Freelance Copywriting, marketing and social media tips

“We don’t like the first draft, it’s too marketing; it sells our services too much.”

That is a real life response from a copywriting client.

Yes, I was stunned too.

Apparently, the copy had to be more ‘jargonised’ and in the language of ‘high business’ and not focused on what they can do for their clients.

No. That’s not how it works.

Your website is your sales tool

Your website is available to people all over the world, 24/7/365.

It exists for one reason only – to tell readers what you can do for them and how their lives (or businesses) will be richer by using your products or services.

How do you do that?

Through high quality website copywriting that focuses on your reader and tells them the main benefits of what you do.

If your website focuses on you and is full of jargon, at best it tells the world your company exists, but that’s it.

Great, you exist. So what? I’m going to use these other guys who have taken the time to tell me about how their service is going to help me.

You are missing a trick – a potentially very lucrative trick – if you ignore this advice.

How to market through website copy

As mentioned earlier, you have to remember that:

• Your website is a sales tool
• It exists to tell people what you can do for them
• It is not a soap box from which you can rave about your company

The copy that you write has to be:

• Focused 100% on your reader
• In the second person so it ‘speaks’ to your reader
• Focused on the benefits you provide
• Engaging and interesting

And it should all be topped off with a strong call to action telling the reader to get in touch, buy now, sign up, or whatever action it is you want them to take.

Don’t make the mistake of thinking your website is there to tell the world about you. That type of thinking is lame, boring and a disaster waiting to happen.

Please, please use your website as it should be used. Make it all about your reader and not about you.

Thanks for allowing me to get that off my chest. I feel much better now.

Author: Sally Ormond, copywriter at Briar Copywriting Ltd

Twitter | Facebook | Google+

Image courtesy of Clare Bloomfield/FreeDigitalPhoto

Over the years social media has changed – a lot. Not only has the variety and functionality of the platforms increased so has the public’s buy-in, making social media part of every day life.

There are oodles of posts out there that report on user statistics, but one I stumbled across on Econsultancy really blew my mind.

It looks at the growth of social media over the past three years.

Rather than ramble on about it, here’s what they found:

Twitter

• In 2010 is had 75m user accounts, of which about 15m were active users
• In 2013 it has 883m user accounts and 232m monthly active users

• In 2010 the average number of tweets per day was more than 27m
• As of August 2013 Twitter users were posting around 500m tweets per day, which means about 5,700 tweets a second

• In 2010 the average number of tweets per hour was around 1.3m
• In 2013 Twitter users send out around 20.8m tweets per hour

LinkedIn

• In 2010 it had more than 50m members worldwide
• In 2013 it has 259m members after increasing its user base by 40% in a year

• In 2010 there were 11m LinkedIn users across Europe
• In 2013 it has more than 57m European members and more than 74m across EMEA

Facebook

• In 2010 Facebook had 350m monthly active users
• In 2013 it has 1.19bn monthly active users

• In 2010 50% of active users logged into Facebook each day, meaning at least 175m users every 24 hours
• In 2013 Facebook claims to have 727m active daily users, meaning 61% of users log on every day

• In 2010 65m users accessed Facebook through mobile devices
• In 2013 874m monthly active users used Facebook mobile products as of September 3^rd 2013

• In 2010 there were more than 3.5bn pieces of content shared each week on Facebook
• In 2013 there are 33.25bn pieces of content shared every week

Flickr

• In 2010 Flickr hosted more than 4bn images
• In 2013 it has competition from a wide range of different social networks and there are no statistics as to the number of images it hosts, but one estimate puts it close to 8bn

Wikipedia

• In 2010 Wikipedia had 14m articles and 85,000 contributors
• In 2013 it has more than 30m articles in 287 languages and 125,900 active registered users

It’s only when you see comparative stats like those that you fully grasp how social networking has grown over the years.

Irrefutable proof that, if you don’t already have a social media marketing strategy, you need one.

Author: Sally Ormond, Copywriter and MD at Briar Copywriting Ltd. Follow her on Twitter and Google+

Testimonials are wonderful things.

They offer potential clients an insight into your service and approach and illustrate the benefits of your product/service in a real life situation.

Listing them on your website, or dotting them amongst the rest of your copy is OK, but you could make more of them.

Turning testimonials into stories

There’s nothing better than a good old-fashioned story to get your readers engrossed.

Let’s face it the testimonials you receive from customers are like the wrap up of a story. They’re just missing the beginning, middle and protagonist.

But if you were to add that information, hey presto, your testimonial suddenly turns into a case study.

Weaving a story around the testimonial is easy; just make sure it’s factual.

First, set the scene – give some background to it, who is the client and why did they come to you? This is where you explain the problem they had.

Now in comes the protagonist – that’s you, or at least your product or service. Think about why they came to you (don’t make this bit up, if you know write about it, otherwise skip it). Write about how you approached the problem and what you did to solve it.

The happy ending – now your reader wants to know the outcome. This is the bit they’re concerned about; what did your solution do for your customer? Hopefully, the testimonial you received has a bit more substance to it than just “they were really nice and helped me, thank you.” In this section you want to show the reader how your solution helped, using their testimonial as a summary of the whole case study.

Now, your testimonial has become a story that shouts about your service, giving it a real life context that is meaningful and that your reader can relate to.

Plus, it’s a great way to add fresh content to your website.

In any form of copywriting, whether it’s online or off line, lists are incredibly powerful.

And here’s why:

1. People love lists (go on, admit it, you write them all the time)
2. Numbers and bullets produce easy to read chunks of information
3. They make an impact on the page or screen (help your benefits stand out)
4. Adding numbers to your headline offers a promise to your readers that they won’t be able to resist
5. Bullet points are easy to scan so you can get information quickly
6. Bullets and numbered list are more efficient to read
7. People remember numbers
8. Obscure numbers (like the one in this heading) catch the reader’s attention
9. A list grabs the attention of the reader
10. They add interest to a page by breaking up text
11. I couldn’t think of another one, but wanted a list of 11 rather than 10

I’m sure you can probably think of even more reasons why you should include lists in your copy.

But for me, their main benefits are that the break up text, add interest to a page and are a great way of highlighting benefits.

Short and sweet today, but there’s nothing else that needs to be said.

About the author: Gemma Thompson is the author of the best-selling “The British Book of Social Media Marketing“. She is full time social media consultant and loves helping businesses grow. When she’s not working,   she can be found watching Dr Who with her teenage daughter, or indulging in a spot of inept D.I.Y (but no, she still hasn’t managed to make her house bigger on the inside than on the outside).

No, we’re not talking about those wonderful little +1 buttons that Google has splashed all over the internet. As great as they undoubtedly are, let’s talk about a far bigger ‘PLUS’.

‘PLUS’ is an acronym for ‘People like us’. Although this can be read in two different ways, and these days the emphasis always seems to be on getting our customers to ‘like’ us, it always used to be used in marketing to describe our customers as being like ourselves, meaning the emphasis was on the ‘us’.

Now, I’m a social media girl so I love it when my clients’ customers ‘like’ their business pages! But getting people to like you becomes a whole lot easier if you empathise with them, so today let’s go back to the old-fashioned ways and talk about that. After all, social media is just a new way to do the same old thing, and that is to get to know each other!

Although almost everybody in the world has the same basic hopes and dreams (to love and be loved, to live a better lifestyle than our parents and to make sure our kids have it even better than us), our craving for kinship is something ingrained within us and geographical ties are often more important than experiences or point of view.

When I was younger I spent a lot of time travelling and it never ceased to amaze me just how hard we try to find things in common with people we meet on the other side of the world and how those kinship ties can be stronger or weaker depending on such things as where we grew up.

Even when we knew none of the same people the fact that someone else was from our home town, county or region was enough to produce excited squeaks of recognition.

All nations have social codes, characteristics and habits that are deeply ingrained in us and damnably difficult for us to break. The Italians are known as passionate, Germans are organised and the French are nonchalant. When it comes to marketing our businesses these can have a huge impact; it’s important that our brand and communications are not only honest representations of us and our businesses, but also that they do not offend cultural sensibilities.

For us Brits humour is one of our biggest personality traits and we are rightly proud of it. We also talk about the weather… a lot!

Of course there is a lot more to us than that and there are plenty of personality variations too, but the more we get to know our customers and talk to them about our similarities, and the more comfortable they will feel talking to (and therefore buying from) people like us.

What do you think?

Do you want more people like you buying from you? I’m always interested in hearing your views, experiences and questions so please comment or get in touch.