5 Easy Tips to Make Your Content Look Professional

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These days, looking professional online is key to helping you bring in new business and maintain your credibility. Fortunately, it’s not too difficult to add a dash of classy, trustworthy chic to your online content. Here are just a few ways to go about it.

Use high-quality images

Thanks to the rise of smartphones, you don’t need to hire a photographer to ensure quality images on your website, True Local listing or social media platforms. Your average phone will do the job just fine, so just remember these key points when taking photos:

  • Keep your hand steady – holding your breath when taking the photo can help with this
  • Shoot in well-lit areas, and try to use natural light as much as possible rather than your flash
  • Keep a straight centre line using the horizon or a flat surface as a guide, and also check your phone’s settings to turn on your camera’s gridlines
  • Save your photos in a relatively high file size – keeping them at around 100kb each should be enough to look good on-screen without slowing down the speed of your site (which is also important for SEO!)

And just what sort of photos should you be taking? Well, that depends on your business, but generally speaking, before-and-after shots, team photos and project shots are a good start. Follow these tips and you’ll be snapping like a pro in no time!

Choose your colour scheme carefully

Your colour scheme says more about your business than you might think, and a dodgy one can be incredibly off-putting. Stick to no more than three complementary colours – you can use a colour wheel to determine which colours match well.

You also get bonus points for selecting ones that are relevant to your field (white and blue for a refrigerator repair company, for instance) and incorporating your logo. If you’ve got your heart set on a bold, vibrant colour, offset it with white or neutral tones so you don’t overwhelm users. What’s more, your colour scheme should be consistent across your entire online presence – including your website, social media pages and True Local listing.

Pick a clean font

Just like the colour scheme, your website’s font can have a big impact in terms of a first impression, and it’s something that a lot of businesses don’t think about when designing their websites. You’re best off sticking with something clean, simple and easy to read – Opens Sans and Helvetica are always reliable choices. If you do want to use a fancier font for a bit of flair, keep it to headings only, where eye-catching can be a good thing. Font Combinator is a great tool for checking out how different fonts work together. It also probably goes without saying by now, but steer well clear of Comic Sans and Papyrus!

Keep it simple

While you could probably talk for hours on end about your field of expertise, it’s not always best to do so. Large slabs of text in your content are ugly and off-putting, and won’t do you any favours when comes to gripping a reader’s attention. Be concise and direct in your blog posts and social media updates, and break up the content with icons and imagery to add visual appeal. Keyword-rich headings and sub-headings are useful here too for two reasons: they help keep the reader’s attention and they aid in optimising your content for search engines.

The same goes for your website layout – the simpler, the better. Make sure that your content is in defined blocks, spaced apart appropriately, and ensure all critical information, such as your phone number and a contact form, is placed clearly and prominently

Do a spelling and grammar check

So simple, yet so often overlooked. Everything you post should be 100% free of spelling and grammatical errors, as their presence can be construed as laziness and carelessness. You don’t have to be a wordsmith to make sure your content is error-free, though. Before you post it, simply run the text for your True Local listing, Facebook page, website and other platforms through trustworthy checking software. Using a free tool like Grammarly in addition to Microsoft Word’s spellcheck will help ensure you’re fully covered.

Check out our business blog for more practical tips on helping grow your business online.


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