by Elle Ray | May 28, 2013 | Writing
Tips from Professionals for Website Writing
Make it short.
Make it hot.
Make it memorable.
The new breed of reader doesn’t go in for long, drawn-out sentences. They don’t want complicated explanations. They want answers, plain and simple.
It’s possible many readers never really enjoyed having to decipher their information before digesting it. It’s possible readers tolerated digressive writing only with the mantra: “The next sentence will have the answers I seek, the next sentence, the next…”
On the other hand, maybe poor writing and lack of clarity is one of the driving reasons for low levels of literacy in America and worldwide. Until the World Wide Web, most information-based writing was boring, long-winded, and academic. In other words, reading was a chore.
Reading Online
Modern Internet readers often seem to be in a hurry. They have twitchy fingers just itching to swipe or click to the next page. If you want to get a message across to readers of your web page, you’ve got to connect with them in the first few seconds — or you will risk losing them, permanently. There’s always another website waiting to give them what they want.
Internet readers are not going to wait for your perfectly set-up payoff. They want information, and they want it now. Successful journalists often make the best web writers because they’ve learned to give readers answers at the top of each article. Bury the lead, as they say in the newspaper business, and you lose your readers.
An article with a good lead will hook readers, drawing them in to read, and learn, more. Craft a good lead, and your readers stick around to discover your more in-depth information. At Ray Access, we know how to write for the web. We can make your website lead the pack.
But Wait; There’s More
While many people rely on the Internet to research topics, others use it like a phone book. They too want it now, and they don’t want to have to search for it. Make it easy on them — provide your phone number, email address, or location right up front.
You don’t have to sacrifice quality for efficiency. At Ray Access, we know how to incorporate the important information like your address and hours of operation into the first page and still hook your audience to they keep them reading. The writing has to be so good, they’ll want to know more. The page has to be so well organized, it’ll be obvious where to find everything.
So give your readers what they want, whether it’s your mission statement or your physical address.
They’ll stay.
They’ll look around.
They’ll learn something.
They’ll come back for more.
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.
by Mark Bloom | May 16, 2013 | Announcement
Ray Access Offers Something for Everyone…
Linda and Mark, the principles at Ray Access, have been refining their list of services recently, and two things became clear:
- It was time to spread the word about all the good things we do, and
- It was time to offer a discount on our most popular service: writing blog posts.
Sprinkling of Services
For the full list of our services, visit our page for businesses or for agencies, but let us share with you here what we love to do:
We can also come up with blog ideas for you if you’re stuck gazing at an empty page. We are really good at brainstorming and thinking outside the carton. We guarantee you will want to develop some of the titles and topics we send you. Or you could hire us to write them too!
For New Clients Only
Now is time for savings! Normally, four blog posts for your business normally cost about $300, depending on their length, but now Ray Access is offering those four blog posts for only $199. That’s better than a 33 percent discount.
What’s the catch? You have to be a new client, one we’ve never worked for before. If your business has a website, and assuming you have a blog or want to start one, you are eligible for our new client discount. Simply contact us through the website and tell us you want the four-blog special, and we’ll contact you to arrange everything. What could be easier?
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.
by Mark Bloom | May 10, 2013 | Editing
Write in Plain Language; It Helps Everyone
There is a movement gaining traction across America: writing in plain, understandable English. Plain language is, as William DuBay said, “a literary style that is easy to read because it matches the reading skill of the audience.”
Government agencies are adopting the tenets of plain language. Lawyers are hiring editors to “translate” their legalese into English that anyone with an eighth-grade education can understand. And more and more businesses are gradually coming around to the benefits of using plain English in their communications.
A New Wrinkle in Communications
In retrospect, it seems obvious that easily understood writing would help everyone — from those with a message to relay to those trying to read that message. The plain language movement’s goal is to make the written word easier to comprehend. Given that we are all inundated with messages throughout the day, making those messages clearer can make life simpler for many people.
Still, it has taken a surprisingly long time to get everyone to agree that documents should be written in plain English. Detail-oriented lawyers in private and public practice wanted foremost to close loopholes. Business writers assumed their audiences were highly educated. Training in clear communications did not exist.
The Movement Gains Ground
This is not a new phenomenon. Way back in 1972, President Richard Nixon issued a decree that the “Federal Register be written in layman’s terms.” The government — and future Presidents — have mostly continued to push for clearer and simpler written communications.
Like any grassroots democratic cause, the plain language movement has gradually gained momentum. People tired of the confusing status quo and asked for simpler content. They weren’t lazy; they needed to find meaning quickly so that they could make important decisions. Today, we can see the changes… in some places.
Writers still have work to do, but the benefits are becoming clearer as more research is done. For an introduction to plain language, check out the Plain Language Association InterNational (PLAIN) website. You can find cutting-edge information about and examples of plain language in the Wikipedia.
How This Affects You
Ray Access believes in plain language. We apply its principles in all the writing we do, matching our style to the reading skill of the intended audience, as Mr. DuBay recommends. We write for people, not search engines. Our writing is geared to attract more human eyes to your business, which can translate into more sales, greater visibility, and customer satisfaction.
In the process, search engines take note, too, which increases your website’s page rank. It’s truly a win-win scenario.
If you are ignoring your website, it’s likely ignoring you. Get the best value from your online assets. In plain English.
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.
by Elle Ray | Apr 16, 2013 | Editing
Grammar Matters — No Matter What You Write
Of course we believe that grammar is important; we’re writers, after all. But what if we loosened our standards:
Its time to talk to you about a day-to-day and week-to-week issues. And im not about to talk about the talk every one know does no good. Let me explains that now.
We could go overboard, too, thinking that everyone has a 16-year education:
Inferring the textual concept of proper grammar and punctuation, noun and verb agreement, correct spelling, and all the other tenets of the English language that make it a difficult, yet succinct form of communication among those who have a clear and concise message to deliver and require a medium that appropriately tackles the task at hand, you would think it would be performed accordingly.
Yikes. Please stop us.
The Problem Is Rampant
Since we’re writers, we read a lot. In our research, we have to peruse 100 or more websites a day, so we see it all the time. This kind of writing is rampant. You know it too if you’ve tried to find a quick recipe or picked up a newspaper lately. Sometimes, it’s impossible to get “just the facts.”
Given this dilemma, we’d like to share a bit of good news. There’s a movement afoot called “plain language” that aims to make government documents and legal papers easy to read and understand. But even they get bogged down in trying to look smart by using big words and long, drawn-out sentences. We know — we’ve edited some of their work.
Everyone Loses
One problem may arise from alluringly inexpensive writing services that contract “English language writers” overseas. But we fear most of the errors are due to being either lazy or cheap. Perhaps publishers don’t take the time to read their own copy before going live with it, or maybe they are too tight to pay someone to proofread for them.
As a result, everyone loses. The reader quickly moves on to another webpage or forces herself to read the copy over and over until she understands its meaning. It’s tedious work, and in most cases, unnecessary.
Don’t do that to your customers and your readers. Please stop.
Get Professional Help
Before you publish that article, that press release, or that webpage… contact Ray Access. We’re professionals. We not only do this for a living; it’s our passion as well, so you know we want to do it right the first time.
If you don’t think you can afford us, call for a free estimate. If you want to keep all your work in-house, at least read your copy out loud before you publish it. If you’re not sure, get a second opinion. Give it to a fourth grader to see if she gets it. Sleep on it and then see if it still makes sense in the morning.
Whatever you do, make sure your prose is clear and to the point before you publish it. If it’s wrong or long or poorly edited, it can damage your reputation once it’s published. It may cause your customers, clients or readers to go elsewhere, which is likely the exact opposite reason you wrote it.
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.
by Elle Ray | Mar 29, 2013 | Website Content
Spend Your Work Time Running Your Business
When you’re in the groove, doing what you do best, you feel energized. Everything seems to fall into place, and time passes so quickly that you barely notice. It’s why you got into business for yourself — to follow your passion, to turn your avocation into your vocation, and to follow your bliss.
Unfortunately, owning a business requires entrepreneurs to engage in all sorts of activities that have nothing to do with the core of the business. You have to market your products and services to let customers know you exist. You need to do the books, pay the bills, write your blog, send out press releases, find suitable employees, and manage your time.
A Smart Solution
So if you’re smart, you turn to outside contractors. Using a third party to do those things that you aren’t very good at anyway can be a wise investment. Hiring local professionals to use their expertise to solve your challenges also supports the local economy. It’s not only big corporations that create a trickle-down effect to the local economy; entrepreneurs like you also drive those economics.
According to the Small Business Administration, hiring an outside contractor can save you money in the long run, too. The projects that you don’t want to do actually take you longer to accomplish, and you could be much more productive in those hours, doing what you do best. Because you only pay outside contractors for the work they perform for you, you have no payroll or tax issues to worry about.
Added Benefits
In addition, the project is more likely to be successful because you’ve hired an expert to do it. We were so pleased this year to find a local accounting firm where we could just deliver our pile of receipts and return a few weeks later to sign the tax returns. We’ve all done taxes ourselves in the past, and while we did a good enough job, we learned that the time involved wasn’t worth it. In the hours it took to figure out all the codes on the various self-employment forms, we could earned twice as much money as it cost to hire the accountant.
At Ray Access, we’re writers. Our passion is writing and editing. It’s what we often do when we’re not even working. Our heads spin with ideas on topics to write about and angles to take them in. As writing professionals, we can save you time and money by writing your web content and your weekly blogs. Jot down all your notes, and we’ll put together a marketing strategy or business pitch you can present to your clients in readable plain language. It’s all part of what we do.
Since your time is money, spend it doing what you do best. Hire us to do what we do best. You follow your passion, and we follow ours. Everyone wins.
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.
by Mark Bloom | Mar 20, 2013 | Content Provider
How to Protect Your Business’ Good Name
Recently, we came across a blog post by Rich Gorman on Tamar Weinberg’s blog, and we thought it an apt topic to share with you. Ray Access is a content provider. As such, we encourage our clients to post new content on their websites no less frequently than every week. This influx of fresh, relevant content attracts visitors, establishes your authority, and (as a cool consequence) improves the page rank of your website.
So, we are involved in the world of SEO (search engine optimization) only in a tangential way. We don’t claim to be SEO experts, although we are involved in improving a website’s SEO through our work. We like to keep abreast of the industry, though, which means we do a lot of reading.
In Gorman’s article, he writes about what to do when your website or your company is fairly or unfairly given a poor online review. Just as your blog posts are always available and never go out of print, so a bad review is potentially always available. As Gorman says:
“A sterling reputation is worth its weight in gold — figuratively speaking, of course. That’s why businesses work for years, sometimes even decades, to earn the public’s trust, and to gain as much consumer goodwill as possible. In this Digital Age, however, all of that hard work can be undone in an instant. It just takes one bad review.”
So what can you do? Gorman frames the issue:
“The obvious question, then, is how you can defend yourself. It goes without saying that you can’t exactly coerce people into giving you positive reviews, and you can’t get people to stop leaving reviews altogether. A bad review could appear at any moment; there’s nothing you can do to prevent it, or to erase it. What you can do is ensure that it’s never seen by anyone.”
In other words, if you post content that floods the search engines, that comment is liable to end up on Page 4 of the search results, where almost no one will find it. That’s where we come in. Ray Access provides content — whether you need it fast to defend your company’s reputation or whether you are just starting to build your brand. A continual flow of useful content works for you on many levels.
Click here for the complete article or go to: www.techipedia.com/2012/bad-reviews/.
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.
