Interactive Content

Why should you interact with readers?

1. You can establish closer, more personal relationships with visitors.

2. You can find out about their preferences, likes and dislikes.

3. You can listen to their complaints and suggestions.

4. You can request their feedback on your performance.

5. You can collect valuable demographic data on your audience

AND.... you can get fresh content to use on your site!

All of this allows you to make improvements, additions and enhance the value and utility of your site to visitors. By employing interactive tools, you can generate content to use later. There are many different ways to do this. Here are a few ideas:

Forums

An electronic bulletin board is a Website where a visitor can read messages posted by others, and respond by writing another message on the board. This reply is also displayed for others to read, producing a growing list of discussions on related topics.

After a reasonable period of time, the messages under a particular topic can be encapsulated into a feature article or other form of content on your site.

Chat Rooms

Real-time online chat is a fantastic interactive tool – but with unavoidable limitations. Chat events permit the creation of innovative pieces of content like

• Interviews with participants, especially experts and celebrities

• Discussions on featured topics and issues

• Workshops and seminars for your visitors

Creating Your Own Content

If you have a lot of experience in your specialty, and your writing skills are excellent, content creation will be a simple matter of sitting at your computer and banging away at the keys for a few minutes.

If, however, you aren’t wired that way, generating material for your site will feel like having a tooth pulled – without anaesthetic!

Writing for the Web

Reading online, on a computer screen, differs in many ways from the way people read print publications. Most skim through an article rather than read it line after line.

By breaking up content into small chunks, and by the generous use of white space between them, you can make your WebPages look neat, uncluttered, and readable.

Some tips:

Use shorter sentences

Use ‘catch’ words and phrases

Avoid long, difficult words with many syllables

Get to the point right away

Use sub-titles to set off paragraphs

Spelling and Grammar

Your reader will judge you on many factors. Spelling/grammar is an important one.

Reasonable care to ensure correct spelling and grammar is essential if you are to establish a serious image.

A few mistakes might (and will) slip through the cracks! Your readers will probably accept this. But if it happens very often, you lose credibility.

Style

A formal, impersonal, grammatical style would be ideal for some topics. But a chatty, friendly, write-as-you-talk style will be a perfect fit for others. There aren’t any rules – use what work for you.

Be Bold – Experiment

Managing a Website can be an interesting voyage of self-discovery. Be adventurous. Try out new ideas. Imitate models you find interesting. Keep innovating.

And monitor response to each change. Did your readers like it? If they did, keep it. If not, experiment again.

Most sites grow by such trial-and-error methods. The winners are those who identify successful models and develop them, while ruthlessly eliminating any that fail.

An open mind to ideas and suggestions, and a willingness to adapt to change, is perhaps the best skill you can develop as a Webmaster.