Freelance Copywriting, marketing and social media tips

Your website copy must speak to your visitors.

It must engage and inform them, give them something to take away with them.

Google wants high quality writing, that’s natural and that resonates with the reader.

How many times have you read or been told that?

You know Google’s constantly changing, trying to improve the experience for searchers, but how can you be sure your web copy engages?

Engaging website copy

Is it hard to write engaging copy?

Hard is probably the wrong word to use. It’s more to do with standing outside of your business to understand what your customers want to know.

Too many people, when writing their web copy, focus on their business. They fill their web pages with what they offer, the features of their products and services and details about their company.

Believe it or not, that isn’t what your reader wants to know. They want to know what you are going to do for them and how it will help them. It all comes down to benefits – your shoes may well come in an array of colours and sizes and be handmade, but it’s the air of sophistication they conjure and superb comfort for all-day wear that the reader wants to know about.

When writing about your benefits, imagine yourself stood in front of your customer. This will help you develop a more informal conversational style that will really resonate with your reader. They want to feel as though you are talking to them directly when they read your site, because that gives them the personal connection that’s missing from online shopping.

When browsing the web, there’s no eye contact or gestures to help you get your point across, but conversational, benefits laden copy will help over come that.

Constant engagement

You see, there’s no great mystery behind how to write engaging copy, it just takes a lot of practice.

But don’t be fooled into thinking that once you’ve written your web pages you can sit back and relax.

The other thing Google’s looking for is fresh content. That means adding blogs and articles to your website – again focusing on high quality writing.

Use the same informal, conversational style to make your work readable and keep to your niche. You’re an expert, so use that knowledge to help your readers. Make sure every post offers some new information, or a tip they can take away and use.

If your content is found to be useful, the reader is more likely to share it (make sure you have your social sharing buttons clearly visible on your site), boosting your web presence and so attracting more traffic to your website.

So in summary, to create engaging web copy you must:

• Focus on the needs of your readers
• Show them the benefits your product/service offer
• Write in an informal, conversational style
• Avoid using technical language and jargon
• Regularly update your website with fresh content in the form of blogs and articles
• Encourage social sharing

Hopefully, this has shown that you don’t have to a copywriter to be able to write engaging copy. But it does take practice.

LinkedIn is the professional social networking platform.

You already know how important it is to make the most of your LinkedIn profile and that you should only accept connection requests from people you know, but what about asking for recommendations?

Personally, I find it a great platform to gather recommendations that I can also use as testimonials on my website. But what do you do if, when you receive a recommendation, you’re asked to provide one in return.

I’ll scratch your back if you scratch mine?

It’s mind-boggling – the whole point of a recommendation is to give feedback about the service you received. Yes, you do get the option to provide a recommendation in return when you get one, but what if you haven’t experienced their service, why write one?

It makes a mockery of the whole system.

The same way as when you ask for a recommendation from someone just because you know them or have met them once or twice. What do you expect them to write?

“I met Joe at last week’s networking meeting. Seemed like an OK bloke.”

It’s pointless.

Recommendations exist so potential clients can read how your service helped others

But if you do feel duty bound to return the favour, how about an endorsement?

Endorsing skills

Isn’t it great when that email lands in your inbox telling you someone has endorsed one of your skills on LinkedIn?

Admittedly, now and then endorsements come through for skills you don’t have (or actively use as part of your business) and even you can even receive them from people you’ve never worked with. But on the whole, they are a good way to instantly see how others perceive a particular person’s abilities.

So, if you want to return the favour and interact with your contacts on LinkedIn, why don’t you give endorsements too?

Being on LinkedIn isn’t about sitting back and waiting for people to connect to you or tell you how marvellous you are.  It’s a two-way street where you need to be active to be found.

Give endorsements, contribute to group discussions and offer great information – show yourself as someone who is approachable, helpful, knowledgeable and, well, personable.

You only get out of LinkedIn what you put in, so if you’re not prepared to invest a bit of time to help others, don’t expect to get much in return.

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

According to Foursquare, their app:  

“…helps you and your friends make the most of where you are.”

If you’re a business:

“Foursquare can provide you with tools to engage with your customers and fans.”

Apparently, according to their website there are over 40 million people worldwide using the platform. But now there’s one less.

Today, I deleted my Foursquare account.

Why I deleted my Foursquare account

I signed up to the app a few years ago. It was the new kid on the block and loads of my business pals were using it, so I thought why not?

For a while it was quite fun; I’d check-in when I arrived at meetings or when I was having a coffee, reading recommendations from fellow users and gaining the occasional Mayor badge.

I can’t say it was ever useful for business, but it was a nice way to stay connected with close-by colleagues.

As time went by I began to think ‘what’s the point’ and used the app less and less.

But then this morning I received an email that made my mind up once and for all – it was time to say farewell to Foursquare.

As you know, when you visit a location you can check in earning yourself various badges as you do so. They don’t mean anything earth shattering, they aren’t going to make you famous and they most certainly aren’t going to make you rich. Yet, it would appear there are people out there who are dead set on gathering as many Mayor-ships as they can, regardless of whether they’ve been to the locations or not.

Surely not! I hear you cry.

Well, today’s email is evidence of that practice.

I would post an image of it here, but I’m not into naming and shaming. It announced that I’d been ousted as Mayor of Briar Copywriting.

Sour grapes on my part? Nope, and this is why.

1. Briar Copywriting is my business and office
2. I work alone and meet clients at their premises
3. It is my home office
4. I’m the only one who works there
5. The guy who ousted me as Mayor isn’t even a friend on Foursquare
6. He’s never even been to the office
7. I have no idea who he is!

So, bearing all that in mind, this is a guy who sits at his desk (on his sofa, or wherever) claiming to be visiting places me most clearly is not.

Why?

How sad is that?

Why would you claim to be going somewhere that you’ve never visited before? Just so you can gain a worthless, virtual Mayor-ship?

For me, this just illustrates the pointlessness of Foursquare.

Tell me about your experience

What’s your experience been like?

Have you found it useful?

I’d really love to hear from you if you have.

Leave a comment, good or bad, about your feelings for this platform.

If you were connected to me on Foursquare, apologies for my abrupt departure, but now you know why.

 Image Courtesy of Stuart Miles/FreeDigitalPhotos

As a website owner, you’ll have your own views about what sort of webmaster tools you want.

In an ideal world you would be able to pick up the phone to Google and say, “hey guys, you know what would be really cool…?” and proceed to rattle off your wish list.

Well, I don’t have a phone number for you, but here’s the next best thing.

Matt Cutts recently posted on his personal blog that he wants to know what you would like to see from Webmaster Tools in 2014.

How cool is that?

He asked the same question back in 2007 and, since then, has delivered on a lot of peoples’ requests.

Just to get your little grey cells working, here are a few suggestions he makes:

• Making it easier or faster to claim authorship or do authorship markup
• Improving the reporting of spam, bugs, errors or issues
• Having the option to download the web pages that Google has seen from your site, in case of a disaster
• Checklists to help new business
• Better tools for detecting or reporting duplicate content or scrapers
• Show the source pages that link to your 404 pages, so you can contact other sites and ask if they want to fix their broken links
• Better bulk url removal
• Ways for site owners to tell Google more about their site

You can see a full list here.

Of course, there’s no promise that every request will be actions, but at least it means that Google wants to hear from you, so why not make the most of the opportunity?

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

Sorry for the ‘Barnie-ism’ that snuck into that title, I’ve obviously been watching way too much ‘How I Met Your Mother.’

But the thing is it really doesn’t take a lot to excel in the levels of customer service you offer. In fact, if I may be so bold as to suggest, it all comes down to one thing.

Want to know what it is?

The speed at which you respond to emails.

Is there anyone there?

How long does it take for you to respond to emails and enquiries?

A day?

Two days?

Sometimes a week?

OK, I think you’re missing something.

Email is great.

You can rattle off an enquiry without being stuck on the phone for ages (and have a written record of what was said). But because of its immediacy, the sender does tend to expect a similarly rapid response.

If you want to stand out from your competitors, it’s imperative you respond to incoming emails instantly – or as close to it as practical.

Let’s face it, if I get an enquiry for copywriting services, you can bet your Granny that the sender has sent the same or similar email to 2 or 3 other copywriters.

If you take 3 or 4 days to respond, but a competitor replies to them the same day, it doesn’t take Stephen Hawking to work out who gets the most brownie points.

Is all of this pretty damn obvious?

Yes?

Should I have to spell it out?

No, but I feel compelled to do so if some of the companies I’ve contacted are anything to go by.

It doesn’t take a lot – even if you just email them to thank them for their enquiry and a date by which you’ll respond in full to them.

Dealing with customer contact is one of the basic parts of being in business. Responding to enquiries quickly is one of the best ways to show:

• You care about your customers
• You’re efficient
• You’re keen to do business with them

So next time you get an enquiry, make an effort and respond or at least acknowledge the email immediately (or close to it as is practical).