Writing for Pleasure

Most of the things I write here are about strategic communication: how can you increase search rankings and conversion rates, how to increase usability, how to make your blog more effective for your business, stuff like that.

And yet in my own work I’m not always writing carefully calculated paragraphs filled with essential keywords. Much of the time, sure, but I also write things that are intended to be useful and entertaining. This very blog is supposed to do that. My educational blog, too. The blogs I write for most of my clients. The articles and teaching materials I write for other clients. These things are mostly fun.

This morning, I’m writing about the music of the Gulf Coast and a motorcycle rally for women. I enjoy this very much. And when, later today, I revise copy for an employment agency’s website, crafting sentences intended to hold as many keywords as possible while still making jobseekers feel that these guys are their best hope, I plan to enjoy that as well.

So I hope that when you have something witty and amusing to say about your company, you put it in your blog. I hope you feel free to make deep philosophical points in your corporate materials, if that’s the kind of person you are. I hope you won’t hesitate to wax lyrical in the copy for your About Us page.

Just make sure you get your keywords on the home page.

Seriously. Have a good, keyword-rich homepage. Make sure that your blog is strongly enough related to what your company does that the search engines can guess what you do.

Having done those essential things, you can then have as much fun as you want while you write the rest of it.