Show Your Personality When Writing for the Web

Posted: July 14th, 2007 | By: Steve Mullen | Filed under: Social Media Tactics | 1 Comment

I wanted to show an example of how outstanding writing can really make a bland announcement worth reading. Anyone who has stopped by here knows I’m a big fan of Feedburner. In fact, this is my second post in a row about them (I need to branch out .. really).

The reason I like Feedburner is not only that they offer great services for sites that utilize RSS feeds, but also that they make it seem so cool. They do this with creative and sometimes offbeat writing. To find an example, look no further than the their recent announcement about Feedburner integration for Blogspot blogs. This sounds awfully boring, particularly if you don’t have a Blogspot blog. But, after glancing at it, I ended up reading the entire thing even though I really couldn’t care much less about the actual announcement. Here’s the first sentence:

Hot on the heels of last week’s much-ballyhooed free FeedBurner for everyone, we are very excited to announce the immediate availability of one-click redirection for Blogger Blogspot blogs (note our fine use of both alliteration and first syllable congruence).

Humor, offbeat or not, gives writing a personality, and attention-grabbing copy is absolutely positively critical on the web. That last portion that’s in parentheses makes me imagine the writer would be a fun person with whom to sit down and share a beer. A lesser writer would have just laid the information out there, which might peak the interest of Blogspot customers. But, with personality like this sprinkled throughout, the writer went above and beyond the call of duty. You’ll find this sort of thing all over Feedburner, and it’s one thing that makes a successful web-based company stand out.

It’s something for everyone to think about … including yours truly!

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