January 27, 2010Employing a professional writer
I can wire a plug. So somehow this makes me think I can re-wire my house. Several electric shocks later, I’m reaching for my yellow pages. I’m not a mechanic, so when my car breaks down, I call the auto club. When I get sick, I call a doctor. The point? These are all professionals plying their trade.
But when it comes to writing, everyone’s a DIY merchant. Everyone thinks, well, I speak English, so I can write well. That’s why it’s hard for a copywriter to make it in this modern climate. People will happily shell out for web design, because it’s easier than learning HTML. But English is a language everyone understands. Or so they think.
I studied hard to get my MA in creative writing, and I’m an expert copywriter. I know the English language inside out. I know what works and what doesn’t. I know how to turn a phrase and how to turn your customers on to your services.
The hard part is convincing you to think the same way I do.
It’s hard to sell your services as a writer. That’s why there are so many beautiful websites containing awful copy. It’s the bit everyone does themselves to cut costs. Why pay a writer when you can do it yourself?
The truth is, most people can’t write very well at all. Writing well for an audience is an art, and it’s as hard as fixing a car or a broken boiler. Okay, maybe it’s not brain surgery, but like most things, you get a better result when you call in the professionals.
Dustin Curtis provides an excellent example of how a well written call to action can improve your response rate. By changing his call to “you should follow me on twitter here” from “I’m on twitter” he improved his response rate from 4.70% to 12.81%
That’s a threefold increase just by crafting a better written sentence. Heck, even adding ‘here’ to the end of the sentence resulted in a 3% increase.
That’s the power of good writing. A good copywriter can take your message and sell it to your customers. In short, he’s talking their language. Are you?
The chances are good you could vastly improve your marketing, generate more sales and leads, as well as increasing brand awareness right now by hiring a professional writer, like me. The question is, why don’t you?
I agree wholeheartedly. Now I just need to get some experience so that one day, I too, can say that I am a professional writer.
One thing that I’ve found interesting with your articles is that I always WANT to read them. I have a feed reader filled with so many different topics, authors and blogs that I very easily end up skipping through a few dozen articles a day.
But when I begin reading your articles, something catches my eye and I can’t help but continuing on. Even without looking at who the author is (it’s very small text in my reader) I know it’s yours.
That is what I can one day aspire to be. A writer that is so good at what he does, that people already know who I am just be the quality of the article they are reading.
I found your website by chance, surfing around and looking for interesting ideas about creative communication. I must confess it’s the very first time I read something so accurate and true about copywriting at all. I used to work in the marketing dept. of a small company in the northern east side of Italy, that kind of companies where the owner knows beter than you, anytime, anyhow, just because he is the owner. That kind of company where they haven’t any clue about what marketing is, how it should be done. That kind of company, too, where “less is more” sounds as an insult, since they’re paying you, you’re supposed and expected to write the “Divina Commedia” of the advertising pages.
I happened to try and work with a moltitude of small advertising agencies…. Not the big names, of course, depending on very low or unexisting budget, and I wasn’t expecting miracles, ever. But nobody had such a deep and clear vision of the extreme importance of writing.
Thank you and congratulations.
Alessia, and italian wannabe professional writer