Business Consulting Archives - Nelida Ruiz Consulting

Marketing during Covid-19: Social Media and Content Marketing More Important than Ever

Many small businesses, from lawyers to hair salons, thought of online marketing as a necessary evil or a distraction if they thought of social media as marketing at all. Now, during Covid-19, social media, email and website marketing may be the only way businesses can stay in touch with customers. And staying in touch is critical during social distancing.

If social media and online marketing for business are new concepts to you, there are plenty of resources available to help you make the most of your online presence. From setting up your business’s Facebook page to creating content to share, I’ll be providing advice and resources on how to transition your business to an online presence, keep in touch with your customers, and navigate the sensitivities around developing content during a crisis.

Marketing Checklist during Social Distancing

Here’s my checklist to steps you should take immediately:

Update Your Contact Information & Hours

If you have a website or Facebook business page (you should), update your office hours and contact information to let people know how to reach you. People can’t afford to waste time driving to your location only to find out you’ve adjusted your hours or are closed. Keep in mind that just because your business’s physical doors may be closed, there are still many ways to help your customers. Update your online information now.

Update Your Contact and Email Lists

Ask customers for their updated email addresses and contact information so you can keep them informed. You can set a form up on your website to collect their information or even ask them to direct message you on social media with their current contact information. Your website creator or hosting platform likely already has contact form templates to choose from, and it should only take a few minutes to build a form from scratch. Remember to ask for a name, email, and phone number. And be aware of privacy policies and opt-out requirements.

Offer Online Ordering, Curbside Delivery and Shipping

If your business sells products, offer online ordering and curbside delivery on your website and social media pages. This process works great for hair salons, but not so much for lawyers.

Develop Online Content That Will Help Your Customers

Consider answering the most common questions you’re asked. You can post a list of FAQs online, schedule and host a webinar, and/or record and post a video answering common questions.

For example, if you’re an attorney who specializes in employment law, you can offer a wealth of guidance during this challenging time. Employers need to know how they can and can’t handle such things as reductions in hours or benefits, work-from-home policies, sick time, and disciplinary actions. Corporate attorneys can provide information on contract clauses that might help, given this worldwide business interruption. Everyone could use a little enlightening on the new Coronavirus bill.

Businesses of all types can create useful content. If you own a hair salon, develop hair and makeup tutorials. Offer tips on how to maintain your color at home, use accessories and styling to hide roots, or give your family emergency trims at home. Run photo contests for before and after at-home transformations, and offer to fix those haircuts when social distancing requirements are lifted.

Shops and stores, depending on their specialties, can showcase seasonal products or show how shopping in your own home can help refresh spaces and your wardrobe. Show how products can be used in multiple ways with minor adjustments.

Develop Content, Not Just Ads

Businesses of all sizes around the world are having to rethink their advertising and social media surrounding the pandemic. This Adweek article addresses many of those considerations.

In short, don’t make the mistake of automatically jumping to social media advertising. Social media advertising can be cost-effective and a great way to target customers. As a marketer and social media fan, I’m seeing social media ads on a scale I’ve never seen prior to the pandemic. Before you consider placing ads on social media, think about simply staying in touch and providing valuable content. Show you care. It’s the businesses with heart that will survive this crisis best.

Business Continuity Communications: How Prepared Is Your Business?

Posting Original Content: Advanced Social Media Post Ideas for Professionals

Three Essential Social Media Tips for Attorneys, CPAs, and Other Professionals

Business Continuity Communications: How Prepared Is Your Business?

Communicating during a crisis like the one we’re experiencing with Covid-19 is crucial and risky for any business. See these tips for communicating effectively to employees and customers.

Has your business reviewed any automatic or pre-scheduled communications for appropriateness given current events? Do you have a solid plan in place for communicating with employees, customers, and the public should a quarantine affect your place of business? How are you communicating about alternative work arrangements, work from home, or business travel to your employees? How are you communicating about sick leave policies? Are you preparing for how to provide updates on upcoming and future events that may be canceled?

Every business should have a formal communication plan for business continuity and crisis situations like the one we’re experiencing with Coronavirus. Communicating accurate information is important, but we also need to address and consider the emotions of employees and customers.

Use Official Sources

Rely on official, accurate sources to provide information about the pandemic. You may link directly to official sources like the CDC and state government websites, but try not to quote or paraphrase those communications or news organizations that might be perceived to provide slanted information. Your employees and customers have access like never before to news and information. What they need from you now is how your business plans to proactively respond to and address what is happening locally.

Help Employees

If your business provides a benefit like an Employee Assistance Program (EAP), make the contact information readily available to employees who may be feeling overwhelmed emotionally or financially.

Provide information on (hopefully increased) cleaning and sanitizing schedules. Some businesses have even provided hand sanitizers, disinfectants, and facial tissue for use onsite at work.

Understand that productivity may suffer with employees distracted by news reports, and many want to discuss current events among themselves. Keep your communications short and easily understood to minimize additional distractions and make it clear what is appropriate to discuss with customers and what is not.

Consider Communication Channels and Messaging

Develop a multi-pronged, omni-channel communication approach. Use all appropriate communication channels at your disposal, including, email, texts, digital displays, voice messages, message points for supervisors and managers, bulletin boards, intranet, and intracompany social media channels and collaboration tools. And consider which messaging is appropriate for each channel. And again, keep communications short and easy to read.

Be Agile and Prepare in Advance

Depending on the size of your organization, you may need to involve several leaders in communication planning and distribution, including human resources, facilities, marketing, communications, legal, IT, and security. However, all involved should have a clear understanding of what approvals are needed, when, and for which types of communications. If your company does business in person with the public, specify who is authorized to speak to the media should the need arise and let employees know that only those authorized to speak on behalf of the company should do so. Plan in advance for as many scenarios as you can and finalize drafts well ahead of when situations might arise.

Providing timely and accurate information will go a long way toward reassuring your employees and customers, minimizing distractions and speculation.

Take Your LinkedIn Professional Networking to the Next Level

Are you looking to take your social media professional networking or business development to another level? Building on my previous article, Three Essential Social Media Tips for Attorneys, CPAs, and Other Professionals, this article provides simple steps you can take to go from a basic LinkedIn profile to using LinkedIn or other social media for business development and professional networking.

Note: the links in the following tips take you to additional content on LinkedIn for help with the tips mentioned. Use the Help feature in Twitter and Facebook for help with those applications.

Follow the organizations you support.

1. Most people support organizations with monetary donations, volunteering, or sitting on boards. Simply following these organizations on LinkedIn or other social media channels can beef up your LinkedIn profile and professional networking. And you’ll become more aware of the organizations’ activities by following them on social media, opening up opportunities to do more. Reshare their content and like their posts–at least the ones you find most of interest. Your connections will get a feel for who you are beyond your resume. And you never know where that could lead. You may inspire someone else to support the same organization or meet others with similar interests.

Follow industry peers and referral sources.

2. You likely know many people within your industry. Perhaps you attended a conference where someone you know and respect spoke. Be sure to connect with those you exchange business cards and have meaningful conversations with. Congratulate others on their achievements. Like and reshare their content when appropriate. In the legal field, conflicts may bar an attorney from taking on a matter with some frequency. Maintaining connections on LinkedIn can provide two-way referral sources. And down the road, you never know where your career path will take you. Those connections can prove very valuable over the years as a source of business or even a new career.

Follow thought leaders, content producers, and organizations in the areas you rely on for information and expertise.

3. Most of us rely on information from industry sources to stay current in our fields. Whether you rely on information from business publications like Forbes or Harvard Business Review or more specialized content like JD Supra or Corporate Counsel, be sure to follow these sources on LinkedIn. When you find an article or post that is helpful or thought-provoking to you, you can quickly reshare, like, and comment on their content. That activity will then appear in the feeds of those you’re connected to, and those who view your profile will see it as well.

Get out in the community.

4. Are you attending a charity auction or fundraiser, walking or running in an event to raise funds for a nonprofit, or volunteering for a cause close to your heart? Share a post or two about the event. Most event programs also include a hashtag to use for the event. Don’t forget to tag the organization, using @ and the organization name. Just be sure your tag is the organization’s official account. Share details of the event in advance to help boost registration. At the event, take a photo of something of interest, like speakers, sponsorship signage or you with other attendees, and post during or immediately after the event. Again, you never know who you might inspire and the organization and event organizers will likely take note of and appreciate you spreading the word among your connections.

In my next article, I’ll share more tips on how to continue to amp up your social media networking and business development. Sign up to subscribe to all the tips.

Three Essential Social Media Tips for Attorneys, CPAs, and Other Professionals

Many professionals shy away from using social media for business networking. This article is the first in a series, providing quick, easy steps to harness social media to connect with people on a professional level.

Are you using social media for your business development? If not, you should be. Social media doesn’t replace your business development and networking efforts; it simply gives you more opportunities to connect with others. And best of all, you can do it quickly from your phone when you’re away from the office. Here are three easy social media tips you can apply today to keep in better touch with clients and colleagues.

Note: the links in the following tips take you to additional content on LinkedIn for help with the tips mentioned. Use the Help feature in Twitter and Facebook for help with those applications.

Follow and Connect with Businesses and Individuals

1. Follow your clients and connect with client contacts. Once you’ve followed and/or connected with a client or individual, his or her content will appear on your LinkedIn feed. You can then easily like, comment and/or reshare your clients’ content going forward. If you’re unclear on whether to follow or connect, see LinkedIn’s article on the differences between the two.

“You can ask someone to join your professional network by sending them an invitation to connect. If they accept your invitation, they’ll become a 1st-degree connection. We recommend only inviting people you know and trust because 1st-degree connections are given access to any information you’ve displayed on your profile. Building your network is a great way to stay in touch with alumni, colleagues, and recruiters, as well as connect you with new, professional opportunities.”
LinkedIn

Celebrate Your Contacts’ Successes

2. Celebrate your clients. If a client has a milestone like an anniversary, a ground-breaking or good press, offer your congratulations on social media. Don’t forget to tag your client and your client contact.

Share Your Employer and Colleagues’ Content

3. Follow and share your firm’s content. If you work with others, be sure to share their content and like their posts.

Starting with these three easy social media tips will help you get more comfortable with interacting on social media, whether it’s LinkedIn, Twitter or Facebook or all three. In the coming weeks, I’ll be sharing additional social media ideas for professionals. Sign up to subscribe to all the tips.

Business Development Tips: Save Your Contacts

Taking 30 seconds to add each new contact you work with to your contact list can save you oodles of time in the long run.

Synopsis: One simple step can amplify your business development efforts and save you tons of time in the long run. Save your contacts. This article explains why and how.

Time is precious. And so is building your business. One piece of advice I give every attorney, professional and business owner I work with involves an everyday habit with email. Do you save your contacts? Your best marketing and business development tool is hiding in your inbox. It’s your contacts’ email addresses.

Your Email Inbox Isn’t Designed to Efficiently Store Contacts

Too many of us, simply rely on our email inboxes to store and find email addresses and phone numbers of contacts when we need them. That works well for contacts you’ve worked with over the past couple of weeks or month. But beyond that, it can take too much time to search your email to find the contact details for someone you worked with six months ago.

You might have to guess at part of his email address and hope it auto-populates, you might have to search your email to find an email exchange that includes your contact’s phone number in the email footer, or you may have to ask a colleague to provide the contact details. Worse, if emails at your firm or business are archived or deleted after a period of time, you might lose those details altogether. Yet, simply taking 30 seconds to add each new contact you work with to your contact list can save you oodles of time in the long run.

How to Save Contacts in Outlook

Start today. Follow these simple Outlook instructions for each person you email today. Hint: just click on the person’s email address, and select Add to Contacts. Keep it up as you work; if you find yourself searching your email for someone’s contact details, be sure to save that someone as a contact. You’ll thank yourself later.

Give Contacts to Marketing

And if you’ve already developed this habit, don’t forget to provide appropriate contacts to your marketing department as well. They can ensure your contacts are receiving thought leadership content and invitations to seminars.

You can’t rely on your clients searching out information they might need or don’t know they need. Provide valuable content at regular intervals. And to do that, email addresses are one of your most valuable marketing tools.

Goal-Setter vs. Goal-Getter

What’s the biggest goal you’ve ever challenged yourself with? They’re called stretch goals. And while achievable in theory, they’re a stretch. This past weekend, I went to Lake Placid to watch and photograph the athletes competing in the IRONMAN triathlon. Clearly, competing in an endurance competition like the IRONMAN is the ultimate stretch goal.

The IRONMAN is aptly named. Athletes have 17 hours to complete a 2.4-mile swim, a 112-mile bike ride, and a 26.2-mile marathon in that order. The official rules for the marathon state: “Athletes may run, walk, or crawl.” This is serious business. Swim, Bike, Run is the unofficial motto of triathletes. But the rules are sobering. Crawling is a real possibility at the end.

Commitment

When you make a commitment to participate in a competition like the IRONMAN, you are committing yourself to countless hours of physical and mental conditioning. There are more tests of endurance before the competition than the day of. It’s the sacrifices, endurance, and commitment that come before the race that determine, in part, how the day will end for each person.

Sure, there are outside factors like weather, nutrition, equipment, illness, and injury. But it’s ultimately your conditioning, your decisions, and the sacrifices you’ve made during the six months of your training that ultimately determine your finish time or whether you finish at all. Competing in the IRONMAN, like any other major goal, involves a long series of decisions and actions. One two-time Ironman reflected on her prior experience racing, “You just focus on the next fifteen minutes and what you have to do.”

Preparation & Training

This grueling hill on Route 75 is just one of several through the Adirondacks on the IRONMAN course.

By race day, the athletes are so attuned to their training that they can predict with amazing accuracy when they’ll complete each phase of the competition. In our case, we knew within 20 minutes or so when to watch for a particular cyclist to ride by, once then twice, on the cycling loop. The official IRONMAN app also handily provides an athlete tracker. We picked a spot, three-quarters of the way from the top of a grueling hill on the course—just one of several that riders take on through a total elevation gain of 4,182 feet over the course through the Adirondack mountains.

We set up a speaker to play a soundtrack of inspirational tunes from Queen to Coolio. We shook cowbells and whooped our support as riders passed. First came the male professionals competing for a purse, heads down in the zone, barely acknowledging the sudden noise from the small group randomly positioned on the side of the road course. Then came female professionals, and the women in our crew shouted our support even more loudly.

While the professionals left us in awe, the amateurs made the experience more relatable. The age brackets for IRONMAN go all the way up to 90+, and there were times we swiveled to spot an athlete’s age inked on the back of his left calf as he rode past. One man helpfully stated, “79 and still going strong,” as he passed us. I wonder how many times he repeated that statement to himself and anyone listening throughout the day.

Support

Some thanked us for being there, some bopped their heads to the beat of the music, and some raised an arm to pump their fists in the air in perfect rhythm. Nearly all of them smiled. Three-quarters of the way up a relentless incline, they smiled at a group of six strangers who had gathered to cheer them on. They were nowhere near the finish line with an 11-mile climb and a marathon still ahead of them. They had tens of miles to travel on their own power, alone with their thoughts and in pain. And they smiled. Why?

Rochester area resident and newly minted IRONMAN, Eric Miller, waves to his hometown supporters.

I imagine for two reasons. First, they were doing it. They were undoubtedly in the midst of one of the biggest challenges of their lives, and they were doing it. Goal setting is one thing. But goal getting is another. Goal getting creates confidence, a sense of accomplishment and motivation for doing more. And second, they were smiling at the unexpected support of strangers and new friends who waited until the last rider had passed.

At the IRONMAN finish line, the announcer calls the name of each finisher as they cross. But that’s not all. Whether you’re a man or a woman, after your name, he adds, “You are an IRONMAN.”

To anyone out there stretching yourself to accomplish your goals, I wish you Godspeed. I wish you a great soundtrack. And I wish you support from family, friends, and strangers. All your commitment, training, preparation, and endurance has led you here. It’s not easy. But you’re doing it. It’s worth the stretch!

How Successful People Like Attorneys Achieve Goals and Get Out of Their Comfort Zones

The shortest distance between two points is a straight line. In theory, achieving goals should be the same. Point A is your starting point. Point B is your goal. But there’s a catch about measuring shortest distances; the surface has to be flat. Most people’s paths to achieving goals are anything but short and anything but flat and smooth sailing. And without a sufficiently specific goal, a plan and the ability to overcome distractions, we can subconsciously downgrade goal to a four-letter word.

I started my coaching career with a bang, coaching lawyers at the law firm I worked for. I’d had some experience previously in my personal life and career as a coach, manager, and mentor, so the opportunity to get a coaching certification seemed like a natural fit. I ignored the voice in my head insidiously questioning what I could offer these successful, driven, and highly intelligent people. I went for it. And here’s what I learned.

Fleeting Moments of Insecurity and Nagging Fears Shouldn’t Stop You

My own thoughts about my coaching goal were immediately quieted when my first coaching sessions began. I asked what are you most afraid of about setting this goal? And the answers flowed without hesitation. It turns out we can all easily name the things we fear about going after our goals, and the answers are often variations on the same theme. What if I fail? What will other people think? How can I make the time to do this? How much work is this going to take? And my favorite question: can you just do it for me?

I can and will write a whole separate article on my answers to these questions, but the point is even successful, driven, and highly intelligent people have lapses in confidence in their pursuit of goals. But they don’t let those fleeting moments or nagging fears stop them.

Understand that Accomplishing Major Goals Requires Consistent Effort

Goals have a sneaky way of expanding exponentially. Deep down, most people know what they need to do to accomplish their goals. In theory, you can accomplish anything. In reality, there are many steps to accomplishing your goal.

For example, the goal of most attorneys is to develop more business, and they have a variety of ways of doing so from client referrals and networking to advertising and speaking at events. Businesses use the same type of activities. Yet, attorneys and other professionals have been behind the curve in adopting social media to build their businesses and reputations online.

This American Bar Association article points out, “As busy professionals, attorneys have difficulty focusing consistently on things that are important but not urgent.” Don’t we all?

Recognizing the time commitment and level of effort it takes to expand their business development into social media or develop work in a different area of law, many feel it’s not worth their effort. Working with a coach, however, can help busy professionals to maximize their efforts and quell any apprehension they may have about posting content, developing a personal brand on social media, or demonstrating thought leadership in a new area. It’s the same for small businesses.

Talking things through with a coach fills in knowledge gaps on what steps to take and helps organize a plan for realistically moving forward on goals with minimal distractions. Perhaps, most important, a coach provides the accountability needed to stick to your plan and avoid unnecessary detours.

Multicultural Marketing Mistakes: How They Happen and How to Avoid Them

Kim Kardashian Teaches a Marketing Lesson – Are You Listening?

Yesterday, Kim Kardashian announced she would rename her lingerie line after previously announcing her line as “Kimono.” Today, CNN reports that Japan will send trade officials to the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office to discuss the situation. This all comes after the hashtag #KimOhNo began trending on Twitter with people around the world labelling the branding decision as cultural appropriation. Kardashian’s team should have seen this coming. Anyone with the worldwide reach of the Kardashian family would certainly want to be aware of multiculturalism in marketing. Maybe they did and decided to move forward anyway in the spirit of no press is bad press. While it’s highly unlikely that this incident will damage a brand like Kim Kardashian’s, most organizations can’t afford to take that risk.

"All marketing is multicultural marketing these days." — Whether you’re intentionally marketing to specific groups or your message reaches them organically, you’re responsible for any multicultural marketing mistakes.

What Is Multicultural Marketing?

Whether or not an organization is intentionally marketing to specific ethic or diverse groups, also known as multicultural marketing, the reach of digital media means that marketers need to be more culturally aware of the impact of marketing decisions from photos to product and company names to taglines, content and hashtags. All marketing is multicultural marketing these days. Unfortunately, examples of insensitive or poor marketing decisions abound.

Social Media’s Response to Multicultural Marketing Mistakes

In April 2019, Ancestry.com, the world’s largest DNA testing company, received the equivalent of a social media slap fest for a commercial, titled “Inseparable.” In it, a black woman and a white man in period costume speak in a foggy alley with the sound of horses trotting in the background. He offers her a ring and tells her to escape to the North with him. This, my friends, is a warning case study of how not to handle multicultural marketing. Surely they meant the ad to be inspirational. And just as surely, they failed.

As far as I can tell, they timed the commercial to coincide with a promotion offering free access to more than 100 million records from a Civil War collection. Perhaps someone on the marketing team spotted the issue and spoke up or perhaps not. In any event, Ancestry had to deal with the fallout of articles like the Washington Post’s with the headline, “How Ancestry.com Has Failed African American Customers.”

In March 2018, Heineken faced similar backlash for its “Sometimes Lighter Is Better” commercial and its decision to use this tagline while featuring non-white actors in the ad. After over 20 years in the corporate marketing world, I can easily see how this went down. Some well-meaning marketer read in a strategic plan that minorities were a target market. Perhaps, the plan stated the need to use more diverse actors and models in commercials and ads. There is absolutely nothing wrong with the decision to expand into or target specific markets. And I applaud the employment of diverse people. However, the decision to use this questionable tagline at all is an epic fail. And all of this happened just a year after Heineken had been applauded for its “Open Your World” commercial.

I’m being gracious. The Twitter universe was not. One celebrity, Grammy winner Chance the Rapper, tweeted that “some companies are purposely putting out noticeably racist ads so they can get more views.” I certainly hope this isn’t the case.

How They Happen

My graciousness comes from personal experience. I’ve faced issues like this that stand out for all the wrong reasons. I once received a proposed marketing package for a new promotion at work. I glanced down and immediately noted a problem. The image featured a minority male looking distraught. A yellow Post-It was stuck to his forehead. Written on the Post-It was one word. “Help.” I nearly choked.

I knew that clients had been giving feedback that our marketing materials featured too much of the same…happy white caucasians. I knew a well-meaning peer had likely selected the image with that feedback in mind. I evaluated how best to proceed. In the spirit of managing up, I let my boss know I was going to step in. He didn’t get it. I looked into his ice-blue eyes as he smiled and told me he didn’t see anything wrong with the image. “I guess I’m just not as sensitive to that stuff as you are.” Clearly. Undeterred, I approached my peer and let her know how the image would likely be perceived by the same clients who had felt underrepresented in other marketing materials. To her credit, she changed the image.

No one and no organization is immune from occasional slip-ups, marketing or otherwise. While I’d like to believe that no company or marketer would intentionally promote cultural appropriation, bias on insensitivity for attention, I know that unconscious bias exists. I also know that marketing is a fast-paced, demanding career, and any marketing misstep can be painfully public. And I know that without someone specifically watching out for multicultural elements and risks and foibles in marketing efforts, these things will continue to happen. And when they do, social media will be there to set things straight with a hard, less than gracious, clap back.

The Number One Risk with Your Business Emails and Three Easy Ways to Avoid Fumbles

“I didn’t have time to write a short letter, so I wrote a long one instead.”
Mark Twain

From executive communications to your employees’ emails, the number one problem is they’re too long. And business emails that are too long are at best, a waste of time because no one will read them, and at worst, risky if people only skim or read a portion.

Mark Twain got it right when he recognized that composing short, easy-to-read text takes time. Few business owners and fewer employees think they have the time to craft well-written messages to their organizations and customers. But there are a few quick easy actions you can take to shorten and improve business communications.

Use contractions to improve readability.

It may not seem like a big difference, but shortening I am and you are to I’m and you’re makes your email easier to read and visibly shorter.

Don’t use verbs as nouns.

Avoid sentences like, “We conducted an analysis of the situation.” Instead, write, “We analyzed the situation.”

Write in the active voice.

Emulate your favorite sports commentator. Too often, business emails are written in the passive voice and sound like this, “The form was received by the deadline, the service was added to the client’s account, and the sales rep received the commission.” If we’re rewriting this statement as a sports commentator would, we’d describe action on the field like this: “He threw the ball. The fans jumped to their feet. The clock ticked down its final seconds. And the receiver caught the pass in the end zone.” The player comes before the action. So using business language, we’d write, “The client submitted the form before the deadline. Customer service added the service to the client’s account. And the sales rep earned the commission.”

According to a recent Forbes article, “Emails that take about two minutes to read, or roughly 400–500 words, yield the highest readership.” There are many benefits to taking the time to write shorter communications. People will read them. But more importantly, people will understand them. The information you pass to the receiver is received and understood. It’s simple, efficient and good business.

With fewer opportunities for missed communication or miscommunication in your business emails, there’s less risk and fewer fumbles. And the crowd goes wild!

Can you afford the time to write shorter communications to ensure your employees and customers read what you send them? For more email tips, get my Nine Tips to Make Your Emails Impossible to Ignore. Or contact me for communication coaching or training.

Field of Dreams: Lessons SEO Taught Me about Writing for Business and Why They Matter to You

Search engine optimization (SEO) has taught me a thing or two about writing. And that’s saying a lot. Whether you’re marketing your products or business online, emailing customers, blogging, or posting on social media to demonstrate your expertise, there are SEO lessons you can apply to help people engage with your content.

If you search engine optimize it, they will come. SEO is an organic way to help your web pages and content reach a higher position in the search results of Google or other search engines. Higher search engine rankings lead to more traffic to your online content.

In the movie, Field of Dreams, Kevin Costner’s character hears a mysterious voice say, “If you build it, he will come.” While the movie is about baseball and relationships and not about SEO or writing, here’s the connection. Many people assume that if they write something people will read it—whether it’s an email, a post on social media, or a piece of website content.

In reality, people don’t read anymore. They skim. They’re super selective in what slows their scroll. That is even if they see your content at all. That’s where SEO comes in.

Don’t be fooled by the technical term. Essentially, SEO is the science behind getting people to engage with your content. And there are lessons to be learned whether you’re writing an email to a project team to get updates or web copy to sell a product or a service.

Write short sentences.

The first thing I’ve learned is that shorter sentences boost your SEO and readability scores.

People no longer have the time to read long sentences—even great ones. Just because you know (or think you know) the rules of grammar doesn’t mean every sentence you write should be a compound sentence. I once wrote content for a sales audience. I passed the near-final draft along to the sales leader I’d written it for, expecting minimal feedback. He told me there was a run-on sentence that I needed to address. I scoured the text looking for it. I realized that he was simply referring to a long compound sentence. I broke the sentence into two shorter sentences, and suddenly he was happy.

SEO is not unlike that sales guy. Break any long sentences up into shorter sentences, and watch your readability scores go up. And if your readability scores go up, so will the time people spend reading your content. Shorter sentences lead to longer engagement with your content. This is a lesson that can apply to your emails, executive summaries, and text messages too. An added benefit is you’ll be far less likely to make a typo if you keep it concise.

Adjust Your Content to Your Audience.

The second thing I learned from writing SEO content is that the lingo you use within your business may not give you the best search engine rankings for external content. For instance, I worked for a law firm where we referred to our employers as attorneys. However, we had better SEO results when we referred to them as lawyers. Why? Because people outside the legal industry are more likely to search for a “Corporate lawyer” than a “Corporate attorney.” Consider your audience when writing. Answer questions they would ask. Use words they would use.

Throw Your Pride of Authorship Out the Window.

It takes a humble person to write good SEO content. Whether you’re writing directly into an application like WordPress with Yoast for instant SEO feedback or writing in Word and transferring content over to the web, don’t get too attached to your original wording. You may need to reorder paragraphs to introduce keywords earlier. As mentioned previously, you may need to shorten sentences. You’ll need to write in the active voice. (That’s subject before verb for those of you looking to impress friends at dinner.) In short, be prepared to make changes to your precious final draft.

And don’t forget to proofread again after you’ve made any changes! I’ve been using Grammarly lately, and it’s been incredibly useful in catching errors and helping me identify problem sentences before anyone else sees my work. It’s free and convenient, and, it’ll help you avoid embarrassing errors. I highly recommend it especially to anyone who is prone to errors or lacks confidence in his writing.

Don’t Rush SEO.

It’s hard to get noticed out there in the web world. That is unless you have a precocious child, cute dog or a cat with attitude. You may have written a great piece of content, but if you cut corners with SEO, it’ll take longer to get the attention you’re looking for with your post. Give SEO the time and attention it deserves. Or if you have people who handle SEO for you, give them the time they need to take a thoughtful approach to SEO. They’ll need to research relevant keywords on search engines and social media. They made need to add headlines and subheadings to your content. They’ll add and test external links to additional content. This all takes time. But it’ll pay off in the end.

SEO has taught me a lot about writing. The most important lesson is if no one reads your great content, you’re no further along in your efforts than you were before all that writing. Use every tool you can to get the engagement you need to propel yourself and your business forward. If you SEO it, they will read it.