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Section 2: Recipe No. 13 | Review a product
threw me was the ‘DVD check’ — a process that took around 20 minutes.” He goes
Hot Tip
There are two types of product reviews - stand- alone or comparative. The first focuses on a single product. The second evaluates
similar items and helps readers to choose the product that best suits their needs.
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on to talk about new features like the Finder, Space, and the Time Machine. The review ’s quality is enhanced by the addition of photographs taken from his desktop that illustrate exactly what he’s talking about. In his summary, he concludes that the system is well worth the money.
Two approaches, two audiences
Riley and Snell approach the same product in different ways. They have been written with different audiences in mind.
Your readers
Who are my readers? This is the question you should be asking yourself repeatedly throughout this process. If you are largely talking to an audience of corporate managers their problems are going to be different from the guy who runs a small business from home. Your readers are key to the product review, because they will make a judgment call on whether to purchase the product based on your review.
Content
You can write a review on anything — it doesn’t have to be the latest piece of technology. You could write about a nearby restaurant, a coffee shop that sells the best muffins you have ever tasted, or a household appliance you have recently invested in.
Detailed research is essential. You have to know your subject matter, so that you’re being fair to the manufacturer, and to yourself. It’s your credibility that is at stake.
Once you have decided on your product, researched it and know the style you want to adopt, decide on your structure. I have provided some points to consider:
• Headline should include the full product name and version you are reviewing.
• Introduction should be a short summary of your product review. Give
your readers a taste of what to expect by telling them whether this is going to be a positive or negative review.
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Section 2: Recipe No. 13 | Review a product
• You should set out the claims the manufacturer makes about what the product does by reading all the material supplied. These provide a
basis for measuring the product’s success.
• Why will your readers be interested in this particular product? What
could they gain from using it? What are their needs and wants? What problems do they face?
• How does it work? Think about giving a step-by-step description and include
photographs, like Riley did with the Mac Leopard. If you are reviewing software don’t get too technical. Your readers won’t want to know every cough and spit of an installation process but they may appreciate a screenshot.
• Show your appreciation or disapproval of the product. You should go
back to the promises the manufacturer makes and express how it lives up to those promises, or how it doesn’t. A list of pros and cons is a great way to show your readers exactly what they can expect from the product.
• Make comparisons. Is the product an upgrade of a former model? Is it
better than its predecessors? How does it compare with competitive products — so in the Mac example, you might want to consider how its operating system compares with a similarly-priced PC?
• Summarize your opinion in the final paragraph. Is it worth the price tag?
Do this with certainty and conviction, or you will leave your reader confused. Would you buy it? You should also include a link to the company who makes the product and the recommended retail price.
Now that you have shared your views with the world, invite others to participate and get a debate going.
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Build a
Top 10 list
Readers respond well to Top 10 lists and they are some of the quickest, easiest articles you can write.
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There is a lot of competition out there, so you need to be able to present your article in an easily accessible way. A list that contains lots of text will be off-putting to many readers. A Top 10 should have short sentences and shouldn’t be repetitive. You can list top tips, worst mistakes, or simple bullet points.
The www.toptenz.net site is dedicated to Top 10 lists.
Toptenz provides great ideas for your own content.
It may provide ideas for your business. 10 is a popular
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quantity, and more likely to be searched on than other numbers. But, you can include any number of points – whatever suits the content.
Keyword research ideas
If you aren’t sure what kind of Top 10 article you
should be writing, start with some keyword research. Use either Wordtracker ’s paid Keywords tool , or its free keywords tool.
I typed ‘top ten’ into the Keywords tool and it produced a list of potential articles. The most popular was Top 10 search engins, but others caught my eye, too. You could write about the Top 10:
• travel destinations • supermarkets • viral emails • movies • toys
• books to read
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Section 2: Recipe No. 14 | Build a top-10 list
BBC Top 10 list
Hot Tip
Almost any topic provides plenty of opportunities for
creating a Top 10 list.
Find the right keywords and search engine
traffic will flow to your site. Include the terms ‘top’ and ‘best’ in your headlines and title tags.
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In February 2007, ING Direct bank commissioned some research about social signals that are key indicators of a neighborhood that is “on the up,” with potential for rising house prices. The BBC carried a news article on what the Top 10 indicators are:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/6389467.stm
1. Ethnic cuisine
2. Thicker telephone directories
3. Crowded public transport
4. Better school results
5. Neighborhood watch schemes
6. More burglar alarms
7. More skips and scaffolding
8. Graffiti disappearing
9. Planning notices appear
10. More traffic wardens
ING’s timing, not long before house prices started to fall, wasn’t great. But the example shows how straightforward it is to attract good media coverage for Top 10 lists.
Top 10 things you should know before you blog
In her article, The Top 10 Things You Should Know Before You Blog , Carole Matthews takes a more in-depth approach to a Top 10 article. Matthews writes 1,400 words, with each of the 10 headlines in bold, and around 120 to 150 words on each point.
The piece works well because she has done her homework and is able to include a variety of attributable quotes and links to organizations within the body text.
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Section 2: Recipe No. 14 | Build a top-10 list
Use the Top 10 to showcase your talents
Think of your audience when writing. What kind of thing would they like to know? How can you use your expertise to provide useful tips or share your strategic thinking?
E-consultancy.com, an online marketing and e-commerce site, has published a series of articles analyzing major UK retailers’ websites. See 10 things Tesco can do better online . Or 10 things Boots can do better online . Each article is a critique of the retailer ’s site, with tips on how users’ experience could be improved.
You could write a similar article to showcase your skills or products. If you run a yoga class, explain the Top 10 benefits of yoga. If you run a cookery school, cover the Top 10 meals made with chicken. Or if, like Guy Kawasaki, you are a successful blogger and venture capitalist, you could write about 10 ways to use LinkedIn to find a job .
Five more ways of benefiting from Top 10 lists
Here are five more ways of benefiting from Top 10 lists
• Invite readers to add to your list – this gives you greater engagement and
interactivity with your audience, and creates additional keyword rich copy.
• Create seasonal lists – for Christmas, Halloween, or Valentines. End of year
round-ups are always popular.
• Include both ‘Top ten’ and ‘Top 10’ in your headline and body copy –
as people will use both terms when searching.
• If you sell advertising, you may want to split the list over more than one page. You can benefit from optimizing each page separately, but more
importantly, generate page impressions to impress potential advertisers.
• Finally, halve your workload – write a Top 5 list.
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