Web comms: Four-course meal or light bite?

This isn't a long article with thousands of words split into slabby paragraphs.

If it was it would die.

This is the interweb, see, and in web comms short and snappy rules.

Seriously. Writing stuff people might glance at on a website or find through a tweet isn't the same as news in papers or features in magazines. There, you can graze. Here, people snack.

So, some rules about webby stuff.

• Dress it up like a snack. So people don't think they're being asked to swallow a chair
• That means bulletpoints. And varying the style of the typeface by using bold or italic
• Drop in images and links to other stuff. They break up text and suggest added value (notice how I didn't do italics there? I did brackets instead because unexpected is also good)

You also need to think about key words and phrases which will be picked up by search engines. So quit with the 'I'm not playing by Big Brother Google's rules' and do the decent thing. Otherwise those principled thoughts of yours will sink without trace.

Keep it short, sweet, accessible. And wrap up with a summary where you remind people about the need to serve up bite-sized chunks of text which can be quickly read, easily digested.

They'll still go and snack somewhere else. But they'll remember your lip-smackin' taste.