Every business owner would love to sit at home and watch their business grow, turn profits, and expand without having to invest 60+ hours a week to do so. Is there a way to sell your business without investing excessive amounts of time and money as a business owner? There is. But it takes good marketing sense and an understanding of the tools available to you.
One of the most important ways to sell your business is through its materials. The website you run, the direct mail pieces you create, the information you present to customers on sales calls or other interactions. Researching and managing those campaigns, and managing them well, is extremely important. But let’s not forget the tools themselves – the materials. Writing is a huge part of selling your business without having to work, because the written word sells your product or service on your behalf when you can’t be there to sell it yourself. Words are a 24/7, no holidays and no days off way of selling your business without incurring the costs of a new staff member. Can you really make a sales call to every potential client? And even if there weren’t geographical and time limitations, could you really afford to hire a massive force of sales personnel to reach each and every one of the potential conversions in your market? No, you can’t. Nobody can. There are too many people, too many businesses, and too many markets in this world. No single person or group of people can reach all of them by using manpower alone. This is why good writing is so important. Hire your business people, hire your campaign managers, hire your product developers. But then find a talented writer. Talented writers know how to create materials that can convert prospects into customers without much work on your part. The customers begin coming to you out of intrigue and interest, instead of you having to try to constantly go and find them. Selling your business without having to work? Yes, it can be done. Whatever your business size, constantly evaluate the effectiveness of your materials. If you are not having the conversion rates you want, give a contractor a trial run on a small project. See what they can do. You might just find you can save money and grow your business. And that is a good return on your investment. Need help growing your business or nonprofit organization? Browse my website to learn about how I can help you with your particular needs.
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The challenge with traditional user manuals is that they can often become jumbled and hard to understand. And in an effort to fix this issue, writers can try to employ what I call "look over here" techniques to minimize the wordiness and simplify the content. I have found this approach to be extremely ineffective most of the time.
Why? Because user manuals are not meant to be flipped through 10 times for one task. That is what online help is for. So how can we create a good user manual? Well, we do so by dividing the content up and presenting it in a self-contained manner. In this way, ALL of the information necessary to perform that task is present in that section of content. Take this basic scenario of a sample page from a user manual, and see if you can tell what's wrong with it: Logging into the application 1. Open the Start Menu. If you do not know how to access the Start Menu, see page 5. 2. Locate Application A, and double click to open it. For more information about how to do this, see page 2. If you do not see the program listed, go to page 6 for troubleshooting. 3. On the login screen, enter your user name. For more information about where to get your user name, see page 3. 4. Enter your password. If you have forgotten your password or are not sure what your password is, see page 4. 5. Click OK to log in. Does it look concise and pretty? Yes. Does it appear easy to scan? Sure. But is it effective? No. Why? In the scenario above, we have turned five simple steps into an extremely complex, page-flipping process whereby the user has to go from page to page in order to perform a simple task. The workflow looks something like this: page 1, page 5, page 1, page 2 or page 6, page 1, page 3, page 1, page 4, page 1. Why put the user through this? And imagine if the pages weren't close together or there were 20 steps in the process? Let's say the manual was 200 pages long, and the user had to flip from page 25, to page 72, to page 4, to page 169, etc... The best way to format a user manual is to create self-contained modules that have all of the necessary information within the module. Page flipping should be minimized. However you must be careful to format the text so that it still maintains its readability. How do we do this? By using bullets and notes. My rule of thumb is: have your main action in the step, and any supplementary instructions in bullets or a note. That way, if the user doesn't need the extra help, he/she can move forward quickly and not be encumbered by excess information. Want to read more? View my expanded blog post here, where I go more in depth on the topic. Need help growing your business or nonprofit organization? Browse my website to learn about how I can help you with your particular needs. So you own a business, or you are growing a business, or you are launching a new product or service. While at first glance entities like sales personnel and product quality (hey, a lot of people successfully sell very poor quality products!) can seem much more important than writing, writing is actually very large part of what drives new business, sells existing products and services, and promotes continued interest in what you offer. How so? Well let me explain.
Most likely you arrived at this website because of something I wrote. I speak directly to a handful of prospects everyday, but not enough to cover all of the traffic my website receives. And not enough to attract the amount of service inquiries and quote requests I get. Think about the websites you visited yesterday, or this year. How did you get there? Maybe you searched for something. Or you saw something. Or the way something was described or written intrigued you enough to want to learn more. Maybe it was on Google. Maybe it was on a social networking site. Maybe it was sent to you by a friend. But you saw words. Think about the ads on TV. What makes those ads compelling…or not? Are we watching silent films? Or are we hearing people speak, and watching text come across the screen, and looking at branding and taglines? Words. Words are powerful. Words are used in every aspect of business, from print and web ads, to radio and television campaigns, to business procedures and contract negotiations. The words that sell are words that took thought and talent to create. Have you taken a look at how your words are performing? How much are you willing to invest in your business communications? Find talent in this area. It’s the number one way to continue to grow your business when you can’t be there. Need help growing your business or nonprofit organization? Browse my website to learn about how I can help you with your particular needs. If you are feeling overwhelmed and trying to figure out where to start with marketing your business, here is a quick five step guide to get you going:
Need help growing your business or nonprofit organization? Browse my website to learn about how I can help you with your particular needs. So you created a website. Great! But do you know how it's performing? Do you know which content is effective, and which isn't? Do you know where people are entering your site and where they are leaving?
This is where a program like Google Analytics comes in. How do you use Google Analytics? Well, you insert a bit of code into your website code, and Google extracts all kinds of useful information from your site to help you continue to monitor and improve its performance. What kind of information, you ask? Well it tells you things like:
Need help growing your business or nonprofit organization? Browse my website to learn about how I can help you with your particular needs. I just came across a posting on a freelance site. It said something along the lines of, "I want a new website designed, I want it to be number 1 on Google, and my business opens in a month." Hmmm....is that really possible? No, honestly it's not. Unless you want to pay to get your listing at the top (via Adwords), which can become costly if your website is ineffective. So how can you get your site to number one without having to pay extra?
Getting listed on the first page of a Google search is not a fast or easy process. Not only do you have to first get your site listed so that it will even show up in search engines, but you have to establish a presence and start driving traffic to it. Moving up in the Google rankings has to do with how you create your website copy, how you create your URLs, what types of information you contain in your site, and how people find you. If your site is stagnant and rarely accessed, it will start falling into obscurity and will never appear in searches. If your site is active and thriving, eventually you will move up in the rankings and hopefully make it into that first page of listings. The key is to get your site up and running, monitor traffic using a program like Google Analytics, and make sure it is functioning effectively. You need to monitor how people are finding you, where they are moving around in your site, and whether or not they are leaving your site immediately (this is what we talk about with the term "bounce rate"). There are a few ways to help drive traffic to a brand new site. The best way is to focus on inbound marketing - or, having people find you by linking to your site from other places. How can you do this effectively? Do some research on your own. Or hire a marketing consultant or freelancer to help you. A knowledgeable freelancer who understands how to write website copy can help you find the best ways to drive traffic to your site, and eventually get you closer to that coveted #1 slot. Need help growing your business or nonprofit organization? Browse my website to learn about how I can help you with your particular needs. There are thousands upon thousands of writers out there. The rates they charge are anywhere from dirt cheap to really expensive. How can you find a good freelance writer? And what should you look for?
The first thing is a polished website. If the website is not appealing, think about the skills of the person who created it. In general a writer will have created their own website, or at least the copy within it. Is it visually appealing? Does it catch you and draw you in? Is it informative and persuasive? If not...well, don't expect the work they do for you to be of any higher quality. A writer's website is their calling card, and their marketing tool. It should be an example of their best work. If it doesn't look impressive to you, move on. Because your potential clients may react similarly to your materials/website if they are looking at work from that particular writer. Another important thing to look for is breadth of knowledge. Can this writer only write articles? Can they only write marketing copy? Can they only write blogs? But why would you care, anyway, if all you want is a blog writer? Well...a good writer can write for any medium and any audience. Specializing in something is great, being limited to one or two areas is not. Why? Because writers need to be able to get into the minds of their intended audience. And to craft whatever type of writing is necessary in order to meet the client's objectives. If the writer you are considering can only write in one area, will they really be able to effectively sell YOUR particular needs? And what if you find that your business grows, and you want to expand to other areas? Do you really want to have to go out and find another writer all over again, because your current one cannot deliver? A final thing to look for is professionalism and confidentiality. Does the writer willingly give out client samples to anyone and everyone who asks for them? Are there links to proprietary information on their website? Or is the writer careful about maintaining disclosure agreements and guarding their clients' key business information? You want a writer you can trust. If they don't portray trust and professionalism in their interactions and work samples, move on to the next one. And always remember: you get what you pay for. A cheap writer is like immediate gratification - the low up front cost is nice, but the long-term effects on your business end up costing you more. Need help growing your business or nonprofit organization? Browse my website to learn about how I can help you with your particular needs. A lot of businesses think they can cut corners in the writing department. They try to outsource it to a cheap provider overseas, delegate it to a current employee, or look for quick help through a freelancing site that they feel will provide the most content for the cheapest dollar amount.
But rarely in this world do good things come cheaply. Most often, you have to work for what you get. And the cliche "you get what you pay for" just about always rings true in this line of work. The problem with thinking you can cut corners on the writing is that even if you have paid top dollar for a snazzy look and feel, the artwork and design can only go so far in selling your image. Great writing and great design go hand in hand. You can't have one without the other. If your potential customer is impressed by the design, but then appalled by the written content, you have instantly lost a sale and potentially any referrals that may have come afterward. Have you made the best investment possible to grow your business? Think carefully about why you should pay more for quality writing. What kind of ROI do you want? There are plenty of aspiring writers who would be willing to do work at extremely low rates. But think about how you want to represent your business. The image you portray through your materials is like investing in the clothing you wear to an interview. Are you going to show up in shorts and flip flops, or in a polished suit that really shines? Which option will provide a better return on investment? Get their attention. Make your business shine. Hire a great writer. Need help growing your business or nonprofit organization? Browse my website to learn about how I can help you with your particular needs. The traditional form of help documentation is a hard copy manual that is printed out, nicely bound, and functional. It serves as a reference manual – skim the TOC or index, find the page, and follow the directions step by step. The problem with a user manual format, in my opinion, is that it is very linear.
The challenge with these types of documents? User manuals can often become jumbled and hard to understand. And in an effort to fix this issue, writers can try to employ what I call “look over here” techniques to minimize the wordiness and simplify the content. I have found this approach to be extremely ineffective most of the time. Why? Because user manuals are not set up to be flipped through 10 times for one task. That is what online help is for (see an upcoming blog post for more information about that format). As a writer trying to create a (good) user manual, it is better to divide your content up and present it in a self-contained manner. In this way, ALL of the information necessary to perform that task would be present in that section of content. Example: Bad formatting Take this basic scenario of sample pages from a user manual, and see what’s wrong with it: Page 1 Logging into the application 1. Open the Start Menu. If you do not know how to access the Start Menu, see page 5. 2. Locate Application A, and double click to open it. For more information about how to do this, see page 2. If you do not see the program listed, go to page 6 for troubleshooting. 3. On the login screen, enter your user name. For more information about where to get your user name, see page 3. 4. Enter your password. If you have forgotten your password or are not sure what your password is, see page 4. 5. Click OK to log in. Does it look concise and pretty? Yes. Does it appear easy to scan? Sure. But is it effective? No. Let's take a look at the other pages the user has to visit in order to complete those concise steps on page one. Page 2 Locating the application Open the Start Menu and select the application from the list. If you do not see the program listed, go to page 6 for troubleshooting. If you do not know how to access the Start Menu, see page 5. Page 3 Getting your user name Your user name is sent to you by your administrator. If you have not received your user name, contact your administrator for assistance. Page 4 Your user password Your user password is given to you by your administrator, and you can change it through the Preferences page. Refer to your administrator email for the password, or contact your administrator for more assistance. Page 5 Accessing the Start Menu The Start Menu is located at the bottom left corner of the screen in your Windows application. Click it to access the Start Menu. Page 6 Cannot locate the application If you have installed the application but do not see it in the Start Menu, contact Customer Support for assistance. Big problems In the scenario above, we have turned five simple steps into an extremely complex, page-flipping process whereby the user has to go from page to page in order to perform a simple task. The workflow looks something like this: page 1, page 5, page 1, page 2 or page 6, page 1, page 3, page 1, page 4, page 1. Why put the user through this? And imagine if the pages weren’t close together or there were 20 steps in the process? Let’s say the manual was 200 pages long, and the user had to flip from page 25, to page 72, to page 4, to page 169, etc... Example: Good formatting Let’s create user manual text that is effective. Here is a better version of the above information: Page 1 Logging into the application 1. Open the Start Menu, which is located at the bottom left corner of the screen in your Windows application. 2. Locate Application A, and double click to open it. Note: If you have installed the application but do not see it in the Start Menu, contact Customer Support for assistance. 3. On the login screen, enter your user name. Note: Your user name is sent to you by your administrator. If you have not received your user name, contact your administrator for assistance. 4. Enter your password. Note: Your user password is given to you by your administrator, and you can change it through the Preferences page. If you have forgotten your password or aren’t sure what your password is, refer to your administrator email for the password, or contact your administrator for more assistance 5. Click OK to log in. In this scenario, we have included all the necessary information in a single page. The user doesn’t have to flip around, and they can complete the process much more quickly and easily. But what about the other pages? Ideally, we would likely still have the other pages present (pages 2-6). The key is that we do not require the user to visit those pages as part of this particular process. The user would go directly to those pages for specific problems, and would find those pages via the TOC or index. And what about readability? Is it more wordy? Yes, a bit. But that doesn't have to be a bad thing, if you know how to format your text. What’s the best way to help readability? Use notes and bullets to make it easier to scan. My rule of thumb is: have your main action in the step, and any supplementary instructions in bullets or a note. That way, if the user doesn’t need the extra help, he/she can move forward quickly and not be encumbered by excess information. Look back at the example and you will see how easy it still is to scan, even with the excess information. Part four in the "Common Grammar Mistakes" series. Last time we talked about their vs. there vs. they're. Here, we discuss another common grammar mishap.
It’s vs. Its Finding the correct usage for these two words can be challenging to some writers. But it need not be. The difference between “it’s” and “its” is that one is a contraction and one indicates possession. It’s is short for “it is” or “it has”. You would use “it’s” in the following scenarios:
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