Introduction Messages Part II

Back in March I wrote an article about introduction messages. I was doing website reviews today on one of my favorite forums, and in one of the threads someone asked for a review of their new webmaster forum. Well guess what? It was just like a thousand other webmaster forums, dead, boring, no members, and little activity. It takes a lot of work to get any kind of forum working, and in regards to a webmaster forum, seriously, good luck.

The site owner asked for a basic review, and after looking at it for just a couple of seconds I saw the header included a small logo, a guy with glasses, and that is it. No tag line, nothing, just the forum below. I mentioned to him he needs to get a tag line, and gave him a few more tips. He replied back with, “Well the basic tag line for th whole site is ‘Web Resource Community’”. Gag. I’m sorry, but that tag line is not going to cut it.

How to Write an Introduction Message or Tag Line

Here is a great way to write a tag line or introduction message. Write a two sentence description of your site. Be as descriptive as possible. Now sit on it until tomorrow. Now edit your two sentence message to make it a one sentence message. You may need to be very selective with your words, and when you are finished, I am guessing you will be very proud of yourself. At this point the introduction message is usually high quality. Now sit on it for a day. Here comes your tag line. Forget writing a whole sentence, and only using the most absolutely essential words from your one sentence create your tag line. Mine is “Site Usability Testing and Web Development Services”. This originally came from an entire paragraph of material. Odds someone will read the entire tag line instead of whole paragraph? 100%. Odds that someone will skip your site if it is not clearly defined in a twenty seconds or less? 100%.