How To Write Well Online: Ebook

Ebook By Joe Williams
How to
Write Well
Online
digitalmarketinginstitute.com
1
Table of Contents
Why Online Writing is Different 4
Planning and Structure 6
Writing your Content 9
Editing your Content 11
Formatting your Content 14
Creating a Style Guide 16
Conclusion 18
EBOOK: HOW TO WRITE WELL ONLINE 2

How to Write Well, Online.
by Joe Williams
How do you write engaging content that will attract attention and turn
prospects into customers?
Whether you’re writing a quick Twitter update, an in-depth blog post,

or a crucial sales page on your site, you want to do it well. Maybe
you’re a copywriter, looking to brush up your skills with writing online.
Perhaps you’re an SEO, and you don’t really consider yourself a ‘writer’
– but it is actually bound to be a large part of your job.
In this guide, we’re going to go through what you need to know in order
to create great online content, from planning it out to formatting it
well for online consumption.

Why Online Writing is Different
If you’re used to business writing or academic writing, or even if
you’ve written for print (perhaps a journal article or a book chapter),
then you will have learned that writing for the online world is quite
different.
When people come to your website, they’re often not looking to read
every word.
They might be trying to find a specific piece of information – or they

might have clicked on a link to one of your blog posts from Twitter or
Facebook while idly browsing.
If they’re on a computer, they might well have multiple tabs open;

if they’re on a phone, they might be glancing at your website while
waiting for their coffee. Either way, they’re almost certainly distracted.
Your aim is not to get people to read every word. After all, would you
prefer that they slowly and carefully read your entire blog post … or
that they sign up to become a paying customer?

Your aim is to help readers get what they
need from your content.
That means writing in a way that makes it easy for them to quickly
scan the text and pick out the parts that are most relevant to them. Of
course, some readers may want to read every word – but many won’t.
Your website also needs to be found by the people who would

benefit from it. This means writing in a way that search engines can
easily understand (which is part of the process of Search Engine
Optimization, or SEO). The good news here is that lots of the things
that make for good online writing in general are also great for search
engines – so you don’t need to do anything unusual or write in a way
that would sound odd to readers.
We’re going to cover lots of specifics later, like how to choose the right
words and how to format your text for the online world, but before
we get into that, we’re going to look at a fundamental aspect of good
writing: structure.

Planning and Structure
Even if you’re writing something very short, like a 200-word blog post
or a 20-word tweet, it’s still important to plan your piece.
While you might not need to outline short individual pieces, you may
have an overall plan or pattern for your updates. For instance, you
might decide that on Facebook, you’ll have a schedule of updates like
this:
• Monday – link to your blog post for the week

• Tuesday – pose a question to your followers
• Wednesday – link to someone else’s blog post or resource
• Thursday – share an interesting fact about your business (“Did you
know…?’)
• Friday – funny cartoon or meme related to your business area
Planning benefits both you and your reader. By planning your writing,
you’ll never start with a blank page: instead, you’ll have at least a
rough idea of what you’re going to write.
Planning also benefits your reader because when you plan ahead, you
tend to create better-structured content. Your social media posts, blog
posts, and other content will be focused and to-the-point – without
any unnecessary digressions or omissions.

Planning is crucial when you’re working with other people. You might
need to run an outline past an editor to check they’re happy with your
ideas, or you might be commissioning content from freelancers or
guest bloggers who need a brief before they can start writing.
You may find that planning doesn’t come to you naturally. If that’s the
case, you might want to work from a template that you can use again
and again (and modify to suit your needs).

The Three Elements of Every Piece of Content
Almost all pieces of content – and certainly those longer than a

paragraph– should have these three elements:
• Introduction – Get the attention of your reader (or viewer) and set
out what’s to come
• Main body – the bulk of your content: the ideas or information
you’re sharing
• Conclusion – summing up and (ideally) suggesting a subsequent
conclusion for your reader
We’ll be looking at this in more detail, specifically as it applies to

blog posts, but you could use it for other types of written content too,
including longer social media update.

Structuring Blog Posts
There are lots of ways to structure your blog posts and we’re going to
take a look at two key options, the ‘classic’ post and the ‘list’ post:
The Classic Post

The `classic` blog post explores a particular idea or argument. It
should normally be divided into sections – a good example is What
is it Like to Work as a Digital Marketer in an Agency? which has these
subheadings:
• The benefits of working for a digital agency

• The key qualities of an agency-based digital marketer
• The dynamics of working at a digital agency
This type of post can be difficult to structure, because you might feel
that you have lots of information to share about a particular topic –
and no obvious order in which to place it.
It’s a good idea to come up with three to five key points you want
to make, or angles you want to explore, and use these as your
subheadings.
As with every blog post, you should have an introduction at the start
and a conclusion at the end.

The List Post
The ‘list’ post presents a numbered list of ideas, tips, mistakes, or
similar. This type of post is very popular with readers and with content
marketers, as it’s an easy format to produce and easy for readers to
scan. It can still lend itself to in-depth content, though: 10 Ways to
Turn Around Falling Website Traffic is a good example of
a list post with in-depth content.
With a list post, the main body of the post is the list (e.g. in this case,
the `10 ways` promised in the title). Each point in the list is normally
set out with a number, a subheading, and an explanation of the
particular point. This way, a reader can easily scroll down the
page to find a specific point they are looking for, or to see if the
article covers the topics they are interested in.
Again, you should have an introduction at the start of the list post
and a conclusion at the end.

Why Subheadings Matter
While you don’t have to use subheadings in order to have a well-

structured post, they’re a very helpful tool for busy readers.
Subheadings ’signpost’ the reader to key sections of your post.

They can act like a mini blog post title, creating interest and making
a clear promise about what the reader is going to gain from reading
that section of your content.
For readers who are skimming for information, subheadings

are easy to spot and take in.
They’re also helpful for readers who are going slowly, as they help
them to orient themselves within the post. If you’re reading a list
post, for instance, it’s particularly helpful to have the subheadings
numbered so that you know how far you’ve got and how much is left
to read – and so you can refer back to specific items within the post.
Subheadings should normally be in Header 2 format (if you have nested

subheadings beneath these, you can use Header 3). Search engines
will pay attention to Header 2 text, and it’s a good idea to use keywords
in your subheadings: that way, they’ll work well for search engines
but (just as importantly!) they’ll also help readers to quickly spot what
they’re looking for. However, do make sure the keywords you are using
are relevant to the content – avoid keyword stuffing.

Here are the subheadings from Belinda Weaver’s Copyblogger post 5
Practical Time Management Tips for the Chronically Time-Poor:
• “Ugh. Another post about time management?”

• “#1: Know your work zones”
• “#2: Be clear about your priorities”
• “#3: Create a time map”
• “#4: User calendar blocking to level up”
• “#5: Allow time to drift”
The first subheading moves from the introduction into the ‘why’
behind the post (and structurally, it’s often a very good plan to include
the ‘why’ before the ‘how’, because that way, you give your readers
a clear reason to read on). The next five subheadings are the five key
points on the list of time management tips.

Writing Your Content
Once you’ve outlined your content, it’s time to write it. With a good
outline in place, this is really just a case of filling in the gaps – so
hopefully you’ll find it easier to write now that your ideas are mapped
out in a structured way.
It can be tricky, though, to know exactly how to phrase things. Writing

for the online world can feel quite different from the sort of writing
you might do when sending internal company emails, or (on the other
end of the formality spectrum) when texting a friend.
One useful way to think about your writing is to make it

‘conversational’ – as if you’re having a friendly chat with the reader.
There are several easy ways you can do this:
• Use the words ‘I’ (and ‘me’, ‘mine’) and ‘you’ (and ‘your’, ‘yours’) in
your writing
• Use contractions, such as ‘don’t’ for ‘do not’ and ‘I’m’ for ‘I am’
• Avoid formal language
• Be open to a response
We’ll go through some examples of these:
Using ‘I’ and ‘You’

In some styles of writing (particularly academic writing), you might
be advised to avoid using words like ‘I’, and not to directly address the
reader. Online, however, it almost always makes sense to use ‘I’ and
‘you’ – because these make your writing more direct and accessible.

You can also use ‘we’ to align yourself with the reader and position
them as part of your community.
Here are some examples of ‘I’, ‘you’ and ‘we’ in use:
‘I’:
“When I blog, I know a single post or podcast is unlikely to have a

reader trusting me completely.”
(from How to Build Trust with Your Blog, Darren Rowse, ProBlogger)
‘You’:
“There’s a little growth hack that every ecommerce site should be

using. It’s the easiest hack… it doesn’t require money, you don’t need a
following, and it works instantly. But you know what? No one is using
it.”
(from One Simple Hack That’ll Boost Your Ecommerce Sales, Neil
Patel, NeilPatel.com)

‘We’:
“How have algorithm updates evolved over the past decade, and how
can we possibly keep tabs on all of them? Should we even try?”
(from How Often Does Google Update Its Algorithm?, Dr. Peter J.
Meyers, Moz.com)
Unless you’re writing a post that’s very much about your personal
experience (e.g. a case study of how you accomplished something),
it’s best to use ‘you’ more than ‘I’ in your post – that way, you’ll be
focusing on your reader.

Using Contractions
When you talk, you almost certainly say ‘don’t’ rather than ‘do not’,
and ‘I’m’ rather than ‘I am’ – at least some of the time.
In some formal types of writing, you might avoid contractions – but for
online content, it’s very normal and expected to use them. If you don’t,
your writing may seem stilted. With social media, too, contractions
help you to fit your message into a slightly shorter space – ‘do not’
takes up six characters, but ‘don’t’ is only five characters.
Some common words you can contract include:
• Do not = don’t
• It is = it’s (don’t confuse this with ‘its’, the possessive)
• Cannot = can’t
• I am = I’m
• I will = I’ll
• Are not = aren’t
• Shall not = shan’t
• Had not = hadn’t
• Will not = won’t

Here’s an example of the use of ‘it’s’ (twice) in a tweet by Copyblogger:
Of course, it sometimes makes more sense to spell words out in full –

you don’t have to use contractions every single time. If you want
to place emphasis on a word, for instance, you might write it out:
Make sure you check the box once you’ve read the terms and conditions.
Do not click the back button at this stage.

Avoiding Formal Language
It can be easy to slip into a quite formal or jargon-ridden way of
writing, especially if you’re creating static pages (like the About page
or Contact page) for your website.
While this is appropriate or even expected for some businesses –

customers would expect a certain degree of gravitas from a law firm,
for instance – for most companies, a friendly, informal style works
best. Here’s how formal versus informal language looks:
Formal:
Upon joining, you will receive a detailed dietary preferences

questionnaire to complete. This allows your personalized diet plan
to be tailored to your specific needs.
Informal:
When you join, we’ll ask you a bunch of questions about what you
like to eat. These let us make sure we’re giving you a diet plan that
suits you.

Note how formal language tends to use words that we wouldn’t normally
use in everyday speech, like ‘upon’ and ‘utilize’.
It can sound a bit jargon-y – perhaps in this instance, the company has
what they internally call a ‘dietary preferences questionnaire’, but that
doesn’t really mean anything to the potential customer.
Informal language is clear, direct, and straightforward. It uses the

sorts of phrases that people would use when talking to or writing to
a friend – in this example, ‘a bunch of’ is an informal way to say ‘a
number of’.
Using informal language tends to make it easier to incorporate

keywords, too. When people search the web, they’re often describing
things in a fairly informal way – so they might look for “better sleep
tips” rather than “best sleep practices”, for instance.
Be careful not to become too informal, like using slang terms people
might not understand, and ensure you still write correctly and error-
free.
Being Open to a Response

One of the best opportunities (and also one of the challenges) of the
online world is the amount of interaction it allows. When you put out
a piece of content – whether it’s a blog post, a tweet, a Facebook post,
and so on – it’s normal for people to respond.

One way to make your writing more conversational is to allow space
for that response. That might mean asking questions – particularly
at the end of your piece of content, but also perhaps at the start
and throughout. It also means you should make sure you’ve got
the resources in place to respond in a timely way so you can keep a
conversation going with your prospects and customers.
For instance, in a Facebook post, you might write something like this
to encourage responses:
Remember to back up your files… accidents happen! What tools do you

use to run backups? Let us know your favorites.
If you’re struggling to find the right tone, you might find it helps to
imagine that you’re writing to a friend. What sort of words would you
choose? How would you explain things?

Understanding and Using Calls to Action
As well as making your writing conversational and engaging, you want

the content you’re creating to perform well. You don’t simply want
people to read your words and move on – you want them to read and
then take some sort of action.
By including a ‘call to action’ at the end of your piece of content, you

can prompt readers to do something that will help them move toward
becoming a customer (or at least a useful lead) for you.
You might want to encourage your readers to:
• Sign up for a newsletter: (e.g. “Want our tips on getting a great night’s
sleep? Just pop your email address in the box below and you’ll receive
our free guide…”)
• Buy a product: (e.g. “Our latest T-shirt design is already selling out
fast! Check it out here.”)
• Contact you to find out more about a service: (e.g. “Want to know how
we could help with all your design needs? Fill in this form to schedule
a free no-obligation call…”)
• Read or view more content on your website: (e.g. “For more help
perfecting your golf swing, check out our video…”)
• Share your content: (e.g. “If you enjoyed this post, we’d love you to
share it on Facebook or Twitter.”)
• Leave a comment: (e.g. “What do you think? Pop a comment below to
share your ideas with us.”)

Your call to action should, ideally, follow on in a natural way from
the piece of content. For instance, if you want to encourage people to
check out your products or explore your services, it’s helpful if your
post is related to those in some way.
Editing Your Content

All content – however short – needs editing. Even a quick tweet should
be proofread for errors, unless you want to risk going viral because of
an unfortunate typo (typographic error, like spelling).
With longer pieces of content, like blog posts, it’s usually helpful to
edit in three separate passes, where you look at your draft material in
different ways:
• First pass: ‘big picture’ revision where you make any major changes
needed
• Second pass: detailed editing, where you focus on individual
sentences
• Third pass: proofreading, where you look for typos and errors
We’re going to go through some key things to look out for in each of
these areas in turn.

1: Big Picture Revision
At this stage of the editing process, you want to look at your piece as a
whole and consider whether you need to make any fairly big changes
(like cutting a whole section or adding in some new material).
It’s often very helpful to have a gap between the drafting of your
content and this phase of editing, so that you can come back to it with
fresh eyes. If you can let it ‘rest’ for a day or so, do that.
Once you’ve let it be for a bit, read through the whole post (or piece of
content) and look out for:
• Any tangents or digressions that aren’t really relevant – could they

become part of another piece instead?
• Anything that the reader may not understand – you might want to
include a short explanation, and/or a link to a piece of content that
covers this in more detail.

• Any paragraphs that don’t seem to be in the right order or don’t
flow well. Even if you planned your post carefully before starting,
you still may find that there’s a better way to present information.
Often it helps to give readers the ‘why’ before the ‘how’ of
something, for instance.
Some people find it helps to print out their draft post at this stage, or to
preview it on their blog (without publishing it) so they can see how it’ll
look to the reader.
2: Detailed Editing
Once you’re happy that the major building blocks of your post are all
in place, it’s time to move on and take a detailed look at each sentence.
(It’s important to do this after the big picture revision so that you
don’t end up spending a long time on sentences that you later cut out
altogether.)
At this stage, you’re looking out for things like:
• Overly long or complicated sentences – try breaking them up into

two or even three shorter sentences.
• Unclear phrasing – reword where necessary to clarify things.
• Jargon or technical terms – sometimes these are necessary and
appropriate, but often you can get rid of them. If you do need them,
it’s helpful to briefly explain their meanings.
• Repeated phrases or words – while repeating things for effect is
fine, unintentional repetition can sound odd. If you’ve used the
same word a lot, try varying it. (This doesn’t apply to very common
words, like ‘the’ or ‘and’.) Use a thesaurus to find an alternative
word if you can’t think of one.

• Clichés and well-worn phrases – it’s easy to include too many of
these when you’re drafting your piece, but they’re often best
avoided, especially if they’re making your writing quite wordy.
Using a lot of phrases like “at the end of the day” or “only time will
tell” can make your writing seem a bit bland or boring. You may not
need them at all, or you may be able to find a better way to express
your thoughts.
From an SEO perspective, this is also a good point to check that

you’ve used your primary keyword (and any secondary keywords)
in an appropriate way throughout your content, if you’re working on
a post or page for your website.
Remember, you definitely don’t need to go overboard here: there’s

no minimum ‘keyword density’ you should be aiming to reach.
3: Proofreading
Proofreading is the final stage of editing. At this point, you’re not
looking to make changes or improvements to your text – you’re just
looking out for any mistakes that need correcting.
These might be simple typos (where your fingers hit the wrong keys)
or words that you’ve misspelled because you’ve confused them (e.g.
‘their’, ‘they’re’, and ‘there’ are easily muddled, as are ‘affect’ and
‘effect’).
Spellcheckers will pick up many of these mistakes, but not all. If you
know that spelling isn’t your strong point, you might want to use an
app like Grammarly to try to catch more errors. (Don’t take every
single suggestion at face value, though, it doesn’t always get it right;
you should make sure the suggested change still makes sense to you.)

No tool can be a substitute for a human editor, though, and it’s still
important that you read through your work carefully. If you struggle to
spot your own errors (and most writers do), then try printing out your
post so you can go through it line by line, or read it aloud. Alternatively
have a colleague or friend read it through with fresh eyes.
Formatting Your Content

Because your words are going to be read on the screen, it’s important
to think about how they look physically. Here’s an example of the
difference that good formatting can make, using an excerpt from Tribe
SEO’s post Why We Rebranded (and the Lessons Learnt Along the
Way).
Without formatting:
Tim Ferris popularised the concept of the ‘minimum effective dose’:

the smallest dose that will produce a specific outcome. For example,
in his book The 4-Hour Work Week, he shares that “To boil water,
the minimum effective dose is 100 degrees Celsius at standard air
pressure. Boiled is boiled. Higher temperatures will not make it
“more boiled.” Higher temperatures just consume more resources
that could be used for something else more productive.”
So, by providing the minimum effective dose for SEO, each student
efficiently learns the essentials to get the desired result they
want. A copywriter gets their content read by people and search
engines alike. A web developer creates beautiful code that is search
engine friendly. A CEO can see that SEO is being done right and is
contributing to the growth of the business.
With formatting:
Tim Ferris popularised the concept of the ‘minimum effective dose’:

the smallest dose that will produce a specific outcome. For example,
in his book The 4-Hour Work Week, he shares that:
“To boil water, the minimum effective dose is 100 degrees Celsius
at standard air pressure. Boiled is boiled. Higher temperatures will
not make it “more boiled.” Higher temperatures just consume more
resources that could be used for something else more productive.”
So, by providing the minimum effective dose for SEO, each student
efficiently learns the essentials to get the desired result they want:
• A copywriter gets their content read by people and search engines

alike.
• A web developer creates beautiful code that is search engine
friendly.
• A CEO can see that SEO is being done right and is contributing to
the growth of the business.
The wording of the two examples is exactly the same. But the second
looks much more attractive. It uses a link (which is useful, but also
helps add visual interest), a blockquote, and a list of bullet points.
Some key formatting elements that you can use throughout different
types of written content include:
• Images
• Bullet points
• Short sentences and paragraphs
• Bold text
• Italic text
• Blockquotes
• Capital letters
• Links
• Hashtags
We’ll go through each of these in turn.

Using Images
Adding images to your content can help provide visual appeal. A well-
chosen image can be striking or funny – or it can offer ‘at a glance’
information (perhaps through a screenshot or graph).
Images help to create additional ‘white space’ on the page, making your
text look more attractive and readable.
Many blog themes require at least one featured image for each post in
order to display the posts correctly on the front page.
Social media sites have become increasingly image-focused, with clear

evidence that tweets and Facebook posts with images do better than
those without. (Instagram and Pinterest, of course, require an image in
order to create a post.)
You can create images yourself, using a tool like Canva, or you can use
free or paid stock photos from sites like Pixabay (free) or iStockPhoto
(paid). Try to avoid choosing photos that look too generic or bland,
and always ensure that you have permission to reproduce the images
– falling foul of copyright laws can prove very expensive for your
company.

Using Bullet Points
Bullet points are a great way to break up lists into easy-to-grasp

chunks. They add lots of extra white space to your post and space
things out to make them easy to read.
Whenever you have a list, consider using bullet points rather than placing
it within a sentence.
Bullet points are particularly useful on sales pages, where you can use
them to give a list of contents or benefits of a service or product. Many
companies like to get creative here with the icon used for the ‘bullet’
itself –check marks are popular, for instance.
Here are some examples of bullet points being used in the Digital
Marketing Institute’s course descriptions (as of August 2019):

Note the use of the different colored check marks to give three key
bullet points for each course.
On the course pages, bullet points are used to quickly list the topics
covered. They’re also used against each section of the course, with a
thin line connecting those larger bullets:

Using Short Sentences and Paragraphs
When you edited your content, you hopefully broke up any sentences
or paragraphs that were too long. The formatting stage, however, is a
good opportunity to revisit this.
Short paragraphs and short sentences are easier to read on the

screen than long blocks of text. Many people will also be browsing
your website on their phone or tablet – where even quite moderate
paragraphs can look excessively long due to the small amount of space
and the low number of words per line – so it’s important to take this
into consideration.
Using Bold Text
Bold text is a great way to pull out key points within your text. This
can be particularly helpful if readers are skimming: it lets them see the
most important points at a glance.
It’s possible to overuse bold text, though, and too much of it can make
your text look choppy as well as make the emphasis less effective. Try
to use it for whole sentences or long phrases, not for individual words
or short phrases, and be fairly sparing with it.
Using Italics
Italics can be used to emphasize a single word or short phrase; they’re

also a useful way to format text that you’re using as an example. You
may want to place quotes in italics if you’re placing them within a
sentence (rather than setting them in blockquote format in their own
paragraph).

As with bold text, overuse of italics can make your post or page look
rather choppy.
Using Blockquotes
When you’re quoting from someone else, it’s normal practice to place
their quote in its own indented paragraph – this is normally called
‘blockquote’ formatting on the web.
Different sites will have different styles set up for blockquotes. Here’s
an example, from ProBlogger’s post How Being a Good Listener Can
Help You Write Effective Sales Copy:
You can see that the quote (from Robert Bruce, who writes for
Copyblogger) is indented, with a dark blue line running down the left-
hand side.
Blockquotes add visual interest and appeal to your post, and they
also make it clear when you’re quoting someone else versus when the
words in the post are your own. They’re best for quotes of at least one

full sentence: with short quotes, like a single phrase, it’s easier to just
include them in quotation marks within a regular paragraph.
Using Capital Letters
With social media content, you’re generally quite limited in terms of

how much formatting you can do.
While it’s not impossible to create bold and italic text to use on social
media, it’s fiddly (you need to create it in Unicode) – but you can
always use capital letters for emphasis instead.
Capitals are, however, harder to read than regular text and can come
across as ‘shouting’ online, so make sure you use them sparingly. They
often work best for a single word or a couple of words at the start of
your social media post.
Here’s an example from the Make a Living Writing page on Facebook:
33
Using Links
Within a blog post, links serve several important functions:
• They add value for your reader – by providing additional

information or resources.
• They help Google to crawl your site effectively (if they’re internal
links to pages on your own site).
• They help you build relationships with other companies or
websites in your field (if you’re linking out to other people’s
content).
One feature of links which you may not have considered, though, is
that they add visual appeal.
Links are almost always in a different color from the surrounding

text, which makes them stand out. It’s worth considering them as a
formatting feature, because this may affect how you use them – for
example, you might want to combine links with bullet points, or
ensure that links aren’t too long or too short (which can look odd and
can make them hard to click on mobile devices).
It’s good practice to set links to always open in a new window. This way
your reader won’t become distracted or confused and be able to come
back to their starting point: your article or post.
Using Hashtags
If you’re posting on social media, it often makes sense to include

hashtags (the # symbol followed by a key word or phrase).
These can be used in a wide variety of different ways – including for

humorous effect – but in general, they’re a good way to help people
come across your posts about topics they’re interested in.
Hashtags, like hyperlinks, also add visual interest to your posts and
can be a great way to pull out some key words:
It’s particularly helpful to use hashtags if your posts relate to a specific

event, whether online or offline. Many conferences have an associated
hashtag, for instance, and online events like Twitter chats may require
you to use a hashtag in order for people to follow your posts correctly.

Creating a Style Guide
As you develop best writing practices for your website, you might
want to record your decisions in a ‘style guide’. This is a document that
details the way in which things should be written or formatted (when
there’s a choice available).
For instance, you should decide if you always use US or UK spelling

across all content you write. Another, minor, example is choosing to
use the ‘Oxford comma’ or ‘serial comma’ when writing about three or
more things in a row, like this:
I went to the shops for bread, milk, and eggs.
Others omit the final comma, like this:
I went to the shops for bread, milk and eggs.
Both methods are equally ‘correct’ – but a style guide can help you stay
consistent across all your forms of content.
Style guides can also cover issues like how words are capitalized or
hyphenated. This might apply to your brand itself or to key industry
terms. For instance, you might decide to write “Search Engine Results
Page” with initial capitals and to abbreviate it as “SERP”.
If you’d like some ideas to include in a style guide, The Guardian

newspaper has a very comprehensive one (which starts with A
here). As well as detailing their preferred usage, the style guide also
incorporates lots of words that might be misused or misspelled. Note
that it’s designed for UK English use.

Conclusion
Whether you feel like you’re a natural writer or not, following the
tips in this guide can help you produce content that will work well
online. Your posts will be clear and engaging; your website will be easy
to understand; and your social media posts will sound like they’re
written by a real person – not a robot.
Good online writing works well for readers and for search engines, too.
You definitely don’t need to go overboard by stuffing keywords into
your pages – in fact, this can make search engines suspicious. Instead,
pick a focused topic that people are searching for, and use the sorts
of phrases that they would naturally use. That way, you’ll be reaching
people and engaging them… while at the same time helping search
engines to find your content.

COPYRIGHT ©️ 2019 DIGITAL MARKETING INSTITUTE

How To Write Well Online: Ebook

Uploaded by

Document Information

Original Title

Copyright

Available Formats

Share this document

Share or Embed Document

Sharing Options

Did you find this document useful?

Is this content inappropriate?

Copyright:

Available Formats

How To Write Well Online: Ebook

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

Ebook By Joe Williams

Why Online Writing is Different 4

Planning and Structure 6

Writing your Content 9

Editing your Content 11

Formatting your Content 14

Creating a Style Guide 16

EBOOK: HOW TO WRITE WELL ONLINE 2

Whether you’re writing a quick Twitter update, an in-depth blog post,

EBOOK: HOW TO WRITE WELL ONLINE 3

They might be trying to find a specific piece of information – or they

If they’re on a computer, they might well have multiple tabs open;

EBOOK: HOW TO WRITE WELL ONLINE 4

Your website also needs to be found by the people who would

EBOOK: HOW TO WRITE WELL ONLINE 5

• Monday – link to your blog post for the week

EBOOK: HOW TO WRITE WELL ONLINE 6

EBOOK: HOW TO WRITE WELL ONLINE 7

Almost all pieces of content – and certainly those longer than a

We’ll be looking at this in more detail, specifically as it applies to

EBOOK: HOW TO WRITE WELL ONLINE 8

The Classic Post

• The benefits of working for a digital agency

EBOOK: HOW TO WRITE WELL ONLINE 9

EBOOK: HOW TO WRITE WELL ONLINE 10

While you don’t have to use subheadings in order to have a well-

Subheadings ’signpost’ the reader to key sections of your post.

For readers who are skimming for information, subheadings

Subheadings should normally be in Header 2 format (if you have nested

EBOOK: HOW TO WRITE WELL ONLINE 11

• “Ugh. Another post about time management?”

EBOOK: HOW TO WRITE WELL ONLINE 12

It can be tricky, though, to know exactly how to phrase things. Writing

One useful way to think about your writing is to make it

We’ll go through some examples of these:

Using ‘I’ and ‘You’

EBOOK: HOW TO WRITE WELL ONLINE 13

Here are some examples of ‘I’, ‘you’ and ‘we’ in use:

“When I blog, I know a single post or podcast is unlikely to have a

“There’s a little growth hack that every ecommerce site should be

EBOOK: HOW TO WRITE WELL ONLINE 14

EBOOK: HOW TO WRITE WELL ONLINE 15

Some common words you can contract include:

EBOOK: HOW TO WRITE WELL ONLINE 16

Of course, it sometimes makes more sense to spell words out in full –

EBOOK: HOW TO WRITE WELL ONLINE 17

While this is appropriate or even expected for some businesses –

Upon joining, you will receive a detailed dietary preferences

EBOOK: HOW TO WRITE WELL ONLINE 18

Informal language is clear, direct, and straightforward. It uses the

Using informal language tends to make it easier to incorporate

Being Open to a Response

EBOOK: HOW TO WRITE WELL ONLINE 19

Remember to back up your files… accidents happen! What tools do you

EBOOK: HOW TO WRITE WELL ONLINE 20

As well as making your writing conversational and engaging, you want

By including a ‘call to action’ at the end of your piece of content, you

You might want to encourage your readers to:

EBOOK: HOW TO WRITE WELL ONLINE 21

Editing Your Content

EBOOK: HOW TO WRITE WELL ONLINE 22

• Any tangents or digressions that aren’t really relevant – could they

EBOOK: HOW TO WRITE WELL ONLINE 23