WRITING WEBSITE CONTENT
STARTUPS: HOW TO PLAN A BUSINESS STARTUP, CREATE A WEBSITE AND GET GREAT CONTENT FOR IT
by Leslie McKerns, McKerns Development and PR
http://www.mckernsdevelopmentandPR.com
Fire It Up
HOW TO GET EXCELLENT CONTENT FOR WEBSITES
For your new startup business you will need the name, the concept, and the target market. Then you will need to promote it via a website.
McKerns Development and PR specializes in writing content for websites. Areas of McKerns Development and PR’s web content writing include: new business startups, brands and products, corporate and business, eco-friendly, green, sustainable and organic products and services, education, professional organizations, destinations, marine and marina industry, healthcare and medical, writing, writers, books and publishing, advertising, marketing and PR, non-profits, advocacy and PR, architecture, interior design, engineering, and development.
THE NAME
1. Decide on a Great Name for your business. How do you decide on a name for your business?
You basically have four approaches to naming a business: a name based upon what you do or sell (casualshoes.com), a company name that is your name (Whitsell Publications, Douglason’s), a letter based reduction of a name (IBM, UPS), or a mythical/fictitious name (WIX).
2. How do you decide which type of company name to use? You might consider the pros and cons of each. For example, it might be hard to find a generic name not already taken for a product or service, but if you do you can use the advantage to pull in traffic based upon a search for that product (tropicalshirts.com). A company based upon your name can be good branding, but it will take you a bit longer to get recognized and you will want to consider the implications of ever selling the business or merging it with other partners (Banks, Biddel, Nutting, Henrehan, Parker, Baker and Solutts).
THE CONCEPT and THE MARKET
1. Decide on whether you are a B2B or B2C Company, selling or promoting your business to other businesses or directly to the consumer. This decision as to how you will market your firm will directly affect how it is promoted on the website. Generally, a more humorous and consumer friendly approach will appeal to those marketing directly to consumers, and a more corporate and technical approach will appeal to those marketing directly to other businesses. (However, consumers may also need a depth of technical information or background information in order to understand or appreciate your product or service.)
2. Decide on a concept for the company. This is a company that does x and will sell/market to xx.
3. Establish the Leadership approach for the company. By this I mean, what you will want your audience to know about you and why it will matter to them. Do you have a fine and lengthy career with lots of technical leadership? Is this a brand new idea, product or concept? You will want to decide what to promote about your products, people and services, and what you will say about your company history and leadership.
GETTING A WEBSITE UP AND RUNNING
One of the most important parts of starting a new company or promoting products and services is getting a functioning website up and running. Understand that the greatest web design company in the world will not write your copy for you. They are computer coding experts, graphic design gurus and more, but are not copywriters. Nor do they know your business, or want to take the time to interview you to find out about it. They want to design your site, the look, the feel, the graphics, the navigation but not the words. That will be up to you and your content writer.
You know you need a website to pull in traffic and generate interest but are just not sure where to begin?
BEFORE YOU BEGIN YOUR WEBSITE
1. List Your Products and Services. Have a complete list and description of all the services and products you will promote. Assemble technical and product data, and photographs you might use on the site. Secure the rights to the photographs if need be. Have your logo and tagline ready: xxxCompany – the ones that do this.
2. Write a Brief for the Web Designer. Before you choose the web design firm, review what sites you like and have some samples (sample URL’s) that they can refer to, then select the look, even the colors you’d like. Share this information with your web designer and make them aware of how comprehensive a site you want and whether you will need merchant services on the site.
3. Create a List of Website Pages. Include a list of pages that you will want to include so that the website designer can work on the navigation. Navigation is how visitors will move through the site, and how they will find things, and return to previous pages. You may want just a few pages: About Us, What We Do, Where to Contact Us, or you may have comprehensive list of pages with main titles and subpages. If you know what subpages you want to appear under which main headings, you can share that information.
WORKING WITH A WEB CONTENT WRITER
1. Provide Research to the Content Writer. Create a folder (paper, digital or both) with background information including research, technical data, product data, project information and anything else that will help the website writer understand what you do and what you plan to bring to market. Include anything that has already been written on this topic or about you and your company (provide clippings and reference to any press you have received) or that is trending news about the products or services.
2. Establish a list of Keywords. Provide a list (or the content writer can do this for you) of all the keywords that you would like to use in the natural copy for your site. These are the words that when searched would be most likely to return your website in its prominent search results. Natural copy means as opposed to artificially keyword stuffed copy, which would read as odd to your readers and would be penalized in search engines (as simply written for false ranking in results and not as honest copy.)
3. Interact and Be Available. Be prepared to have 1 or 2 initial interviews about your firm and the contents of the site, and then periodic copy reviews until completion.
McKerns Development and PR can assist with all of these steps, bringing your new startup a completely functional and well-written website.
Leslie McKerns
@strategicprpro
Strategic public relations and brand building specialist – turning startups into brands and bringing brands to new markets.
· http://www.mckernsdevelopmentandpr.com
McKerns Development and PR
264 Cypress Trace
Royal Palm Beach, FL 33411
561-305-4264
lesliemckerns@mckernsdevelopmentandpr.com
http://www.linkedin.com/in/mckernsdevelopmentandpr
http://www.McKernsDevelopmentandandPr.com
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