Are you building a new site, or does your content need a review and some revisions to ensure it’s still accurate and communicating the right messages? Here are some good reasons to outsource your web content development and maintenance.

Cost/Time
An experienced web content writer will usually work faster and more efficiently and perhaps at a significantly lower rate than you earn yourself. And wouldn’t you rather spend your time focusing on doing things only you can do to build your business, organization, or personal brand?

Expertise
A seasoned web content writer is not only a professional communicator who is a whiz with the written word and helps you convert site visitors to customers. He or she is also someone who stays up-to-date on technology trends in things like search engine optimization, digital marketing techniques, and information architecture that will help your website be found, compelling, and easily used.

Insights
A fresh perspective from someone who is outside of your organization and works with a variety of clients can bring new ideas and insights to your website, which can help you get more attention, and translate to more sales.

Zoom Fatigue
Back in the spring, for many people using Zoom or other video conferencing platforms for the first time to connect with family and friends as well as work colleagues was both a novelty and a blessing. It didn’t take very long for “Zoom fatigue” to set in, however, as people tired of sitting in front of screens and trying to remain engaged for sometimes hours on end.

But I think 2020 will still be remembered, among other things, as when video conferencing entered a new era. Think of the societal benefits – and not just keeping people safe and healthy rather than meeting in person during the current pandemic. Fewer vehicles on the road means less traffic, less air pollution and climate change, and fewer accidents.

In my daily professional life, I’m using video conferencing to teach my adult education students and coach clients, meet with prospective clients, and attend board and committee meetings for the non-profit organizations I work with pro bono. And it saves a lot of time as well – an hour meeting only takes an hour, as opposed to an hour and a half or two hours or more when travel was necessary.

Hopefully you’ve realized some benefits in your professional life from video conferencing as well. Here’s a good article if you want some tips on optimizing your video conference experience.

https://www.howtogeek.com/663874/12-tips-for-video-conferencing-while-you-work-from-home/

You can hire Brett for his writing services through deb@perugi.com or go to his website at peruzzicommunications.com.

A year ago I wrote a post linking to an article by Pantone on the new colors for 2018. Pantone used an image on their blog that I copied and and pasted into my post. I could have easily paid ten dollars for a stock photo that would have been just as good. See recommendations below. Six months later, I was contacted by a company representing the photographer whose copyrighted image was tacked inside the image. (The photo was of a bulletin board and this fashion image was on the board.)

There are companies whose sole purpose is to scan the internet for photos made by their clients. The client photographers pay them for this service and possibly a percent of the collection. When there is a result, a letter is sent out demanding a large payment with the threat of a lawsuit. The amount seems punitive, especially given the resources of a small company. But the law does not specify what is fair. Up to tens of thousands of dollars can be demanded legally.

Recently a client asked me what to do amount a scam he encountered. He writes posts twice a month and sometimes looks for free photos on the internet. A site offering free downloads fined him for not logging in and filling out a form first. A company in California is asking for $3000! He is in the process of working out a deal. These scheming companies “fish” which seems fraudulent to me.  Lawmakers need to address this “out of control” situation as soon as possible.

I admit to wrong doing. It is a bad practice to try to use free photos without permission. Artists deserve to be paid for their good work. The result of my mistake? I negotiated the amount down to something affordable, but by no means cheap. (I found that help from a copyright lawyer was just as high or higher than the fine). Lesson learned… and I was glad to leave the whole experience behind me.

Some fair free photo companies we recommend are Unsplash.com, Pixabay.com and Pexels.com. Stock Photos for reasonable fees are iStock.com and Big Stock.com.

Recently, a client in the whole health and beauty business who provides Chinese herbal medicine and acupuncture added massage therapy to her services. She wants to write a new page for her website to introduce this service. There are two options I recommend. 1. Write a blog post introducing the new service and categorize it as “news” and/or “new services.” Any blog category or post can be added to the menu like a page. Or, 2. If you want it to be a page then do both. Use the content from the blog post and insert it into the page. You can link the post and page to each other. Finding new information in more than one place on a website is a good thing!

I can’t emphasize enough how important blog posts are and should be a regular practice. Here are the reasons why:

1. Posts immediately get sent to anyone subscribed to your blog and encourage people to sign up
2. Posting enlivens your website and makes it more attractive to people seeking information
3. Posts get sent out over the internet apart from your website, pulling in new prospects
4. Posting enhances your search engine optimization and should be a part of any SEO plan
5. Posts can be added to your social networking and newsletter as part of your overall marketing strategy

So, When you think about new activity on your website, don’t forget the blog is waiting to work for you more than just a web page can. Need some training? Give me a shout!

“What is the passive voice?
The passive voice is a grammatical construction. The easiest way to explain the passive voice is by contrasting it with the active voice. The active voice is the standard English sentence structure. Thwie simplest possible sentences feature an actor (the subject), who does (the verb) something to either a person, animal or thing (the receiver).

Mom hugged me

In the passive voice, the actor and receiver are switched around. The receiver becomes the grammatical subject. Note that the meaning of the sentence stays exactly the same. The only difference is the word order.

I was hugged by mom

In some passive sentences, you can omit the actor. ‘I was hugged’, for example, is a perfectly sensible passive sentence, although it provides less information.

Why should I avoid the passive voice?
Let’s cut to the chase: using the passive voice almost always makes your writing more distant and your message less clear. There are two main reasons for this.

Wordy
First of all, the passive voice is wordy. The passive alternative to an active sentence is simply longer. Consider these two sentences:
1. The passive voice almost always makes your message less clear.
2. Your message is almost always made less clear by using the passive voice.
You convey the same message by using the passive, but add three words. When overusing the passive voice in your text, this can really add up.

Sentence structure
In addition, the passive voice uses a sentence structure which requires more cognitive effort. Your reader will spend valuable working memory on making sense of the sentence. This decreases the likelihood of you getting your message across.

Let’s explore why the passive voice demands more effort. As I told you before, the basic active sentence structure is quite consistent and logical in English. The passive voice turns this all the way around. You first read what was affected. Then you read what happened to it. Then you learn how it was affected. You discover who or what was responsible only at the very end. This sequence differs from how we usually make sense of events. Moreover, we expect the actor to be in the subject position, so we are slightly disoriented. This means constructing an image of what happens takes a tiny moment longer. Again, these moments can easily add up if you overuse the passive voice.

In the example I gave, there is no added benefit to using the passive: the active sentence conveys the same information. Whenever you use passive voice, always consider whether a better, active alternative is available.

What are the exceptions?

Sometimes, using the passive voice can be the only logical way to word a sentence. Mostly, this occurs when the actor is unknown or irrelevant. Let’s look at an example I used in the first paragraph of this very text:

In the passive voice, the actor and receiver are switched around.
There is no identifiable actor here, nor would he or she be relevant. After all, we’re talking about a general action here, not a specific one. Any alternative active sentence would be less clear and concise than the passive sentence I wrote, so it’s the best option available.

Alternatively, you may want to use a passive sentence to focus on the receiver. This works when the object is more central to the topic than the actor:

J.F. Kennedy was killed in 1963 in Dallas, Texas by Lee Harvey Oswald.

This means that we’re not here to tell you to avoid the passive voice like the plague. If it beats the active alternative, by all means: use it! Rules pertaining to style are seldom cast in stone, so don’t make the mistake of following the rule of thumb too strictly. Do what seems right to you and what makes your text flow nicely. A maximum of 10% generally suffices. You should be able to achieve numbers even lower than that by following our advice.”

Our job is to do that heavy work. We create the text that not only optimizes the site with key words for SEO, but is strategized and placed in a way that turns prospects into customers. See the post about Purposeful User Flow published a few weeks ago.

Wikipedia says “Inbound marketing is the promotion of a company or other organization through blogs, podcasts, video, eBooks, newsletters, whitepapers, SEO, physical products, social media marketing, and other forms of content marketing which serve to attract customers through the different stages of the purchase funnel.”

I couldn’t have said it better!

So, get to work writing and finding visuals for Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and the like, depending on where your potential customers hang out. It’s worth the time and money to hire someone to help you (and you can track how it’s doing using your analytics). Pick out subjects that you know well that will position you as an expert in your field. Use catchy titles and action verbs. Find a “voice”. You should see increases in traffic and sales in no time!

You can take advantage of writing it on a Sunday and scheduling it for Monday morning if that is when you want your post to hit the internet. Just Save Draft on the right side of your editor and then Edit the Publish Immediately button right below. In fact I’m doing that now. The Publish button then turns into a blue Schedule button. Put in your date and time, save and you are all set.

Check your Google Analytics* a few days later to see how well the post did. You can learn from your own analytics if you review them regularly. Try a Monday at 7 am, then perhaps, at 11 am, etc.

A reminder to all. Use the Categories at the right column to add the article to your database. You may choose more than one category. Add a new category if you need to. Also helpful to SEO is the Tags area just below the Categories.

• To access your Google Analytics reports, go to the url for Google Analytics. (It has its own web site.) Log in with your Gmail address and password.

But, What if you want to allow comments so that you can get the few that are legitimate?  Then you have to allow all the others that aren’t. Before long, if you are not watching the dashboard, you can have over a thousand spam comments. The worst part of it is — each one has to be checked and removed individually. That can take over an hour of painstakingly going through each comment page. Not fun.

Over the years I’ve looked for plugins that help with this process. How can I select all of them on each page and remove them all at once? That would save a lot of time. I found a plugin that did the task, but then could not find it again. Today I was combing through a client’s website and found one already installed. It’s called WP Database Cleaner by WPMize. I have to say I didn’t remember this one, but I will now. It can remove all of your spam in one click. Wow!  But, remember: add this plugin through your dashboard on the plugins page.

Rossi and Deb searched together for the right theme. She liked the idea of something professional and calming. Blues and greens being a favorite color combination as seen in her logo. We even looked through Big Stock photo agency to find the right images to complete her message. Rossi hired Perugi Design at an hourly rate and got the job done fin less than 10 hours. All along, Rossi learned how to use WordPress and worked along side Deb, while Deb worked behind the scenes to format the theme. Now, Flow has to add more posts and WordPress will pull in new clients off the search engines.

Another site for a local professional photographer in Waltham is about to be published. John Swisher first had to reconcile the two business names he was using: J Ray Photographics and John Swisher Photography. He decided to use John Swisher Photography, then altered his logo to reflect that change. Deb helped John simplify his current logo which now graces the top of the website. John also picked out a theme designed for photographers. Glisseo is an elite theme with a lot of bells and whistles. As we have mentioned in an previous post, Not All Themes are Created Equal, this one was not as straight forward as we like. But, despite the difficulties, see for yourself how this theme beautifully renders John’s photographs. We can’t wait to see what John has to say about his images via captions and posts!

For those of us who have worked in publishing, the writing piece is not a big challenge. But for others, it can be a big challenge. I get that. I tell those clients to write in their voice as if they are in their office introducing their business. Why is their service a good value? What knowledge can you share that can help a customer? What other companies complement what you offer? Is there news in your field that you can share? People want to know Your Story, or your company’s story. Are you willing to give it a try?

For more information on how and why to write a blog, I recommend my friend David Gadarian’s book, Better Business Blogging. It’s $6.99 on Amazon.

David says, “The book is about how to see more meaningful results for your business blogging efforts and it is the result of my own experiences with many business owners that were struggling with these very issues.  This book is for business owners and staff at companies ranging from the solo-prenuer all the way up to companies of 250 people (the high end of small businesses).  I feel confident in saying that I think there is value in this book for a wide range of experience levels as the bulk of the book is focused on how to create a better business blogging framework (sorry – no get rich quick schemes here!)”

Remember to feed Seymore … happy blogging! You see I just wrote one and it took all of 15 minutes!

Years ago, I created an html website for my Italian family, which mostly included recipes that we could all share. My grandmother was an excellent cook from the Tuscany region of Italy. I grew up loving her delicious food. I recall her kitchen smelled of marjoram and garlic. So, My cousins and sister sent me the recipes they had, and I coded them for the pages. The job was tedious.

Recently, I revised the site into “LaFamiglia” with WordPress, which can be used and updated by all five grandchildren. We have a page of the older photographs, old Italy and our parents as children. My grandfather was a well known marble sculptor from Italy of which we have many photographs. Then, our generation as youngsters for our children to see.

We recently recorded my Aunt Violet on videotape talking about the old days and placed it on the Memories page. We can also add any stories that we might want to share. Then, the recipes! They are uploaded as Posts. The categories of the posts become an index of the recipe book:  Pasta, Meat, Fish, Salad, Dessert, etc. The database will grow as we add more. You won’t be able to find our site online, though. It is password protected!

This then becomes an online scrapbook, for images, video, storytelling and food. We will hand it down to the next generation. I’m counting on WordPress to be around for a long while…