Who are you?

It's the simplest thing to start with, but it's amazing how many people forget this bit.

What should be in lights on your home page? On the front of your brochures? Not just your name, but what you do and who you do it for.

Get some friends of friends to visit your web site. People who know nothing about your business. See if they can tell what you're selling and why they'd want to buy it in your first few lines of copy.

If you're not absolutely clear on this, you need a re-think. Don't make your visitors work hard at understanding you. You need to work at understanding your potential audience and spelling it out for them. In their language. You only have seconds to convince. Make the most of it.

Getting the tone right for your audience

When you're writing content for your web site, or your brochures, or your leaflets, it's important to consider your audience at all times. Can you characterise your audience by its age group, its interests, its education level? Understanding your audience will help you pitch your writing at a level that informs without either blinding with science or patronising.

For an example, here's what happened on our Bank Holiday day out ....