As a small company or a freelancer it can be tough to build a brand from the ground up.

Yes, you can create a logo and a tagline within just a few days. But a brand is a lot more than simply a cool logo and a snappy tagline.

And, no, you can’t build a brand within just a few days, a few weeks or a few months even.

Your brand will grow and develop through a combination of your own efforts, and the ways in which your customers see and respond to you. You brand is as much a function of customer reaction as it is a creation of your own making.

For example, if you sell a great product, but your customer service is horrible, that horrible customer service will become part of your brand.

You take the first step in creating your brand through design and writing. After that, once it’s out there in the wild, your brand will evolve. It will get some support from some customers, and take some hits from others. Your job is to both develop your brand, and to protect it.

When it comes to developing a brand, a lot of freelancers and small businesses think in terms of addition. They add more content, they express their brand through new channels, and across different media.

For example, one might add a YouTube channel, start pushing out images with Instagram, or write a ton of new posts that support the brand and its underlying message and promise.

But what most marketers don’t think about is supporting and building their brand by the process of subtraction.

When you add new information to grow a brand, you are taking a guess. You are guessing and hoping that the additions you make will have a positive impact. But you don’t know for sure because, like I said, your brand is in large part influenced by customer responses. And you don’t know how your customers will respond. That’s in the future, and unknown.

But when you subtract information to support your brand you can be much more certain about what you are doing, because you are dealing with the present, which you know, not the future, which you don’t know.

To start with, you might want to do an audit of all your existing content and identify pages and other content that doesn’t support your brand as clearly as it should, is attracting negative comments, or simply isn’t being read.

When you eliminate content that is off-message, confusing, or simply not supporting your brand and its promise, the remaining content becomes stronger and your brand becomes clearer.

Few people strengthen their brand by subtraction because it feels counterintuitive. People feel that building something has to happen through a process of creation, not elimination.

But this isn’t true.

When asked how he could carve a sculpture as remarkable as “David” out of stone, Michelangelo is reported to have said, “It’s simple. I just remove everything that is not David.”

You can build and protect your brand in the same way.

Just remove everything that isn’t your brand.

About the author: Nick Usborne is an online writer, copywriter, author and coach. Read more…

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Wouldn’t it be nice if there was just one easy way to improve every single page of copy you wrote, regardless of the product or service you were trying to sell?

It turns out there is.

It works for homepages and sales pages. It also works for emails and newsletters. Product pages. Shopping carts. White Papers. Radio. TV. Direct mail. Whatever.

It works whether you are selling weight-loss products or industrial fasteners. It works whether you are selling vacations or dental services.

Best of all, it’s incredibly easy to include this “secret” in everything you write.

I’m not saying this little trick is all you need to know about copywriting. Nor am I saying its use will cure bad copy.

But it will help.

Here it is...

Tell your readers, listeners or viewers it’s easy.

The easy way to whiten your teeth. The easy way to manage a huge sales force. The easy way to move your website to WordPress. The easy way to pick up more clients. The easy way to retire overseas. The easy way to build a garden pond. The easy way to find your true soul mate! The easy way to ship your products overseas. Ordering is as easy as 1,2,3!

We are all of us drawn to easy answers. It doesn’t matter whether you are a teenager trying to lose weight or a CEO trying to choose a new Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system.

In other words, the desire for things to be easy is universal.

Of course, when you step back from the keyboard and think about this, our susceptibility to the promise of things being easy is a little discouraging. Because in real life we know only too well that to achieve anything worthwhile, the journey is almost never easy.

But…however smart, thoughtful and realistic about life we might be, we are still drawn to messages that tell us something is going to be easy. We just can’t help ourselves. Over the course of a year we probably make tons of bad decisions, swayed by this simple promise.

This odd loop of wiring in our brains is something every copywriter needs to understand.

Regardless of what you are writing, find some way to include the promise that you are offering an easy way forward.

No, this doesn’t mean you should lie through your teeth. It means looking carefully at the product or service and finding some aspect of it that will allow you to make the promise.

It’s not so hard.

After all, if you are reading this, there must have been something about the headline that caught your attention. Right?

About the author: Nick Usborne is an online writer, copywriter, author and coach. Read more…

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A while back I wrote a post about how copywriters are the rock stars of online business.

Put simply, ecommerce is driven by words. Without good copywriting, there are no sales.

If you have talent as an online copywriter or content writer, you are fortunate. These skills are a true gift.

Now let’s look at two very different ways in which you can use that gift.

First, you can focus on making as much money as possible. You know you have a skill companies need, and you can look for ways to maximize your fees and revenues. When you have something of great value, you can sell it at a premium price.

You trade your gift for cash.

But there is another way of looking at this, taking the meaning of the word “gift” a little more literally.

Look at your gift as something to be shared and passed on.

Instead of trying to sell your gift, you take the view that the benefits of your skills as a copywriter are something you would like to share.

You truly want your clients to prosper. You take pleasure is sharing your gift, and using your copywriting skills to help your clients grow their businesses and succeed. Your gift is being passed on, from you to your clients.

Of course, you still charge for your work. But your mindset is different.

And I think you will do much better in the long term if you are motivated more by the desire to give than by cash.

To focus on the cash means you are always looking at your business relationships with the eyes of a trader or accountant. You’re just looking for the money, and chasing your invoices.

When you focus on sharing your gift, everything changes. Now you approach the business relationship with a more generous heart. You really want to help your clients. You work hard to use your skills in ways that will help them succeed. You take pleasure in being part of their successes.

Now you are sharing your gift.

And here is the counterintuitive part. This latter approach with almost always result in greater success for you, certainly in the long term.

Clients dislike it when freelancers just do the job, as per the brief, and then run. They know when a freelancer is all about the money.

However, clients love it when a freelancer really rolls up his or her sleeves and is clearly interested and enthusiastic about the project, and eager to help as much as possible.

The client doesn’t call that first freelancer when the next project comes along, but he does call the more generous, “giving” freelancer.

This shift in mindset also helps you do a much better job or marketing your freelance services.

When you are all about the money, the prospecting process is pretty cold and clinical. And marketing certainly isn’t fun. It’s not something you enjoy doing. It just becomes a numbers game.

But if you are focused on sharing your gift, instead of on the money, prospecting becomes a whole lot more enjoyable and less stressful. When you are reaching out to prospective clients because you would just love to share your gift and help them, that’s an activity you can enjoy.

Psychologists have known for a long time that money is actually a very poor motivator in our lives, and that one of the most powerful and enduring motivators is a desire to serve and give to others.

Give this some thought.

As a writer or copywriter you have a gift.

Focus on sharing that gift and you will almost certainly build a more success business for yourself.

And you’ll enjoy life a great deal more in the process.

About the author: Nick Usborne is an online writer, copywriter, author and coach. Read more…

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On the face of it, this may sound counter-intuitive.

Why would an online copywriter be interested in social media? These two areas of expertise and interest seem worlds apart.

There is a very simple reason.

Smart copywriters focus on the wants and needs of their readers. Smart copywriters try to see the world through the eyes of their prospects and customers. Smart copywriters walk a mile in the shoes of their prospects and customers before they type the first word.

Back in the days before the web we did this mainly through focus groups.

With the arrival of the web, we could take a peek into the lives of our audience by lurking in relevant forums, reading customer reviews and listening to the opinions and voices of our customers at every opportunity.

For me as a copywriter, this ability to listen to my prospects – before I started typing – was a game-changer. I had never been a big fan of focus groups and similar research approaches. With the web, I loved the fact that I could listen in to what people were really saying. I was getting it from the horse’s mouth, so to speak.

For example, if I was writing an online sales page for a particular line of digital cameras, I could do a whole lot more than just rely on the client to give me information about their potential buyers. By researching blogs, review sites, forums and customer feedback I could get an in-depth, first-hand insight into what people really thought about those cameras.

Like I said…a game-changer.

Well, now we can research our audience in even more detail, and immediacy, with social media.

Think about it. The task of a copywriter is to get into the prospects’ minds, identify their problems or challenges, figure out what they want, and then deliver an answer to which it is easy to say yes.

Social media takes the guesswork out of finding out what our prospects are thinking. Using simple search tools, like Topsy.com, I can find out exactly what my prospective buyers are thinking and saying…right now. And now. And now.

For me, the most important thing is that I can find out the exact language my prospects use when writing about the product or service I’m trying to sell. This language is often markedly different from the language used by my clients in their briefing documents. Business people rarely “get” or use the language of their customers. But when I write in that language, I can significantly increase levels of engagement and trust.

This is why I made it my business to dive into social media several years ago. I wanted to understand it and use it as a means to help me become a better copywriter.

Of course, I soon realized that in addition to listening to what people published through social media, I could also take part and connect with other people who shared my own interests, both professional and personal.

It was then a small step towards understanding that participating in social media was deepening the relationships I had with my readers, and leading to more sales of my own products and services.

And once I was able to understand that dynamic…using social media to move my readers from viewing me as a stranger to trusting me as an honest and authoritative source of valuable information…I was in a position to teach the same process to my clients and readers.

You can follow the same path.

But if nothing else, as a copywriter you need to understand and participate in social media, because you’ll always improve your craft by listening to the real voices of the people you’re writing to.

The better you know your prospect, the better your copywriting will become.

NOTE: I have created a social media training program specifically for freelance writers and copywriters. It is published by AWAI, and you can find their information and sales page on the program here…

About the author: Nick Usborne is an online writer, copywriter, author and coach. Read more…

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Social media marketing is, thankfully, coming out of its trendy phase and moving into its business phase.

For those of us who have been online for a while, the trendiness of social media has been somewhat irritating. The web was social before the web even existed. In other words, the Internet was social before the first web browsers appeared. Back then we connected with one another through Listservs and the like. It was 100% social.

Services like MySpace, LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook didn’t invent social media. They simply made it more popular and improved its functionality.

One of the outcomes of the trendy phase of social media is that well over 90% of North American companies now have a presence on sites like Twitter and Facebook. Those companies jumped in because they felt pressured to be on those sites. If that’s where their customers and prospect were spending their time, they needed to be there too.

But most of them jumped in without any kind of strategy. And they didn’t bother integrating social media with their other online marketing activities.

Hence the next step forward, which is to integrate social media with a company’s online marketing activities.

There is a huge opportunity here for online writers and copywriters.

The geeks have taken care of the technology side of social media. The gurus have done the big sales job and moved companies into social media. And now it’s down to savvy online writers and copywriters to integrate social media.

Here’s what I mean by integration…

Most companies have online marketing calendars. They have a schedule and know on which dates they are going to be promoting their various products and services. Smart companies have an integrated content calendar that tells them which kinds of content they are going to be publishing in support of their marketing campaigns.

But very few companies have taken the next step…which is to integrate a social media calendar, in support of both their content and their marketing campaigns.

There is a big gap here.

And every gap represents an opportunity.

Here are 3 examples of ways in which online writers and copywriters can profit from the coming integration of social media.

1. If you are an online copywriter, working on some sales pages, you can expand the scope of your work simply by asking, “Shouldn’t we be planning some activity on social media to drive traffic to these new pages?” The answer is yes, you should. And this gives you the opportunity to not only write the sales pages, but also all the social media entries that can be used to support them.

2. If you are an online content writer, creating new site pages, blog posts, product reviews etc, simply ask, “Would you like me to optimize this content for social media? And would you like me to write some social media entries to support this new content?”

3. Or, if you want to help more broadly with your clients’ social media marketing, you can ask, “Would you like some help in integrating your social media with your content and marketing calendars?”

This is an easy opportunity. Most companies already have their social media pages up there. What they are missing is someone who can help them work up a social media calendar that is integrated with their content calendar and marketing calendar.

And the people best positioned to help them do this are the online writers and copywriters who are already writing their content and sales pages.

I smell opportunity here, and hope you do too.

NOTE: I have created a social media training program specifically for freelance writers and copywriters. It is published by AWAI, and you can find their information and sales page on the program here…

About the author: Nick Usborne is an online writer, copywriter, author and coach. Read more…

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If you go back 15 years, when I started writing online, the rock stars of pretty much every website were the coders and the designers.

Writers? Not so much. Copywriters? Not at all.

Back then it was all about the technology and the look. I went to startup meetings where the coders and designers had been working on the site for weeks, or maybe months, and then came to me, almost as an afterthought, and asked me to add some words.

Sounds crazy, but it’s true.

And as you may recall, the internet crash of 2001 was caused in large part by hugely inflated values being attached to online businesses that really weren’t businesses at all. In other words, they didn’t make money. They just worked reasonable well, and looked good.

Also, when I was speaking at events back then, my message was that the web was actually all about the words. And that those words couldn’t just be cut and pasted from print or other media.

I didn’t always face a very receptive audience with that message. Particularly when I stood up in front of 500 designers and told them that their job was to showcase my words.

Fun times.

But after 2001, when a new breed of business people came to the web, there was a growing awareness that online companies needed to make money. All of a sudden business owners began to pay more attention to things like clickthrough, conversation rates, A/B split testing…and revenues.

And when you think in those terms you come face to face with the fact that you can’t achieve good results in these areas just with technology and design.

You need words.

In short, it has taken commerce online almost 20 years to figure out what the direct response industry had known for about 100 years…If you want results, you have to use great copy.

That’s right, when it comes to conversion rates and revenues, the true rock stars of the web are now the copywriters.

I’m not saying that the technology and design are not important. They are. But the copy is even more important. In my work with optimizing site pages, the biggest increases in performance usually come about as a result of simplifying the design and improving the copy.

The technology? Well, that’s pretty much a commodity now. For most sites you don’t need to write pages and pages of custom code. You just grab what you need off the shelf, or use an available content management system.

And if you think that every website is now well served by professional copywriters, you would be mistaken. Certainly there are some smart companies that figured this out early, and have quality copywriters in-house, or are already outsourcing.

But the majority of companies still haven’t made the transition from words as “filler” to words as sales tools.

And that’s where your opportunity now lies.

It’s a huge opportunity because you can approach companies with a pretty simple message:

“It’s the words that make the sale! If you would like to see your website convert more visitors into buyers, I can help you. I’m a professional online copywriter.”

That’s a message every online marketer wants to hear. They all have website, but few of them know how to convert visitors into cash.

And that’s what you can do for them.

NOTE: If you have yet to receive any professional-grade training in the craft of online copywriting, find out more about my program, Copywriting 2.0. Copywriting 2.0 is published by AWAI, and you can find their information and sales page for the program here…

About the author: Nick Usborne is an online writer, copywriter, author and coach. Read more…

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Way back when I wrote copy offline, I was pretty much a one-trick pony.

I wrote direct mail. That was my thing. I have never written a radio spot. I have never written a TV commercial.

Back then, it was fine to focus on a single copywriting skill, because there was no connection between what I wrote for a client as a direct response writer, and what their agency copywriter wrote for TV.

Sure, we all worked to the same brief, keeping within the same campaign idea.

But the key point to understand is that the quality of my direct mail piece didn’t depend on my knowing anything about writing for TV, radio or any other medium. Why? Because each medium was separate from the other.

All that changed with the arrival of the web.

Online, everything is connected. (Think hyperlink.) Every page on a website is connected to other pages. Emails and e-newsletters are linked to site pages. Site pages are linked to social media sites. Social media tweets, updates and posts are linked back to websites.

This is a game changer for copywriters.

As online copywriters we can no longer do our best work in one area without at least a clear understanding of the bigger picture, and how everything is connected.

For example, if I were asked to write an online sales page for a company, I would do well to think about more than just the page itself. I would certainly ask about how the company planned to drive traffic to this page.

Just through internal links on the site itself? Or by email? Or through PPC ads? Or through social media? Or through all of these channels, and maybe more?

To put it another way, to write a great sales page I need to know my audience. And part of the challenge of knowing my audience is to understand where they are coming from.

Are these warm and trusting prospects from an in-house email list? Are they fans coming in through social media? Are they complete strangers who have come in through PPC ads? And so on.

Once I ask my client these questions we are going to get into a conversation about email, social media and PPC.

Or, just as likely, the conversation will be initiated by the client as part of the briefing.

It’s at this point that my client will learn whether I can hold an intelligent conversation not only about sales pages, but also about email marketing, social media and PPC.

If I can’t, he or she will experience a moment of disappointment, and the perception of my value in his or her mind will fall.

Not good.

If I can, the opposite occurs. The perception of my value rises. Suddenly I’m not just a copywriter for hire, but am also acting like a consultant, exploring the larger marketing picture.

This is why it makes sense for online copywriters to understand all aspects of writing for the web, through multiple channels. No, you don’t have to master ever channel, but you do need to know enough to hold an intelligent conversation with your client, and to do your work with a clear understanding of how it fits in with everything else.

The bigger your toolbox, the greater the opportunity.

Several years ago I was approached by a prospective client and asked to rewrite their homepage. This was a fair sized company in the insurance industry. Certainly I was qualified to do what they asked. But I wanted to know more. I asked about the major category pages one level down from the homepage. Were they going to be rewritten too? If not, then it would limit the changes I could make to the homepage.(Remember, everything is connected.)

We talked about that, and in the end decided I should rework the homepage and those second level pages.

Then I asked about all the other pages on the site. If I were to significantly adjust the tone and approach of the top level pages, this would have implications for many other pages.

No, I didn’t get to write all those pages as well. Nor did I want to. But I did get paid to fly in and talk to their in-house web team about what I was trying to do with the new pages, so they could adjust the lower level pages accordingly.

On another occasion I was asked to write a landing page. After talking about it for a while I learned they were going to drive traffic to the page through an email campaign. I suggested that I write those emails as well. Having the same person write the emails and the landing page would ensure a clean and powerful transition from email to web page.

I took the same approach with every client, and significantly increased my earnings as a result. But I wouldn’t have been able to do that if I didn’t have a firm grasp on multiple aspects of writing for the web.

If, like in my offline days, I had been a one-trick pony, and focused just on sales page, or just on homepages, or just on email, I would have limited my opportunities and would also have diminished my value in the eyes of my clients.

Where can you get professional grade training in multiple areas of online copywriting?

This is where we are going to transition gently into a soft sales pitch.

After working with corporate clients online for about 10 years, and after training many of their in-house teams in online copywriting across different channels, I decided to create a program based on everything I have learned and taught.

That program is called Copywriting 2.0.

As far as I know it is the only professional-grade training program that is focused on teaching copywriters multiple aspects of writing for the web. Once you have worked through hundreds of pages of printed materials, watched the 16 embedded videos and sat through numerous bonus webinar presentations, you’ll have online copywriting skills that are both broad and deep.

Like I said…if you want to maximize your value and your earnings, you want to approach your clients with a big, fat toolbox, stuffed with online copywriting skills.

Copywriting 2.0 is published by AWAI, and you can find their information and sales page for the program here…

About the author: Nick Usborne is an online writer, copywriter, author and coach. Read more…

If you found this post helpful, sign up for my e-newsletter and get a free copy of my 35-page guide...

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I’m a big fan of the freelance life. I should be, because I have been freelancing for most of the last 32 years.

I have raised four sons. I am raising a daughter. I have lived in two different countries and, here in Canada, have lived in four different provinces. I have worked on the kinds of projects I choose and enjoy. I can’t be downsized. I can’t be fired. And I love what I do.

What’s not to like about being a freelancer?

Let’s look at 3 ways in which freelancing truly rocks.

As a freelancer, I can focus on what I do best.

This doesn’t often make the top 10 list of reasons to become a freelancer, but for me it’s huge.

Over the last couple of decades I have been an employee three times. Each time I lasted about 12 months before becoming a freelancer again. There was nothing wrong with those three companies, but in each case I ended up being asked to do work that was not central to my core skills.

In one I ended up being more of a manager and mediator than a writer. In another I was pushed into a role where I was spending a lot of time buying ads and managing the small details of the company’s promotional campaigns. And in the third I quit sooner than usual after being asked to do stuff that any summer intern could have done.

The point here is that if you want to enjoy your work, and if you want your work to have meaning, it’s tough to make that happen when your life is being managed by other people.

I’m a writer, a copywriter, a teacher and a coach. These are the activities that not only pay my bills, but also provide a more intrinsic reward for the time I spend at my desk. They mean something to me. And when I’m not practicing those skills, I am learning about them.

In a nutshell, my freelance life allows me to focus on the kind of work I really want to do. And to me, that’s hugely important. If my work doesn’t have meaning, it’s just an exchange of work for money. And that sucks.

You have a gift. Devote your work life to exploring and growing that gift.

As a freelancer, I am independent.

Many, many moons ago I was the creative director at an ad agency. When I decided to leave I felt guilty about leaving my team in the lurch. In part this was because our immediate boss was the boss from hell, and I had done a good job of insulating my writers and designers from his moronic interference.

Anyway, shortly before I left, one of the owners of the agency sat me down for a brief chat. He had somehow heard about my guilty feelings and wanted to set me straight. He told me that while my feelings were laudable, I should toughen up and learn to always put myself and my family first. He made the point that nobody in the company would give a second thought to firing me if they felt it was to their advantage.

That was a valuable lesson for me. (His good-guy status was confirmed when he gave me a bottle of whisky as a leaving gift. Good man.)

Put simply, I don’t trust companies. I like plenty of individuals who work for companies, but I don’t trust companies one inch. So why would I entrust my future to some corporation that cares nothing for me as a person? Why would I risk my future and my family’s future? Makes zero sense to me.

This is another reason why I work for myself. I’m independent. I’m in total control. I am not subject to the whims, mistakes or moronic decisions of others.

As a freelancer I can work anywhere.

This is one of the more popular reasons given for being a freelancer. And it’s certainly one that works for me.

As I mentioned, I have lived in many places over the last few decades. We moved because we wanted to, not because a company told us to.

In addition, I have family spread all over the place geographically. And when I go visit, sometimes for a couple of weeks or more, my clients and business partners are none the wiser. It makes no difference where I am.

And while I can certainly work from anywhere, it has meant a lot to me over the years that most of the time I work from home. I have been involved in my family life, I have been there when my kids got back from school. And my children have learned about work because they have been able to look over my shoulder while I’m pounding away at the keyboarding with my rather poor two-finger typing.

Yes, freelancing rocks.

I would never want to work any other way. If I ever end up working as an employee again it will be because of a lapse in judgment or a massive failure of some kind at my end.

But I won’t let that happen. My independence is too important to me.

Being able to focus on what I want to do rather than on what an employer wants me to do is priceless.

About the author: Nick Usborne is an online writer, copywriter, author and coach. Read more…

If you found this post helpful, sign up for my e-newsletter and get a free copy of my 35-page guide...

Writing For The Web #1 -- 7 Challenges every Writer and Copywriter faces when writing for the Web.

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Last week I was speaking at an event in Austin, Texas, and had a chance to talk with dozens of freelancers at various stages of their careers.

I was particularly interested by what I heard from those people who had high-level, professional careers behind them and were now on the verge of starting a freelance business.

Here is the part that got me thinking. Several of those people seemed to assume that they had to get started on the bottom rung of the ladder as a freelancer. It’s as if a switch in careers somehow required that they start over and look only for low-paying, low-challenge projects.

Well, I don’t think that is necessary.

If you have some solid business experience behind you, why not start closer to the top?

OK, so you don’t yet have a ton of experience as a freelance writer or copywriter. So your first client probably won’t be with a sophisticated direct-response company that is used to working with A-level copywriters.

But you do have business experience, which is something a lot of those hotshot copywriters don’t have. So you can approach large companies and pick up plenty of writing and copywriting work that isn’t all about maximizing conversions on sales pages. Maybe it’s a case study, a series of White Papers, a monthly e-newsletter, editorial content for their website…and so on.

For those kinds of jobs, you don’t need to be an A-list copywriter. But you can ask for a fat fee because of your business experience. Large and medium sized companies like working with writers who understand business, speak their language and understand their culture.

Never position yourself as a beginner. Never behave like a beginner. Think of yourself as the person you were at the highest position you held in the business world, and behave like that.

Be that top-performing person, carry that persona and confidence into the world of freelancing, and position your services as top-end, close to the top of the ladder, starting on day one.

Can’t do that? Sure you can. You would have done it as an employee if your boss had told you to.

So why not do it for yourself?

About the author: Nick Usborne is an online writer, copywriter, author and coach. Read more…

First let me explain what Go Away Green means. It’s the color Disney uses in its theme parks for any object or building they don’t want people to look at.

Garbage bins, fences, administrative buildings…stuff like that. They want your eyes focused on the rides, stores and scenery, not on the infrastructure.

The idea of Go Away Green is that it’s such a boring and unattractive color, your eyes just pass over it until they latch on to something more interesting.

The concept of Go Away Green is important to grasp when creating anything that is a combination of attraction + structure.

This certainly applies to web design and yes, also to writing and copywriting.

The “attraction” in what you write is the story you tell, the core of your message and the supporting information that surrounds it.

The “structure” of your writing represents all the words and sentences you use to set up the opening, create transitions throughout and wrap things up at the end.

Every piece of writing requires some structure to hold it together. That’s OK. But when a page of writing includes too much structure or scaffolding, then you have a problem.

To get an idea of what I mean, think back to the last post or article you read where you found yourself skipping over a few lines. Or you found your mind wandering as you tried to stay focused. Or where you felt you had come to the end of the piece, but there were still ten more lines to go. Or it felt like the writer was trying to lead you through the text like a dog on a leash – “Think this now, and think this now.”

That’s writing in Go Away Green. Too much structure in proportion to the content. The readers’ eyes and attention are likely to slide away.

In a theme park you are there for the day. The Go Away Green simply moves your attention over to the next attraction. On a web page, you don’t have the same kind of hold on your readers. They are not there for the day. Your hold on their attention is tenuous to say the least. So if they hit too large a patch of Go Away Green in your writing they are likely to do just that…go away.

The internal structure of a piece of writing should be invisible, or as close as you can get. Cut away as much of the structure of the writing as possible.

If you find this hard, and find yourself over-explaining in the opening or writing too many transitions from one point to the next, it may be that you are trying to cover too many topics within a single article or post.

Try sticking to one topic per page of content. That’s any easy way to minimize the need for structure.

Keep it simple, and stay away from green.

Related ebooks I have written about writing for the web:

Popcorn Content - the craft of writing short-form content for social media

Killer Headlines for Web Content

101 Web Content Ideas, Tips and Resources

Writing Kick-Ass Sales Copy...

About the author: Nick Usborne is an online writer, copywriter, author and coach. Read more…

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