Email may have supplanted snail mail for direct marketing, but the challenge remains the same: how to keep recipients from trashing your message before they read it. Here are a few best practices that may help your next campaign.
In my last blog I contended that there’s no such thing as an internet writing style. In response, a reader wondered if I “had purposely neglected to discuss the importance of taking effective print media copywriting and optimizing it for the search engines [with keywords] … an immensely important step …” I didn’t address using keywords for search-engine optimization (SEO) because I feel they are matter of content, so talking about them wouldn’t belong in a blog about style.
However, I absolutely agree that including keywords is immensely important in web copy. As a writer I hate to say it, but including the most effective keywords in your website copy is a much greater success factor than superb style—and unlike style, there’s little if any art involved. It’s a highly scientific endeavor.
Ever since the advent of the internet, “experts” have been spewing out guidelines for the new writing style this interactive medium demands. Don’t believe a word of it.
If you want your messaging to be effective, AIDA should be music to your ears.
With the advent of new media, and more recently Web 2.0, some believed that advertising as we knew it was dead. Certainly, the communication dynamic changed profoundly. Instead of a one-way conversation—seller talking at buyer—a two-way dialog became possible. read more