A decent Web Site Design is great.  What about the contents?  Do they matter?

I write and research every single day, looking out for topics that attract the attention of people.  Some, including myself, still see the Internet with kind of a “suspension of disbelief” gaze:  Sometimes some of us, who knew 5 1/4-floppy disks and actually started their video-games addiction with the archaic charm of an Atari 2600 console.

So, watching how fast the Internet grew up into this fascinating kaleidoscope of stimuli is a bit too much to fathom in one day.  Who knows what’s going to be waiting for us tomorrow?

Literally.  Tomorrow.

I grew up writing.  It’s just something I love to do.  I keep little notebooks and pieces of paper around me in case a sentence, an idea, an image or a story comes to my head.  If a nice topic comes to my head, I rush to the computer and log into these blogs and type my poor heart out until it has the shape, the tone, the length and the references that I want.

Turning into a copy writer, seconds before dying out of sheer starvation, was just a way to turn a passion into a profitable online business (so to speak… you’ve heard that before around here, haven’t you?).

To be honest, nothing will replace the good ol’ paper and pencil combo to get my creative juices flowing.  Every brainstorm ends up with a bunch of sentences and doodles that convey, in an arcane order, what I’m trying to say.  It’s an organic process that starts with a bunch of different images (visual, written, auditive, different flavors, different textures and shapes, smells from the past…) and they turn into a hyper-concentrated version of that stream of thought, organized in an industry-friendly format.

… I keep extra paper by my computer here at my office.  Sometimes I rely on it more than on the keyboard I’m writing this.

Probably, if you have been following these blogs (and you’re not one of those creepy bots who leave Viagra spam in the comments) you have noticed a few changes.  I was told once that it felt as if this blog was facing its own middle-age crisis.  Which is odd, since I’m still on my 20’s.

Writing content for your website can be a strenuous task. Restrictions, SEO, product promotion, deadlines, loads and loads of work piling up… Yeah, it can be a drag.  But I gave it some thought on my free time.  It was an exercise of practical observation:  I saw the team of designers working and I saw something amazing.

They were able to create amazing sites and graphics and logos.  They had fun thinking of ways to communicate a message, thinking of the best colors, struggling against creative blocks and coming up and out with great designs.

So it hit me.  Some things can be learned from them and be applied to online content writing:

• Deadlines are not your enemy.  The choice can be reduced to this:  would you write contents thinking about editing them afterwards (and delay your posting rate) or are you going to REALLY write for the net (saving time and space, being concise and sizzling)?
• Writing is, definitely, a creative work when it’s well done.  It requires the same levels of professionalism, research and commitment as web design.
• You have to consider that your content, by itself, won’t be read.  So, spiking your articles with some good ol’ natural SEO will improve your chances of building up an audience.  Add keywords to your text in the same way they’re added to the core of a site.
• Take it as a challenge.  Every new format demands new means to express yourself.  If it’s tasteful, interesting, informative and honest, you can get away with anything.

Ernest Hemingway once said that there’s nothing as horrible as a blank sheet.  I’m starting to differ.  Unlike a finished text, a web site design with no content holds the best information a text can offer: potential. And that’s pure beauty.

Here’s a question for you, if you have a blog:  how did the Internet change the way you write?