The basic principles of good writing apply online, but because your audience’s attention is limited (and often divided), it is best to keep it simple and tailor your language to your audience.
Tone
The tone of your content should be consistent with the brand you are writing for. Brands will often have full tone-of-voice documentation – if they don’t, read some of the brand material to get a feel for the company’s style of communication. Compare the difference in tone in the examples below.
Example of Tone A: Investec
Since Investec was founded in South Africa in 1974, it has expanded through a combination of substantial organic growth and a series of strategic acquisitions in South Africa, the United Kingdom and other geographies.
Investec’s strategic goals are motivated by the desire to develop an efficient and integrated business on an international scale through the active pursuit of clearly established core competencies in the group’s principal business areas (Investec, 2013).
Example of Tone B: Nando’s
500 000 years ago Civilisation as we know it was born. People have started to cook with fire and the idea that food is more than just nourishment. A community spirit is emerging as people gather together around a flame, talking, sharing and laughing, in wait for their meal.
The Mozambique community is flourishing. Life here revolves around early evening feasts about the fire. Everyone joins together to share good food and their heroic stories of the day! This is where the famous story of the discovery of Peri-Peri began. It is said that a young spirited boy went exploring one day and returned late that night with the African Bird’s Eye Chilli. It had been shown to
him by the African people who named it Pili-Pili (Nandos, 2010).
Active voice
Grammatically speaking, people expect characters to execute actions that have an impact on objects or other characters.
For example: The girl ate a chocolate.
• The girl is the subject.
• Eating is the action
• The chocolate is the object that is affected by the action
This is known as the active voice. Unfortunately, writers often use the passive voice. This turns the object into the subject. For example: The chocolate was eaten by the girl. The human brain automatically translates this into the format that it expects. According to Price and Price, this adds 25% to the time required to understand a sentence (Price & Price, 2002).
When writing for the Web, it is better to use the active voice.
Neologisms and buzzwords
Sometimes the World Wide Web is referred to as the Wild Wild Web as it is an environment where anything goes. The ever-growing numbers of social media participants, for example, habitually play fast and loose with grammar.
With new services and products being developed daily, it can feel as if the list of new words (and their uses) is growing faster than you can keep up with. Dictionaries and reference guides celebrate this regularly with a ‘word of the year’, usually one that has been in heavy use on the Internet for the three years preceding its entry into a dictionary.
For example, in 2005, ‘podcast’ was voted word of the year by the editors of the New Oxford American dictionary (Oxford University Press, n.d.), while ‘blog’ had its day in 2004 when it was declared word of the year by Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary (Merriam-Webster, Inc., n.d.). The word ‘blog’ was coined in 1999 (Wikipedia, 2012).
Online services can quickly become verbs in everyday language, so we talk of ‘Googling something’ instead of ‘searching on Google’, and of ‘Facebooking someone’.
Always remember you are writing for your users – and talk in the same way as they talk. If your content is aimed at cutting-edge early adopters, then pepper it with the latest buzzwords. If your audience does not know the difference between Mozilla Firefox and Internet Explorer, then be cautious when using a word that did not exist the day before.
Features and benefits
Writing compelling copy means conveying to readers why they should perform an action. While features may seem all-important, you need to communicate the benefits of the features to the user.
• Feature: a prominent aspect of a product or service that can provide benefit to users. It describes what the product does.
• Benefit: the positive outcome for a user that a feature provides. It can be the emotional component of what the user gets out of the product.
For example, consider a home entertainment system. Features could include surround sound and a large flat-screen television. The benefit is a cinema-quality experience in your own home.
Features and benefits are very different. Features are important to the company that provides the product or service. Benefits are important to those who decide to use the product or service.
Persuasive writing makes use of features, benefits and active verbs to create appealing messages for your personas:
Enjoy cinema-quality movie nights in your own home with a surround-sound home entertainment system.
Tone
The tone of your content should be consistent with the brand you are writing for. Brands will often have full tone-of-voice documentation – if they don’t, read some of the brand material to get a feel for the company’s style of communication. Compare the difference in tone in the examples below.
Example of Tone A: Investec
Since Investec was founded in South Africa in 1974, it has expanded through a combination of substantial organic growth and a series of strategic acquisitions in South Africa, the United Kingdom and other geographies.
Investec’s strategic goals are motivated by the desire to develop an efficient and integrated business on an international scale through the active pursuit of clearly established core competencies in the group’s principal business areas (Investec, 2013).
Example of Tone B: Nando’s
500 000 years ago Civilisation as we know it was born. People have started to cook with fire and the idea that food is more than just nourishment. A community spirit is emerging as people gather together around a flame, talking, sharing and laughing, in wait for their meal.
The Mozambique community is flourishing. Life here revolves around early evening feasts about the fire. Everyone joins together to share good food and their heroic stories of the day! This is where the famous story of the discovery of Peri-Peri began. It is said that a young spirited boy went exploring one day and returned late that night with the African Bird’s Eye Chilli. It had been shown to
him by the African people who named it Pili-Pili (Nandos, 2010).
Active voice
Grammatically speaking, people expect characters to execute actions that have an impact on objects or other characters.
For example: The girl ate a chocolate.
• The girl is the subject.
• Eating is the action
• The chocolate is the object that is affected by the action
This is known as the active voice. Unfortunately, writers often use the passive voice. This turns the object into the subject. For example: The chocolate was eaten by the girl. The human brain automatically translates this into the format that it expects. According to Price and Price, this adds 25% to the time required to understand a sentence (Price & Price, 2002).
When writing for the Web, it is better to use the active voice.
Neologisms and buzzwords
Sometimes the World Wide Web is referred to as the Wild Wild Web as it is an environment where anything goes. The ever-growing numbers of social media participants, for example, habitually play fast and loose with grammar.
With new services and products being developed daily, it can feel as if the list of new words (and their uses) is growing faster than you can keep up with. Dictionaries and reference guides celebrate this regularly with a ‘word of the year’, usually one that has been in heavy use on the Internet for the three years preceding its entry into a dictionary.
For example, in 2005, ‘podcast’ was voted word of the year by the editors of the New Oxford American dictionary (Oxford University Press, n.d.), while ‘blog’ had its day in 2004 when it was declared word of the year by Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary (Merriam-Webster, Inc., n.d.). The word ‘blog’ was coined in 1999 (Wikipedia, 2012).
Online services can quickly become verbs in everyday language, so we talk of ‘Googling something’ instead of ‘searching on Google’, and of ‘Facebooking someone’.
Always remember you are writing for your users – and talk in the same way as they talk. If your content is aimed at cutting-edge early adopters, then pepper it with the latest buzzwords. If your audience does not know the difference between Mozilla Firefox and Internet Explorer, then be cautious when using a word that did not exist the day before.
Features and benefits
Writing compelling copy means conveying to readers why they should perform an action. While features may seem all-important, you need to communicate the benefits of the features to the user.
• Feature: a prominent aspect of a product or service that can provide benefit to users. It describes what the product does.
• Benefit: the positive outcome for a user that a feature provides. It can be the emotional component of what the user gets out of the product.
For example, consider a home entertainment system. Features could include surround sound and a large flat-screen television. The benefit is a cinema-quality experience in your own home.
Features and benefits are very different. Features are important to the company that provides the product or service. Benefits are important to those who decide to use the product or service.
Persuasive writing makes use of features, benefits and active verbs to create appealing messages for your personas:
Enjoy cinema-quality movie nights in your own home with a surround-sound home entertainment system.
