Freelance Copywriting, marketing and social media tips

• Great

I’m sure you can think of a few more, but these are all words that can be cut from sentences without having any effect on its overall meaning.

2. 3 part lists

These are useful when stressing a point. Remember Tony Blair’s “education, education, education”? The rhetorical effect of a 3 part list helps to drive home your point.

3. Second person

No, that’s not the forerunner of “The Third Man”, writing in the second person (i.e. you and your) makes your copy personal because it addresses the reader directly. This will help you build rapport and establish trust between you and your audience.

4. Distinguish between features and benefits

Anyone can write about the features of a product, but a copywriter will concentrate in their benefits. But not any old benefit; the benefit to the reader – saving them time, money, making them more successful, making them more attractive…

5. Bulleted lists and highlights

As well as adding interest to your page, bulleted lists and highlighted text will also draw the readers’ eye. So what better way to stress your key points than to list or highlight them?

6. Paragraphs

Most of us like to get our information in short chunks. Lengthy pages of text are a big turn-off, so use short paragraphs to get your information over succinctly.

7. Read aloud

The only way you will get a feel for your copy’s flow and rhythm is by reading it aloud.

Yes, you’ll feel ridiculous, but it will instantly identify where your copy works and where it falls short. Better to find out then than after it’s published.

Over to you

Great, readable copy is all about minimalism. That doesn’t mean all copy should be short, but it does mean that all copy should only use as many words as are absolutely necessary to get your point across.

How about you? Do you have any favourite methods you use to make sure your copy is as tight as a nut?

Leave a comment below and share them with us.

Sally Ormond

Freelance copywriter, blogger, social media addict and lover of rum butter toffees

Ever wondered how a copywriter does it?

Day after day, they sit in front of their computers writing amazing copy that compels even the most hardened cynic into buying products and services they didn’t realise they needed.

They must be truly inspiring individuals, creative geniuses, magical wordsmiths…or they could just be great researchers.

That’s burst the bubble, hasn’t it?

True, they are great writers, but their constant stream of inspiration doesn’t float down from the ether to them. They have to work at their art and that means researching.

Research, a copywriters’ best friend

Contrary to popular belief, when you send a brief to a copywriter, the first she doesn’t do is write.

Before any creativity can occur, your copywriter has to do some leg-work – i.e. research – and lots of it.

If you were commissioned to create a wedding cake, you wouldn’t just grab the deposit and start baking. No, you would sit down with your client and ask questions so you fully understood what they wanted, what their colour scheme was, whether they wanted plain sponge, chocolate or fruit cake…

In the same way, your copywriter has to research:

• You – to discover precisely what you want to achieve
• Your company – so they understand your ethos, brand and voice
• Your customers – after all, if they don’t know who they are writing to, how will they know what to say?
• Your product/service – they have to understand every aspect of it to discover its main benefits
• Your competition – they need to know what else is out there and what makes your product/service different

Only once they have done all that, can they sit down and start to craft their copy.

You see, creativity doesn’t come from thin air. It must have substance and be based on you, your company and, more importantly, your customers. Only once your copywriter has discovered who your audience is and what will make them buy, can they begin to write compelling and persuasive copy.

Guess work

What happens if they just guess?

Well, the copy won’t reflect your values or brand image. The benefits of your product or service won’t come across, so your customers won’t buy.

That’s why the research element of any copywriting project is so important.

The moral of this post is, if you want your copy to resonate with your customers and make them buy, you must allow your copywriter sufficient time to research your market fully.

Following from my recent request on Twitter for guest bloggers, Neil Stoneham of Voxtree kindly agreed to allow me to re-post his blog “Me-me-media” on Freelance Copywriter’s Blog.

It takes a look at the good, the bad and the ugly sides of social media and how it has permeated all our lives – enjoy…

The explosion of Social Media over recent years has thrown up all sorts of fascinating sociological paradigms. We have to thank Twitter for helping engineer the Arab Spring, Facebook for catching up with friends, and Youtube for making the secretive machinations of oppressive regimes all the more difficult to conceal. There are numerous examples of the good that Social Media has brought to our increasingly fragile world, and there will doubtless be more to come.

But among all the brilliance of Social Media, there are inevitably demons lurking within. Obviously nobody is trumpeting the rise of cyber-bullying, the open platforms for ranting extremists or the accessibility of a Daily Mail comments page. Actually, those last two are pretty much the same thing, but anyway…

Whatever the ying and yang of Social Media, something else seems to have pervaded our collective online consciousness – particularly for those of us who use social media regularly. Namely, we have all become narcissists. Even the most modest and placid among us seem to have a field day, telling all and sundry about the minutiae of their lives, when let loose on a Facebook status or a Tweet. This blog advertises my own guilt here; the fact that I’m typing away, voicing my opinions on this and that, assumes there are people out there who actually care what I think about such things.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not condemning people for announcing to their 1762 ‘friends’ matters of import or joy (or sometimes misery…often misery, in fact). It’s just that the Social Media world seems so, I don’t know, cluttered.

In the old days, if we had something to share with our friends we would call or meet them. And because we had to go to some physical lengths to do this, you could rest assured that the topic would be of relative importance. Today, we have Social Media, so we don’t have to get off our backsides and tell people our news any more. We can type it in less than 140 characters and know that most people in our social circle will learn of it within 24 hours max. So…what’s wrong with that? Nothing. It’s great. I love it.

But…

Would a friend call me up to tell me they had just eaten a nice pizza, been for a particularly satisfying run or bought a new pig for their virtual farm? Nope. Or if they did, they wouldn’t be friends for long! The point is that a lot of people now litter the Internet with matters of absolutely no interest whatsoever; things that very often don’t ‘bring anything to the party’ at all.  That’s not to say that every update or tweet has to be of particular interest to me. But I’ve had to hide some people from my Facebook ‘wall’ for bombarding it every five minutes with a litany of utter irrelevance.

I could go on. I’m not pretending to be whiter-than-white here – somebody could no doubt call hypocrisy somewhere – but I think that there needs to be debate about this. I’m not calling for bans or rules (you can go to the Daily Mail site for that). But if we go on creating so much unnecessary noise, we could end up drowning out the whole Social Media goodness that there is.

Thanks Neil for your take on the virtual world that is beginning to take over the real world – or at least it feels that way at times.

Over to you

What do you think?

How has social networking sites affected your life?

Have you embraced them with open arms or are you keeping them at bay with a very large stick?

Leave a comment below and lets get a virtual debate started.

You’ve finally done it.

It was a job that remained on your to-do list for months, but finally, you’ve completed your new website copy or brochure content.

Your copy is error free (well, as far you can see), reads superbly and most importantly, can now be crossed off your to-do list.

Once it’s been uploaded or your shiny brochures have been received back from the printers (smelling divine), you sit back and wait for your phone to start ringing and the deluge of emails to pour into your inbox.

Strange, nothing’s happening…

Dogs can teach you a lot about copywriting

These lovable rogues are my dogs – Jerry and Scooby.

As all dog owners will understand, they love to test my patience every time we go for a walk.

Jerry (the Springer Spaniel) is 11 now and slightly hard of hearing. Therefore, the commands he obeys are the ones he hears – and that’s not many.

Scooby (the Chocolate Labrador) on the other hand is only 5. He can hear and see me perfectly well, but that doesn’t mean he’ll always do as he’s told.

You see, Scooby has a condition known as ‘Intelligent Disobedience’. In other words, he’ll only do what I want him to do if there’s something in it for him.

The fields around us are littered with rather unpleasant dead rabbits (myxomatosis seems to be rife this year). There is nothing Scooby loves more than to find these rabbits and either play or attempt to eat them (dogs will be dogs).

If I tell him ‘no’ in a stern tone, his thought process goes something like this:

Hmmm, she wants me to put this rabbit down. But I found it so it’s mine. She’s not going to run across this ploughed field after me so, no, I’m not going to put it down.

A prime example of his Intelligent Disobedience – he’s thought about the command, decided there’s nothing it for him and therefore chooses to ignore me.

However, if I shout ‘no’ as I place my hand in my jacket pocket – the one he knows contains his favourite doggy treats – this is more likely to be his response:

I don’t want to put my rabbit down. Hang on, her hand’s in her pocket…hmmm, do I want a smelly rabbit or one of those delicious treats she buys me. No contest, goodbye rabbit – I’m coming mum!!

This time, even though Scooby didn’t really want to put his rabbit down he knew that if he did he would be rewarded with his favourite treat.

What on earth does this have to do with copywriting?

You are probably beginning to think I’ve finally lost it.

Bear with me, all will become clear.

Let’s go back to the copy we talked about at the start of this blog. Something’s wrong because it’s not converting readers into customers. Your readers are displaying their Intelligent Disobedience.

The most likely cause is that you haven’t written it for your reader. Everything you write must be aimed at your customers. It has to tell them what they want to know, not what you think they ought to know.

In a nutshell that means writing about the benefits of your product or service.

For example, if you were writing about a sofa and told your reader it comes in 6 colours, seats 3 people and has wooden casters, the most likely reaction would be ‘so what?’ That could relate to any sofa, you haven’t given them any good reasons to buy yours, therefore they have made the decision not to buy.

But if you told them:

• It’s made of hand stitched fine Italian leather
• It’s the latest design, so this is your chance to be the first to own such a luxurious piece of furniture
• It will transform any room, creating an air of chic luxury
• The same sofa is currently gracing no less than 3 movie star homes

Your reader is more likely to think ‘yes, I must have that sofa!’

Why?

Well, the first scenario simply tells them what the sofa is and doesn’t offer them anything in return for their investment.

Yes, I know, they will get the sofa – but’s that all.

In the second scenario, you are not only selling a sofa, you’re also selling a life style. Basically, it’s telling your reader that not only will they get the sofa, they’ll also own the latest design, a piece of furniture that will create an air of luxurious chic in their home, in fact a movie star life style!

An extreme example I grant you, but it serves as an illustration of how selling the benefits of your product will make your reader decided to buy.

Over to you

If you want to avoid Intelligent Disobedience in your customers, always make sure your copy sells the benefits of your products or services.

That means concentrating on what your product/service will do for your customer. Whether it’s aesthetic like the above example or more tangible (i.e. saving them money etc.), your customers will want to know what’s in it for them if they buy from you.

How do you sell the benefits of your product/service? Have you come up with any innovative techniques that really work? If so, leave a comment below and share them with us.

The good news is that loads of businesses understand the importance of content generation. Whether it’s through blogging or article marketing, they appreciate that constantly producing great content boosts their online presence.

Yay!

The bad news is that unless people can find it, it won’t get read and won’t generate the constant stream of traffic to your website that you were hoping for.

Boo.

How do you make sure people can find your stuff?

There are several things you can do to make sure your hard work isn’t wasted.

1. Research

Before you start writing anything, take a good look at your target audience. What is it that they want? What interests them? What issues do they have that they might want help with?

Only when you can answer those questions can you be sure you’re writing focused, informative articles that they’ll want to read.

2. Call to action

If they do happen to find your articles and posts, but you fail to ask them to do anything once they’ve read it, they’ll just go away again.

The whole point of generating content is to drive people to your website, so make sure you tell them to visit your site, or place relevant links within your article to take them to the page on your site that holds all the answers to their questions.

3. Forget the search engines

OK, don’t write them off completely, but make sure you write for your reader. Make sure your information is interesting, well written in simple language (no jargon) and easy to read.

It is your readers who will (hopefully) be buying from you, not the search engines.

4. Keywords

Yes, I know I just said don’t write primarily for the search engines, but you still need to get your keywords in your headings and body copy if you want to be found. But that doesn’t mean stuffing it with keywords.

Keep your writing natural – the keywords will drop in automatically without you even realising it.

5. Social media

Make sure you promote your writing. Send out links through Twitter and Facebook, but make sure you add value and engage rather than just blatantly self-promote.

Social media sites (such as Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn) are a great way to spread the word and to get your article. Plus, promoting them will encourage people to share your content with others.

Over to you

Do you content market? What has your experience been? Leave a comment below and share your tips too.

Sally Ormond – freelance copywriter, blogger and social media addict

Briar Copywriting – T:@sallyormond – F: www.facebook.com/freelancecopywriting