We edit and publish a monthly e-zine from tiny Greek island of Karpathos. Kafenio, which premiered in March 2000, focuses on European life and culture. The first step in thinking globally was to accept our classified ads in any language using Latin letters, so French, Spanish, German - no problem for our software.

Not so hard, is it?

That was an important decision for us. Living on a remote Aegean island as we do, surrounded by goats and cats, it would be easy to get tunnel vision and forget about rest of planet.

English is English, right? The first major conflict that punched us right in nose was British vs. American English. We then had a contributing writer from Australia, another journalist from Canada.

What to do? We made it our policy that each writer would stick to his/her native usage of English. No way did I want to ruin an article by Americanizing it. That‘s not global thinking. Savvy readers in Britain or elsewhere would spot that style slip-up a mile away. (I mean a kilometer away, no better make that kilometre. See what I mean?)

There is a vast difference between editing something for accuracy and acting like language police. No, we cannot please everybody and we cannot spend every waking moment trying to. But to reach out to a global audience, we have to willing to widen our thinking.

Global excitement Recently we decided to run banner ads in languages other than English and this kicks off in July issue with one German and one Russian banner. It‘s a start of something exciting and we think we can expand on our idea as time goes on. Not every improvement to a site or e-zine has to occur overnight.

Good writing is good writing. If a user is given choice between long and interesting, or short and dull, they will probably read half of interesting piece, and skip dull content altogether. Neither is ideal, my point is that too much emphasis is placed on length these days, rather than very nature of content itself.

What keeps people reading?

1. Stories. "Story" can mean lots of different things. It can be a testimonial. It can be your first-person account as entrepreneur. You can make up a goofy little character and have him guide users through site. The fact of matter is, we respond to stories. The best TV writers know this-and so do best ad copywriters. Watch CLEO awards some year. Every award-winning commercial I've seen has a narrative. It may be overt, it may be subtle, but it's still there. Even most buttoned-down business site can use story to good effect-TV ads for swanky, expensive cars are a great example.

2. Content-in its original sense. I actually find word "content" profoundly irritating, because it gives impression that you can fill your site with anything, as long as it takes up visual space. I think original use of that word-that is, table of "content-s"-is much more helpful. No one's going to read a book full of junk text; and they won't read it on a site, either. Avoid filling your pages with "fluff" - that is, cheesy sales rhetoric that doesn't really say anything at all. Use details. Get specific. Be as accurate as you can. Think of yourself as a reporter, writing an article. A detailed, objective description is far more compelling that pie-in-the-sky Carnival barking.