For many people, they know where they want to go, but feel it’s too difficult to get there and so don’t bother.

But for others, the desire to achieve their goals is so strong they make them happen.

So, which one are you?

Setting goals

The key to personal development is to set goals, but you must ensure they are achievable.

For example, if I decided that by this time next year I would be a multi-millionaire, although it would be very nice, it is also unlikely to happen.

Why?

Well, unless I won the lottery, it would be highly unlikely to achieve that level of success in such a short space of time.

But, if I came up with something a bit more manageable…

To illustrate this, last year life began for me (yup, I hit 40). I’ve never bought a brand new car and have always wanted to go into a showroom and order the exact car and specification I wanted. So, I decided that my business goal in the run up to my birthday was to earn enough money to be able to buy my car.

It was hard work, and at times I didn’t think I was going to manage it, but, on my birthday, I went to the Mini showroom and picked up the keys to my new Cooper S.

Now, goals don’t have to be cars. They can be anything from securing 10 new clients to taking a luxury holiday – whatever you want. But having something to focus on like that will help you get to where you want to be.

Achieving your dreams

When we’re kids, we all have dreams of what we want to be when we grow up.

Few of us actually realise them, but they never go away.

I always wanted to be an author and, although being a copywriter I write for a living, it’s not quite as the fiction writer I’d envisaged.

But, after clearing my office ready for its make-over, I came across a manuscript I’d written a few years ago.

It had just been sitting on a shelf gathering dust.

Several years ago I’d sent it to a few publishers and although I came close once or twice, I didn’t manage to find anyone to take it.

But it seemed such as waste seeing it sitting there. That’s when I decided it was time it saw the light of day.

So now, if you pop over to Amazon you can buy my debut novel, Mackerel Skies, for your Kindle.

Who knows – it could be my first step towards realising that childhood dream.

Over to you

You should never ignore your dreams and goals. Regardless of whether they are business orientated or a personal dream, you should always hang on to them and work towards them.

What about you?

Do you have any burning desires you’ve kept hidden?

Share them with us and who knows, you might just find someone to help you make your dreams come true.

Sally Ormond, Copywriter who still dreams of being an author.

“Search Plus Your World” will find content that has been shared with you privately along with matches from the public web, all mixed into a single set of listings, according to a recent post that appeared on Searchengineland.com.

At the moment it will only happen for those signed-in to Google.com and searching in English. For some it will make life a lot easier; however for others, it raises concerns about privacy. Although the private content remains just that, private, it may make the content more visible to friends and family.

Of course, Google’s search has been personalised for some time now, in fact since 2005, and has evolved constantly since then:

What will the new search method mean?

Your new personalised results will include:

• Listings from the web (general)
• Listings from the web (in relation to your personal behaviour)
• Listings from the web (in relation to your social connections)
• Public Google+ posts, photos or Google Picasa photos
• Private or limited Google+ posts, photos or Google Picasa photos shared with you

You search results will show you the number of personal results and the number of other results. Plus, a new button will appear on the right of your results that will enable you to toggle between your personalised and non-personalised results.

For more information about these changes, take a look at the full article and find out why Google’s results will get more personal with “Search Plus Your World.”

This article was supplied by Printed.com, suppliers of unbeatable quality digital flyer printing, and a shortlisted company for this year’s industry leading Print Week Environmental Company of the Year 2011 award.

The author’s views are entirely his own and may not reflect the views of FreelanceCopywritersBlog.com. If you are interested in producing a Guest Post for this blog, please get in touch with your ideas.

A flyer campaign can offer a high return-on-investment due to its ability to reach a targeted demographic with a specific, relevant message. Once you have written your flyer, or flyers, the main issue is how and where to distribute them for maximum effect.

Like everything else, the business world is dependent on the written word to communicate information about its products and services. No matter how many thousand words a picture is worth, text isn’t going out of fashion: there is simply no substitute for a paragraph, page or book of words to get your message across. Your own flyer is a case in point: flyers are an outstanding way to deliver a simple, brief and accessible pitch to potential customers. Although images can add a great deal to them, flyers stand and fall on the quality of their text.

Flyers as a calling card

Whilst the text on any flyer is critical, it takes on a new relevance when the service you are promoting is text-based. Here your flyer presents an additional opportunity and pitfall; it is not just what you are saying, but how you are saying it that will make an impact. As a copywriter, editor, proofreader, advertiser, scriptwriter, bid writer (the list goes on), the quality of the text on your flyer as well as the service itself will form a vital part of attracting new clients. At the most simplistic level, you have to be absolutely obsessive about detail; if you are offering a copywriting service, for example, your potential customers will not have much confidence in you if your flyer is littered with minor errors – something that might be forgiven in a different industry. Conversely, if your flyer is well designed and laid out, and the text is compelling and letter-perfect, this in itself serves as an advert for the service you are offering. The flyer is an advert and portfolio sample in one.

Distributing your flyers

Once you have identified a need or niche, and composed your flyer accordingly, you need to make sure it reaches the right people. One of the biggest advantages of a flyer campaign is that they can be used to target certain demographics. Local businesses with a broad appeal (such as a restaurant, for example) might benefit from distribution to a particular post code. Other services, probably including your own, will require a different approach.

Fortunately, this is relatively easy with a little research. You will know from experience that flyers are distributed in a variety of ways – direct to your door, in magazines and other publications, and displayed in public places. The only task is to establish which of these are most relevant to your business and will provide the best ROI. That way, you need send out comparatively few flyers, knowing that the people they reach are likely to be interested in the service you provide. Specialist and trade publications are a good place to start, since you know that these are industry-or interest-specific. You may also be able to purchase mailing lists of people who have used or expressed interest in similar services in the past.

Conclusion

Some forms of advertising (such as newspaper ads or radio commercials) aim to reach a large number of people representing a cross-section of the population. Consequently, this is best for businesses that have a broad appeal. Flyers, on the other hand, typically reach a smaller number of people with a specific message that – with a little research – can be tailored to their needs. This is why a flyer campaign can offer such a high ROI: flyers are very cheap to produce, and can be sent to the people who will most likely respond well to your message. For a text-based service, there are a wide range of opportunities to distribute your flyer to potential and relevant customers, due to the large number of publications aimed at different business sectors.

This article was written by Daniela Baker, a small business blogger at CreditDonkey, a credit card deals website. She helps entrepreneurs compare small business credit cards to find rewards right for their business. 

The author’s views are entirely his own and may not reflect the views of FreelanceCopywritersBlog.com. If you are interested in producing a Guest Post for this blog, please get in touch with your ideas.

When was the last time you went to a corporate website, other than your own? OK, now when was the last time you went on Facebook or Twitter?

Yeah, this is the reason why some people are asking whether social media is killing off company websites!

According to blogger, public speaker, and social media strategist Jeff Bullas, company Facebook pages seem to be absorbing corporate website traffic.

For example, he cites three companies that have both a booming Facebook presence and developed corporate websites: Coca Cola, Starbucks, and Oreo. A quick check this morning revealed that Coca-Cola boasts 36.6 million Facebook fans, Starbucks has 26.6 million, and Oreo has 23.7 million. They’re doing well, right?

Except Bullas noted that Coca-Cola’s corporate site traffic dropped by over 40% last year, Starbucks’ site traffic reached a plateau, and Nabisco’s traffic plummeted from 1.2 million hits each month to just 321,000 per month in a year. The social media strategist pointed to a Webtrends study showing that 68% of Fortune 100 websites have been experiencing negative growth, with a 24% decrease, on average, in unique visitors.

Even back in 2009, blogger and Internet media entrepreneur Adam Ostrow pointed out how common it was becoming to see business cards which included Twitter usernames instead of domain names and ad campaigns that included URLs to Facebook pages.

But is this death, or just specialization?

It’s important to note that neither Bullas nor Ostrow are predicting the death of company websites. Rather, the rise of social media seems to be taking them in a different direction.

Bullas, for example, argues in favor of integrating and optimizing content for different websites, such as Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube. That way, consumers can be more engaged all around.

He suggests using social media pages to send traffic to your corporate site by offering links on your company’s social media profile pages. For corporate blogs, include a sample of the start of the latest blog post in your company’s Facebook status or tweet, then include a link to the article. Make a Facebook or MySpace contest that requires users to track down information on your website, then announce you’ll publish the winners on your corporate website. Use social media to link your fans or followers to on-site coupons and use e-mail marketing, too.

That way, social media sites can help interested visitors find your corporate site instead of being a replacement for it.

Need help figuring out how to make your company website and social media communications play well together?

If this is all leaving you confused, consider hiring a social media consultant to help. With so many experts participating in the social media trend today, this task has never been easier.

Many major freelancing websites, such as Elance, even allow you to pay remote workers using your credit card. Business credit cards can be particularly helpful when using this strategy. Using a business credit card allows you to earn rewards that go toward your bottom line, access a steady source of cash to help you through dry periods, and establish business credibility.

Look for a social media strategist that’s familiar with many different social networks, has good feedback from past clients, can show you their own social media presence, understands new technology, plans ahead, and has a professional attitude.

Social media presence + corporate website = better communication with consumers.

In short, your brand’s social media page may take some attention away from your corporate site, but that doesn’t mean that you have to choose one or the other. With a little effort, you can make them work together for best results.

Think of it this way: your brand’s social media page can hand out flyers while your corporate website hosts the party.

how on earth do I price my services?

Many make the mistake of choosing the option of charging for the time it takes to write the copy. But hourly (or even daily) charging doesn’t really cover the full picture.

Let me explain:

• If you were looking to hire a builder you wouldn’t expect to pay by the hour
• If you went to a plastic surgeon you wouldn’t pay by the hour

Why?

Because it’s their experience, expertise and talent that you are paying for, not the length of time it takes for them to complete the task. That’s why you are willing to pay them for the end result.

Charging for the difference you make

A company will seek out a copywriter because they need expert help. They are looking for someone to:

• Turn their business around
• Generate more sales
• Attract more leads
• Increase the number of visitors to their website

Therefore, you must base your charges on the difference it will make to your client.

It doesn’t matter if it only takes 2 hours to write a cracking sales letter, but what does matter is the 80% boost in income that sales letter will generate.

Copywriting, as with the other elements of marketing, is an investment – the client pays for the output and results your work produces, i.e. for your experience, expertise and aptitude.

Better for the client

If you are still struggling with the concept of not being paid for your time, think of it this way – by coming up with a fixed fee for the project (based on the brief, your considerable experience and talent and the difference it will make to your client) your client will be happy because they will know exactly how much the job will cost.

Just make sure you clearly show in your proposal exactly what is covered within the quoted fee (e.g. number of revisions, meetings etc.) so everyone knows where they stand.

Over to you

How do you feel about pricing?

Do you have a method that reflects the quality of your writing?

Have your say by leaving a comment below.

This article was supplied by Printed.com, suppliers of unbeatable quality digital leaflet printing, and a shortlisted company for this year’s industry leading Print Week Environmental Company of the Year 2011 award.

The author’s views are entirely his own and may not reflect the views of FreelanceCopywritersBlog.com. If you are interested in producing a Guest Post for this blog, please get in touch with your ideas.

Leaflets are a great way to drum up some business, assuming the content is up to scratch. However, writing effective copy for your leaflets is quite a skill.

Leaflets are an excellent way of targeting a particular area or demographic with details of your business, and flyer printing is a cheap and simple process thanks to advances in digital printing. However, simply putting together a leaflet and sending it out isn’t enough. Your content has to sparkle in order to grab the attention of your readers and raise it above the level of the dozens of other leaflets they will encounter on a regular basis.

Before you start…

To begin with, there are two general principles you should remember. One is that attention to detail is really important. When you have finished writing your leaflet copy, check it, re-check it and check it again. Then get someone else to read your leaflet. Printing thousands of substandard flyers isn’t going to do you any favours, as spelling and grammatical mistakes make you look lazy – and if you can’t be bothered to proofread a flyer, why should the customer have any confidence that you will pay them the attention they need? The other principle is not to over-stuff your leaflet with too much information or extraneous text. Readers don’t want to plough through any more than they have to.

1. Grab the attention

Flyer printing is an excellent way to access new customers, but you need to engage them straight away. Don’t leave your best material for the end of the leaflet. You need to grab their attention in the opening words – since these are all that many people will read. Most customers will take just a few seconds to assess your leaflet, before deciding to keep it or throw it away. In addition, if your leaflet is displayed alongside others in a rack, the first third or so is all that casual onlookers will see. You need something to make them pick it up. Have a look at other leaflets to see which achieve this and which fail. Images are sometimes good, and digital printing means you can include colour pictures at a relatively low cost. Nevertheless, make sure they add to rather than distract from your leaflet’s message.

2. Draw them in

Having gained your potential customer’s attention, you need to prompt them to consider your business or service further. A good way to do this is to ask a question that has particular relevance for them, and then offer the solution. Readers don’t want or need to know all about your business; what they want to know is what it can do for them. All the detail in the world won’t help you to make a sale or gain a client if they can’t see how it relates to their needs. So, put yourself in a potential customer’s position and write your leaflet copy accordingly.

3. End with a prompt

Finally, make sure you end your leaflet with a ‘call to action’ – a little encouragement to your audience to take the next step and get in touch, visit or find out more. Needless to say, make sure that they have all the information they need to do this, whether it’s directions and a map, a website or phone number. (Make sure that you are going to be able to deal with people who get in touch that way – there’s no point including a phone number on your flyer if you don’t have staff around to answer the calls.)

The call to action restates the reason they might want to find out more, and tells them how they can do it: ‘To cut your heating bills by 30 percent, phone us on…’ Don’t just give them the information they need in the flyer and expect them to make the leap to contacting you. Including this one extra sentence can result in a far more effective leaflet campaign.

But there is one area that many people don’t even consider – your images.

Every reader likes to see a visual image. They help reinforce, and at times, strengthen the text you read. They can add excitement and impact to your copy, plus they have the added advantage of offering another way for people to search for your conten through image specific search.

To help you understand this concept further, take a look at this very informative post on TopRankblog.com by Ashley Zeckerman. According to Ashley…

Images are essential for both search and social media marketing with growing popularity as a social media asset. Long time image hosting and social network Flickr hosts well over 50 billion images and social media image sharing services like Instagram and Pintrest have exploded in popularity:

• Pinterest has grown 4,000% in the past 6 months
• Instagram added over 2 million users in November

To discover more about how you can optimise your images, go to Ashely’s post 3 Ways to Optimise Images: Search, Social Media & User Experience.

Sally Ormond, Copywriter

Usually, the press is full of bad news stories. If someone has received truly awful service they spend hours telling everyone about it. But what about the occasions where good service is received?

Surely, there must be some companies out there who are getting it right?

Well, I’m about to redress the balance with a couple of examples I recently experienced.

Printers, printers everywhere, but which one do I choose?

Just before Christmas, my printer decided to fall out with my computer and refuse to print anything. After much searching through troubleshooting guides and help forums, I decided the only thing to do was to ditch it for a newer model.

But which one to choose? If you’ve shopped for printers recently you’ll know how many are out there. After asking round colleagues for advice, I decided a trip to my local Staples was on order to see what I could find.

First, I was greeted by a member of staff asking whether I needed any help.

I explained what I was looking for and he immediately asked loads of questions about how I would be using the printer, whether I wanted a multifunction model etc.

Once I gave him all the information he needed, he instantly whittled it down to 3 models. Then we chatted about ink and paper costs, so he even worked out which one would be the cheapest to run.

I bought the printer I needed and left a very happy shopper.

Beeeeeeeeep

Don’t you just hate it when, after you’ve gone through a seemingly endless automated phone system and finally get to speak to a real person, you get cut off.

Well that happened to me the other day. I phoned Santander to find out some details about international payments. Before I got cut off, the guy I was speaking with was very helpful. At this point I would like to stress that the phone went dead due to the adverse weather conditions and the fact that I was phoning on my VoIP line – so when the wind blew out my broadband, my phone also died.

To my amazement, after about 15 minutes, my phone rang (by this time my broadband was once again functioning) and it was the guy I’d been speaking with.

He was most apologetic that he hadn’t phoned back sooner but got caught on another call.

Amazing – such a simple thing to do and yet so few companies do it.

Neither of these examples are exactly ground breaking stuff, but it just goes to show that simply by treating your customers as real people and having a desire to make sure they receive the product or advice they need, you’ll provide them with a positive experience.

Would I use either company again?

Absolutely.

Over to you

Have you received a particularly good service recently?

Perhaps you’ve received terrible service?

Whatever the case, leave a comment below and share them with us.

Sally Ormond, Copywriter

If you’re unsure what a white paper is, basically, it’s a document that describes a problem and shows the reader how to resolve it:

•    It begins by discussing a challenge experienced by its readers
•    Gives a compelling case as to why you should use a particular approach to solve the problem

I guess you could say they are a cross between a brochure highlighting the consumer benefits of a particular product or service and an educational magazine article, therefore conveying technical information within a marketing format.

But happens once they’re published?

The information within them is valuable marketing collateral so it seems a waste to allow it to gather dust.

Make the most of your white papers

White papers can be anything from 6 to 50 pages in length; that’s a lot of information.

Whether you publish them online or produce them as print materials, there is a way to get a bit more mileage out of them.
One such way is to repurpose the content for your corporate blog. After all, how many times have you found yourself scrabbling round for blog posts?

There are only so many times you can pester your subject matter experts within your company to write something for you. Plus, (no disrespect to the technical bods) their writing tends to be too complex for your blog readership who are looking for short posts packed with easily digestible information.

Whether you have the time and expertise within your own company to do this, or you hire in an outside copywriter, a single white paper can create a series of interesting posts.

All you have to do is:

•    Re-write the content with your new readership in mind
•    Devise a way of splitting the content down into individual sections (a 15-20 page white paper should generate about 7 blog posts)
•    Find new ways of presenting the information (e.g. info graphics as well as text)

Before you know it, you’ll have generated a whole new series of marketing collateral.

In this way, a single white paper that would normally have been forgotten about can be converted into fresh, vibrant content that will reach out to a whole new market whilst providing you with an endless stream of blog posts.

After setting up your account, you probably searched for friends, family and colleagues and then came to a grinding halt.

What happens next? How do you find new followers?

Let Twitter give you a helping hand

If you go to your Twitter page, you should see something like this:

At the top of the screen you can see #Discover, clicking on this brings up this screen. As you can see, it gives you the options ‘who to follow’ and ‘find friends’.

But what happens when people follow you?

Should you automatically follow them back?

The simple answer is no. Take control of your Twitter stream and follow only those people you want to follow.

Here are 5 very simple ways to make sure you get value out of your Twitter experience:

1. Say farewell to spam

When someone follows you, take a look at their tweets. Are they excessively promotional? If so, they are more than likely going to be a spammer. Unless you want your stream full of their plugs, don’t bother following them back.

2. What are they saying?

Someone’s Twitter feed will tell you a lot about them. Take a look at their past tweets – do you find them interesting? If so, follow them, if not, don’t bother.

3. OTT

Tweeters come in all shapes and sizes; some have a lot to say, others very little. If someone follows you who is a prolific tweeter think carefully before following them back. Do you really want them to be filling your Twitter stream 24/7?
If what they’re saying is interesting, go ahead and follow. But if you’re not so sure, it may be better to pass.

4. Silent night

Twitter is all about being social and that means interacting. If you’ve been trying to engage with a particular follower and they’ve just been ignoring you, you’re not really getting any value out of that relationship so it may be time to unfollow and find someone who’s a little chattier.

5. Bio and interests

The best way to find out a bit about your followers is through their biography. Personally, if there is no avatar (i.e. uploaded their own rather than using a generic one), or there is no bio (or a very poor one) I won’t follow back.

Your bio is where you can add details about you, your likes and dislikes. It’s the best way to work out whether you have something in common with your follower or not. If you do, you are far more likely to enjoy a great Twitter relationship.

At the end of the day, Twitter is about being social. It’s not about a band of silent stalkers that don’t interact with each other.
Choose who you follow carefully to make sure you get the most out of your experience. By following these 5 very simple ‘quality checks’, you’ll be able to ensure your Twitter followers will add value to your social media activities.

Sally Ormond – Copywriter and Tweeter