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.

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!

Susan was introduced to me by Nancy Wolff Leary, of Online Amplify. Nancy provides marketing solutions to companies that help them grow through an improved online presence. Nancy and I worked together to provide Susan with a head start on her new company website Fundraising Focus. Nancy is an expert on content writing and she asked me to provide the design piece of the puzzle.

Nancy wanted to have a design in place before providing web copy, which is something I did not anticipate. My usual strategy starts by meeting and discussing objectives with the client, looking over text (either a previous website or brochure) and building a wire frame (or layout sketch) from that. But I had a solution. I would find a Child Theme site layout with dummy copy that was approved by Susan and myself for Nancy to view. Susan and I easily agreed on one. I made suggestions on where headlines and links should go based on what I knew Susan needed. And Nancy would have enough sections to consider.

But this solution was not without its challenges. Three women who each have their own ideas about website development made for some interesting discussions. I think we can agree the site is the better for it. It incorporates Susan’s precise objectives, Nancy’s lively and thorough text and my sense of appropriate color, layout and photography. Go see for yourself and if you know an organization that could use fundraising help, go here! To ask me about this project, contact me.

“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.”