Archive for the ‘Copywriting’ Category.

Why Optimization Isn’t Everything

I’ll be the first to admit that I’m not an SEO (search engine optimization) specialist. But I am a writer, so I know the difference between strong writing and weak writing when I encounter it on the page or screen. I prefer not to use the terms “good” or “bad” in describing any kind of creative endeavor; as my playwriting instructor used to tell me, “There’s no such thing as good or bad writing — only stronger or weaker choices.” In the world of writing for the Web, some of those weaker choices occur in the struggle to produce “organic SEO,” or content optimized to turn up higher in online searches. And there lies the rub. Do you write to get your website found, or do you write to convert those who find it?

This question came to a head for me a few years ago when I wrote for a web developer who was building a new site for a local attorney. This particular web developer put tremendous stock in the power of organic SEO — so much stock, in fact, that he didn’t care about niggling details such as grammar. As a result, he insisted that I use a phrase that simply didn’t make grammatical sense on the sole grounds that it ranked well in search results. “We need to make sure this attorney gets found online,” he said.

I felt obliged to point out that just because people don’t use grammatically correct search phrases, that doesn’t mean they won’t recognize a clunker when they see it on the site. “Even if the key phrase does attract lots of visitors,” I tried to explain, “you’ll just have that many more people viewing poorly-written content and assuming that your client is a moron.” He was having none of it, though, and his word was final. So I found a way to couch it in a quotation, thus: “You’ll see a lot of online searches for ['key phrase']….” This allowed me to use the phrase without actually having it originate from the client, saving both his page ranking and his reputation as an educated person.

Organic SEO does matter, but it has to be seeded gracefully into the writing. A term such as “Chiropractor East Austin,” for instance, is pretty darn hard to add to a sentence without sounding goofy, whereas “East Austin chiropractor” is a cinch. Will the latter phrase rank as high? I don’t know, but surely it’ll rank. Personally, I could see myself typing either phrase to search for that particular service. Ultimately, the decision rests with the web developer or SEO specialist assigned to the site, but as a writer I will always push for the stronger content over the stronger keyword. Many of the SEO experts I’ve spoken to actually agree with me — drawing lots of ideal customers to the site doesn’t matter if the content they view there turns them off. And there are plenty of effective, perfectly ethical SEO tactics that don’t involve the written page text at all.

I’ll climb down from my soap box now. Just remember — SEO matters, but so does the quality of your writing!

For information about writing services and current package deals, check out my website at www.reynoldswriting.com.

Hiring a Copywriter: What Are Your Options?

So you need to hire a copywriter to bolster your blog, whip your website into shape or perfect your print marketing. Let’s assume your business actually has a marketing budget, and that you actually have allocated some funding toward this solution. The next question is: How will your hire your copywriter?

The fact is, you can engage your copywriter under whatever kind of working arrangement you both find palatable. Here are some common scenarios:

Per Project: I’ve almost always used this setup. Most of the people who have contacted my for writing work express relief that they know exactly what their money is buying. It’s as simple as making a purchase at a shop: Product X costs Y dollars, and that’s that. Companies with skimpy marketing budgets can’t commit to a vague estimate, and the precision of this method allows them to breathe easier. It can also be a smart way to go when you’re hiring a freelancer for the first time. Is he a fast writer, or is he a pokey one? Are his estimates accurate, or will you receive an ugly surprise at the end of the job? Flat per-project rates eliminate that uncertainty.

Hourly: Some businesses can benefit from hiring a writer by the hour. If your writer has a track record of accurate estimates, or if he’s willing to eat the extra hours on an underestimated job, then you have nothing to lose. Very large projects are particularly suitable for hourly billing if you can’t afford to pay for the whole thing in one or two painful chunks. Keep in mind, though, that if you pull the plug halfway through, all the hours you paid for up to that point may have gone to waste.

Retainer: A monthly retainer is a type of contract that “retains” your copywriter of choice for a specified amount of work or number of hours. For instance, you might retain my services for $600 a month. That $600 could buy you X number of general writing hours, or it could pre-pay for X number of blog articles or web pages or whatever. Retainer contracts make sense if your business needs a steady stream of content and a writer who’s always available to provide it. A retainer contract can also help you reduce your administrative paperwork, because you’re processing just one writing invoice a month instead of a new invoice for every single project. Marketing firms and web development companies can usually benefit from putting writers on retainer.

Permanent hire: If you’re a big marketing or advertising agency, it may be worth the investment of time, money and energy to hire one or more copywriters as full-time permanent staff. Or maybe not. The business world has moved away from the massive, unwieldy corporate model of the past. “Nimble” is the new normal as businesses rely increasingly on outsourcing to minimize their payroll, overhead and HR headaches. Many companies, even the ones with a bottomless need for written content, find that a reliable bullpen of contractors can get the job done just fine.

Which option is right for you? I can’t answer that question without learning more about your business, your marketing efforts and your writing needs. But if you’d like to talk about it — you know what to do!

For information about writing services and current package deals, check out my website at www.reynoldswriting.com.

Generally Speaking: The All-Purpose Copywriter

Recently I received a nice endorsement from one of my clients in the pet care field: “After just a few minutes’ conversation with William on the topics we wanted to cover, he produced articles that sounded like he was an expert on pet care.” That’s nice, but of course I wasn’t the expert at all — he was. The articles I wrote for him reflected his expertise and point of view, which is just how it should be.

As a generalist, I like to say that I know a tiny little bit about a whole lot of things, and even that is probably more credit than I deserve. It’s cost me some jobs, I’m sure, because some subject experts only want writers who specialize in that subject. To me, that seems kind of redundant, especially since my job is to digest the information for a mainstream readership. If you can explain it to me, I can explain it to them.

Here’s a tiny sampling of some of the subject matter I’ve written on over the years:

Cosmetic eyebrow shaping
Senior/home health care
Home theater setups (and movie suggestions)
Indoor plumbing
Automobile troubleshooting and repair
Veterinary issues
Buying and selling homes
Urology
Life insurance
Chiropractic care
Debt management
Photography
Executive outsourcing
Transportation security
IT services
Psychology
Handicrafts
Mobile apps
Digital printing technologies
Residential & commercial landscaping
Vehicle wraps and commercial signage
Family & divorce law
School fundraising strategies
Metric screws, nuts and bolts
Commercial roofing and construction
Marketing strategies
Green technologies
Executive financial management
Massage therapy

And those are just the first few that popped into my head. Suffice it to say that over the past 16 years I’ve written on many, many more subjects than these. Does that make me an expert on all of these subjects? You’ve got to be kidding.

So how do I ensure accurate, authoritative writing on such as broad range of subjects? Well, thanks to the Internet, all of us have a near-infinite supply of data at our fingertips, provided that we stick with widely recognized, trusted sources. The easiest way for fledgling writers to do this is by prioritizing the “.edu” and “.gov” sources over more obviously commercial ones. Over time, these go-to resources engrave themselves into your gray matter until you can rattle them off automatically. Medical topic? Mayo Clinic. Cleveland Clinic. University of Maryland Medical Center. American Chiropractic Association. American Dental Association. American Cancer Society. American Heart Association. And those are just for starters — there are tons of medical studies, universities and private clinics out there to back you up.

But where does 90 percent of my background info comes from? From my expert in the field — the client! That’s the whole point of writing on a particular topic; you know a lot about this stuff, you have something meaningful to say about it, and you’re the specialist that your target reader should contact to learn more about it. I find that once I get clients talking about their chosen work, they usually excel at explaining it to me in everyday terms. And that allows me to explain it to their readers in a compelling and colorful way.

Got a unique, obscure or esoteric topic? Never fear — the generalist is here!

For information about writing services and current package deals, check out my website at www.reynoldswriting.com.

Is Your Copywriting “Kid Stuff?” Don’t Insult Your Readers’ Intelligence

Have you ever been talked down to as if you were a moron? Chances are that it was purely unintentional. And yet books, movies, TV shows and other presentations insult our intelligence every day.

Case in point: One of my favorite animated shows from my youth, the Japanese-American sci-fi adventure Robotech. I remember being fascinated at how different this show was from the other after-school fare — a continuing storyline that took place over three generations, with Earth military forces battling aliens; a complex cast of characters who fell in and out of love, questioned the meaning of their lives, and even, on occasion, died suddenly and tragically. Looking back on it, I can understand why the producers of the show’s American dub probably felt that a lot of this stuff would fly over the heads of their youthful target audience. But that doesn’t quite excuse the sheer overkill of their solution.

Almost every time a moment of silence occurs during an episode, a loud, obnoxious narrator throws in his two cents about what’s going on, even when it’s incredibly obvious. Our hero Rick might be in his room looking at mementos from his dead brother, and instead of a wistful silence we’d hear something like: “RICK HUNTER REMEMBERS THE MANY GOOD TIMES HE SPENT WITH HIS BROTHER, MOMENTS NEVER TO RETURN NOW THAT HIS BROTHER IS DEAD.” Even a 14-year-old kid would (and did) roll his eyes at that one. My personal favorite, which continues to ring in my mind’s ear decades later, occurs after Rick awakens from a lengthy, bizarre dream:

Rick: So, it was all just a dream….
Narrator: YES, RICK, ONLY A DREAM.

I call this sort of thing “Gratuitous Explanation Syndrome.” It’s the result of content creators not trusting their audience’s ability to get the message, and it’s usually an embarrassment to all concerned. It also happened in Ridley Scott’s movie Blade Runner. Audiences who saw it in the theater remember Harrison Ford’s running narration in which he explains pretty much every single plot detail and shares his every passing thought. While on the surface it seems to mesh with the film’s “noir” mood and style, in reality it was added only after the movie was completed — because the studio didn’t think the audience would follow what was going on without having the entire story spoon-fed to them.

Is your marketing content guilty of underestimating its audience?

I’ve written about the dangers of dumping too much information on your target market before, but this is a special kind of transgression because you’re not just over-explaining; you’re actually talking down to your readers. It’s one thing to use a clear, simple writing style at a non-challenging reading level. It’s quite another to attempt to do all the thinking for the readers. Not only do you project your apparent belief that they’re a bunch of numbskulls, but you also take away their ability to engage the concepts — to fill in the blanks for themselves. It’s the difference between trying to tell your audience what emotions to feel and actually drawing them in so they can feel those emotions spontaneously.

What would a Robotech viewer have felt watching Rick Hunter reminisce in total silence? Just what the original writers intended, most likely. It’s a riskier, more courageous creative choice, but one that can yield bigger dividends — both in TV and in marketing.

For information about writing services and current package deals, check out my website at www.reynoldswriting.com.

The Freelance Copywriter’s Mentality

The freelance copywriter strikes many as a very odd duck indeed. And it’s true that many of us have earned our profession’s reputation for eccentricity, tunnel vision, narcissism and laziness (or the flip side — hypervigilance), unpredictability and general flakiness). In real life, of course, you’ll find many freelancers who debunk these stereotypes, and as many others who reinforce them. Occasionally, I’ve had new or would-be freelance copywriters ask me what traits I think are most helpful to cultivate. So here’s my current answer:

Nerves of steel. The phrase “feast or famine” might have been coined with the freelancer’s life in mind. Even a relatively successful or well-known writer may have two reasonably lucrative months, followed by two disastrous months, followed by a fantastic month, et cetera. The ups and downs smooth out somewhat as you build your clientele and reputation, but you may never achieve the rock-solid stability of a 9-to-5er. You have to develop the ability to simply shrug it off, maintain a “nimble” business model, and push ahead with fingers crossed. At the same time, you must learn how to resist low-paying jobs and Clients from Hell, even when money is tight. They may seem like a tempting source of short-term cash, but in the long term they’ll degrade your billable time and make you nuts.

Zero writing ego. When you’re writing materials for a client’s use, remember that it’s the client’s project, not yours. If the client wants changes, or even makes those changes himself, yours is not to question why. Now, if you genuinely believe that the client is making a mistake that will come back to bite him, by all means exercise your professional opinion — ideally, that’s one of the things your client hired you for. Ultimately, however, you grit your teeth and accept the alterations. Freelance copywriting is not about YOU. Save the artistic integrity for that Great American Novel you’ve been working on.

Persistence. As Woody Allen has said, 90 percent of success is just showing up. You may find yourself running the same race alongside a bunch of other hungry freelancers, all scrambling and clawing for whatever jobs get thrown into the path. Some of these freelancers will settle into a particular niche and/or form profitable referral alliances with each other. Others will simply tire of the struggle and give up, to be replaced by other hungry hopefuls along the way. The only way you stay in the race is by continuing to put one stubborn foot in front of the other. Like they say about the lottery: If you don’t play, you can’t win. If you’re the type who would be writing obsessively anyway, pay or no pay, then at least you’ll enjoy the journey.

Good luck!

For information about writing services and current package deals, check out my website at www.reynoldswriting.com.

Are You Quite Interesting?

If you’re any kind of Anglophile, you’ve probably heard of a very popular BBC quiz show called Quite Interesting, or QI for short. The moderator — actor, writer and Twitter demigod Stephen Fry — poses bizarre questions loosely related to a topic-of-the-week such as “Arthropods” or “Journalism,” and a four-person panel tries to come up with answers that win points. The panelist with the highest score at the end of the show wins. All very simple and straightforward, right?

Well, not quite. One of the most, ahem, interesting things about this freewheeling show is its eccentric, almost arbitrary scoring system. As you might expect, panelists win points for providing a correct answer to a given question — but they get even more points for an interesting answer. (If your answer is both correct and interesting, you can really clean up.) But they get points taken away for an answer that’s not only wrong but also lamentably dull and predictable in its wrongness. Why? Because amusing, captivating responses are more entertaining than obvious, boring recitations of facts or incorrect but commonly-held beliefs. Heck, anybody can know stuff, but would you actually enjoy talking to someone who only rolls out information you could get anywehere?

Our culture tends to rank entertainment on par with, if not actually above, information for its own sake. We’ve come to expect goofy weathermen, melodramatic graphics and music bumpers accompanying news stories, whiz-bang animated Powerpoint presentations, and ads with outlandish headlines. It’s the equivalent of somebody snapping their fingers in front of your face and saying, “Hey you! Watch this!” Well, it works — we watch. And if the information we receive engages us on an emotional level, we not only remember it but also act on it. That, as they say, is entertainment. It’s also effective marketing.

I’m not suggesting that you attend sales meetings wearing a rubber nose or program your website to run circus music every time someone goes to it. But the information you present in your marketing content needs to grab the reader or viewer on some emotional level or other, and presenting it from a clever or unusual angle is one way to accomplish that. Amuse, astonish or jolt your audience, and you’ve got your foot in the door. Once your audience is engaged, you can begin throwing those serious facts out there with some certainty that they’ll get a friendly welcome. It’s still important to be accurate — but in the world of marketing, it’s even more critical to be interesting.

Now go out there and score some points with your audience!

For more about my writing services and current package deals, check out my website at www.reynoldswriting.com.

Practice Makes Perfect: Developing Your Writing Technique

I just signed up to attend an MSP Training session. MSP, which stands for Member Success Program, is a basic training course in the fine art of networking for BNI (Business Networking International) members. As a seven-year member of the organization, I’ve taken the course twice before, but we’re advised to re-take it every three years to keep our skills sharp. The agenda includes how to give an effective self-introduction, how to listen for possible referral opportunities, the difference between a genuine referral and a lukewarm “lead,” and so on. This sort of training is especially useful for those of us who weren’t born with a natural gift for self-promotion or confident interaction with a roomful of strangers. But I’ve found that the most important thing I can do to become a better networker is to network. A lot.

I guess this is true of just about any activity, particularly the ones that don’t come naturally to us. Sure, you might accidentally pick up a basketball one day and discover that hitting 3-pointers is child’s play for you and dumb luck for all your friends. More likely, though, you’ll have to practice hour after hour, shot after shot, until you get the muscle memory down pat. That’s technique, and anyone can develop some degree of it, no matter how much actual talent they have for the given task. In fact, technique can continue to serve you even when natural ability can’t or won’t. There are countless stories of singers, actors, athletes, musicians, you name it, who perform competently or better in the face of illness, injury or personal stress. They may be so distressed or distracted that afterward they can’t even remember what they did. But’s that okay, because their technique remembered for them.

Writing is another activity that benefits from constant practice and repetition. If you feel the need to communicate your company’s mission or your own expertise through writing, you don’t need a journalism or marketing communications degree — you just need to do the following things:

1) Read a lot
2) Write a lot

If you plan to write your company’s marketing content, then immerse yourself in marketing content from your competitors, from unrelated industries, from your junk mail inbox, from everywhere you happen to find it. Soon you’ll be able to recognize the good stuff from the bad stuff, and eventually you’ll start to recognize the mediocre stuff as well. At the same time, practice whatever form of writing you intend to pursue. It’s perfectly fine to mimic the masters to get a feel for what they’re doing — many great composers got their start by transcribing each other’s work verbatim. After a while you’ll be able to know whether a given word or phrase will work before you ever set it down, with no need to wait for “inspiration.” And that’s the beginning of technique, because once you can do that, you can write whatever you want, whenever you want.

Can you still have a professional copywriter go over your work and edit as needed? Of course! But if you really want to refine your own writing, I recommend that you study the copywriter’s revision of your draft with a surgeon’s eye. What exactly did he change, and what exactly is that change doing to make the content better? It’s like getting a bonus tutoring session for the cost of an editing job, so take advantage of it. And whatever you do — keep practicing!

And now if you’ll excuse me, I have to go work on my handshake.

For more about my writing services and current package deals, check out my website at www.reynoldswriting.com.

Copywriting and Video Production: The Words Matter Too!

Video is the way to go. You’ll hear that from an increasing number of web developers and social media consultants these days. Uploading your marketing or informational videos to your website, YouTube and other channels can boost your online presence and create excitement about your company. And these days it’s easier than ever. I was in video production back when dinosaurs roamed the earth, and creating even a short clip required a roomful of expensive editing facilities. Today you just point your iPhone in front of your face, talk/record, and post the result. Voila! Instant marketing — for better and for worse.

Video hasn’t killed the copywriting star. Why? Because more often than not, the effectiveness of a marketing video hinges on the words coming out of the presenter’s mouth. Some business owners with the gift of gab might have a magical ability to say all the perfect things in the right order in exactly X number of seconds. The rest of you, however, will find yourselves uhh-ing and umm-ing your way through multiple frustrating takes — including, in the worst case scenario, the final one. Posting such a video can do more harm than good.

So what’s the answer? Most video producers will tell you that it’s a script — a prepared marketing statement spoken directly to the camera and/or recorded as voice-over narrative. Video scriptwriters typically handle this task by creating a two-column document, with a list of shots on one side and the corresponding spoken text on the other. This not only keeps you from sounding like a doofus when you address your audience, but it also gives the director and editor a clear written blueprint for the entire video, saving time (and therefore money) in post-production.

Do you want to appear on camera or not? The great advantage of the voice-over narrative is that it allows you to record the whole thing at your leisure without having a camera pointed at your face; the editor will simply insert the completed audio wherever it needs to go in the finished product. And since you’re not on camera while you’re delivering your spiel, you don’t have to memorize anything. This is a big deal, believe me, unless you have a TelePrompter or cue cards standing by (and even then, your eyes may betray the fact that you’re reading). In some cases it may be worth it to hire a professional actor to serve as the face of your company, at least on video. On the other hand, if you are already known as that face, you’ll need to find a way to deliver the text yourself. A skilled copywriter will often help an on-camera novice by scripting a series of shorter speeches taken as multiple shots, as opposed to long monologues. Believe me, I’ve seen a LOT of time and money wasted because some poor non-actor was forced to nail a demanding speech in a single take.

So while it’s fantastic that video technology is cheaper and easier to work with than ever before, remember that to some extent, you still get what you pay for. And paying for a professionally-written script can make all the difference between a glorified home video and a genuinely effective marketing presentation.

For more about my writing services and current package deals, check out my website at www.reynoldswriting.com.

Smoothing the Rewrite Road

The well-known copywriter Bob Bly recently blogged a quote from H.G. Wells: “No passion in the world is equal to the passion to alter someone else’s draft.” I don’t know whether Mr. Wells was speaking from some hard-earned personal bitterness, but few writers can completely avoid an occasional goring with a red pen. I’ve been relatively lucky in that I don’t usually get a lot of rewrite requests. That isn’t necessarily bragging — for all I know, the client has rewritten my work himself and never mentioned it to me. But I’ve found that there are certain things that both writers and their clients can do to help make the revision process less painful:

Writers: Ask questions, no matter how dumb they may seem. You may be the writing expert, but your clients are the ones with all the industry knowledge and inside data necessary for your project. Get clear on the basics and fill in the informational gaps as needed by asking questions. A quick email or phone call can prevent some major misunderstandings, not only on details but on the overall direction of the entire job.

Clients: Collect your notes — all of them. You may be tempted to shoot some revisions requests to your writer the moment you receive the draft. But if you do, be prepared to fire off another email, and another after that. And then there’s your marketing person, and your CEO, and whoever else may care to pile on with suggestions. Nothing confuses a writer worse than dozens of emails, each with different and possibly conflicting rewrite requests. Make sure you have collected everyone’s comments and checked them for consistency before sending that ONE email to your writer.

Both parties: Be prepared and responsive. For writers, that means listening closely and making detailed notes right from the initial consultation. Before launching into the first draft, go over the job with your client to make absolutely sure you’re both on the same page. For clients, it means answering the writer’s questions and providing additional information in a timely manner. Work together to make that first draft as compelling and accurate as possible, and you may not need to go to a second draft at all.

H.G. Wells would approve.

For more about my writing services and current package deals, check out my website at www.reynoldswriting.com.

Writing to Order: Imperatives Are Your Friends

Do this, do that. Go here, go there. Act this way, respond that way. Welcome to world of imperative sentences, an important tool in the world of marketing copywriting. Seems strange, doesn’t it? On the surface, it may seem like slamming your target market with imperatives wouldn’t get you very far. After all, nobody likes being pushed around, right?

Actually, you’d be surprised.

Imperative language is simply telling someone to do something. Not recommending or requesting or asking pretty please with sugar on it, but not necessarily barking an order either. It’s a clear prompt, an unequivocal nudge forward. “Give yourself the dream vacation you deserve.” “Take advantage of our free offer.” “Ask not what your country can do for you, but for what you can do for your country.” You get the idea. In the marketing world, we commonly associate imperatives with the call to action in a piece of ad copy. You know and love it as the final kick in the pants to do what the advertiser wants you to do. “Call now! Operators are standing by.” Of course it only makes sense to start making such prompts toward the end, instead of screaming “Call now!” at the top of the ad. Why would I “call now” when I don’t know what I’m calling about or why I should buy the product or service offered? That’s putting the proverbial cart before the horse. But once you’ve stated your case and painted the appropriately rosy picture that gets your target reader excited, the call to action is the perfect spot to start laying in the imperatives.

Does this mean that imperatives are only good for the call to action? Certainly not! Imperatives can help you lead your readers all the way down the path you’ve marked for them. For instance, they’re great at encouraging readers to indulge in various sensory journeys that stir up their emotions: “Imagine having the green, lush, perfect lawn you’ve always dreamed of.” Well, if I lust after just such a lawn, I’ll be more than happy to follow that command. And once you’ve got me all giddy about that ideal lawn and then explain to me how you and only you can provide it, you’ve won. Old movie trailers seemed to revel in this sort of thing. You’d hear the narrator exclaim, “See the jungles of the Amazon close up! Hear the King of Rock and Roll sing his latest smash hit! Relive the battle of Normandy!” Imperatives don’t just order us around — they also grant us permission.

Take a look at your own marketing copy. See whether you’re using imperatives in a way that will work on your audience. Think about ways you can persuade and command without seeming pushy. Then watch as your revamped ads and web pages get results! (And if you see what I just did there — give yourself a cookie.)

For more about my writing services and current package deals, check out my website at www.reynoldswriting.com.