5 Important Rules When Writing For A Digital Audience

Any growing business or organization that wants to have long-term success in today's digital world must learn to take advantage of digital content.  While there is still value in physical business collateral such as books, brochures, magazines, informational pamphlets and the like, what's becoming a standard for practically every professional industry is for businesses to produce online content for a digital audience.  If you're wondering how to best approach digital content for your business to ensure that it's helping rather than hindering your goals, here are 5 important rules when writing digital content:

1. Keep it simple

The number one rule when writing for a digital audience is to keep your writing simple, uncomplicated, and easy to understand for your average reader.  Online readers have a short attention span and can quickly and easily navigate somewhere else if your digital content is confusing or hard to follow.  To prevent this from happening, take the time to ensure that your online content is clear, concise and to the point.  

2. Fulfill a persona 

It's one thing to have good quality writing in your digital content, but unless that content has the appropriate tone that appeals to a certain target audience, all that effort may go to waste.  Whether you're targeting students and young adults, working professionals, business executives, or any other audience, your digital content should fulfill a persona that has the appropriate tone for your target audience.  This way they are more likely to enjoy your digital content and further engage with your organization.

3. Show authority 

When you're creating content for a digital audience on your own website or for another publication in your industry, demonstrating authority plays a big role in whether your content makes a positive impact because it's what determines whether your readers take you seriously.  If your online readers don't take you seriously, you risk losing credibility and respect in your industry.  The best way to show authority through your digital content is by consistently delivering a relevant and strong message, having great quality writing, and providing value to your target audience. 

4. Provide value 

More than any other platform, an important rule for writing for a digital audience is that you must provide value to your reader.  As we mentioned before, online users have countless other options right at their fingertips when consuming digital content.  So if your content doesn't provide value in some way, it's possible that you'll not only lose your current readers but you'll fail to draw any more in the future.  Some good ways to provide value through your digital content is to offer content that solves a problem, educates, demonstrates, inspires, or otherwise appeals to your audience's needs or desires.

5. Keyword-optimize  

And finally, one of the most important rules to remember when writing for digital is to use optimal keywords throughout your digital content.  Keywords are the core words and phrases that describe what your content is about.  They are also the words that search engines use to categorize your web pages so that they can show up properly in search engine results.  To ensure that your content is prime for search engines and is properly keyword-optimized, remember to work relevant keywords into these areas of your content:

• Web page URL (permalink)
• Page title / heading
• Body of the page 
• Image title
• Image alt attribute

If you're looking to meaningfully grow your business or organization through digital marketing, contact us to learn more about how our marketing technology and digital marketing solutions can help you reach your goals.