Marketing and communications specialists like ourselves have had to adapt our writing styles to the demands of the web and Internet users. Every word has to count. We have to ensure that the message or story suits the target audience, while the text adapts to search engine requirements and, whenever possible, doesn’t get classified as spam.
It’s old school marketing with new school teachers; still putting together creative and penetrating copy, still identifying the correct targets and market places, still reflecting the core message of the corporation, but with new tools, new approaches and much, much more information available.
We wrote about search engine optimisation in our last newsletter and the importance of fine tuning web text to pick up on likely key words and phrases used by Internet researchers is an important aspect of SEO. Second guessing the way that people use search engines generically to find products, services, stats and information means that marketing specialists need to understand their target audiences very well. The public now has an element of control in the way websites are written – the way they think is driving the creative content building process, and it is changing all the time as fads and fashions take hold and sweep virally through ‘the collective’. Search engines adapt – BING is just out, and looks at search in a whole new way. Utilizing graphic interfaces is the next big step, developing search from images… it’s a brave new world out there.
Social networking sites continue to influence the way business communicates with the public. They are not the right vehicles for a hard sell but offer great potential for a more relaxed form of dialogue with target audiences, presenting the personality and aims of a company in new ways. Once again, Internet users are helping to shape the environment in which business can present itself, and we are in the front line of taking the current wave and adapting our clients’ messages so they can surf it.