading previous Ray Access blog posts about:

Also, get website content tips and ideas for making your web pages pop. Most of all, keep in mind the difference between a blog and a web page to get the best results. You need both to reap benefits from your online marketing campaigns!

Blog Consistently for Best Results

by Mark Bloom | Jul 17, 2018 | Blog Writing

A Business Blogger Has to Write Every Week

This blog post is the 225th published on this website. As a business blogger, Ray Access has been blogging every week — with few interruptions — since the first blog post went live back on August 28, 2012 (nearly six years ago!). For 225 times, we’ve found something to write about. And every week, we wrote something we felt was worth sharing with other writers, entrepreneurs and website developers.

A business blogger writes consistently

The point isn’t to toot our own horn, although 225 blog posts is something to celebrate. The point is to stress that the key to a successful website is a consistent blog. And for almost the whole time we’ve been blogging for ourselves, we’ve also ably performed as a business blogger for our clients (see some of our examples). They understand the value of consistent blogging.

Consistency Draws Attention

Just as with social media, you develop name recognition — the first step in the sales process — with consistent postings. If you’re on social media once a month, no one will remember you. But if you’re there every day, your audience eventually recognizes your name.

The same is true for business blogging. If you publish a blog post once a month or even less frequently than that, no one will know or care who you are. You’d have to get lucky enough to write a viral article, which is very, very difficult to do. But if you blog — and promote your work — every week, week in and week out, people will come to recognize you and your business. They may even look forward to your words.

Quality Always Counts

But if you’re publishing useless advice or tips that everyone already knows, your readers will come to recognize your name and learn to stay away. Even if you publish consistently, you’ll be building a reputation, but one you won’t want. A business blogger has to add value to the online conversation with every post.

Part of the puzzle is knowing your audience. Only then can you write about topics of interest. Only then can you deliver insight and value to your community. No one online has time to wade through boring preambles or irrelevant facts. If you can write well about your business or industry, you can make a name for yourself, a reputation that attracts an audience. Writing quality always matters.

A business blogger aims for better quality

How to Be a Business Blogger

Ray Access has been blogging for long enough to have picked up some tips to share with you. To blog consistently for six years, you need several tools beyond a website platform:

Develop business blogging ideas. Coming up with a new topic every week can be a challenge. Ray Access has the advantage of a superb partnership that shares this burden equally. We also use the two-headed approach to brainstorm blog topics for our clients. You either have to devote time to it or call in a professional.

Use a clear or entertaining voice. How you relate to your audience helps you stand out from the crowd. If you’re consistently clear and thorough, that makes you a dependable source. If you’re funny or entertaining, that makes you worth a visit. Whichever voice you choose, be consistent.

Learn how to tell a good story. All good nonfiction writing has to inform. While that’s true with every type of writing, it’s especially true with business blogging. A business blog has to engage its readers and hold them until the end. That’s easier to do when you have a story to unfold.

Promote your blog wherever you can. A business blogger has to reach out to his audience. Bring your blog post to them. Make it easy to find your words. When you take the time to promote your blog, you widen your audience and attract new visitors. In fact, that should be the goal of your blog.

Be consistent. You don’t get to 225 blog posts without being consistent. You don’t get to be successful without consistency. Rain or shine, whether you’re feeling inspired or not, make your blog a priority, and it will catapult you and your company into an enviable online entity.

If you can’t do blog writing, hire someone who can — someone like, you guessed it, the business blogger pros at Ray Access.

The Different Uses — and Forms — of Professional Bios

by Elle Ray | Jul 9, 2018 | Writing

What You Should Include When You Write a Bio

What should you write in your bio?

In business and journalism lingo, a bio is short for biography. One of the reasons it’s short is because it’s not a book, nor is it a resume or a lengthy history. At the same time, when you write a bio, there are a number of different iterations you may consider.

After all, your life has many twists, turns and triumphs, and not all are appropriate for every venue or reader. The parts to share in your bio depend on the audience for whom you’re writing it. The length depends on your purpose. The form it takes depends on who/what/where/why/when/how factors:

Who you expect to read your words
What your bio accompanies (e.g., a book, report or presentation)
Where you plan on publishing your bio
Why you need a bio
When it needs to be ready
How detailed it needs to be

Write a Bio for Your Website

Today, a website is a common platform to place your bio. A bio on a website typically goes under a link entitled Meet Our Team or About Us (see ours). You may even include your bio on your homepage if it seems appropriate. This strategy not only identifies you to your visitors, it also provides extra copy to make the page search-engine friendly by creating long-form content.

When you write a bio for your website, the length and style should be driven by:

The tone you take on the rest of your site
The industry that you’re representing
Your target market or audience

For example, if you’re a physician, you don’t want to write a bio with information about how you play with your cat on weekends, although it may be prudent to include information about your fitness activities. On the other hand, if you’re a local plumber, your customers may want to know that you’re pet-friendly, but they won’t care so much if you’re in shape or not.

The length of a bio on your website shouldn’t be longer than 500 words, or you risk losing the interest — and respect — of your readers. Don’t bore them with irrelevant details. Shoot for a balance of education, experience, interests and passions. Remember that consumers and companies do business with people and firms that they like, so make yourself likeable.

Write a Bio to Find Work

Another common place where you may need to write a bio for is on your social media platforms, particularly on LinkedIn. Your LinkedIn bio is known as your profile (see ours), but its purpose is the same. It’s still a bio, a shorted version of your biography or life story, just geared to business and business experience.

And it can reflect a little more personality than your resume normally does. Job-hunting requires taking advantage of every possible avenue to show off your skills, attitude, background and goals. As on your resume, you can’t lie, but you can make yourself look as positive as possible. Have you enjoyed some success? Tout it! Accomplished something special? Brag on it!

Write a bio that's illuminating and positive

You can use the bio that you create for your social media in a cover letter that gets attached to your resume when applying for a job. If it’s well done, it speaks to your strengths, which is what an employer wants to see. Add a salutation, a signature and few more salient lines, and it’s good to go!

Write a Bio for a Press Release

Probably the shortest form of self-promotion and introduction goes into a press release. Press releases, which Ray Access writes, never should be longer than one page. And that includes everything! You want to hit the highlights so that media types can get just enough information to whet their appetites. You want them to be hungry for more.

Remember your audience when sending out a press release. News organizations, magazine writers, funders and successful bloggers take mere seconds to read a press release, so yours needs to be just that — a condensed version of your Best Of. At a minimum, it may contain only your title, contact information and one anecdote or feature.

Write a Bio for Other Reasons

Maybe you need a bio to tag onto an application for a board seat. Perhaps your alumni organization wants one for the next reunion magazine. Whatever the reason, writing about yourself is one of the most difficult tasks imaginable for some people. Writing bios never should be so overwhelming that the process shuts you down.

You can always call on Ray Access to write a bio for all the various places you may need one, even if the need arises for something unique. We have the advantage of having former journalists on staff. Journalists are adept at honing down to the truth.

If you hire a writer for your bio, she may need to interview you to really get a feel for your personality — especially if you need a bio that expresses your true self. If that’s too much of a bother, you can complete a short questionnaire, which is good enough if you just need a bio to match the others in your firm.

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