Once you've evaluated the effectiveness of your writing, the final step in the process is to optimise it and squeeze every last bit of effectiveness out.
Tailor the content
Every time you write and evaluate, you learn more about your audiences, their needs and interests. They will let you know whether your content is interesting and engaging either from the comments they leave on your pages, or through the usage patterns of your website.
Use this information to make constant improvements to your website and to individual pieces of content and you'll become a much better writer. You'll also be amazed at the difference it makes to your organisation and your beneficiaries' experiences.
Remember that, unlike print, you can edit and re-edit web pages as many times as you like, even after they go live. If you review and reword an old article as part of a content improvement plan, you can check your analytics to see if that page's performance has improved over time.
Another useful tool for optimising your content is Google Website Optimizer, which lets you publish multiple versions of the same article and compare the effectiveness of each. This tool is at its most effective when you're already getting high numbers of visitors to your website, so work on driving traffic to your site first. This sort of content testing can be quite sophisticated an time-consuming, but can reap great rewards in terms of conversion from casual browsers to donors, volunteers or activists.
Editing at least once in response to feedback and analytics data is also good practise and will help you become a better writer.
Personas
Use this information you've gathered from various sources (such as analytics, comments, surveys etc.) and think about writing or updating "personas" for your audience.
Create a fictional character and give her/him a name and a short biography. How old are they, where do they live, what are their hobbies and interests.
Personas will help you think about
- who your audience is
- what the individual needs, interests, tasks and motivations are and how your organisation can help them
- are they likely to be a member of a small peer group or demographic?
These personas will help you think about how people might be using your website, what sort of content they're looking for and how they'll find it. You can then write content which will be interesting and relevant to different groups of baneficiaries.
Don't write all your content for one type of group - you'll get more traffic and a better experience for the user if you write for a range of people.
Next: Free and essential Google tools