David McLean

Reprinted from The Business Journal.

With most of what we write for marketing — whether print advertisements, press releases, white papers or Web sites — now making its way to the Internet in some form, marketers are challenged with two new dimensions to writing: searchability and transparency.

Searchability of your writing can help or hurt. An offensive tweet on Twitter can cost you a job, a client or a friendship, but a few well-chosen words placed early in a blog post can get the attention of a new customer for an order.

Transparency is the idea that your communication is not so much “selling,” as it is informing in an honest and revealing manner.

Meanwhile, your writing still has to make sense and be engaging enough for people to want to read it!

That’s because customers are searching, especially in this economy, for products and services that meet their needs. They want ideas more than promises. They want, most of all, to understand how you can help them. And they like finding this out on their own. Once they have, they might be ready to talk to you.

To get that conversation started, there are techniques you can use to help ensure searchability and transparency:

• Start with your strategy: How do you want people to “need” you? What phrases describe your unique offering? Most of all, what question do they ask on a search engine? If what you hear on the phone and at trade shows is, “I need a component that cuts cycle time,” then the first line of your Web site or blog post should be “Our new component cuts cycle time.” That way, the ones who need to find you, will.

• Content, discipline, protocol: These are the three factors in successful Internet writing, especially for blogs. Content, in this case, implies value. People don’t tolerate fluff on the Internet. Be direct and brief. Discipline means you need to make regular updates to your content to keep your presence relevant and at the top of search engine results. Protocol means that by following the rules (the protocol) of blogging, you can get maximum placement on multiple sites.

You can, for example, host your photos on a site like Flickr.com and your instructional video clips on sites like YouTube.com. On these media sites, you can write strategic descriptions of your photos or video and add “tags” (special words that help people find you with Internet searches) that add more ways for prospects to find your business.

• Provoke conversation: A few years ago I interviewed about a dozen prospects of one of my clients to find learn what marketing messages they were most receptive to. The feedback was, “have a conversation with me.” The respondents suggested that they want to feel like they’re involved in developing the solution they’re buying. I think this is what “transparency” is all about.

Your content can provoke a conversation by asking questions that cause readers to reexamine their current situation.

Keep in mind that your content can go beyond words; it can include photographs, audio or video, or even tools. For example, we recently built an online calculator to demonstrate efficiency to be gained by using my client’s service.

As you evaluate your marketing communication in an environment where prospects find so much of what they need via the Internet, make searchability and transparency part of a strategy that informs your customers of who you are, what you do and why they should do business with you instead of your competitors.