Several tweets later, it was revealed to be a marketing ploy by Snickers: the celebrities tweeted ‘you’re not yourself when you’re hungry’.

The campaign was brilliant. The fact is few people really use social media well. Campaigns are needlessly complicated and convoluted, almost inevitably reflecting the number of people involved in writing them. Social media campaigns work best when they are kept simple.

I wrote some time ago about an offer at Pizza Express that required you to download and install a Facebook app and reserve your table through the app in order to qualify for a discount pizza. A mail-out flyer or coupon would have garnered more business. In the end I ate in a Prezzo which had a ‘buy one get one free’ offer displayed on a board outside.

Yes, yes, yes. Getting you to install an app is a great way to mine personal data, for now. It’s only a matter of time, once things like seeing increased prices once you’ve ‘liked’ something online, before the backlash starts — and people refuse to engage at all. But advertising has never been about complexity – nor has it been about treating the customer like an idiot. In the famous words of David Ogilvy, “The customer is not a moron, she is your wife.” Good campaigns are simple, direct, and most importantly of all — they speak at the same level as their audience.

Snickers’ social media campaign fulfilled all three criteria for a good campaign, social media or otherwise. Ultimately the best campaigns get people talking, and that’s exactly what Snickers managed to do.

So why are they being investigated by the Advertising Standards Authority? Of course, it could be a little bit of cheeky on-the-side marketing (getting reported to the ASA is a great way of getting even more press for your campaign), but you have to wonder where-next-for-social-media (and celebrity) if a simple bait-and-switch campaign is declared illegal.

Send a few fake tongue-in-cheek tweets. Then tell everyone it was a joke, associate the joke with the brand.

A formula so simple a child could have created it. Yet they didn’t. It was the work of a fiendishly clever advertising brain. It takes a true genius to create a campaign so simple.

At no point did the campaign talk down to its audience. Any ‘deception’ was light hearted and extremely unlikely to cause offence.

Best of all, it wasn’t a transparent attempt at data mining, demanding ‘engagement’ with an app or a page without giving a great deal in return. It was simply good old fashioned word of mouth.

Here’s hoping to see many more campaigns like it in the future.

I can pick an appropriate tone of voice.

If McLuhan’s oft-quoted phrase ‘the medium is the message’ is true, then how you say something is at least as important as what you’re saying. Would you pay attention to a warning sign written in baby talk? “Danger! Men working overhead!” is more likely to resonate with a building site audience than “Hope you’ve got your hard hats on, boys and girls! It’s sky-fall-icious out there!” or somesuch.

Of course, some brands do use “wackywriting” as a way of getting their message across. Innocent Smoothies is the classic example. In many circumstances, it’s appropriate or, at least, not inappropriate. During a recent project for Oasis (the clothes shop, not the band), I suggested a sign should say “more lovely things this way” rather than “more collections on the first floor” — because I felt it was more personal and intimate.

In short, it’s important to find a register that resonates with the people who are reading. If it doesn’t, you risk annoying or even angering them.

Some people get angry with “wackywriting” because they believe the “playful” copy masks a patrician and authoritarian undertone – say it any way you like, you’re still giving an order. Other people simply feel it’s patronising to talk to a grown adult like a child.

As a copywriter I’m not just writing words. I’m choosing — then writing in — the correct style.

Complaints Department

Style guidelines are important. It’s altogether too easy to offend. As an example, I was recently sent an incorrect order from a company I’d bought something from online. Already angered by their incompetence and tired by a twelve hour day at work, I fired off a quick but courteous 9pm “My order is wrong, fix it” email to the address provided.

The response I got irritated me in several ways. Firstly, the reply addressed me as Alastaire. Let me make this clear to you: when I am the customer, when we have not been introduced, when you are in the wrong, and I am making a complaint, to you I am Mr Allday or Sir. We are not on first name terms. The second problem was that I sent the message from my work email account. As it wasn’t the address my account was registered to, they refused to handle my complaint. But instead of a “I’m very sorry about this Mr Allday,” the tone of the email more or less accused me of attempting to commit fraud and point blank refused to offer assistance: “we are unable to help”. In other words, I felt as if my complaint had simply been dismissed.

A pro-active response would have been to say “Dear Mr Allday, we are very sorry but we are unable to process your request as we require further information to verify your identity. We’d be happy to call you back, etc etc.” Instead the tone was overwhelmingly negative and dismissive.

The result: I won’t shop there again.

Maybe it’s an extreme example, but there are cases cropping up like this all the time. @Nashienet received terrible customer service at his local cinema and won’t be returning - once again a company loses out on business because it doesn’t know how to treat its customers.

Wackywriting isn’t the only problem companies face. It’s part of a wider lack of respect. The world is becoming less formal. People don’t wear ties to the office any more. Strangers address you by your first name.

However, in any customer relationship where someone is giving you money to provide a service, the default tone of voice should always be deference.

The customer is always right. He’s also always your boss.

Yes, there are times when an informal voice helps. I thought changing the signs in a clothes shop to something playful was appropriate. For web copy, friendly and approachable usually works best. But copy that talks down to the customer, or — in the case of the complaints department — even copy that regards the customer as an equal, isn’t appropriate.

I’m off to France for my holidays next week. And I remembered something about French that we lack in English: the informal “tu” and the formal “vous”. You address a stranger, or someone you are serving, as “vous”.

In my opinion that should be the starting point for all interaction.

Nobody was ever offended by someone being too polite.

In other words, you’d imagine that Don is exactly the kind of customer who’d embrace Facebook Timeline with open arms. So much so, in fact, that one individual even mashed up one of Don’s famous pitches to create the Don Draper delivers Facebook Timeline pitch.

But like Peggy’s ‘relaxerciser’, this is one product that Don may be selling, but certainly won’t be buying. Why? Because Don is a man with a past. And he wants to keep it private.

**Spoilers ahead**

The man with no name wouldn't stand a chance against Facebook Timeline

In case you’ve been living under a rock (or you’re one of those crazy people who aren’t part of the Mad Men Cult), Don’s real name is Dick Whitman, and a little over a decade before the series starts a mix-up in the Army results in him being discharged under a new name — he effectively abandons his past and starts his life over again.

Over the course of the series, Don has dodged having his true identity discovered by everyone from junior executives to Federal Agents. But the chances are he couldn’t avoid Facebook Timeline, the new feature that makes it easy for people to read every status update, every relationship, every ‘key event’ in your entire life in just one or two clicks.

If you thought Googling your girlfriend was bad…

Once upon a time when you met a girl you asked your friends about her. Then, you googled her to see what you could find out — job, hobbies, you know, anything you could use to give you an edge. “Sure, I love collecting porcelain kitten figurines too! You have a website dedicated to them? No!”

Some people thought this was already too much. Then, along came Facebook. In many ways, adding someone on Facebook is the internet equivalent of getting to first base, only you share ideas instead of sticky saliva. You swap pictures. You can see each other’s hobbies. You start reading about what is happening in your new friend’s life.

What we haven’t been able to see until now is each other’s pasts.

Of course, this isn’t just about relationships. When we meet new friends, we add them to Facebook too. But up until this point, all we’ve known about each other is what we’ve chosen to share from that point.

With Facebook Timeline, everything is different. Now, when we add someone on Facebook, there will be an additional expectation.

We will instantly expect to know everything about a person’s past.

Nowhere to run, nowhere to hide.

Even if you’re not Don Draper, you probably still have plenty to hide. (Hint: 76% of photos on facebook depict people who are drunk)

Let’s assume you joined Facebook early, in 2004-2006. You were probably still at uni, or at the very least weren’t aware of Facebook’s privacy implications. You certainly weren’t aware that friends you’ve just met in 2011, or 2021, or however long Facebook is still cool for, would be able to read everything you’ve said and done back in 2004.

The privacy implications are startling.

Let’s say next year you get a job in something dull — maybe as a sales executive somewhere. You’re a telephone jockey, struggling to meet your OTE. Work is your life, and it’s made more pleasant by having a few friends in the office. You go out for a few drinks. Maybe you flirt with one of them. They want to add you on Facebook. What do you do?

You joined Facebook in 2005. You were still in Uni. You smoked weed, or had some other disgusting habit you’ve since grown out of, like being active in questionable university politics. I have plenty of friends who were active in hard-left circles who have since gone on to work for major corporations. How embarrassing.

So here’s the dilemma. Do you refuse to add these people because you don’t want them to see your past? Or do you selectively edit your past, deleting the things that could harm your relationships in the present?

If you start deleting things from your past, will people feel you have ‘something to hide’?

Would you, like Don Draper, be missing a large chunk of your life? Would you create a fake past? Or would you have to suck it up and admit you’d been caught out.

But wait… what’s there to be caught out about?

It’s a fact. People change.

To borrow from dope-smoking Prime Minister David Cameron, people are entitled to keep their past lives private.

Until now, we’ve been able to keep facts about who we used to be a secret from people we know now. Why should your work colleagues at Goldman Sachs know you used to hand out Socialist Worker flyers? You’ve moved on.

In Season 4, Don Draper says:

“When a man walks into a room, he brings his whole life with him. He has a million reasons for being anywhere, just ask him. If you listen, he’ll tell you how he got there. How he forgot where he was going, and that he woke up.”

The point is that friendships are enriched by slowly discovering things about a person — we are partly defined by our past and our present but also by our future — by our hopes and our aspirations.

Facebook Timeline may leave us all forever looking back on each other’s pasts.

If I meet you in 2011, or 2022, or 2100, it shouldn’t matter what I was doing in 2005. But Facebook Timeline encourages people to do just that.

When we meet new people, we decide what to tell them about our past.
We selectively edit our histories, we start each new friendship with a blank slate. Facebook Timeline removes that in one fell swoop.

Instead of starting each friendship anew, we’ll dive head first into other people’s pasts to find out exactly what kind of person they were 5 or 10 or 20 years ago. Eventually, checking up on people’s pasts will become the norm, and those without a past made public will be asked what they have to hide.

Facebook Timeline represents a paradigm shift in privacy – from the expectation of slowly learning about who a person is and where they came from as a friendship develops, to being able to find out instantly everything about their past life before you knew them. In short, it takes the fun out of being friends.

It’d certainly take the fun out of watching Mad Men.

But there is another way…

Introducing Don Draper, Twitter Fanatic

While editing my own Facebook Timeline to remove all questionable material (another problem: we selectively edit our pasts and are discouraged from sharing moments of failure, or where we have felt depressed or needed help) I noticed that since joining Twitter, I have hardly posted on Facebook at all.

I was late to the Twitter party. As a private person, I decided I never wanted to have an “open feed” of everything I was doing available to the public, so I resisted getting an account.

But because I joined in the full knowledge that everything I said was completely public, I have always had complete control over everything I share.

So if you’re a control freak like me, or you have a questionable past like Don Draper, Twitter is a better option if you simply can’t do without social media (Don would be fired on the spot by any agency these days if they found out he didn’t do social media, and so would I).

Twitter is a public forum, but for all that, it’s much more private. There’s no compulsion to share past history, and you know that everything you share is instantly public — there’s no sneaky changes to catch you off your guard.

With Twitter, you really can be anyone or anything. It’s all about what you say and what you share, not who you are and what you have done.

Facebook Timeline encourages us to look back on things we’d rather forget and places we will never be again – when we should be looking forward to the future.

Thanks, Facebook. But I don’t choose to share my past with you, or anyone else I’ve just met.

If anyone needs me, you can find me on Twitter.

• Is it better to go to the client with just one idea?
• Is it better to go to the client with two or three of the best?
• …or does your client want to pick and choose from a hundred different options?

The answer depends on the client — and on how well you can read them.

Some clients want to be told what to do. They’re paying you, the expert, to tell them what will work best. Other clients will reject your first idea out of hand, even if it’s good, simply to show that they’re in charge.

Other clients need to be led to a decision, but feel like they’re part of the creative process. (A favourite technique of mine is to supply three options, with two of them being absolute stinkers).

Then you get that last, most difficult client. The one who wants every option you can think of — and then more. So what do you do?

Ad agency McCann Erickson tackle a tricky client.

Do you carry on writing until your dog-eared thesaurus finally falls apart? Or do you insist on a direction?

I’ve been sharing some of my work-in-progress with other creatives over on fiftytwonetwork.com – including a document of over 50 straplines separated into five distinct tones of voice. That’s a heck of a lot, said fellow copywriter Reed Words. But not necessarily if it’s a work in progress.

In fact, the multiple options were going to the account manager on the job, who could then use the document to try to get a feel for what direction they felt the client would plump for.

But for me, this brought up another, bigger question.

How many ideas do you have to discard before you find one that works?

I prefer to take my time over creative projects. To go away for a week, to think about the options, and to come back with two or three really storming ideas. The client or agency is presented with a branding report explaining my research and my thought process, along with three concepts or copy samples.

I’m often blunt about it. I tell the client: sometimes, you’ll be paying me to play golf. Or to throw darts at a board. Or to have a night out drinking overpriced cocktails. Or whatever. The point is, you’re paying for whatever it takes to put me in the right frame of mind to have a creative, original idea. And yes, you’re also paying me to improve my backswing.

As Don Draper puts it in Series 3 of Mad Men,

“Part of working with creative people is giving them the freedom to be unproductive until they are.”

It’s an absolutely essential part of the creative process — throwing away bad ideas until you find a good one. Tossing ideas back and forth with people you’ve just met in the pub, on the driving range (or, if you live a virtual life, on Twitter and Facebook!).

The trouble is, while good ideas take time, you don’t always have that time. Agencies, studios, and their clients have deadlines. Creative or not, it’s your job to get the work done on time.

When I’m in a rush, I tend to adopt a scattergun approach to copywriting. Think of it as automatic writing — literally writing the first thing that comes into mind without thinking why. I might write 100 straplines in a morning. At least 50 of these will never see the light of day. But the rest will be categorised (“this emphasises the product’s ease of use…” “these appeal more to techie types…”) and refined.

It’s a little like prospecting for oil. You dig a hundred holes. But you only need to find one spurt to know you’re rich.

Personally, I prefer to take my time — but I’ve found that for clients in a hurry, the scattergun approach to copywriting works too. Naturally, it’s more stressful (most every copywriter charges more for a “rush” job), and my brain is fried for a couple of days after it.

But I’ve found that both methods work. So is it a case of six and two threes, or is one method better than the other?

In short, I think it’s all about finding a method you’re comfortable with.

In the fairy tale of the Tortoise and the Hare, it’s the slow and steady tortoise that wins the race.

But one wonders if he’d cut it in advertising. If the client is truly demanding, sometimes more is more — and less isn’t enough.

When you’ve had a hundred ideas, you have a hundred starts to work from.

Sometimes wordplay is subtle. Sometimes it’s not. The pun, that most maligned staple of Englsh language humour, can be both.

More importantly sometimes it works in copywriting and sometimes it doesn’t. Sometimes a pun can liven up a dull sentence and keep your client’s message in their customers’ heads for hours, or even days. It can also lose your audience’s respect and ruin your pitch.

The trick to a good pun is knowing when, and how, to use it.

In an early episode of Mad Men, Account Manager Ken Cosgrove gets a short story published. Copywriter Paul Kinsey asks him why he doesn’t become a creative. “I don’t like puns,” Ken replies, then adds: “Admiral! The TV set that won’t go down the tubes.” and laughs mockingly.

This is an example of a bad pun. It’s a pun that draws attention to itself and not the product. It isn’t funny. And it gets even less funny over time.

The golden rule:

The pun is not an aim in itself.
You’re not writing comedy. Your’e not trying to be clever.

You’re not trying to write a memorable pun.
You’re trying to make the reader remember the client’s product..

A good pun is noticeable at first, but becomes less obtrusive over time — in other words, it makes you think about the product more than the joke.

With that in mind, here’s my list of my top five favourite puns in advertising.

5. House of Fraser: “Temptation on Every Level”

This simple pun works for House of Fraser. As a department store, we’re used to having to check the layout on arrival to find out which floor we’re looking for. So this subtle message reminds us that the whole store is full of tempting things. Suggesting the things themselves are tempting the customer, rather than merely being commodities there to be bought, is a nice touch to encourage impulse buying.

4. Toyota: “The Car in Front is a Toyota”

Personally, I’m a Mercedes fan. And their use of Janis Joplin’s “Lord won’t you buy me a Mercedes Benz” was genius. But they can’t top this brilliant bit of punning by Toyota. The double meaning is compounded by the fact that for a few years all Toyotas came with this slogan as a sticker on the rear window. Brilliant situational advertising. Special mention should also go to Land Rover for their “The best 4 by 4 by far” strapline.

3. Skint: “You’re broke. We’ll fix it.”

Sorry. You knew it was coming. I had to put one of my own lines in here. A few years back this online loan company came to us looking for a website. I suggested “You’re broke, we’ll fix it” as a strapline and I still get a mild chuckle out of it even now. Sadly, the line was replaced when the owner decided he preferred “It’s no fun with no money”. I explained that two uses of the incredibly negative “no” wouldn’t work in a strapline when people are already worried about cash. The web design was replaced by an “SEO consultant” too. Unsurprisingly, the company couldn’t prove a match for Wonga.com — but I got paid, which is what really counts.

2. Nokia: “Connecting people.”

Don’t think it’s a great slogan? Think again. In 2011, we’re tired of hearing social media gurus (t)witter on about engagement factors, conversations, ROI, and “connections”. But back when this strapline was coined the mobile revolution was just starting and this simple two word slogan struck a chord. Nokia connect people. Yes, but they also connect people. The double meaning is as simple as the intonation. A simple, unobtrusive way to explain how great technology brings people together. Simplicity in its greatest form — and, importantly, it translates into multiple languages.

1. “Absolut ______”

No, it might not seem like a pun at first. But as a witty  play on words, Absolut definitely qualifies. Absolut’s marketing has been the same since time immemorial – append a word to the brand name. “Absolut magic.” “Absolut chaos” “Absolut spring”. In this way, they can associate their brand name with absolutely anything making it one of the most successful — and simplest — marketing campaigns of all time. Absolut genius.

What are your favourite puns in advertising? Do you think puns are over-used? Or do they liven up dull ads?

What do you think?

‘You’re a good writer,’ he said. ‘But your stuff won’t be great until it has a through line.’

It’s the best writing advice anyone ever gave me. And it’s advice I’m still using as a freelance copywriter today.

Whose through line is it anyway?

A through line is a single message, or set of messages, that’s repeated throughout your copy. Whether you’re writing an article for a newspaper or a magazine, copywriting, or working on that novel you’ve been writing for the last ten years, your through line is the point you’re trying to make.

The purpose of The Great Gatsby is to criticise the American Dream. And the purpose of a Polly Toynbee column in The Guardian is to criticise the undeserving rich, as well as to break a few more windows in the glass house she apparently lives in.

Even when you’re not speaking directly about a subject, a strong throughline will still convey your message. Toynbee is an excellent example of a journalist who does just that which is, presumably, why she gets paid such an obscene amount.

Fitzgerald never once uses the phrase “American Dream” in his writing. He doesn’t need to. He gets his point across.

The purpose of a through line in any good piece of copywriting is to get across your client’s message…
…even when you’re not talking about it directly.

The through line is a merger of style, tone, and content to create a single, unified purpose in your writing.

“To fly, to serve, to be blunt.”

BA’s much maligned strapline is an example of strapline as throughline — they’ve even made the point by launching a campaign showing the strapline written through a stick of rock — demonstrating how the words are written through their very core.

“To fly, to serve” is written right through BA’s essence. It’s consistent. It is what the company lives and breathes. It is, ultimately, the sharp end of the point they want to get across.

If you don’t know what the through line is, you don’t have a point.

I’m not going to get further into the debate about whether “To Fly. To Serve” is a good strapline. Because I don’t believe that it is. My personal feeling is that it’s arrogant and condescending — the concept of “service” is being used to suggest a sense of superiority, kind of like a snooty English butler Americans imagine everyone in Britain has. But who knows. Maybe the line will appeal to the American market.

The point is, as far as through lines go, it isn’t very subtle. It’s a classic example of “show, not tell” not being implemented.

In other words, instead of letting you discover what BA stands for by giving clear signals that leads you, the reader, to make to a conclusion (a classic way of persuading people — make them think the conclusion they’ve made is their own), it bluntly tells you what to think instead.

Sometimes it works. But imagine if every other airline’s strapline was their throughline.

Virgin Atlantic: We’re cool!
Easyjet: We’re cheap!
Ryanair: We’re crap!

I’m a fan of the say-what-you-mean school of copywriting. In other words: “here is the product, here are the features“. As consumers become more and more aware of the persuasive techniques we employ in the advertising industry, this “does what it says on the tin approach” resonates with consumers more and more.

However, much like the game of seduction, sometimes the consumer actively wants a little persuasion. They want to feel like they’re being wooed, like their needs are being accounted for. The consumer doesn’t want to be told. They want to be asked.

Would you care to dance?

It’s hard to strike the right balance between being overly formal and overly friendly — you want to be conversational and persuasive, but anyone who’s ever been assailed by a random drunk knows it’s no fun when a stranger tries to be your “friend”.

Tom Albrighton suggests that “wackywriting” (zany copy that tries to talk to consumers like they’re children) doesn’t work, because it’s actually patronising and authoritarian. I agree. But to me, BA’s approach is a step in the wrong direction too. They’ve dropped the wackywriting, but kept the authoritarian. The result is a strapline (and a throughline) that simply sounds cold.

Finding the throughline

Finding the througline isn’t easy. For starters, it might not always be something you can say out loud. Your client’s message might be “We’re cheap!” But how many places can get away with saying that without losing business? It might, in the case of BA, be “we’re better”. But how do you say that without sounding snooty?

The trick is to use subtlety. To use a tone of voice that’s conversational, an argumentative style that’s persuasive, not confrontational, and above all else, to show not tell.

You can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make him drink.
You can lead your readers to a conclusion…
…but ulitimately they’re the ones who make the decision to buy.

A subtle, persuasive through line will enable them to think they’re making choices for themselves, rather than being told what to think.

“Dear Sir (or Madam),

Unfortunately your application has not been successful at this time. Thank you for applying, we will keep your details on file for future reference.

PS, F**k you.”

It’s a letter we’ve all seen at some point in our lives. Whether it’s from a potential employer, a bank, mortgage broker, university, or other institution, the message is clear. We don’t like you. Go away.

Like most people, I’ve seen a fair few of these letters in my time. And, as I’ve become a better copywriter, I’ve noticed one thing that really bugs me about them — the way they always begin with the word “unfortunately”.

“Fortune” implies luck. A lack of fortune implies I’ve been unlucky this time, as if I’d just walked into a casino and put it all on red. How does a bank decide whether you’re going to get a mortgage? Do they flip a coin? Do employers make interviewees draw straws to decide who gets the job?

If that’s how you’re rejected, yes, it’s unfortunate. The same way it’s unfortunate when you’re playing hold’em and you get stacked by trip deuces against your pocket aces. That’s bad luck. But if the bank has decided you’re a credit risk, or an employer has decided you’re not good enough for the job, it’s not a matter of fortune. And saying “unfortunately” merely dances round the issue — “We don’t like you. Go away.”

You didn’t meet the criteria. What’s fortune got to do with it?

Very often a sense of forced politeness prevents us from saying what we mean. Many, many years ago I was rejected for a job — “You were a very strong candidate but unfortunately we decided not to hire you at this time” was the message. I replied: “Thank you for the compliment, but if I was a very strong candidate, I’d like to know why I wasn’t chosen. I’m more interested in knowing what I got wrong than what I got right, otherwise I risk making the same mistakes at an interview with another company. Please give me truthful feedback — and don’t hold back.”

They gave me feedback, but it was useless — it was for a creative role and I was told I had spelled a couple of words wrong. Probably not a deal breaker in any year after the first spell checker was invented. I’d have preferred “we just didn’t like your face.”

The “unfortunate” fact is that we’re often too polite to say what we mean. And that’s true when a client is giving feedback, too. We’re used to politeness meaning more to us than accuracy. But it’s better for a client to risk hurt feelings than to hurt the quality of your work. 

We’re used to criticism. So give it. “Unfortunately” offends more than the truth.

As a freelance copywriter, it’s happened to me a couple of times. A client has simply vanished (without paying) because they aren’t happy with the work — rather than tell me what they’re not happy with. Perhaps it’s a peculiarly English problem, after all, we are too polite for our own good sometimes. But I’ve found the following things help when ensuring you get good feedback:

1. On submitting your work, make it clear to the client that you don’t want them to hold back. Tell them you won’t be offended, and they’ll get better results if they’re completely critical.

2. Make sure you ask for specific advice, not just general notes. It doesn’t have to be line-by-line feedback, but ‘I hate the way you’ve used the word “sure” throughout the copy because it sounds too American’ is way better than “It sounds too chirpy” “It doesn’t sound British enough” et cetera.

3. Don’t get offended. It’s a mistake I made once or twice too often when I was just starting out. The fact is, if the client’s unhappy, it’s their money. Of course, if the client is dead wrong, don’t be afraid to argue with them, if you’re really sure it will impact on their business. But be prepared to back up your argument with statistics and evidence. Confrontation for confrontation’s sake looks churlish. But saying “this site that uses this style of copy gets 20% fewer conversions than this one that uses the style I chose for you” works.

Stop being polite. Be honest. That goes for clients and freelancers alike. And if you’ve been turned down for a job, a loan, a work placement? Don’t let them get away with telling you it’s unfortunate. Ask for real feedback.

It’s the only way you’ll improve.

Is sharing always a good thing? Do you think you got more pleasure out of that new toy when you played with it alone, or when you were forced to share it with others?

I ask because that’s exactly how Facebook works. Like a pushy parent, Facebook is forcing you to share more and more. And, perhaps inevitably, another tantrum has happened.

Facebook and Spotify force users to share intimate details of their lives

This time, it’s music. It’s bad enough that Spotify now forces you to sign up to its streaming music service with a Facebook account. Many people, myself included, naturally resist this attempt at data mining — they don’t want Zuckerberg knowing their every musical taste. I didn’t sign up (and pay money) to Spotify only for them to hand over my data to Facebook for free.

But the latest privacy outrage didn’t stop there. Once your Facebook and Spotify accounts were linked, an “auto sharing” feature was automatically enabled — with no ability to switch it off from within the Spotify app. In other words, all your Facebook friends could see every song you were playing in real time.

Obviously, most people saw this as too much. If I want (heaven forbid) to play Britney Spears at two in the morning on a Friday night, I certainly don’t want any of my friends to know about it. But the fact is we all have some guilty pleasures — we don’t want to share everything all of the time with everyone. Would you want to share with everyone on your friends list (who may or may not be ‘real’ friends) every meal you ate, every movie you watched or, even, every toilet visit you take?

It’s an old joke. But this cartoon from 2010 doesn’t seem to be so far off the mark. Facebook really is pushing us to share more and more — and many things, such as being forced to share the music we’re listening to, make us feel deeply uncomfortable.

You can opt out… but when did you opt in?

It took less than a week before Spotify were forced, by public outcry and drop-offs in usage, to give users a privacy option to prevent this over-sharing. I don’t want my Facebook “friends” to know every time I take a shit. And I don’t want them to know when I listen to “shit” music either.

There is such a thing as sharing too much — it’s okay to share when you want to,
but being forced to share is different — as Facebook and Spotify have found out.

Facebook’s new Timeline is almost upon us, and many people have argued that Facebook is getting too complicated [Mashable] for most casual users. It’s possible to prevent apps from automatically sharing information but it’s time consuming and complicated for most users. And there will always be the nagging feeling that the next time you log in to an app using Facebook, it sends data to your friends that you don’t want to make public.

Mashable have also highlighted three privacy fights the new timeline will bring – mostly to do with people from your present being easily able to dredge up things (or relationships) from your distant past, and hold the things you say against you. That’s quite difficult to do right now. The new timeline will enable your girlfriend, or your boss, to instantly find out what you were doing or saying five years ago.

Embarrassing photos from university? 4/20 status updates from before you wised up to the fact that only losers smoke pot? Hundreds of lovey-dovey messages from the ex who turned out to be a bunny boiler? They’re all back.

I’m not trying to be a luddite or a technophobe and I’m actually quite excited about some of the changes the new Facebook timeline will bring (as is, by the way, Don Draper). The idea of being able to share and curate a scrapbook of my life has appealed to ever since I got my first Livejournal over a decade ago.

But I want control over what, and when, I choose to share.

Spotify and Facebook didn’t slip up when they forced us into sharing the music we’re listening to.
That’s genuinely their vision of the future — a world where we share everything, all the time.

It’s not my vision of the future.

In George Orwell’s 1984, where our every move is monitored, Winston Smith’s interrogator says “If you want a vision of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face – forever.”

Perhaps this is no longer the case. With Facebook’s timeline, perhaps a more likely vision of the future is six billion people flinging shit at each other for all eternity.

Facebook Turdline? Don’t joke. One day, it just might happen.

Using arbitrary word counts to arrive at a quote simply doesn’t work. The only thing worth quoting on is time and complexity. How many hours will this take? How exhausted will you be at the end of it? How much of my time is this job worth?

It takes a lot longer to build one small building well than it does to put up ten houses sloppily. Copywriting is the same. You get what you pay for.

So why don’t we apply this logic to blogging?

Anyone can be a blogger, right?

Price per turd?

Since the days of Livejournal and, latterly, WordPress, every man and his dog has a blog. A million monkeys on a million typewriters. At least we’ve finally proved one thing: no-one out there is writing Shakespeare.

Content is a commodity. It’s simple economics: the more of a commodity there is out there, the greater the supply — and the lower the price. This is why horse manure is considerably cheaper to buy than gold.

A good blogger is worth his weight in gold. Yet most clients settle for manure — because that’s all they’re willing to pay for.

I got into copywriting via pro blogging — I was a journalist (a very underpaid journalist) and, at the time, £50 for a 1000 word SEO-style article seemed like a good deal. I was on £70 a day at a regional news group so £100 a day for two articles seemed like a big step up. This was almost seven years ago. As a fresh faced graduate, I was lucky to be earning at all — rather than taking part in the legalised slavery racket that is the “work experience” game. I saw my move to pro blogging as an early promotion.

The articles (usually 3000 words a week) I wrote as a journalist were good. But when it came down to writing two lengthy articles a day, every day — it wasn’t long before I started churning out the same old horse manure as everybody else.

Did anyone actually read the articles I wrote? Probably not. They were produced in the heady days of SEO when it was all about keywords, keywords, keywords. No-one gave a crap about readability, which was just as well. Because the readability of my articles was absolute crap.

How much should bloggers get paid?

If you want to get a good idea of current digital rates for professional journalists, take a look at the National Union of Journalists’ average rates page.

You’ll see an enormous spread, from the ridiculously underpaid (£50 per 1000 words, the rate I started out on) to the seriously beefy — £500 – £600 (that’s almost $1000!) for bigger publications such as Conde Nast where, obviously, readability is an important issue.

Most bloggers should be getting paid somewhere in the middle — £250 for a serious 1000 word journalistic article that takes a day to write. About half that for a quick-and-cheap review or keyword laden linkbait post.

But that’s not what bloggers are earning.

The imaginatively titled “SEO Design Solutions” offers 350-400 word blog posts by professionals “with an English or Journalism degree” from $25 per 450 word article. While back in the UK, Copify (who make no guarantees about the professionalism or qualifications of their bloggers) offer rates starting at just £0.03 per word. That’s £30 per 1000 words. Somewhere, in a Foxconn plant in China, there are workers who are doing less and earning more.

And it’s doubtful they’re servicing 30k of student debt.

Pay peanuts, get monkeys?

ABC Copywriting and Unmemorable Title have already taken apart content mills. But I’m going to say something very unpopular here:

Sometimes, a monkey is exactly what the client wants.

Not everyone wears Armani suits or Paul Smith jeans. I said to a friend I needed a new suit, once, and they replied “Tesco sell one for £30.” Frankly, I’d rather go naked than be seen wearing a cheap suit. But the fact is, the market for cheap suits is out there. And the chances are good that Tesco sell a lot more suits than Savile Row.

The trouble comes when people can’t tell the difference. Yes, a £30 blog post will cover the nakedness of your blank page as well as a £300 one, but it’s not a like-for-like substitution. Yet a suit is a suit in many people’s eyes, and a blog post is a blog post. As there seem to be an enormous amount of starving grad students out there willing to write for £0.03 per word, supply at the lower end of the market is overwhelming — and it’s depressing the market for the rest of us.

While copywriting is seen as a specialist skill, blogging isn’t.

I recently charged a company approximately £250 per 1000 words to write their web copy. They thought they were getting a good deal — and they were happy to pay it. Then they offered me a price per blog article to write for them on an ongoing basis. You’ve guessed it. £50 per 500 words.

I asked them why they thought I’d want to take a 66% pay cut.

They simply said: we can get bloggers cheaper elsewhere.

As an ex-journalist, I enjoy pro blogging. However, rates for bloggers are so low I rarely find myself doing the work. Most clients aren’t prepared to pay £250 for a 1000 word article when they can get someone to do it for £100. Or, if they visit a copy mill, they can even get someone to churn out an article for £30 — presumably while literally asleep at their keyboard, pressing random keys with their face.

It’s a simple fact. Blogging pays less than copywriting, even though writing good journalism is just as demanding as creating good copy.

My questions are:

1. Should high quality “journalistic” articles be marketed differently to “blogging”?

(Following Tom Albrighton’s suggestion that copywriters need a new name to distinguish themselves from copy mills, do premium bloggers need a new name to differentiate themselves from the penny-a-word hacks?)

2. Given that complexity varies so much, is it as absurd to set a price “per article” as it is “per word” or “per page”?

(If so, why do almost all copywriters and content producers market blog articles per word rather than per hour / case by case etc)

3. If the going rate for a blogger is 50% less than a copywriter’s equivalent hourly rate, Is there any point in a copywriter offering blogging services at all?

Comments welcome.

So why am I in London?

It’s partly a personal thing. My friends are here. My girlfriend is here. My life, more or less, is here. But every so often (usually once every year or so) I get the sudden, powerful urge to leave. Paying rent is killing me. Catching three night buses and getting home at 3am is killing me. The riots certainly didn’t help. The trouble is, there are definite and compelling business reasons to stay.

Firstly, even in London, some clients want to feel a strong geographical connection to their freelancer.

As a copywriter, I can write from anywhere. But even in the age of email, skype, and (relatively) cheap international calls, people still want to meet face to face. I’d say at least 50% of my clients insist on at least one face-to-face meeting during the work. If I left London, I’d be leaving 50% of my business behind.

Secondly, there’s obvious search related benefits to being geographically attached to an area.

The most popular organic search term clients use to find my site is a price sensitive keyword. The second most popular is related to my portfolio. The third most popular keyword: it’s geographical.

But it’s not simply about volume of searches. It’s also about my conversion rate. While seven times more people find this site for a price keyword than a geographical one, I’m certain the opposite is true: geographical keywords are several times more likely to convert than price. “Price” people tend to make ridiculous enquiries (“Will you do this £250 job for £50?” “No!”) while geographical searchers have higher budgets and are more interested in building a long term relationship with their copywriter — hence the use of the geographical search, to find someone close by.

Finally, there’s the repeat custom.

For some reason, local (i.e. London based) jobs tend to lead to more London-based work from friends or colleagues of the original client. Perhaps this is because people feel more confident recommending someone they’ve actually met. Either way, to move would be to lose this valuable contact base.

Conclusion: is being a freelancer more about the personality than the work?

Collectively, these three things astound me. Cumulatively, it’s clear evidence that people are more interested in meeting you and sizing you up to see if you’re a good fit than they are in seeing how well you present yourself online, or even over the phone. So why bother with a fancy website? Why bother updating your portfolio?

Obviously, it’s important to have a strong online presence — it’s this that gets your foot in the door. But it seems that this is only the first step — and if you don’t live in the area you’re targeting (or at least within easy commuting distance) you’re missing out on a lot of work. I know plenty of regional copywriters — people in Bristol, people in Newcastle, et cetera — and they base their business (and target keywords) geographically too.

In other words, even in a fully digital age, people still prefer to “go local” — and that’s probably as true for any other service as it is for freelance copywriters.

It’s also worth counting the number of buzzwords a client uses in their enquiry. One recent enquiry opened with “we’re looking to engage with a copywriting solution”. This solution politely rejected the client’s offer to get engaged. Knowing in my heart of hearts we were incompatible, I was sure I’d be jilted before invoice day.

My friend added another one to the list. ‘Passionate,’ he said. ‘Beware anyone who tells you they’re “passionate” about something. And if they want you to be passionate too, run a mile.’

I thought getting “engaged” was bad enough. But, apparently, everyone is passionate about what they do. And they expect you to be, too.

The word “passion” worries me.

In the course of my career as a freelance copywriter, I have met people who are passionate about design. Fair enough. But I have also met people who are passionate about carpet cleaning, picture framing, and even data entry.

If it’s your day job or your living, it’s possible — albeit unlikely — you’re passionate about data entry. But I’m still surprised every time I see a brief, enquiry, or RFP that asks the copywriter (occasionally: “copywriting resource”) if they are “passionate” about xxxxxxx.

Most people aren’t passionate about their own jobs — let alone someone else’s. So why ask?

It’s about engagement, stupid, or:

When people are passionate, they want to get engaged.

In other words, the client is looking for someone who understands them. They’re looking for someone who thinks the way they do. They’re looking for someone they can relate to. They’re looking for a relationship. And they assume this requires passion.

For some reason people think you need passion to be in a relationship. Anyone who’s ever been married will tell you this isn’t the case. For most people, a job’s a job. They might have a passion for numbers, but not merchant banking. But they’re in banking rather than teaching because the money’s too good. They are using their skillset to earn a living. Personally, I’m passionate about words, about writing, about books, about literature. Copywriting, less so. I simply try to do a good job.

Builders probably aren’t passionate about the houses they build, plumbers aren’t passionate about toilets. Frankly, you’d be worried if they were. That doesn’t mean they don’t do a good job building your house or mending your leaky pipes. They’re professionals, doing a job. No passion required. Just an honest day’s pay for an honest day’s work.

Why are passion and creativity inextricably linked?

It all comes back to the myth of the starving artist, the guy who’d rather buy paint than buy next week’s food. Unfortunately, when it comes to the “creative” professions, people believe you need to be passionate to do good work. Not just passionate about your craft, but passionate about your subject matter too.

Do you need to be passionate about something to write about it?

The answer is no.

Journalists sent to cover a story aren’t passionate, they’re objective. They might be passionate about writing — but not always about the assignment they’re given. They’re professionals who tell a story and convey information. Copywriters do a similar job. One week, you’re working on an ad campaign for women’s fashion (which you might care about), the next week, you’re writing long copy for the back of a cereal packet, or a 4000 word financial services brochure. Such is the life of a professional writer.

So should you be worried when someone asks you if you’re passionate?

My friend argued that people used the word “passion” to mean dedication to the job — dedication that could often be exploited for lower wages or poorer conditions. I’ve known chefs, for example, who work up to 12 hour shifts for near minimum wage in 5* restaurants because they’re passionate about food, even though practically any other highly skilled job would pay more and demand less.

So when someone asks you if you’re passionate, my friend decided it was because they wanted you to be dedicated enough to work for less, to redraft documents for free, to wait for payment, etc — and he considers it a danger phrase as bad as “it’s only a little job…”

Personally, I think people are just suffering from the illusion that you have to be passionate, rather than professional, to be able to write.

We don’t demand passion from plumbers, bank clerks, or reporters.
So why demand it from copywriters?

What do you think?

• Reciprocity (People tend to return a favour, e.g. giving out free samples leads to greater sales)
  
• Commitment (Once people have already decided to buy, it’s much easier to raise prices with ‘extras’ at the last minute, a common technique used in car showrooms)
  
• Social proof (If other people you trust are doing it, you’re more likely to do it as well — which is why referral schemes and, of course, social media, works)
  
• Authority (Celebrities and doctors sell stuff)
  
• Liking (Attractive people sell stuff)
  
• Scarcity (Hurry! Stocks are limited! This offer won’t be repeated tomorrow!)

If you’re interested in learning more, I highly recommend you read the book — it’s full of examples of how to use people’s ingrained behavioural patterns to influence them. It’s also great at teaching you how to spot these techniques so you can avoid them.

But Cialdini got me thinking. What are the choices that I make, as a copywriter, when sitting down to start a brief?

Cialdini’s arguments appeal to logic — but where’s the logic in that?

All six of Cialdini’s ‘weapons of influence’ are appeals to argument — to logic — in other words, they’re appeals to the head, not the heart.

For example: You should buy this, because your peers like it. You should buy this because custom dictates that since we have done you a favour, you should return it (Cialdini actually explains this is an important evolutionary trait and, therefore, logical), and so forth.

Cialdini’s ‘weapons of influence’ show us how we make purchasing decisions based on rational choice, even subconsciously.

But I don’t think all decisions are made this way. After the fact, yes, we try to rationalise our decisions. But the truth is very often we’re led not by the head, but by the heart.

Head or heart?

Fans of Mad Men will know that every Don Draper pitch or advert is essentially the same. From the ‘nostalgia’ of watching old memories displayed on a Kodak Carousel to a tug on your heart strings remembering your childhood in a Glo-Coat advert, or watching your own children growing up as they eat a bowl of Life Cereal, Don’s pitches are successful because they make emotional — not rational — appeals and touch us at a deeper, more instinctual level.

Which technique is better?

When people ask me how to sell something, I usually point them towards The Oatmeal’s one frame cartoon, How to (not) sell something to my generation.

The Oatmeal formula is very simple and it works:

Be sincere, knowledgeable, and helpful. Explain: “Here is the product and here are the features”. If the product is good, if the person wants it, the product sells itself.

And of course this works, especially on the web. As The Oatmeal points out, pushy sales techniques don’t work in such a saturated, crowded market. They look desperate. With a million and one reviews and competitor sites online, it’s easy to browse thousands of sites and compare like-for-like.

Usually, when making a rational purchasing decision, I don’t want you to try to persuade me. I simply want to know what the product is, what it does, and what it can offer me — and this is how I structure most copy on most sites. Anything else looks like a cheap con trick.

Sometimes rational appeals aren’t enough

As the Don Draper method proves, sales aren’t always made by making convincing arguments.

They’re about touching something deeper within us — making an emotional connection between seller and purchaser and, ultimately, making sure the purchaser knows that they will feel something with this product.

After all, isn’t that what we want? We buy a new car, we buy new clothes, we buy a new breakfast cereal… we want to feel good about our purchase.

You may argue that some things are better sold with appeals to the heart (a new Porsche) while other things are sold with appeals to simple logic (does this new Dell give me more bang for my buck than the Sony? I’ll read a few reviews and find out!).

But anyone who believes it’s as black and white as this is over-simplifying. Apple, for example, have carved out an empire by building computers that appeal to the heart, while everyone else was building functional but ugly machines that appealed to the wallet. Consumers spoke with their wallets. They chose Apple.

And it’s this last point that’s the most important:

Appealing to people’s desires enables you to charge them based on perceived, rather than actual, value.

When you make a rational appeal to logic, a product is only worth as much as you value the functionality it gives you. (“This new laptop is twice as fast as my old one, has slightly better battery life, this is worth £750 of my money”).

But when you appeal to a person’s emotions, you are able to charge them as much as that feeling is worth to them — and that could be a great deal more. (This shiny new MacBook Air will make me feel great about myself. I love the way it looks! I simply have to have it at any price, even though the components are only worth £750!)

Based on this logic, then, it’s always best to include an appeal to the heart in any good marketing campaign — simply because it enables you to set prices based on people’s desires, based on perceived, rather than actual, value.

The Oatmeal’s formula therefore needs an addition:

1. This is the product.
2. This is what it does.
3. This is how it will make you feel.

A product that appeals to both head and heart is more likely to be successful than one that simply appeals to the head alone.

Unfortunately, this information isn’t enough to help your copywriter do a good job. It’s only enough to help them do a generic job. If you want truly personal copy, you’re going to have to be prepared to get personal.

Can’t meet your client in person? That’s where my brief comes in.

A personal interview gets personal results. So does a good copywriting brief.

As a London copywriter, I’m fortunate to get enough local business to enable me to meet most of my clients in person. Once I’ve met them I’ve got a much better idea of who they are and what they want, as well as being able to ask them specific questions based on their earlier responses. In other words, I’m interviewing them, the same way a journalist might interview someone for a magazine feature. It should come as no surprise to you to learn that before I became a copywriter I was a magazine journalist. But my method works for copywriting, too.

The questions a good copywriting brief (or interview) needs to answer:

You’re unique. In order to write copy that’s specific to you, a copywriter needs to know three things:

• Who you are
• What you do
• How you help your customers.

Next, a copywriter needs to know a little more about your personality. That includes:

• Your sense of style (Funny? Serious? Laid-back? Adademic? Professional?)
• What you like and don’t like (buzzwords, slang, Oxford commas, etc)

Finally, a copywriter needs to understand about your audience. A good copywriter doesn’t write for you, he writes for your customers. Understanding what they want is at least as important as understanding what you want — and perhaps a great deal more.

Free to you – my copywriting brief!

I’ve created a 15 question copywriting brief to send out to clients I can’t meet in person to help them think more about their business, and to help me understand more about them, so I can provide them with copy that’s personal to them.

Too much copy is bland, generic, and could be about anything or anyone. Bad copy fails to convey a brand’s personality. The reason so much copy is bad is because clients rarely bother to provide personality information in their brief — and bad copywriters rarely bother to ask.

Here are my 15 questions. You can download this copywriting brief template here in MS Word format or as a PDF.

Copywriter Brief Template

1. Describe, in plain English, what your company does.

• Explain who you are first, then explain what you do. For example, “we are a factory… we are a shop… we are a website… we are a software development team…” then “we manufacture phone handsets, we develop apps for the android platform, we sell bicycles, etc”
• Avoid buzzwords or business-speak (e.g. “we provide solutions”, “we enable companies to leverage their investment and generate increased ROI” etc).

2. How do you help your clients? What benefits do you offer them? How are their lives / businesses enriched by your product / service?

• For example, “the bicycles we sell from our online shop get you from place to place faster than walking, but cost less than a car, and are better for the environment! Best of all, we deliver!”

3. What is your main objective you hope to achieve with the copy?

• For example, to attract new customers, retain old customers, make your brand sound more modern, enable you to charge higher prices by positioning yourselves as a ‘premium’ product, etc.

4. What is your USP? (i.e. something your competitors can’t provide)

• For example, we are 50% cheaper than our nearest competitor, we have twice as many staff, all our staff have a university education, we sell our product in more colours than our competitors, our product is proven more reliable, lasts twice as long, etc.

5. Do you have any evidence to support your claims?

• Case studies, product reviews, testimonials etc.

6. Do any of your competitors provide a similar service? Who are they? What are their strengths? What does their marketing (website, brochure, etc) look like. Provide links to their websites if possible.

7. Who is the main audience — who will be reading the copy? Provide as much information about the client as possible.

• For example, age, income, company size, job title, location, interests, political affiliation, choice of newspaper, gender — anything that can help identify the reader.
• e.g. “Our clients are typically aged 30-40, have £1000 to spend, are university educated, female, interested in the arts and the environment, liberal, iPhone users, married but don’t have children, etc”

8. Is there a secondary audience who should also be targeted in addition to the main client?

• For example, if you supply beauty products to high street stores, you might also want to supply them to spa owners as well – they’re not your main audience, but it’s worth considering them in the copy.
• Ask yourself – is there anyone else’s business you wouldn’t mind targeting?

9. What is the primary conversion objective of the copy?

• A conversion goal is anything you want your website to achieve.
  • It could be an enquiry about your product by phone or email…
  • A sign up to your site or subscription to your newsletter
  • A click-through to another site
  • More comments on your blog or inbound links from other sites (“linkbait”)

10. Are there any secondary objectives?

• For example, increased brand awareness, greater number of purchases by under-25s, website (and copy) featured on another prominent site, etc.

11. What sort of copy do you like? Do you have a preference for tone of voice?

• Conversational? Friendly? Formal? Professional? Educational? Funny? Light-hearted?

12. If your business was a person, who would they be?

• For example, Steve Jobs, Barack Obama, Don Draper, A 37 year old man in a suit, a 27 year old hipster, a teenage girl with pigtails, a Mercedes Benz driver, Al Pacino in Scarface, the sort of person who always wears a watch, etc

13. What do you like about your current copy? What don’t you want me to change?

• e.g. short, concise, headline-driven

14. What don’t you like about your current copy?

• e.g. too technical, too pushy, too long, too boring, etc

15. Additional information – now I’ve got you thinking, is there anything else you think I need to know?

Here’s a simple, concise, and definitive argument courtesy of shortee.tumblr.com –

As you can see, the Oxford comma isn’t an afterthought. It’s absolutely essential to get your message across with clarity.

Here’s another example, this time from aeferg.tumblr.com –

The Oxford comma is kind of like the <li> tag (if you’re in an HTML frame of mind). Each comma is another <ul> or <ol> entry that separates each individual item. In other words, the Oxford comma is the old fashioned way of writing bullet points.

Without the comma, sentences are simply separated into two clauses, with confusing (and sometimes hilarious) results.

In short — if you want to give your readers clarity, give them the Oxford comma.

Your car isn’t your transport solution. Your phone isn’t a communications solution. And I’m willing to bet you never refer to dinner as a “foodservice solution” or even a “hunger solution”, do you? What about your girlfriend? Is she your loneliness solution? Or is that what you call the bottle of whisky you drink alone, late at night? Is paracetamol in a glass of water your hangover solution in the morning? Or would you prefer another swig from the bottle?

Blimey! I just used the word “solution” six times in one paragraph. It’s enough to give anyone a sore head. Can’t blame you for reaching for that bottle of whisky. But that’s exactly what bad business copy does.

Solutions don’t explain what the product is, what it does, or why you need it.

Businesses like marketing themselves as “solutions”. It’s almost like they have an inferiority complex, going around pointing out how everyone must have problems and how they’re the “solution” to all your woes.

The trouble is, as I showed you in my introductory paragraph, the real world doesn’t work that way. We have specific names for things — and we don’t consider them “solutions”. Over-using the word solution simply suggests you don’t have much of a grasp on exactly what the product or service is you’re trying to offer. Worse, it obscures the very essence of what it is you’re trying to say, substituting a specific word for a general (and perhaps unsuitable) promise. Sure, you might get a girlfriend as a solution to your loneliness problem. Then again, you might get drunk, too. Obviously, the two things are very, very different. Both, technically, are “solutions” to your problem. But one of the above, you might not choose.

To make things even worse, a glass of paracetamol dissolved in water really is a hangover “solution” — in the dictionary definition of the word.

Turner Ink Copywriting points out a paragraph from Wikipedia’s acceptable use of English guide –

The word solution should be confined to its use in chemistry, mathematics and problem solving. It should not be used to refer to products, services, software or a combination of these things, since such usage implies that the product or service solves the problem it is intended to solve: the word “solution” should instead be replaced by a concrete descriptive term for the type of product, such as “software”. Solution often is used simply as a buzzword that can be eliminated altogether with no loss of meaning.

A company called Xxxxxx Medical Solutions came to me recently. I advised them to drop “solutions” from their name. “Xxxxxx Medical” wasn’t great. But Xxxxxxxx Medical Solutions sounded like something you’d find in a colostomy bag. The company actually sold dermabrasion machines. That’s all they needed to say. Not a medical solution. A dermabrasion machine manufacturer. Simple.

For example:

In the real world – Telephone, landline, phone call.”

In business speak – “Communication solution.”

The S-word actually obscures and reduces description through over-generalization.

As a result, business copy is littered with bad writing, such as “we supply business communication solutions” rather than “we provide fixed land line services” or “we sell telephones with business functionality such as conference calling, multiple line handling, etc”

Technically, carrier pigeons are communication solutions too — as would be a program like Skype. But without getting specific, I’ve got no way of knowing what your “solution” is, or if I want it.

A company that’s simply providing “solutions” isn’t providing anything at all.

You owe it to your customers to explain what your product is
before you explain how it “solves” their problem.

1. Get a 50% deposit up-front, every time.

If the client can’t or won’t afford this, what makes you think they’ll pay up on time, or at all, once the job is done?

2. Sometimes, you’re being hired to give your opinion, as well as your words.

You can’t argue with every client, but not everyone likes a yes man. If you’ve got different ideas (and you can express them politely) don’t be afraid to put them across.

I’ve turned £500 jobs into £5k jobs by being willing to tell the client their business model is wrong — something their entire staff was afraid to say.

3. People don’t buy things unless there’s a price tag attached.

If you walk into a clothes store and the clothes don’t have price tags, it’s a case of “if you have to ask, you can’t afford it.” Great if you can survive on those clients alone, but most freelancers will require the volume generated by clients with mid-range budgets.

Pricing is variable. But I’ve found setting a clear and accessible day rate really helps clients understand the value of your work. “Sure,” I say. “I could knock out this 2000 word job for you in a day. But if you’re willing to pay for three days, you’ll get a lot more options, several redrafts, and more carefully thought out work.” That way you can target people with budgets at both ends of the scale while — technically — offering one consistent price.

___________________________________

I seem to get asked for advice by freelance copywriters who are just starting out an awful lot these days. Much more than I used to, anyway. I guess this means that, after a few years in this game, suddenly I’m the voice of wisdom and experience. Funny, because it doesn’t feel like all that long ago I was just starting out myself.

Of course I’ve been writing for ages. But I only turned freelance in 2008. Why? Because suddenly the economy was in freefall and my job was one of the first to be cut. After six of the most embarrassing, painfully slow weeks of my life in the dole queue, I decided this life wasn’t for me. Mere mortals waited for a job. I’d go out and create one for myself.

And that was how I got into freelancing. I knew how to write. But other than that, I knew nothing.

When I was starting out, this is the one thing I wish someone had told me:

As a freelance copywriter, writing is only half the job.

Marketing yourself, dealing with clients, negotiating with subcontractors, attending meetings and conferences, doing admin, answering emails and phone calls, doing your taxes — all take up a lot of your time.

In fact, they take up about half of it.

The most common question I’m asked by new freelance copywriters is “how much should I charge?”

So as a rule of thumb, you should figure out how much you need to survive per year, divide that by 52, divide it again by 5, and then double that figure. That’s your base day rate.

For example — if you set your day rate at £150, you can expect to earn (150 x 5)/2 = £375 per week. You will not earn more than this.

Even if you get a client who pays you for a full five days’ work, there will still be unbillable items, administrative costs, extra meetings and phone calls you cannot charge for. Plus, you won’t have done any marketing this week. Where will your next client come from? You may spend all of next week earning nothing.

So if you charge a day rate of £150, your annual income will be about £18,000.

If you charge a day rate of £250, your annual income will be closer to £32,500.

I charge a day rate of £250 at the moment and most people think I’m insanely cheap for a digital copywriting specialist with several years experience. Personally, I’d rather live a little more modestly now and be able to pick and choose the best clients whose work I think will get me noticed — enabling me to charge more in the future — as well as being much happier with the kind of work I’m doing now.

Good work now = more money later.

My clients don’t choose me. I choose them.

I’ve seen my work appearing in some pretty famous places lately and that means I’m going to be able to charge a lot more in the future. I got here by keeping my prices low and attracting a lot of enquiries from a broad range of clients, creating a varied portfolio.

Instead of choosing my clients by how much they’re able to offer me in cash terms, I’ve often chosen to work with cash poor clients whose design work is better — meaning in the long run I’ll have a better portfolio. But that’s a decision you’ll have to take.

Given the choice between the good designer and the rich client, I’ll always pick the good designer.

If you’re not averse to using the word “solution” in every sentence and writing like a robot for the rest of your life, you could probably earn double what I do writing very staid B2B copy for very dull clients. Good luck to you.

The best thing about being a freelancer is being able to pick and choose your work on your own terms.

Beware the bad client: A cautionary tale

A couple of years ago, I was approached by a client who was willing to pay me over £3000 for what amounted to a little under 4000 words. This is at least double, and in some cases almost quadruple even a battle-hardened senior digital copywriter’s rate.

It sounded too good to be true. It was.

During the length of the project, the client sent me no fewer than 260 emails. Sure some of them took a minute to respond to. Some of them (like the one where he tried to insist I pay his subcontractors and he’d reimburse me and I had to spend four hours trying to think of a politer way of saying two popular words beginning with F and ending in off) took closer to four hours. He wasn’t a bad guy — he was just a nightmare to deal with. So assuming every email took an average of 15 minutes to deal with, 260 * 15 = 65 hours. 65 hours, on email contact time alone. That didn’t take into account the eight days worth of meetings he wanted. At my day rate, that’s over £4,000 already — without a single word being written.

The moral of my story?

As a freelancer, you have to decide how much you’re worth.

A day rate of £200 will put you on about the national average wage.

If you set your copywriting rates slightly lower than your skill level,
you’ll be able to pick and choose your clients — leading to better work in the future.

And the golden rule:

Unbillable items such as admin will take up half your time. So work out how much money you want to earn, work out your day rate, then double it. You’ll still be working a full five day week, but as a freelancer, you’ll only be doing billable work half the time…

…Make sure you get paid for it.

Tumblr started out a little like a cooler version of Twitter. I’ve often said that Twitter feels like a water cooler for us bored, lonely freelancers who don’t get to enjoy the simple pleasures of office gossip — well, Tumblr started out kind of like a hyper-specific water cooler for graphic designers, artists, and techie hipsters who mostly wanted to reblog each other’s cool designs. Some time between the year I joined and now, something changed.

Tumblr is indisputably the platform of choice for teenage (and slightly older) girls. I don’t know what the exact ratio of girls to boys on tumblr is, but one thing I can tell you is, unlike the rest of the internet, it isn’t a sausage fest. Heck, I actually went on a date with a girl I met on tumblr and she didn’t turn out to be a cave dweller or a social reject. In fact she was fairly typical of the friends I’ve made on tumblr. Young, pretty, urban, sophisticated, and very, very interested in fashion.

Okay, Tumblr isn’t quite as hipster as it used to be, but it’s still very cool. It’s full of young, affluent, fashionable people with lots of disposable income. That makes it a perfect place to  promote your brand — if it’s already fashionable, you’re already playing to a captive audience. If you’re looking to become more fashionable, tumblr  is the definitive social media platform with “fashionable” street cred. GQ is on Tumblr — and it’s as effortlessly cool as the magazine.

But how do you get it right? What’s the right way to promote your brand on Tumblr?

1. Stop trying to sell me something

Like all social media, if you out and out spam me with “buy this! subscribe to that! follow me! follow me! WHY WON’T YOU FOLLOW ME???” junk I will ignore you, block you, or report you. Fortunately, Tumblr is mostly free of that kind of crap — which is why we like it. And we’d like to keep it that way, please.

That’s especially true on tumblr, where the aim of the game is to share ideas and inspiration — very rarely original content. My tumblr is mostly full of the music I like, interspersed with a little bit of architecture and photography. I have a graphic designer friend who shows off her talent using her tumblr — but she never, ever hassles anyone to buy anything. She simply draws something, puts it up for free, and tells you you can buy a print, if you really want. If you’re a brand, you could learn a lot from her.

2. Inspire and be inspired

Sweet Home Style is a great example of a conversation happening online. People submit photos of their interior designs and other people follow. Sweet Home Style is such a popular tumblr it offers monthly sponsorship, without being intrusive. It relies on user generated content — in essence, it’s a forum where people come to share ideas — to inspire and be inspired. Even if you’re trying to sell your own products through Tumblr, your Tumblr shouldn’t just be about you — it should be about the things that inspire you and your readers. Tumblr is a medium that cries out for user generated content to be shared and enjoyed — so make the most of it.

3. Set the mood

I recently suggested to a brand that was lacking direction they could crowdsource what people thought of them visually by setting up a tumblr and asking subscribers to submit images, music, quotes etc that they thought evoked the mood of the brand. But on the whole, most brands know their image already — and a Tumblr is a great way to set the mood for your brand by posting images and ideas that fit your unique style. Do you run a burlesque night? Or are you an acid house promoter? You’ll want to post a lot of pictures of girls in corsets or old videos of 80s warehouse parties, then. Find out what your followers are into — and post things that will appeal to them and solidify your brand identity.

4. Make use of Tumblr’s unique features

I have a journalist / blogger / freelancer friend who works in fashion. She uses Tumblr to aggregate all of her blog posts from across several different sites into one place. The result? A much wider audience for her fashion journalism, as well as a quick and easy repository of all her work for potential future employers and commissions. Tumblr is so easy to use you can start posting in minutes — and it’s a much more versatile platform than Twitter. Think of it as a simpler, slightly cooler socially oriented version of WordPress crossed with Twitter — then think of all the possibilities a platform like that can give you.

The golden rule – Tumblr is a unique community.
Normal rules of social media don’t apply.

Tumblr is home to rampant image piracy and has more repeats than terrestrial television. Expect to see the same old blurry vintage effect photos with helvetica quotes stamped on them a lot. Expect to see fluffy kittens and teenage angst daily. But also expect to find a really solid community of people who care about each other and who aren’t afraid to speak their minds — a little like the good old days of Livejournal. Take it easy at first — Forget what you know from Facebook and Twitter. Tumblr has its own set of rules and etiquette, so don’t offend the natives. And don’t try to spam us or sell us crap.

People on Tumblr trust other people on Tumblr. It’s still a much smaller, friendlier place than Twitter or Facebook. That means brands who go there — and get it right — get a lot more respect, too.

But when you’re at the top of your game, how do you stay there? How do you keep people coming back? On the web, few things are permanent. Does anyone remember Geocities? In ten years, who’ll even remember Myspace?

So is innovation the secret to staying at the top?

Arguably, yes. Then again… arguably, no.

One of Guido’s more recent innovations is to put headlines from other sites he reads under a “seen today” column. One of his recent links was to an NYT article about how The Drudge Report has managed to remain a major force on the web despite being utterly unchanged in over 14 years.

Amazing, isn’t it? This relic of the past still attracts 14m hits a day. No video, no fancy design, no social media buttons, no irritating requests to “like” this at every turn. Just links.

Drudge’s success is down to a number of things.

Firstly, he does one thing very well, and he sticks to that formula.

Drudge’s talent is that “he can look into a huge stream of news, find the hot story and put an irresistible headline on it.”

Today, for example, Drudge warns of a “zombie apocalypse”. It’s just about an ad campaign the CDC are running, but it certainly catches the eye.

Secondly, Drudge has critical mass.

In other words, “everyone goes there because, well, everyone else goes there.”

Finally, Drudge keeps things simple.

From the NYT:

“The genius of Drudge is the simplicity of the layout. Everyone else who tries to knock him off complicates that. There’s no tabs. There’s no jumps. There’s hardly any clutter, even if he now runs more headlines than he used to. He’s secure enough in the formula that he’s never changed it.”

At first I found it amazing that a site that’s essentially a heavily curated set of links to the day’s news, edited by one man, has managed to remain both unchanged and dominant for 14 years — then I realised that the Drudge formula worked.

Do what you do, well.
Ensure you retain critical mass.
Don’t make unnecessary changes to your site,
or clutter it with things that detract from its main function.

Drudge hasn’t needed to change anything, because the formula has kept on working for him. Sure, there may come a day when he needs to add social media integration. But with 14m people visiting daily and no apparent drop off even after years of social media integration in other sites, he’s confident he doesn’t need to right now.

It all comes down to that old phrase, if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. Too often we’re obsessed with improving websites, making them do more, when in actual fact we should be concentrating on the essentials: doing what we said we’d do well, catering for our existing customers, and providing the best possible user experience.

Anything else and we risk losing, not gaining, customers. Don’t mess with success.

Of course, The Sun is known for its outlandish headlines, often involving a pun, joke, or  outright shocker (“Freddie Starr ate my Hamster” being the oft-quoted classic.) So I didn’t think my guess of “Osama nails Obama in Islamabad Drama” was far off. But it was too long. The one thing the tabloids always get right is brevity. They don’t use two words where one will do.

Short, powerful, engaging headlines.

I guessed again. “Osama bin dun in,” I reckoned. Shorter, and also in the “working class accent” the Sun loves to use. But I was still two words too long. The Sun’s response was simple:

“Bin bagged!”

As a headline, it’s genius. In two words, the writers manage to get across three messages — and a pun:

If you’re reading this in the States, a “bin bag” is what we call a garbage bag (“bin” is British English for “trashcan”). So the headline is a very quick pun that suggests a number of things:

1 – Bin Laden has been “bagged” — we got him.

2 – even if he did receive a “proper” burial he deserved “to be taken out like trash”

3 – Go on, laugh, we did. So the headline not only tells a story, it also tells you what to think.

That’s quite a lot for two words.

Simple writing with mass market appeal

The rest of the newspaper is written in a similar style. The Sun’s editorials are often just 30 words long. On Page 3, a topless girl will give you a one sentence take on the main issue of the day, entitled “news in briefs”. But before you start groaning, remember that this newspaper is unashamedly populist and anti-elitist. It may not be the voice of the majority — but as the UK’s highest circulation daily, it must be doing something right.

Most writers are highly educated. Not all readers are.

Chances are if you’re a writer or a journalist, you’re educated to degree level and have a wide vocabulary. Not all your readers will have that kind of knowledge. Yet instead of using simple words, desiring to be more specific, you use longer, more complex words. But to some people, your message will be lost.

It’s all about knowing your audience.

If you’re playing to an educated audience, long words are fine. Being serious is fine. But for true mass market appeal, you need to be able to make your points quickly, simply, and in a way that engages with your audience — often, you need to be funny, using wordplay that appeals to the majority, not the over-educated elite.

David Ogilvy suggested to his copywriters that they go out and listen to a conversation on a bus, or in a bar, in the suburbs, or in a rural town. “Those are the people you’re trying to sell to,” he said.

Complex ideas, packaged simply.

Most of my colleagues frown on me for picking up my daily copy of The Sun. But as a professional writer with two degrees under my belt, I find reading “the nation’s paper” helps keep me in check. It’s too easy to imagine everyone thinks and acts the way you do.

That’s why it’s important to take a step outside your comfort zone and understand how to write for a wider audience — without patronising them. The Sun does this brilliantly.

At home, it’s the next-door neighbour. Down the pub, it’s one of the lads. On the street, it could be anyone you meet.

Pick up a copy and ask yourself –
could I get a complex message across in simple, short terms like this?

If you can’t — keep reading. You might learn something.

Fellow copywriter Leif Kendall recently wrote a blog post attempting to define content strategy. He said:

Content strategy is a process used by organisations to define and plan how words, pictures, audio and video (content) are used to achieve objectives (such as increased sales or a reduction in support calls). A content strategy provides a framework for the creation, publication and curation of content, and aligns those activities with the organisation’s wider strategy.

He’s right. However, his explanation to clients falls a little short. Leif argues that content strategy is a structured approach. But he doesn’t explain what that structure is.

Arguably, that’s because there’s no right-or-wrong approach to content strategy  –

Content strategy is simply the act of creating a structure for generating content and a framework for displaying that content in place, according to set goals.

The question is, what should that structure be?

Is there an ideal “content strategy” most people can use and adapt?

Naturally, I’m biased. As a copywriter, I think words should always come first. If I had my way, I’d start every new build with a copy document, give it to the designer, and tell him to work his ideas around it. Of course, I know it doesn’t happen that way — and even if it did, it would produce results almost as poor as giving the task to a designer first, then getting in a copywriter to fill in the “lorem ipsum” text, treating content as a mere afterthought.

But the fact is, that’s the way most people design and build a website. When I ask my clients what their content strategy is, the most usual reply I get is “Content strategy? You mean blogging?”

1. The difference between content marketing and content strategy

Content marketing is a process where you use content to draw visitors to your site — in effect, linkbait. A classic example I like to use is of a bakery giving away free recipes online to promote its cakes — it’s providing content like this as a “free” draw to the thing you’re really selling. This blog is another example of content marketing. I’m giving away my expertise in the hope that you’ll hire me as a copywriter.

Content strategy is the process of devising and planning both the type of content you’ll be providing (from a page with recipes on it to a regularly updated video blog, content isn’t just text — it’s video and images and everything else, too), as well as deciding how it will be displayed.

And it’s that last part that people usually get wrong.

2. Content strategy is about making sure content has a context.

Content strategy is all about treating content like it’s part of the design process, rather than an “extra’ to be added in later. In other words, it’s all about creating content — or at least deciding how that content will look — side by side with the other creative processes that go into a web design.

The entire “tone of voice” for a copy document I recently wrote depended on whether the headings and sub-headings were to be displayed in burnt orange or neon pink. One required friendly. The other required boldness. A simple colour choice affected the tone of the entire site. That’s what I mean by putting content in context. But not all changes are as simple as a quick colour fix.

If you decide how content will be displayed before you decide on the content, you end up picking the picture based on the design you’ve chosen for the frame. That’s why it’s essential that content strategy is devised before design work is finalised.

3. Content strategy at a conceptual level

Content strategy starts with two things: an objective, and a concept. My objective is to convince people I’m a knowledgeable and experienced copywriter. We decided on a pyramidal content strategy — the site opens with short bursts of sales-led text to get my message across, followed by a more detailed “about” section, then a broad-ranging set of portfolio sub-pages, followed by, finally, a blog.

In other words, the design of my site matches the objectives I want my copy to achieve. If you’re interested in increasing your sales figures — perhaps using “bolder” copy would be better. But you can’t provide bold copy when the style has already been set as “friendly”.

Last year a client came to me asking for “punchy” headlines for his site. The lorem ipsum space for his “headlines” was almost 20 words, two sentences long. “You’ll have to change these,” I told the client. He couldn’t — because he’d already signed off on the design and didn’t want to pay the designer any more money. So I was expected to do the impossible: create a headline that was punchy and snappy but took 20 words to do.

So to me, content strategy is all about context — and if you treat your content as an afterthought to the way it’s being displayed, you end up having to adapt your content style in a way that might not meet your objectives.

Naturally, that’s a copywriter’s perspective on content strategy. A user experience architect might be much more interested in making sure content gets found by ensuring clear menu paths and hierarchies, for example. And a designer will be much more visual, interested in colour, shape, and form.

My point is simple: you need to consider all aspects of content creation at the same time as you’re considering design and user experience.

In other words: a copywriter isn’t the best person to decide on your content strategy. But he’s an integral part of the team.

You don’t need to come up with a complete copy document for your site before your designer gets to work. But you should give him something — some headlines, a page or two, even a paragraph — to help him get the tone of your site right.

Otherwise you end up with a “production line” feel to digital copywriting that leaves most people cold, with bland copy that looks uninspired, the same way template websites look mass-produced and cheap.

The best structure for a new site build:

Having worked on a lot of new builds since becoming a freelance copywriter, I can confidently state that I think copy should be created at the same time as a design concept is mooted. Not all the copy, but at least a choice of headlines and some draft copy for the “home” or “about” page.

I suggest the following structure for your new build:

1. Hire a copywriter and a designer. Get them in a room together to throw ideas and concepts at each other. One will think visually. The other thinks in words. To get a joined-up content and design strategy, ask both for their opinions at the same time. And make sure they talk to each other, too.

2. Get your copywriter to produce a few headlines and a couple of hundred words of sample text. Have the designer create concepts based around this initial meeting and document.

3. Get a user experience expert involved, if you can afford one. It’ll pay dividends in terms of monetizing your site much more efficiently. Most good designers will have a fair idea about user experience — creating clean, highly structured, easy to navigate sites. Ask your designer about his user experience experience. If he doesn’t have enough, consider employing a separate specialist — or finding a designer who does.

4. Get a full first draft of the copy to your designer while he’s still working on the site. Add sample copy and test out whether or not everything gels — if something doesn’t work, if the copy looks out of place, don’t just tell your copywriter or your designer to change things. Get them in a room together (or at least over the phone or on skype) to talk through why things aren’t working — and come up with a mutual way to improve the site.

5. Testing. Test, test, and test again. Everyone involved in the build should have an input — on all aspects of the site. You might be surprised at how much a copywriter knows about design, or vice versa. But don’t forget — you’re paying each person to be an expert in their field. If your copywriter has an opinion about design, great. But 99.99% of the time, your designer will know better (the same goes for designers commenting on copy!).

Ongoing content creation after your site goes live

Of course, with most sites these days being built using a CMS like WordPress and requiring regular updates and additions, it’s impossible to create all the content at a pre-launch stage. That’s why it’s important to have two things settled –

1. A clear structure for the creation of ongoing content — who will produce it? How will it appear? How easy is it to add and remove pages? This is acontent issue, but it primarily needs to be resolved by designers and user experience specialists.

2. A clear style for the creation of ongoing content — in effect, every website that has ongoing copy being added to it should have a style guide. The copywriter who originally worked on the concept for the site should write a brief guide to tone-of-voice, headline size, vocabulary, etc — it’s a vital link to creating joined-up content from multiple sources (for example, having your own staff / PR department writing regular blog entries) once your site has gone live.

In conclusion

I’ve only touched on one small area of content strategy: namely that of devising a content strategy for a new web build, and (as a copywriter), mostly just concentrating on written content and how it fits in with your general design.

The reason why “content strategy” is so hard to define is because it means so many different things to so many different people depending on their background — and to many (who’ve only heard of content marketing) it means very little at all.

Many people don’t see the value in defining a content strategy before the design process is complete. Those people generally have to settle for second-rate “assembly line” websites where content ends up being defined by design — not by the client’s objectives.

That’s why it’s vital to employ a copywriter as part of your content strategy team. Whether the copywriter takes the lead, gives advice, or just makes sure content gets represented at key phases in the design process, you’ll end up with a better, more considered design.

It was an article about the ‘golden years’ of Livejournal that got me thinking. If you don’t remember Livejournal, it was more or less the first social blogging platform. Before Facebook, before Twitter, before Tumblr, before Blogspot and WordPress, it was a place where people met people from all across the world and shared stories — people they’d never met before.

It was an incredibly open place, and many of us in our late twenties and early thirties remember it fondly. I started my first livejournal in 1999 and it was there that I learned how to blog. But it was more than just that, though. It was a place where I met new people, many of whom I’m still friends with today.

In short, Livejournal was more than just an “online community”. It was supportive, open and honest. I felt more connected to some of my online friends than my “real” ones. In time, I met many of the people I’d met online. Sometimes we even travelled thousands of miles to meet up.

The truth is, I can’t imagine any of that happening now. I shared crazy things, like the first time I fell in love, wild nights out (believe it or not, my mis-spent adolescence was peppered with squat parties and raves, many of which I still remember with great fondness), as well as my hopes and dreams and fears. I can’t imagine sharing in that way with “strangers” on Facebook or Tumblr or Twitter, or on a WordPress blog like this.

The value of social media is low compared to "real-life" communication.

Livejournal had a knack of turning “strangers” into real friends, online and in real life. Other “social” mediums don’t seem to have the same effect. And I think I know why.

In the early days, Livejournal encouraged brutal honesty. It was before we’d learned to be guarded on the net — before we routinely googled new friends and potential partners, before employers started trawling Facebook for evidence of misdemeanours, in effect, before we realised we had to hide ourselves when we went online.

If anything, because we didn’t have to worry about what our “real” friends thought, we felt more able to be open and honest. And in time, that honesty was rewarded — we learned to trust each other online, and people became “real” friends.

Now, we spend less time being ourselves online, and more time behind our keyboards, trying to project a certain impression.

A colleague recently brought me to heel for swearing on my twitter feed, which is republished via my linkedin, which is apparently “unprofessional”. But, I replied, I swear all the time in real life. I’ve never sworn at a client, but to my friends and colleagues, I’m a real-life Malcolm Tucker. Do I stop swearing on Twitter? Do I become “less” like my real self?

To thine own self be true?

Yesterday, Mother London, an agency I have an immense amount of respect for, put the “Royal Corgis” in their agency “tweet seat” and proceeded to unleash a profanity-strewn tirade about the Royal Family for most of yesterday afternoon. And I thought: brilliant. In a sea of equal parts self-promotion and self-absorption, these guys are laughing their arses off and thumbing their noses at the establishment. The agency’s character came across online.

And that’s what most of us are failing to do. We’re so busy pretending to be a type of person online, we forget to project ourselves. And we come off as shallow and one dimensional. And that’s why we don’t genuinely connect with people via social media the way we connected in the good old days of Livejournal.

The answer? To take a “warts and all” approach to social media. Sure, it may not be professional to swear from time to time, or to share snaps of crazy nights out where clients can see them, or to mouth off if we’re having a bad day. But the fact is, it’s better to look like a real human being than a single minded sales robot.

After all, who’d want to employ someone who’s just a one dimensional character with no real life?

And so to politics. For some reason, it’s socially acceptable to tweet regularly about politics, even when it has nothing to do with your job. But I happen to think there’s a time and a place for politics: and it’s in the pub, or round the dinner table, not in the workplace.

Imagine if the guy you sat next to in your office interrupted your work every hour so he could tell you what he thought about the government. Chances are after the first day you’d tell him to shut the hell up, keep his goddamn opinons to himself, and get on with his work. Especially if you voted for the other party.

Sure, people who only tweet about their business are boring and dull. But then again, people who won’t stop talking politics are boring and dull, too. The difference is, if I tweet about my new watch, or about being kept awake by sex sounds coming from next door (I do!), it may not be work related — but it’s not going to offend anyone, either. Yet if I tweeted about yesterday’s budget, I guarantee you this — it would offend at least 50% of the people who read it.

In space, everyone can see you tweet.

Politics tends to be black and white. Trust me — I studied it for three years. That was enough to put me off for life. At the end of my degree, I declared “politics is economics for stupid people,” then went off and did another degree so I never had to hear people’s dumb political opinions ever again.

The point is, it’s easy to forget that for every person who agrees with your opinion about government cuts, or tax rises, there’s someone who disagrees. The problem is, that person might just be a client.

Of course, I have political views. And no, I’m not going to tell you what they are. For what it’s worth, I’ve never voted. And don’t ask me if I believe in democracy. If 51% of the population vote to kill, rape or imprison the other 49% — technically, that’s democracy. You’re welcome to it.

I’m proudly apolitical. But the fact is:

My political beliefs have no bearing on my work as a copywriter.

Whether I’m a bleeding heart liberal, a proto-fascist, a referendum nut, a euro-sceptic or a radical environmentalist, I’m still just a copywriter.

But my political beliefs might have a bearing on whether you hire me or not.

• For example, if you were a green party supporter, would you hire a person who consistently tweets in support of something you despise — for example, nuclear power?
• If you were a feminist, would you hire someone who joked about International Women’s Day?
  
• If you were an objectivist libertarian and, having seen a tweet about the importance of providing for the neediest people first, would you be afraid I’d renege on a contract because “some other client needed the work more than you did”?

My point is, unless you’re a politician, you have no business turning Twitter into your personal soapbox to give everyone your daily, or even hourly, political opinions.

Not everyone agrees — so why risk losing half your potential client base?

We all have political opinions — but they’re better kept out of the workplace, or within earshot of potential clients.

Try the pub. You’ll find just as many people willing to get into an argument with you, but if half of them think you’re an idiot, at least it’s only half a room full of people, not half of the entire world.

How long does good work take?

When I first started freelancing, I’d frequently have time to spend two or even three days on a project I’d quoted a day’s work on. After all, I needed the work and didn’t want to price myself out of the job. But I had extra time to think about projects and more time to recharge in between. My work was better, because I took longer over it.

Since updating my sales pitch to feature “Ogilvy style” persuasive techniques updated for the web, I’ve been inundated with work.

A quick aside for everyone who wanted to know if my experiment with long copy worked

My bounce rate rose by 18.95% — almost immediately. In other words, I was turning more people away — making them think ‘this guy’s not for me’ — yet overall time spent on the page rose slightly and overall time on the site rose significantly, and enquiries via phone and email more than doubled, up to an all time high of 11 a week this month.

In other words, the people who stayed were more than twice as likely to read my sales pitch and get in touch — exactly what Ogilvy would have predicted.

With all the new work, I’ve felt a little rushed.

In other words, when I say you’re getting a day out of me, I mean it. There’s no time to go over your text the next day, because the next client is already demanding their work. Combined with the extra admin time taken by the new enquiries and my foray into social media, I’ve felt as if the quality of my work has suffered.

I know I can produce better work in three days than I can in one. The trouble is, getting clients to think that way. It’s hard work convincing every client that good work takes time. My solution: from now on, I’m only going to take on new clients who are prepared to let me take my time and produce my best work.

Less, but better – a philosophy for good copywriting.

Dieter Rams, the creative director behind Braun’s legendary designs, believed in the philosophy of “less, but better” — he meant it to apply to functionalist, minimalist, high quality products (he’s since said that Apple are the only people today still producing consumer goods according to this philosophy). But I believe it can be applied to copy, too. It’s not just a matter of saying things in fewer words (“less is more”) it’s vital those words are better, too. And good work takes time.

It’s easy to churn out words quickly. But the sign of good copy is taking up the least possible amount of space — long copy is fine, but there should never be superfluous copy.

Badly edited copy isn’t a sign your copywriter is bad. It’s a sign he’s too rushed to do the job properly.

Correspondingly, I’ve raised my copywriting day rate from £200 to £250.

This will probably mean less work, but it will give me more time to do the things I used to do to recharge — go to the gym, go for long walks, take the occasional extra day off. I’ll produce less work. But it will be better.

I haven’t changed my day rate in over two years. Raising my prices will reduce my workload and allow me to concentrate on producing better copy for clients who know good work when they see it.

I still think I’m giving my clients great value for money — in fact, I think by taking on fewer clients I’ll be giving the ones I choose even better value for money than ever before.

For all my existing clients, I look forward to welcoming you back. Don’t worry — long-standing clients have always qualified for discounts. And to all my new clients, I look forward to working with you, spending more time with you, and continuing to offer brilliant value for money.

Less, but better. It’s a guarantee.

• “We help people connect to the brands they love.”
• “We look at the world differently.”
• “We’re driven to help people genuinely connect.”

Sound familiar? That’s probably because you’ve seen these phrases everywhere already. So how do you stand out?

The answer’s simple: if your message is the same as everyone else’s, be different. If your message is too generic, be more specific.

It’s unlikely two people ever see the world the same way. So everyone sees the world ‘differently’ — in other words, what you’re saying is that you’re “different” — but the same way as everyone else.

It’s not enough to tell people you see the world differently. You have to show them exactly how you see the world. And you have to explain why your unique perspective benefits them.

The golden rule: Show, not tell.

If you take a creative writing class, the first thing you’ll learn is how to use the ‘show, not tell’ technique to improve your fiction. The good news is, it’s the secret of creating good copy as well. I won’t tell you how to do it. I’ll show you instead.

Consider these two sentences:

• “Jack had broken up with his girlfriend. He was very very sad. He had been crying. Katie really wished she could make him feel better. Katie was in love with Jack.”

Pretty uninspiring, right? Try this instead:

• “Katie knew there was something wrong with Jack when she came round that evening. She could smell whisky on his breath when she came to hug him. His eyes were quiet and sad. Jack hardly seemed to notice she was there. Then it hit her: all of Amy’s things were gone from Jack’s apartment. Suddenly, she realised the room was practically bare.”

Without directly telling us anything, this story shows us everything the first version tells us, and much more besides. It tells us that Katie loves Jack. It tells us that Amy was Jack’s entire life.More importantly, it tells us a story — by showing us, and letting us work out the details for ourselves.

So how do you “show” people you’re different, rather than telling them?

It’s simple: be specific. The whisky on Jack’s breath. The fact his girlfriend’s things are gone from his apartment. These are specific ways of telling us that Jack is sad and that he’s broken up with his girlfriend.

The same technique applies to copy.

Tell = General.

“I’m different. I find new ways for brands
to reach their customers with my innovative approach.”

Show = Specific.

“Unlike other digital copywriters,
I use the scientific approach advocated by David Ogilvy
to produce web copy that’s proven to increase conversion rates.”

Stop trying to be all things to all people.

People naturally want to cast their net as wide as possible. For example, since changing my home page to the more “specific” “this is how I do things, this is my price, and this is my USP” format from the “generic” “I’m a freelance copywriter, blah blah blah” my bounce rate has increased by 5%. The change was big, noticeable and immediate.

Discrimination isn’t a dirty word: turning some people away can improve your conversion rate.

Since switching to a ‘specific’ approach on my home page, my website turns more people away at the door — fact. Yet more people than ever before contact me or give me a call. In fact this week, I’ve had 9 ‘serious’ enquiries — up from a previous weekly average of 4 with the old approach.

Because I’m being more specific about what I do, people are in a better position to judge whether my services are right for them. My homepage acts as a filter: you know exactly what I do, how I do it, and how I think my unique proposition will benefit you. I think I’m one of the few digital copywriters who uses old-style techniques. And I’m pretty sure I’m the only London copywriter who’s doing it.

In short, I’m offering a unique proposition — instead of trying to ‘catch everyone’ with my sales copy, I’m specifically targeting the people I believe are the best fit for my services.

That’s the secret to writing a good proposition.
Show people exactly how you can help them.

Don’t just tell them, in general terms, what you do.

Some examples:
80/20

This site tells you exactly what the agency does — the design shows their minimalist user experience ethic.
Image Mechanics

Maybe I’m biased here because I helped creative director Jason whip his copy into shape (his previous copywriter had “borrowed” pages from somewhere else). Jason believes in Dieter Rams “less, but better’ philosophy. The simple, bold headline was his idea. It states clearly: we’re not just different, we’re unique.
Trib

Trib’s textual homepage is extremely discriminating: going so far as to tell people that their services aren’t for everyone. Their unique outlook is clearly evident in both their design and their copy.

• Conversion rate optimization
• User experience (UX) testing
• Metrics (stats like bounce rates, etc)
• Web design and development
• Content marketing
• Search engine optimization (SEO)
• Social media integration

In this follow-up blog post, I’m going to explain a little about these different disciplines, what I think a digital copywriter ought to know about them, and how a sound knowledge of these digital techniques can help a copywriter produce standout digital work.

Why do I need broad digital, as well as copywriting skills?

You’ll find a specialist skilled in each of  these areas at most dedicated digital agencies. These are the people you’ll be working with. These are the people whose designs and ideas you’ll be expected to produce copy for — the more you understand their needs, their goals, and their methods, the better your copy will be.

The essential skills you need to know
to be an effective digital copywriter:

Conversion rate optimization

As a digital copywriter, your goal is to produce content that drives conversions — a conversion being a sale, an enquiry, a sign-up or similar goal. As a digital copywriter, you will need to know what words, expressions, and tone of voice, are most effective in driving conversions.

The example I often use is how adding “now” to a call to action can increase response rates by up to 4%. But knowing your audience is important too. Does “get in touch” encourage more people to call than “contact us” as a call to action? There’s only one way to find out — a conversion rate optimization specialist will “A/B test” both versions to see which is more effective. Over time, you will come to understand which calls to action drive sales and which ones don’t, and choose accordingly.

Suggested further reading: The Conversion Scientist

User Experience (UX) testing

User experience testing helps make sure browsing a website is a pleasant, enjoyable and informative experience for the visitor. Overly complicated designs in Flash that look pretty, but take a long time to load and hide key information on obscure pages, or use non-standard navigation, don’t drive conversions. What use is your brilliant copy or your call to action if a customer never sees it, or can’t find the contact page?

Using my site as an example, I noticed people who found the site via a sub-page often missed the home page entirely as the only way to reach it was to click “Alastaire Allday” in the top left hand corner. I added a clear “home” link in the main sidebar of the site.

As a digital copywriter, your task will be to apply your knowledge of user experience to the copy you write. For example  your audience might not think it’s cute or appropriate if you use language like “let’s dance” instead of “click here to browse our online shop”. As a digital copywriter your task is to explain and direct the user — as well as working with your UX tester to make sure your copy is in the right place, at the right time, and gets read by the right people. Your UX tester will monitor traffic flows and advise accordingly.

Suggested reading: User Experience Booth

Metric analysis

As a digital copywriter, you should always be making full use of all available metric data to improve your copy and confirm the changes you’ve made are effective and having the desired effect.

If you’re hired to change copy on a site, come back to it a month later and see if any meaningful stats have changed — has the bounce rate for a landing page increased? This could be a problem. But if overall time spent on the page has increased at the same time, it could be that your copy has improved the page to such a point that people who aren’t interested in the product simply go away immediately, while those who are stay longer.

All metric analysis must correspond with conversion rates. If your conversion rate goal has increased, use metric analysis to discover why — and apply what you’ve learned to your next project. If conversions have decreased, use metric analysis to try to undertstand why.

Suggested reading: Google Analytics blog

Web design and development

Chances are you couldn’t build a complicated website all by yourself. But you’re expected to write for them all the time. Understanding how a web page gets designed, what makes a good design, and what “nuts and bolts” are needed to hold the site together will make you a better digital copywriter. Why? Because instead of simply filling out “lorem ipsum” text with no concern for how your text will eventually be displayed, you’ll be much more involved at all stages of the design.

If you’re involved at the design stage, you’ll get to choose what your headlines look like, and where they go. You may have an input on colour schemes, typefaces, how much text is displayed in-line and how much should be separated out into different boxes. You may decide a separate contact page is unnecessary, when a clear call to action (e.g. a phone number) can be placed on every page. Or you may be able to debate the merits of having a contact form at the bottom of every page with your designer, or tell a developer why he should use WordPress and not Drupal as a CMS.

Understanding simple design and development tasks won’t make you able to build websites — but by having a greater input and understanding how your words will relate to the design, the final result will be better.

Last year I blogged about why designers should get copywriters involved before their designs are completed, here.

Suggested further reading: Smashing Magazine

Content marketing

Content marketing is an essential skill for all digital copywriters. Sometimes, you’ll be expected to write informative, useful content — not just sales copy that immediately leads to conversions. Providing information, blogging and marketing indirectly by producing content that generates inbound links, is a vital skill all digital copywriters need to learn.

If you come from a journalistic background, you’ll already be excellent at providing informative information in blog articles, as well as doing research and creating headlines that get people interested in your articles. If you don’t, you need to start reading everything you can on how to produce good, journalistic content. You may be called upon to write anything at any time — on any subject. A strong knowledge of journalistic techniques will enable you to produce better content that informs, entertains, and drives traffic to your client’s site.

Suggested further reading: Copyblogger

Search engine optimization (SEO)

All digital copywriters need to be SEO experts. If you’re writing for the web, you can’t possibly write without a sound understanding of how your content will be processed by search engines, as well as read by people. You need to understand keyword density. You need to know Google ranks words in italics and bold, or in <h2> tags more highly than inline text. Organic search is a prime driver of traffic to most sites. Understanding how Google ranks pages is a vital skill for every digital copywriter.

A good digital copywriter will be able to write copy that’s SEO optimized, but also readable. A bad digital copywriter will either pay no attention to SEO, or try to cram keywords into copy in such a way as to make the content unreadable — reducing its value as “linkbait”. The more people who link to your site, the more important Google thinks your site is. So a good SEO strategy doesn’t just involve repeating keywords. It involves producing high quality, original content that generates inbound links.

Suggested further reading: SEOmoz

Social media

Social media, like organic search, is a prime driver of traffic to websites. Being able to write for different platforms is vital. Even if you don’t tweet your blog posts yourself, can you write headlines that easily fit into 140 characters? If not, anyone wanting to tweet out your headline might have to spend five minutes trying to shorten it — if that means they don’t tweet it, you lose readers.

What makes people want to share your content with their friends? When writing copy, make sure you bear your audience in mind. Is this the kind of article you’d share with your friends on Facebook? If it’s not, ask yourself why. Articles that become popular and get shared socially can quickly go viral and draw massive spikes of traffic to a site. While SEO makes sites stronger over time, social media can draw vast amounts of traffic to your site instantaneously — if you provide the right content.

Suggested further reading: Mashable

Joining the dots: Why a good digital copywriter is
jack of all trades, master of none (except writing, of course)

As a digital copywriter, you’ll understand the basics involved in all the skills above. You won’t be applying for a job as a web designer or a UX tester any time soon, but you will at least know what makes a site effective beyond simply producing the right words for it. By taking a wider view of your work, and how you fit in with the other people a digital agency will employ, you’ll become a better digital copywriter — helping to create better websites that are more user friendly and more likely to convert clicks into sales.

A good builder isn’t a plumber or an electrician. But he knows people will have to add pipes and wires once he’s finished building. Understanding the other digital skills that go into sitebuilding will help you produce copy that enables them to do a better job, too.

Twelve years ago, I never could have predicted I’d have a successful career using the same techniques I learned while writing teenage ramblings for my friends. Yet here I am.

I guess I’ve always been an early adopter. Yet it never ceases to amaze me that there are people out there who still don’t understand the value of digital.

The ad industry is changing, whether you like it or not.

I read this fascinating piece on the future of advertising after it was tweeted by Tom Albrighton and it helped to clarify a lot of things in my mind. I knew the ad industry was changing. What I didn’t know, until very recently, was that people like me were at the very forefront of it.

Part of me thinks “copywriter” is a misleading term for what I do. A “copywriter” at a traditional (read: old-fashioned) ad agency sits around with an art director and spends weeks coming up with “the big idea”, a few storyboards, and maybe a couple of hundred words. When I graduated from university, I wanted to be that sort of copywriter.

It’s only as I’ve grown up and improved my trade by actually working at it, I’ve learned that the days of “big idea” copywriters are numbered. Here’s why:

Digital media spend outstripped traditional spend in 2009. In other words – digital is king.

“Big ideas” don’t sell products any more. Websites do.

Sure, not every product is bought and sold online. But most company’s reputations are influenced,
if not outright determined, by what they do online.

What makes a “digital” copywriter? And why are digital copywriters the future?

When I say I’m a copywriter I mean I produce content as well as ideas. That can be anything from a few headlines to a site of ten thousand words. To help me produce content, I’ll have a broad understanding of:

• Conversion rate optimization
• User experience (UX) testing
• Metrics (stats like bounce rates, etc)
• Web design and development
• Content marketing
• Search engine optimization (SEO)
• Social media integration

Applying these skills to my work makes me a digital copywriter. These are the skills that make me competent to produce content for the web.

Being able to write and being able to think conceptually is important. But if you don’t understand the bigger picture of how your words fit into a web design, or understand how your users browse the web, your words are useless. Sure, you’re still a copywriter. But you’d better stick to writing catchy jingles for the wireless, because you’re living in the past.

Ad agencies don’t understand digital, either. They’re still in love with the “big idea”.

I still laugh when I see “respected” ad agencies with websites that use Flash. Sometimes, I have to spend several minutes looking for the information I need. Haven’t you ever heard of an information architect, guys? What about user experience testing?

I don’t care if it looks pretty. Does it work?

That’s digital in a nutshell. A good digital campaign delivers in seconds, not minutes. Sure, your site looks pretty (if you like waiting five minutes for it to load). But by then, I’ve closed your window and I’m already getting the information I need from the competition.

The days of the big idea have been replaced by the quick sale. You don’t need a copywriter and art director to spend weeks working on a “big idea” when you can find a digital copywriter who’ll tell you adding “now” to your call to action could increase your conversion rate by 4%. Now.

Digital copywriters use scientific conversion rate optimization strategies to provide instantly verifiable ROI. A “big idea” campaign can’t.

“Big ideas” are hit and miss – digital is scientific.

It’s hit and miss whether a “big idea” sticks. And there’s no guarantee your idea is driving sales. Sure, we all remember the Cadbury’s Gorilla adverts — probably the most famous “big idea” ad produced by the UK in the last 10 years. But I can confidently say it never made me buy a single extra bar of Dairy Milk.

In fact, short term sales of Cadbury’s only rose by 5%, a figure that most commentators (scroll down) found disappointing — and given the high cost of saturation TV placements, hardly a great (or even long term) ROI.

But what about brand identity?

Sure, you say. 5% is average. But the Gorilla ad didn’t just increase sales. It increased brand awareness and brand loyalty. Ok, maybe. Prove it. You can’t. Digital agencies provide real metrics — hard stats that show you whether your campaigns are working.

Besides, for every successful “big idea” there are hundreds of failures. Did you know that the Cadbury’s Gorilla was only part of a much wider campaign? Can you remember any of the other ads that were part of that campaign? Didn’t think so.

Most “big ideas” fail. Agencies only carry on because they, and their clients, are addicted to spending vast sums in the hope of hitting the jackpot.

I hate to break it to you guys, but 99% of your ideas suck.

The digital way to build brand loyalty is cheaper and more effective.

I recommend a really simple solution to clients looking to build a brand identity:

1. Use your blog.

Don’t just write press releases. Engage with your customers and their lifestyles. If you’re a baker, give away some recipes for cookies. If you’re a vintage fashion store, blog about the latest trends — not just the things you sell. Be an active participant in the lifestyles of your customers.

2. Use social media.

Whether you prefer Facebook, Twitter, or, like me, Tumblr (also preferred by fashion brands), it’s a great way of getting out there and meeting your customers and talking to them one-on-one. A girl I know wears nothing but American Apparel. Not because she was swayed by their advertising, but because she started following them on Twitter after they started tweeting out discount codes.

3. Engage with the community (and pay if you have to)

I learned about Drakes of London because a fashion blog I read, A Suitable Wardrobe, is sponsored by them. Not only do they run banner ads, the author also writes about how much he loves them in his blog. I still trust the author, because his blog has proven time and time again he’s a man of taste and refinement. Paid blog posts are a much better way of advertising than a television or a banner ad — because it’s an endorsement from someone your customer trusts.

Plus, it’s a heck of a lot cheaper and more permanent than a television ad. Your TV ad is gone in 30 seconds and forgotten in weeks. A blog post will remind customers of your company for years to come.

Why digital agencies are the future:

Digital agencies are the future because they’re small and agile and are able to offer proven ROI using scientific methods to increase conversion rates, often at a fraction of the cost of hit-and-miss “big idea” agencies still living in the 90s.

If you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em. Big agencies are buying their way into digital.

Terrified of being left behind, a lot of bigger old-school agencies are acquiring smaller digital agencies with ready-made in house teams. Leo Burnett UK recently acquiring successful digital agency Holler is a great example. not least because Leo Burnett only allows you to read the blog entry about their acquisition in… PDF or JPG format. Nice acquisition, guys. Holler – your first task will be to teach the peeps at Leo Burnett how to use WordPress.

Digital. It’s the future, and it’s already here.

I’m 100% convinced the work I do is cutting edge. As a digital copywriter, my skills are increasingly in demand — because I can offer proven results at lower costs.

But there’s a certain type of copywiter who spits on the pavement and crosses the road when I tell him what I do because I’m about results, metrics, and conversion rates, not “big ideas”.

I don’t sit in an egg-like chair for several weeks thinking up the next Cadbury’s Gorilla ad. I don’t give my clients big ideas. I give them fast, effective, proven ways to reduce their costs and make more money.

Next time you’re in the market for an agency, or a copywriter, don’t ask them how creative their portfolio is. Ask them if their methods work. Creativity is important — but it has to be backed up by a knowledge of what people want.

And if you’re a traditional agency currently looking to hire a digital strategist, content marketer and copywriter who understands where the industry is heading, well, make me an offer. A starting salary of 50k and a girlfriend who looks like January Jones would be nice, but not a deal-breaker.

Who are your favourite digital agencies? I think Pirata London, Work Club and Brilliant are nice.

Comments welcome.

Of course really smart businessmen hire marketing professionals — because they realise they’re good at making money, not at selling things.

They don’t think hey, I can manage a million dollar business so I can write a strapline, they think — hey, I’m smart enough to manage a million dollar business, which means I can afford to pay a professional to write my strapline.

KFC, in the UK at least, is changing its strapline. You know, “Finger lickin’ good.” What are they changing it to? “So good”.

I say: so what?

Says Martin Shuker, chief executive of KFC UK: ‘”Finger lickin’ good” is very good but it’s very food centric.’

I say: surely selling food is what you do.

Says Martin: ‘”So Good” is still about the food but it also allows us to more effectively communicate the breadth of different things about the brand, such as our people and our community’.

I say: if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.

Martin Shuker is probably the kind of suit who would rebrand KFC as “Fried Chicken Solution” if he could. Actually, he wouldn’t. That’s too specific. “KFC Solutions” would be better. Why go out of your way to tell people what you actually do in your company name when a 3 letter initial and the word “solution” will do?

Maybe I’m being harsh here, but I just can’t understand why you’d want to change an original, timeless slogan that reminds you constantly about how good the food is. You know, selling fast food being your main, entire, whole, revenue stream.

“So good” says nothing about your product and it says nothing about your company. It’s bland, generic, and invites the question — “so what?”

A good strapline explains the value of the product.

McDonalds’ “I’m lovin’ it” slogan is actually pretty clever, even if it does sound a bit like a single by DJ Pied Piper and the Masters of Ceremonies. It’s a bold statement that aims to put food in your mouth by putting the words in first. “You’re gonna love this,” it says, boldly switching to the use of the first person as if to proclaim “there’s no way you possibly couldn’t love our food.”

“So Good,” we’re ambitiously told, will remind people about their campaign to stop the destruction of the Indonesian and Malaysian rainforests. But really. What’s the better strapline to encourage an eight year old child (or a drunk at kicking-out time, the mental age is about the same) to come in and buy a bucket of KFC?

“Finger Lickin’ Good.”
“So good.”

Side by side, there’s no competition.

I was recently lucky enough to be invited to offer a large telecommunications company some branding advice. At the meeting, I expressed concern that their existing marketing didn’t explain what their product did. Once the company managed to explain to me what their product was, I thought it was brilliant. But, I told them, you’ll never sell any if you don’t explain to people what it is, and how it adds value to them.

That’s the secret to a good strapline. Tell people what you’re selling. Then tell them why they want to buy it. “Finger lickin’ good” does both. “So good” does not.

Smart companies, like the telecomms company who called me, call in marketing experts to help them say what they want to say quickly. They’re in the business of making products, not selling them. KFC should stick to what it does best. Making fast food that’s finger lickin’ good.

Why change something that’s timeless and popular with your customers? After all, we don’t have to look too far in our past for a senseless rebrand that went down with all hands on deck, do we, Gap?

I came into the office for a Sunday session, thinking today would be a good day to go over my metrics and make a few tweaks to my site.

I was surprised to find five visits from tumblr. As a tumblrite myself, I wondered who’d blogged about me. What I discovered wasn’t a friendly link, it was duplicate content.

Duplicate content designed specifically to harm my page rank and, therefore, my business.

Duplicate content: how the scam works

You can set up a blog on wordpress, blogger, tumblr etc these days in three or four clicks. In days, if not hours, Google will index your content and check it against what’s already out there. If it’s duplicate content from somewhere else, it’ll go on both of your permanent records. Of course, Google isn’t stupid — it knows who the original author was and takes steps to counteract the scam. But so-called black hat SEO tactics are short term in nature — for all I know this duplicate content might have taken me off the front page for my chosen keywords for a couple of weeks, or even a month, before being adjusted.

It’s a variation on an old scam. Once upon a time, both parties had to hang up the phone before the line would become free again. So rival taxi firms would call each other’s numbers, leave the phone off the hook, and prevent anyone else from calling them — ruining their business for the night.

In this case the actual effect on my site has been fairly minimal. But it’s been a big wake up call. Until today, I never really concerned myself with questions like “what if other people are using black hat SEO techniques to damage my page ranking?”

But I need to be thinking about this more and more. After all, if I drop off the front page for a couple of weeks, my business is dead in the water. My rent doesn’t get paid. I don’t eat.

I’m mostly angry because it must have been a competitor – another copywriter. Most of us in this business are pretty honest guys. When one person stoops to this level, it harms all of our reputations in the eyes of our clients.

Until today, I never thought I was important enough for this sort of thing to happen to me. But content theft is a very serious business and it could be harming your site.

I’ll be on high alert from now on. You should be too.

How to protect your site from duplicate copies

1. Use a duplicate checker like copyscape.com to see if your content is being stolen
2. Use Google Analytics to see if any odd sites are linking to you — I found my tumblr doppleganger because they’d copied the site, but kept the links — so people were finding my real site via their duplicate content.
3. Report any duplicate copy to Google, and to anyone capable of taking the copy down, right away. You’ve no time to lose.
4. If in doubt, change your copy. Minor changes to a few sentences here and there will mean Google will no longer see the pages as identical. This can be a lot faster than waiting to have the duplicate copy taken down.

A good, and comprehensive list of things you can do to protect your content, including technical countermeasures such altering your HTML, robots.txt and using PHP can be found at wiscocomputing.com

Update: It was a graphic designer, not a copywriter, who had copied the site. They have since taken it down and offered a sincere apology. Personally, I’m just glad it wasn’t a fellow copywriter. There are one or two out there who use black hat tactics – fortunately most of us are an honest bunch.

I suppose I should start at the start: with an explanation of exactly why you should be using social media. It doesn’t matter what you do: if your business in any way relies on web traffic, and, specifically, your organic page rank in Google, you need to be using social media.

Why? Because Google changed the rules.

I set up my own business as a freelance copywriter at around the time when core SEO strategy was to have a good site, with lots of keywords and information, and a regularly-updated, keyword rich blog that attracts lots and lots of inbound links. It’s still a solid strategy. But it’s no longer enough.

In December 2010, Google changed their minds and decided to use social media links as a signal to determine a site’s quality, and thus its page rank in organic search.

The effect is slim for now, but it represents a sea change in policy — social media links are only going to grow in prominence now the genie is out of the bottle. He’s not going back in. It’s no longer enough to produce good content and <i>hope</i> people share it. You’re going to have to actively manage your social media presence.

Adapt now before social media links gain more importance. Or risk your site losing page rank — and losing you business. Adapt or die.

I’ll be blogging my conclusions early next week, as well as writing a separate post about setting up a Facebook page for your business.

Until then, for anyone who’s interested, I kept a diary of my week — I guess this will only be of use to social media newbies and people with too much time on their hands, but if you’re interested in how I got on, read on!

Day 1.

Getting started with twitter

I swore I’d never use Twitter. But it was time to swallow my pride: Twitter had to become part of my core SEO strategy. I dusted down the account I’d created last year pre-emptively but never used. To my shock, people were occasionally trying to talk to me or share things with me on it.

Lesson number 1. I’d created the account simply as a placeholder to grab my username and future-proof myself. But if you have a social media account, don’t neglect it. People may be trying to talk to you on it.

At first I was bewildered. “Switch to the New Twitter,” I was told on logging in. I felt a bit like Monty Burns — “Hold on, meistro! There’s a new Mexico?” But it was easy to start following people I knew. Some of them even followed me back.

I added a mix of freelance copywriters, agencies I admire, and friends. It took me less than two hours to discover some information that interested me: the average daily pay for a middleweight freelance copywriter this year is £200 – £300, confirming that my daily rate of £200 was pretty much spot on — with room to raise my prices later in the year if I needed to, and still be competitive.

Facebook: Who needs a page anyway?

Facebook was harder I couldn’t find the page that let me set up a page. Eventually I googled it. I was given a bewildering array of options. Am I a brand? No, not really. What about a public figure? I wish. It seems vain, asking for “fans” — who cares?

I created the page anyway. But I didn’t know what to do with it. Useful information? It’s already all on my website. Cross post my blog entries? To who? No-one’s following me here. Try as I might, I couldn’t figure out a use for the page. In a way that Twitter seemed instantly accessible and friendly to me, Facebook seemed pointless. Who wants to “interact with a brand” anyway? Not me.

I couldn’t bring myself to spam my modest personal friends list with a business request. 95% of my friends list have nothing to do with my business. They’re school friends, uni friends, people I met in the pub. They don’t care about Allday Creative. Why should I ask them to “like” my site?

At the end of day 1, my Facebook page was as it started. “0 people like this.” I go to bed a little downhearted.

Day 2

I’m actually really enjoying Twitter. But then again, following 20 people is easy. I see people who follow 6,000 people. Do they really have time to read it all?

The 140 character limit

The hardest part is getting used to saying what I want in 140 characters. Yes, as a copywriter I have to write short copy. But I’ll sometimes get a day to write a single sentence, if the sentence is important enough. This kind of brevity combined with speed is new to me. I have to sacrifice meaning for space.

For example:

A copywriter tweets a blog post about B2B cliches, with the word “solution” as his top cliche — something i’ve previously blogged about. I reply to him. But instead of saying it’s my “least favourite” word I say it’s my “most hated”. Which is stronger than I intended — but it fits in 160 characters. In other words, you really have to think extra hard about what you tweet.

LinkedIn

Still unsure what to do about my Facebook page, I turn my attention to LinkedIn. I quickly import my address book and found that 54 people I’d had contact with were on LinkedIn. I felt 12 of them were relevant to my business and added them all, along with a couple of friends who also worked in the creative industries. Within the hour, a third of them replied. My conclusion? If you like LinkedIn, you must really love it.

But after adding everyone I knew, I was stumped. I guess I just had to wait for the connections to roll in — to keep my page updated more regularly, to add people as I worked with them. Again, I was going back to rule number 1. If you have a social media page, keep it updated. I integrated my twitter feed into the page to keep it looking fresh. A definite improvement.

Day 3.

Too busy to tweet

On Day 3 I found what I’d feared most: I didn’t have enough time. Several client enquiries came in at the same time as a lot of work was due out. I spent 12 hours at the office. I barely had time to read my emails, let alone follow Twitter.

At the end of the day I’m exhausted, I’ve barely sent a tweet, and my facebook page still has 0 fans, something I promised I’d deal with today. I briefly wonder how some people have time to tweet hourly, every day — without it getting in the way of their jobs. I guess they’re just better at multitasking than me.

I also realise something else: when I’m working, I actually have very little to tweet about. I’m a quiet guy. I don’t feel the need for the world to know what I’m doing. My social-media-phobia is growing again.

Day 4

Facebook page is still languishing. 0 people like it. Can’t blame them – there’s nothing there. Realising I’m hopelessly out of my depth, I contact a marketing expert I did some copywriting work for recently. She agrees to help me with my Facebook problem when I’m a little less busy.

Ironically, I got to know her because she was one of the very few people who went out of her way to not just read my site, but also to communicate me and compliment me on my work on my private Facebook profile. I still don’t know what to do with my page, but I guess this is evidence that Facebook can work, used correctly.

Next lesson. Twitter and RSS go hand in hand.

I see a tweet from one of my favourite blogs, Copyblogger — they’re a bit repetitive sometimes but they’re always in the loop. I was planning to send out a few old-school sales letters (based on the Ogilvy technique) to some of my favourite companies to drum pu business. But someone on Copyblogger has beaten me to it, and now everyone else will be trying it. I probably would have spotted it on RSS. But the belt-and-braces approach may have saved my skin.

Twitter is definitely a distraction. At quarter to five I’m looking at funny tweets from Mother London and daydreaming about working there, rather than concentrating on the financial services brochure I’m supposed to be writing. I figure I’ve spent about an hour using social media today. At my hourly rate, that means today’s tweeting has cost me £25. I begin to wonder where my ROI is.

Day 5

ROI

My ROI arrives, in the form of a client enquiry — someone has seen a blog entry I’ve written thanks to Twitter. Of course, this was happening anyway — without my need to be active about it. People have always tweeted about and shared my posts without needing me to give them a nudge. But now I feel as if I have greater control. I can see who’s writing about me and find out more about them. And, of course, I can promote my own work. So long as I’m not constantly spamming people with things about me, which I’m not.

I tweet out a request for some help with some copy I’m writing: valentine’s day fortune cookies. I get one reply. It’s hardly huge, but it’s something. As week 1 draws to a close, I only have 19 followers – but I’m starting to see the potential ROI spending half an hour using social media a day will give me. Not to mention, hopefully, the organic search boost.

I’ll be going over my analytics later this month with a fine tooth comb and giving you all a detailed, useful report.

Finally, as the week draws to a close, I learn some big news, again, on Twitter — although I do more detailed research on RSS. Facebook is changing the way it handles pages to make them more like user profiles — getting around my problem of wanting to separate business and pleasure — at the moment, the only way I can convince someone to “like” my business is to use my personal profile to “like” theirs — something I’m not comfortable with as I like to keep my personal and business life separate. It’s big news — and another sign that like it or not, social media marketing is gaining in importance every single day.