September 10, 2015

Authority Site Building Part II – Writing Style For Authority Websites

Daily Writing Blog, How to's and Tutorials for Writers, Online Marketing And Affiliate Marketing, Web Design and Development

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Writing Style for Authority Websites

This month, I’m writing a series of posts on authority websites.  Very often, writers tend to pigeon-hole themselves as being a specific sort of writer, or capable of writing only about certain things, or in certain styles. If you want to get the most out of writing as a profession, or turn your hobby into a money-spinner, it’s best to rid yourself of those limitations.

Writing an authority site is a great way to hone your writing skills, make money and provide value to everyone who has a particular set of issues. The beauty of an authority site is that you can scale it to whatever size you see fit. You can make an authority website that’s little more than a niche site where you get paid for adverts, or you can make an authority site that leads to consulting gigs and becomes your main source of income. Or you can pick something in between.

Writing as an authority has its own stylistic quirks. I’ll talk about them later in this article. First though, we’ll talk about strategy.

Strategy

When you’re writing non-fiction, the words that you use aren’t nearly as important as the process you go through to get to the point where you’re writing words. If you’re a freelance legal writer, then you are going to spend as much time making sure you don’t write the wrong thing as you do writing the right thing. If you’re a copywriter, then you’re going to spend a lot of time figuring out which emotional buttons to push with your writing. If you’re writing how to materials, then you’re going to spend a lot of time editing your work down to get your materials down to a concise-yet-still-helpful amount.

When we build an authority site, we have a particular goal: To display our authority.  Our strategy comes from that, and each market will be different. However, here’s how I go about building an authority site project.

Firstly, the goal is to demonstrate knowledge. Authority comes from knowledge of the target market. The easiest and noblest way to do this is to actually be knowledgeable about your target market. The second easiest way is to commit to reading the following:

  • A basic beginner’s book on your subject.
  • The key texts created about your subject.
  • A couple of more out-there/academic books about your subject. (For cutting edge thinking.)
  • A business book on your subject.

If you read and make notes on these, then you’ll know enough to get started on an authority website. This is assuming your target market isn’t something ludicrously complex, and is based on people who know nothing about the subject being your target readers.

For instance, you aren’t going to be able to read five books and then start an authority site on the legal implications of the US Constitution that’s got a target market of experienced First Amendment Lawyers. It’s just not realistic.

What you could do is create an authority site about cooking vegetarian food for people who can currently only cook with a microwave.

You need to be a couple of steps more knowledgeable than your target market. That’s where you derive your authority from.

Once you’ve decided your subject, read up about it, made copious notes and generally know your way around the subject, you’re going to go to real life to do some research. (I know, it’s scary.)

The difference between a niche site and an authority site, or a successful site and an unsuccessful one, is that a good site will address real world problems. Nobody respects an authority site unless there’s a tangible benefit to follow that authority. That’s why an article about making money as a writer will score more hits than a creative writing professor’s article about a post-modern feminist interpretation of Moby Dick.

Go on forums. Go outside. Go and find your market, and find what real problems they have. Your authority site will succeed based on the problems it solves for people. You can’t load a website up with fake reviews of products you’ve never used and hope that people will buy your bullshit over someone else’s. When creating an authority site, you aren’t selling. You’re building good will.

When you have a list of problems, then you can write some articles solving those problems.

Again, don’t sell. The only time you can sell a product is when you have lived the problem, and found that the item you’re selling really does work as the only possible solution. Always bear in mind this golden rule as well: If you save someone money, then they will pay you back in the future.

For instance, say you are starting an authority site called “Party Girl Problems.” One of the problems that girls in your market get into is that their high-heels get ruined because you live in a town with cobbled pavements and their heels snap. You discover the solution is as simple as wrapping the heel in some duct tape or something. (You can probably tell I’m making this up as I go along.)

Don’t sell a “Super saver heel fixer” for $99. Write a straightforward article laying out the benefits for using your duct tape solution.

You won’t make any money from this, but you’ll be building trust. That’s the purpose of your authority site. You can think about making money from your authority site later. (We’ll talk about it in another article.)

Stylistic Choices For Writing An Authority Site

The key take away for writing as an authority is that you need to be straight to the point, honest and factual. People are going to stumble upon your site and read it looking for advice.

Don’t go for the quick sale. Your site is your marketing, and the information you are giving away is your sales material. You don’t need to pile on a sales letter on top of that.

Do answer their questions. Do reduce any background noise.  Do write about your life only as it pertains to the market.

For instance, to use the example above, Party Girl Problems, only talk about your life and display your personality as it relates to going out and partying. Don’t write about your sick parrot. Don’t write about your job. Do write about problems you face that your target will be interested in or relate to.

Also, remember a key point – the average reading comprehension level on the internet is really quite low. Imagine you’re talking to a reader that has the reading level of an average 13-15 year old. Preferably, you’ll type in sentences with only a single clause.

Don’t have more than three or four sentences per paragraph. Add in a lot of pictures and videos when you can. This will improve the traffic you get and the amount of subscribers you get.

Those are the quick and easy rules. In the next article on this subject, I’ll talk about some of the more technical aspects of getting your website up. A lot of people over-complicate things, and you don’t need to do that.

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