Welcome to the fourth installment of “The Benefits of Professional Content Writing.” In this piece, I’m going to talk about one of life’s most important skills: creating great first impressions. In life, we have the luxury of exercising some amount of control over our first impressions. We can extend a handshake, flash a smile and offer a pleasant greeting. On the Internet, however, we have to accept one simple fact:
Every impression could be a first impression.
Because of the way websites are structured, it’s difficult to know exactly where your visitors will land. There’s always a good chance they’ll start out on your landing page, but what if they don’t? There’s a high probability that — if they want to contact you — they’ll head to your contact page, but what if they don’t? If they’re looking to know more about you, they could even start their journey on the About Us page…
But what if they don’t?!
This is one of the central, driving questions behind every professional writer’s approach to creating content. What if the sentence they are creating right now — hidden on the Services page, five paragraphs in, the second of four sentences — is the first thing a visitor sees? What if that sentence is the only opportunity they have to really capture and engage your visitors? If there is one understanding that separates the good content writers from the bad, it is the following:
Every sentence has the ability to welcome or deny your visitors.
There may be no second chances. Potential clients that you deny may not come back for a second visit. To the professional content writer, the answer is simple: every sentence must be welcoming. A good piece of content will illuminate, embrace and compel its reader to continue reading. A good piece of content receives a visitor into the house, hands them a beverage and invites them to take a look around.
Because there are no throwaway sentences — or even words — to professional content writers, the task of filling an entire web page with content can become burdensome. This is typically where DIY writers find themselves struggling. It’s easy to move on and say, “I’ll come back and polish this later,” or “It doesn’t have to be perfect, it just needs to get the information out there.” The key thing to remember, though, is this:
Putting the information out there and getting people to take it are two entirely different things.
Your website isn’t a textbook or an informational pamphlet. It’s usually not something that circumstances will force a person to read. It may sound simple, but in order to be read, you have to be readable. If you want your visitors to stick around, to browse your site and lose themselves in its pages, you have to grab them from the start. Not your start but their start. And where is that?
Anywhere and everywhere!
Ultimately, the services offered by a professional content writer boil down to many things, however, chief amongst them is the promise of a good first impression. This promise is delivered by virtue of their refusal to compromise, their insistence upon crafting effective copy and, more than anything, their dedication to captivating your audience and inviting them into your world.
Tune in next time where we’ll wrap it all up and discuss calls to action!
