Note from your friendly SmallBusiness.com Wranglers: Help us keep SmallBusiness.com simple.
SmallBusiness.com is a reference guide for small business owners and managers. It is a research medium that provides definitions, explanations and how-to guides to men and women who may be unfamiliar with the topic they are researching. Many different types of individuals use SmallBusiness.com, so it's important that the information be written and explained in a way that is understandable by a diverse audience.
8 tips for keeping SmallBusiness.com simple
- Know your audience: Write for a tradesperson or craftsperson who runs a small business, not a person who has studied business or the topic you are writing about. When writing, keep in mind a person who is in the process of making a decision or in need of background information on the topic. An entry in SmallBusiness.com should help provide background and guide users to helpful resources on the web.
- Research your topic first: Look for other entries, guides or articles on the topic. Whenever possible, improve existing content rather than create new.
- Avoid buzzwords: Whenever creating or editing an entry, please avoid buzzwords. If you must use them, link to a definition on the SmallBusiness.com Glossary.
- Give timeless advice: Avoid creating a context for your entry like "this down economy" or "today's high gas prices." That way, your advice will always be relevant.
- Translate academic or technical writing: We encourage you to re-purpose your academic or technical research for this site. But before posting, edit out the technical speak. What remains should be an easy-to-follow explanation.
- Write (and link) for relevance: Many of the entries on SmallBusiness.com contain only a few sentences; others make the scroll bar work overtime. There's no minimum or maximum word limit. Instead, write for relevance and clarity. Apply the same concept for linking, both within SmallBusiness.com and to external sites.
- Format for legibility: Clear formatting is as important as clear writing. Use paragraph breaks, headings and subheadings, and bulleted or numbered lists to increase readability on a computer screen.
- Unclear about being clear? Ask us: We hope we were clear in posting these and other tips in the SmallBusiness.com Help Hub. But if you can't find the help you need, email help@smallbusiness.com and write, "A SmallBusiness.com question" in the subject line. One of our Helpers will get back to you as soon as possible. Or, on Twitter, use @smallbusiness in a tweet and we'll see it.
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