Writing successfully for the internet is a huge challenge if you want to do it consistently well. When a piece of writing can be judged in very concrete terms such as the traffic and links it attracts then there is not much wriggle room for making excuses for bad results either.

The fact is that writing for the web is a lot different to many other mediums. Just as writing for a newspaper differs to writing for an academic journal, so too does writing successfully for the internet require a slightly different skill set from writing most other types of content.

People Don’t Read Online

For starters, people do not read on the internet. They skim. This has been backed up by several eye-tracking studies. People will read a magazine or newspaper, but they will skim content on a computer screen.

An online writer needs to adapt to this. It’s not too difficult mind you – simply by making paragraphs short and including subheadings and bullet-point lists, you can catch the eye of a skimmer to make sure they take in what you are writing about.

People Have Infinite Choice Online

People are restricted in which newspapers they can buy at their local store and which books are stocked at their local bookseller. That means that offline newspapers and books have more control over what their market has the option of buying.

This doesn’t happen online. With the internet, if a reader doesn’t get hooked within a few seconds then they are almost certainly going to look elsewhere or hit the back button. Online writers need to combat that.

Which brings us to another point:

Headline Writing is Much More Important Online

When you need to grab somebody’s attention in a few seconds, you need a great headline. This is not so important for other forms of writing (although it certainly doesn’t hurt), but online it is a necessity if you want to capture readers and links.

Online, even the best content can get lost in the crowd if the headline is not up to scratch.

Final Thoughts

While it’s easy enough to transition between the different types of writing for people who have had experience, it may not be so easy for people who have not had the benefit of that experience or have not shown an inclination to at least study the differences. Plenty of writers will tell you that they can do any type of writing. That’s simply very unlikely.

What this really comes down to is horses for courses. Hire a specialist. If you need a magazine article, then hire a magazine writer. If you need a sales letter, then hire a copywriter. And if you need online content for traffic and links then hire a link bait writer.