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.

• 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.

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.

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.

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.

• “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.

Who the hell is David Ogilvy?

Well, first things first, let’s be clear. David Ogilvy is not Don Draper. In Mad Men, Don prides himself on his creativity, his appeal to the emotions and, above all else, the fact that he’s “never written anything that’s longer than 250 words.” In many ways, Don represents the advertising world as it’s become: an emphasis on short copy, striking design and appeals to the senses, rather than to the rational consumer: don’t make them think they want it, make them feel it.

A classic "Ogilvy Formula" print ad

Ogilvy’s old school. He emphasises the importance of research, as well as tried and tested formulae — his book Ogilvy on Advertising devotes a considerable amount of time to telling the reader why they should never set white type on a black background, as well as why a 6,450 word ad in the New York Times was one of the most successful of all time.

I’m inclined to believe in short copy, particularly on the web. I tell my clients “stick to 300 words per page, preferably less, or people won’t read it.” Blog articles are the only exception to the rule. Even then, never use more words than is absolutely necessary to get your message across.

Ogilvy suggests a simple formula for print ads:

• A large photograph taking approx. 3/4 of the page.
• A headline of up to 9 words.
• 240 words of “editorial” style copy.

Ogilvy’s ads look a little dated and slightly corny now. But that’s only because they worked so well, everybody copied them — and they became overused.

Adapting Ogilvy’s technique for the web

When I launched my site, the front page consisted of three “sliders” with a little over four sentences on each. It looked beautiful. Designers praised it. But it didn’t convert.

I asked myself why and came up with an answer: it told people what I did, and what I believed in (“simple” copy). But it didn’t give them a reason to choose me.

So I decided to be more combative. My first page is as it always was: a picture of me and a description of what I do. I agree with Ogilvy: it helps to show a picture of the product. You’re buying my time — you’re not buying a typewriter. So my page features pictures of me, not copywriting cliches like clipart typewriters, pens, bottles of whisky, etc. My second page I changed to an argument, directly adressing the reader: telling them “their copy sucks” and I could do better. My conversion rate doubled.

But it’s still far from what Ogilvy suggests.

Ogilvy suggests the following “magic formula” for generating sales:

• A long headline (10 words) that offers helpful information or news
• This inspires up to 75% more people to read the copy, copy that should
  also explain the benefit to the customer
• A clear indication of price, as well as the suggestion of any discount.
  How many people would walk into a shop without price tags?

This is combined with his golden rule: advertising is never about guesswork, it’s always about research.

Using Google analytics, I noticed the following:

• Twice as many people (39%) viewed the “three sliders” as viewed the next nearest page, “about” (18%).
• At least half, and maybe more of the people who viewed this page, were web designers or digital agencies who’d come to look at the site’s design.

I’d previously written off most of these visitors as unconvertable — they’re not here to view the merchandise, they just like the design of the shop. Yet designers and agencies need copywriters — in fact, every one of these people is a potential sale.

It wasn’t a huge leap of faith to assume that my site wasn’t converting because it wasn’t speaking directly to its target audience. Using the techniques suggested in Ogilvy’s book, I came up with this:

Before:

After:

Before:

After:

The changes I made (and the changes you should make, too):

• Targeting each type of visitor and selling to them directly
• Being specific, open and up-front about price (even making it a feature)
• Providing information under headlines that promise it.
• Using print techniques like bold and underlining to highlight the message
• Eschewing “fancy” design — letting the words speak for themselves.

Is Ogilvy right about competing on price whenever possible?

With the exception of a couple of introductory offers, I haven’t raised or changed my prices in over two years. I’m now charging approximately 25% less per day than the average copywriter. Meanwhile inflation is running rampant at 4.8% and the price of petrol is almost double what it was in 2008. I have my own central London office that’s about 200 yards from the Thames. These things aren’t cheap.

So I figured there were two ways to make money: either start charging more, or find a way to increase my conversion rate. I’ve always agreed with Ogilvy on one thing: the price is always a selling point. It’s why I’m amazed more copywriters don’t even give ballpark figures on their websites, let alone a simple, transparent rate.

Again, I’m using research: more people find my site via Google through price related keywords like “rates” “copywriting rates” “price per word” etc than any other way.

So I’ve made my prices a major selling point — as well as explaining why this actually enables me to offer a better standard of service to my customers. If Ogilvy comes through for me and my conversion rate increases, I’ll be able to keep my prices low. If not, I guess I’ll have to raise them for the first time since August, 2009.

It’s a gamble. Will it pay off? Like Ben Locker, I’m putting my money where my mouth is and testing whether Ogilvy’s techniques still work. Watch this space.

With a publishing background, I’m much more suited to larger projects where structure, tone and usability are important. If you want professional yet informal, informative yet accessible, I’m all over it like a cheap suit. And I won’t start whimpering if I have to manage a project with 100 keywords, 1000 images or 100,000 words. But if you want a three-word slogan for Apple Tango, I’m probably not your man. (I’d probably suggest ‘apple bubble solution’.)

Fair enough. I’ll gladly take any headline / slogan / short copy work he doesn’t like the look of! But can the principles of creativity be applied to longer projects? To sales brochures? To B2B copywriting? I think they can.

Granted, it’s not always what a client is looking for. I was recently asked to write a sales brochure to corporate clients in a “creative” style. So, for example, I came up with section headlines like “No white rabbits: let us show you the tricks of the trade!” instead of “glossary of financial terms,” which is what I would have written were I not asked to be “creative.” The client’s feedback was unusually blunt. “Eh? I don’t understand this.” Fair enough. I crossed it out and re-wrote “glossary of financial terms.”

The point is, everyone’s definition of creative is slightly different. My definition, my client’s definition, and Tom Albrighton’s definition are all divergent. Tom thinks it’s about creating something original. I think it’s about “thinking outside of the box” — requiring a degree of originality without descending into what Tom calls “crazytivity.”

Being creative: it’s all about the concept.

In many cases, it’s about the “idea” — generating the concept that underpins the copy / design / campaign is the creative side of the work. For example, I helped re-brand a digital agency who were worried they looked a lot like everyone else. When discussing the brief, the word “troubleshooter” came up. I had the idea to rebrand the company as “hired guns” troubleshooting their client’s problems. It was a nice alternative to the over-used word “solution“. And the client’s designers came up with a gorgeous graphical set of windswept prairies and desert sunrises — not a clip art stetson or cowboy cliche in site. Writing the copy was as simple as substituting the word “folks” for “people” and making the occasional reference to digital “pioneers”. It wasn’t crazytivity. It was simply creating a brand identity. As a creative copywriter, that’s something I’m good at.

So maybe that’s what being a creative copywriter means. Being able to have original ideas and knowing how to implement them effectively. Of course, I’ve learned from my mistake with the “creative” sales brochure. As Tom puts it,

True creatives have the confidence to know when creativity is needed, and when it’s not. For them, creativity is a tool rather than a mask.

In other words, sometimes when you’re asked to be creative, don’t. That doesn’t mean some level of creativity in B2B copywriting isn’t possible — or desirable. Last week I had a client enquiry for a B2B project from a company that was impressed with a recent rebranding I helped out on. The client was a software house — nothing particularly exciting. The work, the copy, was very technical — for engineers. But the concept was what attracted the client enquiry. “We liked the fact you used something as simple as putting a ‘+’ in all the headlines to emphasize both positivity and inclusivity — people working together.” A concept as simple as that underpinned over six thousand words of technical copy. Is it original? Probably not. Is it creative? Yes. Did it add to the company’s sense of identity, of individuality? Absolutely.

Creativity is always happening behind the scenes

So when you come to a “creative” copywriter, you’re often looking for ideas as well as words. Sure, I’m happy to offer you words without ideas, but couched in those terms, “uncreative” copywriting doesn’t sound very attractive. Sales copywriting is always about arguing your client’s case. And to do that, you have to convince them with your ideas. So when I say I’m creative, I mean I’m good at coming up with ideas to support arguments — to find your company’s USP and convince potential customers to choose your product. It doesn’t necessarily mean I come up with “crazy” headlines, puns, or “zany” copy.

I’m sure Tom Albrighton uses ideas and arguments to structure his copy, too — after all, I’m familiar with his work, and it’s good. But it’s interesting that he chooses not to call himself a creative. I reckon Tom should cut himself some slack — maybe we’re not, to use his example, painting masterpieces. Maybe we’re painting frescoes, at best.  But we are paid to come up with original words. And original ideas. That means we’re creating something.

So far, I’ve held off mentioning copy mills — terrible places where semi-pro writers sell blog posts and press releases for as little as 2p a word. Other copywriters have already said all you need to know. Google “Copify” and you’ll find a whole host of complaints and bad reviews. If you pay peanuts, you’re bound to get monkeys. At 2p a word, a blog post earns you less than £10. And how many professional copywriters are willing to work for less than £10 an hour?

If you employed a builder to build a house, would you ask him if he charges per brick? He’d probably give you a very blunt reply.

Comparisons between professional copywriters and copy mill writers are worthless. It’s like trying to compare a painter and decorator to an artist, sure, they’re both painting, but one is giving you a considered, finished piece, while the other is just slapping a coat of paint on so you don’t see the cracks.

Builders don’t charge by the brick because they understand that every project is different. Copywriters don’t charge by the word for the same reason.

A professional copywriter is a jack-of-all-trades, understanding the basics of business and being prepared to do detailed research into your project to get on top of your brief. We’re not just writing, we’re googling — we’re reading up on what you do, we’re checking out your competitors, and most importantly of all, we’re applying our knowledge of how to sell. A copy mill writer is just churning out words with little to no interest in if they actually work.

Even a simple blog post is done differently. A professional copywriter cares about creating linkbait — in other words, writing a blog post that gets linked to, draws traffic to your site, and encourages people to call you. A copy mill writer is just throwing out a few random keywords and hoping it’ll draw a few stragglers in from Google.

Average Price Per Word

I’ve averaged out my long copy (large websites, sales brochures) work and arrived at a final figure. I’d say I’m earning, on average, 10-12p per word for editing a 2000 word sales brochure. Or, put another way, if you supply it, I can check over it in a day and I will charge you around £250 for the privilege. If you want me to write it from scratch (or from your bullet points), you can double that figure.

But that’s just a rough estimate. I’ll evaluate you, as well as the work. How long will I spend on the phone with you. How many redrafts will you demand? At the end of the day, if I quote you a fixed price and end up taking twice as long as I had budgeted for, I’m losing out — and, for all you know, I can’t pay my rent next month. It’s that simple — seasoned copywriters won’t under-quote.

It’s not about price per word, it’s about how long it takes.

It’s different for regular clients. I maintain blogs for some of my regulars, and their blog posts can work out at as little as 10p a word. Why? Because I’m used to writing in the correct style, because I understand the ins and outs of their business, and because I’ve worked with them over a number of years, a brief that would take 4 hours to get on top of only takes an hour.

Paying by the word doesn’t work.

It took me a week to come up with a product name, recently. Creating a witty, memorable name took time and effort. I produced two words, at a cost of £100 a word. That’s a long way from 20p a word. It’s even further than a paltry 2p. The truth is, some words are worth more than others. Headlines on web pages take hours to write. The accompanying paragraphs take minutes.

So what’s the use of comparing price-per-word?

It’s worth checking out long copy prices per word, as that will give you an approximate idea of how much your copywriter thinks he is worth. But if you think a good product name, or even a good headline, is worth nothing more than pennies, think again. When you pay a professional copywriter for his services, you’re not just paying him to write. You’re paying him to attend meetings, to learn about your business, and to apply his psychological knowledge to create a structured argument designed to get your customers to think about you differently.

In other words a professional copywriter isn’t just a writer. He’s part business consultant, part psychologist and part researcher — if he’s smart, he’s all sales.

Personally, I use my “20p per word” to arrive at a ballpark figure when I’m asked for a quote. This means a blog post can be anywhere from £50-100, while six web pages will be at least £300. If I’m working with nothing more than a blank page, or we’ve already spent several hours on the phone, I double my quote — because experience has taught me it will take twice as long. I then factor in the complexity of the project and the amount of ‘headline’ (ATL) work I’ll need to do.

In other words, price-per-word can be useful when comparing copywriters. But the cheapest is almost always the worst.

Inexperienced copywriters give cheap quotes because they’re a) hungry for the work (they have no longstanding relationships or reputation to feed them regular work) and b) because they frequently underestimate the time a job will take.

Shop around, by all means, but beware the cheap option.

You always get what you pay for.

After a lengthy discussion on my blog earlier this year, I abandoned the policy of setting variable copywriting rates and settled on a flat-fee structure.

My copywriting rates are completely transparent: I charge £25 an hour, £200 a day, with a minimum spend of £100 for new customers. For that price, your first edit will be free.

The only thing ‘variable’ about my copywriting rates is the number of hours I estimate a job will take. Existing clients will get cheaper estimates because I know their business and have a better understanding of their needs, which means fewer redrafts and less research. Small businesses will get cheaper estimates because they will require less contact time as fewer people will need to approve the final copy.

This blog post isn’t about me, honest.

OK, I’m going to stop advertising my services and get down to explaining what my business model means for your business.

How would you feel if every time you walked into a shop, you had to take the items to the till and ask the shop assistant how much they cost before deciding to buy? You’d think it’s a ridiculous way of doing business, right?

Yet that’s exactly what most freelance copywriters (and many other types of freelancer on the web) do. “Get in touch!” they exclaim. “I offer a great ROI!” or even, occasionally “You’ll be surprised by how little it costs!”

People don’t like surprises when it comes to price. So why not just be honest and up-front with your customers? “I charge £200 a day. No surprises.”

When you don’t tell your customers up-front exactly how much something costs, there will always be the suspicion that they’re eyeing you (and your wallet) up and figuring out how much they can screw you for.

Some freelancers I’ve spoken to have told me that’s exactly how they do business. Why charge a Moneybags £200 a day when you can screw him for six?

The simple answer is that Moneybags might only come along once every six months — meaning you’re losing customers who would be prepared to pay a fair price, if only you told them what it is.

What happened when I made my copywriting rates transparent?

It’s hard to judge exactly when the number of enquiries a freelancer gets can vary so wildly. But my adwords campaign provides good, solid evidence that being honest about your prices increases interest in your company.

I’d been running ads targeted at people looking for a copywriter in Central London for several months. Last month, I changed the blandly generic second line “Award winning copy and branding” to the more specific “£25 an hour, £200 a day.”

Within a month, the click-through-rate for my ad had risen from 1.37% to 2.28%. In other words, interest practically doubled overnight.

Some people baulk at this idea. They see it as the equivalent of going downmarket. But the truth is, I’m not a “cheap” copywriter. Look around. My prices are pretty middle-of-the-road.

Anyone charging you more than £300 a day, unless they’ve got top agency or brand experience, is ripping you off. People who can afford to charge more than £300 a day don’t need to advertise. And I know of copywriters who’ll charge as little as £70 a day. But believe me, you get what you pay for.

I like to think my copywriting rates say “Hi, I’m a friendly, approachable, competent, experienced but not too expensive freelancer who’ll be honest and up-front with you.”

There may come a day when I think my portfolio warrants charging £250 a day. But when it does, I’ll be sure to tell you.

The general lesson for business  is that displaying your prices in the window doesn’t make you look cheap. It makes you look approachable.

Imagine if online stores like Amazon put “Price on Request” on all their products. They wouldn’t get much business.

If you’re selling something on the web, you need to be honest about how much it costs. “You’ll be surprised at how much you’ll save!” doesn’t cut it.

Give people a rough idea how much they’ll be spending before they get to your contact form.

You take an hour of my time, I take £25 of your money. It’s a fair deal.

This was Ernest Hemingway’s response when asked to come up with the shortest story possible. He’s right — it’s short, and it tells a story, a very sad one. Of course, much isn’t said. We don’t even know who the characters are, let alone their names. But do we need to know any more in order for the story to be effective?

Copywriting is the art of fitting as much information into as small a space as possible, quickly providing the reader with a call to action, ruthlessly trimming away any information that’s not necessary, surgically removing superfluous words.

By analysing Hemingway’s “shortest” story, we can understand the mind of a copywriter at work. The story is pared down to the bare essentials — in fact, it’s told in the form of an advertisment. It’s definitely no coincidence that Hemingway chose an advertisment to showcase this most minimal form of writing. While long copy undoubtedly works, short copy is much more effective at grabbing attention — long copy increases sales and conversions (with structured argument) but it’s short copy that attracts people in the first place.

What about web copy?

Being a web copywriter is a unique skill requiring balance between long copy and short copy. It’s not like writing for copy for a single side of paper, a flyer, or a 16 page brochure. You can add or subtract as many pages as you want and they can be as long as you like. Only you can decide where the balance lies. Luckily, Hemingway can still help.

Most people only see the tip of the iceberg.

“Iceberg Theory” was Hemingway’s idea that most of the story was going on “underneath” the story he was telling. “For Sale, Baby Shoes, Never Worn” tells us very little in itself. But it implies a great deal more. A good web copywriter takes the same approach to producing content.

The main pages — ie the ones that 99% of people look at, like the “home” and “about” pages, are the tip of the iceberg. Here, we keep content short, sweet and implied. We limit ourselves to headlines and short copy. If we assume a 50% bounce rate, pages linked to from “the tip of the iceberg” should contain twice as much information (but will be read by half as many people.)

In other words:

The amount of information supplied per page should be inversely proportional to the number of people reading it.

In this case, less is quite literally more — 99.9% of people will be prepared to read a short headline — 90% will go on to read the first paragraph beneath. Maybe only 50% will read beyond three paragraphs.

When it comes to multiple pages, the same rule applies. Be concise on page 1. Supply more information on the sub-page. Supply really detailed information on page 3.

Of course, this rule doesn’t apply to landing pages, which should be keyword rich and sales focused. But by using analytics to chart the flow of traffic from page to page, you can work out an information architecture based on the “iceberg” theory — providing short, snappy information for the masses followed by increasingly in-depth information as people continue to click.

Be concise. You don’t need to write a novel about what you’re selling.

Hemingway only wrote about the tip of the iceberg — A Farewell To Arms was only about one man’s story of World War I, not about the whole war — that was the iceberg underneath. As a web copywriter, you have an infinite number of pages, so you get to decide how big the iceberg is but remember — the rest of the web is your iceberg.

For example, if you’re writing copy for an online camera store, you only really need to write  about your company’s USP and value, with brief descriptions. The unwritten iceberg under the water is the hundreds of review sites and other informative places where users will decide which camera they want — your job is to write your site’s story, not the whole history of the camera.

So what lessons can us humble web copywriters and content producers learn from Hemingway?

Be short, snappy and concise. Tell the important facts first.

You don’t have to tell the whole story right away. Or at all.

Be specific. Structure information with the shortest, most relevant material first.

Sure, you could fill your site with hundreds of thousand word sub-pages full of detail. But most people will only ever see ‘the tip of the iceberg’. Keep your site short and uncluttered. Keep your copy short, too. A headline is worth ten paragraphs. A call to action is too.

Using Hemingway’s ‘Iceberg Theory’ you can produce a site that seamlessly melds short copy and long copy. That’s the secret to good web copywriting.

In other words, “easy as pie” can get your message across to your customer a lot more effectively than “our product is so much simpler to use than your competitors and we think you’ll love it” and is more informal and playful than “easy to use / to get started / to set up” etc. An occasional cliché of this type isn’t always a bad thing.

I’m taking about business-speak and marketing clichés.

Need an example? Look no further than the insidious, omnipresent word solution. Let me put it in context for you. I snapped this outside my house the other day:

I was amazed to discover that’s their actual brand now. “Brakes Foodservice Solutions”. Now in the future they told me my food would come in pills. But in a solution? That’s just disgusting. I put my contact lenses in a “solution” when I go to bed at night.  E=MC squared is a solution. Sorry to be blunt, but “Foodservice solutions” just makes you sound like a dick. Let’s compare their pre-and-post rebrand logos:

This is the logo I grew up with -

This is the logo after their 2002 rebrand -

See what they’ve done there? That’s right. They’ve jumped on a bandwagon. Some marketing genius with an MBA in delivering powerpoint presentations decided to rebrand their company as a “solution” because they think it makes them sound really super professional. The bad news. Everyone else had the same idea.

Now, I don’t market myself as a supplier of copywriting solutions. I’m a freelance copywriter. “Copywriting solutions” sounds suspiciously like jars of watery ink. Likewise, if I went into business selling parrot cages, I could market myself as a “bird confinement and presentation solution,” but I think I’d just be met with a lot of scratching of heads, and not just from the parrots.

The fact is, the only thing the word “solution” solves is the problem of describing what your company does. And as an answer, it’s a very, very poor one. The word solution is a stand-in for an actual description used by people who don’t fully understand what it is their company actually does. There’s nothing comforting about being sold a “solution” when what you really want is a parrot cage, ten thousand frozen ready meals, et cetera. Companies that market themselves as solutions generally don’t have a great grasp on what they sell.

Use cliché to make people feel more comfortable with what you’re selling, not to confuse them.

Don’t claim that you “deliver” unless you’re a mailman or a take-away pizza place. The chances are you don’t deliver anything. “Cooking our ready meals is as easy as pie!” is good. While “We deliver solutions” is just weird. Perhaps you deliver “deliverables.” Stop. Start telling people what it is your company actually does.

The reason why people come to good, freelance copywriters is because we’re better able to articulate what your business does, how you can help people, and why they should choose you.

So leave the powerpoint presentations in the office.
Explain, in real terms, to your real customers, what you really do.

It’s more important to sound natural than to be clever.

F Scott Fitzgerald famously started out in advertising and came up with the slogan “we keep you clean in Muscatine” for an Iowa based laundry service. While he may have been the greatest writer of the 20th century, he wouldn’t have made it very far in the advertising world. Headlines like this are far too glib. Soon, they begin to grate. It’s possible to be “too” clever.

Good straplines find a great balance between being clever and being helpful, positive, and eye-catching.
They should stand out by being sharp, with carefully understated wordplay.

My favourite strapline out there at the moment belongs to the House of Fraser:

Yes, it’s a pun. But it’s a good one. A good pun doesn’t get tired the more you hear it, and every time I shop here, I look at that strapline and go “yup, that’s good.” It amuses, it explains, it entices but most of all — it’s positive.

Negativity never works.

A while ago I was asked to create a strapline for Skint.com, a website offering short term loans. Their existing headline, “it’s no fun with no money” simply didn’t work. Why? The use of the negative, twice. Why depress people by telling them something’s no fun — even if your site promises to fix that problem. Be positive. Look to the future, not the past.

Here’s the slogan I came up with for them.

You may have noticed it already in my portfolio. But it’s one of my favourites, and I thought it deserved a little explanation.

It’s positive. It’s proactive. It feels natural.

Most importantly of all, it paraphrases the three most important words in copywriting: we can help.

A copywriter’s job is to introduce his client to their customers in such a way as the customers know that the client is able to help them. They want to feel able to come to the client and know their needs will be satisfied, their demands will be met.

That’s also why ‘Temptation on every level’ works well. It tantalizes, it promises… there’s an aura of mystique with the feeling of a promise soon to be fulfilled.

Still think any old strapline will do? Think again. If your budget is limited, you’re better off paying a copywriter a day’s work to come up with one simple sentence that sums up your business than producing five or six hundred words of sales text.

Good headline writers are hard to find. That’s because good headline writing is the hardest skill a copywriter will ever have to master.

A good copywriter writes sales-focused copy.

What does that mean? Well, here’s an example. Client A comes to me with Product A, and it’s the best product ever (so he thinks). He’s already come up with a great description of Product A to use on his website. But nobody’s buying.

Let’s call Product A Product Awesome. I’ll let you make up your own mind what Client “A” stands for. Client A says something to me like this. “Product Awesome is the most awesome thing at what it does ever, it’s like an iPhone and an iPad and a can opener all in one and it can also walk your dog. Everyone should want one!”

To which I reply, “Great. So why isn’t your copy telling people why they need this product.”

I’m usually met with blank stares from my client or the simple, weak reply. “Because it’s awesome?” they ask.

Great sales copy has to convince people they need your product.
Just because you think it’s obvious why your product is great,
doesn’t mean everyone else does.

So that’s lesson 1. A good copywriter’s job is to convince, not merely to explain.

Here’s lesson 2. It’s the exception to lesson 1.

A good copywriter knows when to back off. When to stop with the hard sell.

Client “A” comes back to me with his revisions. Based on what I’ve told him, every other line in his copy is now “buy my product! buy my product! buy my product!” — Client A has failed again.

Calls to action are worthless unless you give your customer a reason to call.

I like to use what I call the Jay McInerney approach. One of my favourite books, Bright Lights, Big City, employs a second person narrator. In other words, “you.” Take a look at the opening paragraph –

“You are not the kind of guy who would be at a place like this at this time of the morning. But here you are, and you cannot say that the terrain is entirely unfamiliar, but the details are fuzzy. You are at a nightclub talking to a girl with a shaved head. The club is either Heartbreak or the Lizard Lounge… All might come clear if you could just slip into the bathroom and do a little more Bolivian Marching Powder. Then again, might not.”

And so it goes on. But wow! What an opening paragraph! Instantly, the narrator puts you in his shoes. And that’s the second secret to sales focused copy.

You need to put yourself in your customer’s shoes.
And you need to make your customer imagine himself using your product.

In fact, using the second-person is one of the strongest sales copywriting techniques. “It’s three am. You’re getting tired. You need a can of Red Bull” etc…

Empathizing with your reader and showing you understand his needs is a better tactic than the hard sell. When Client A comes back to me with copy that reads “buy this product! buy this product! buy this product!” he’s getting it wrong. You is a meeting of “I and He”. It is a merger of writer and reader. It’s the best way of selling subtly. In short, you’re showing your reader why your product is awesome, not telling him.

The third secret to successful copy really separates the men from the boys. Or, more accurately, the professionals from the amateurs. It’s knowing when to break the rules.

In some circumstances, describing a product will sell it better than trying to convince the reader to buy it. Sometimes, trying to empathize with the reader will seem cloying and sickly. Between one in ten times and one in a hundred, you’ll actively repel a reader using the above techniques.

A good copywriter writes copy for a large number of different products and services. You may think you know your audience, but without the experience of knowing what works and what doesn’t, reading the best “rulebook” in the world will still leave you selling short.

Experience is the only way to get better at writing good copy. It can take years before you write instinctively, rather than writing to the rules. That’s why great copywriters can command large sums of money for doing what you think you can do — write simple words in plain English.

You’ve got two choices. Either take a couple of years to learn how to write persuasively, or pay someone else to do it this week. Faced with this choice, most clients choose to pay someone to do it for them. But that’s not the best way to good copy, either.

Don’t employ. Collaborate.

I’ve found I work best with clients who write well, who know their product and their audience, but who need a second opinion. I love working collaboratively. That’s the very last secret to writing good copy. Don’t employ a copywriter and then expect him to know everything about your business. He knows nothing except how to sell. Write well about your own business and then give it to a copywriter to turn into sales-focused copy.

When you hire a freelance copywriter, you’re not really employing a writer. You’re employing a translator. You’re asking a professional to translate what you know (“my product is awesome”) into something your audience can understand (“his product is awesome, and here’s why. Can’t you just see yourself using it around the house now?”).

A good copywriter takes what you want to say and finds a way to say it better.

]]> http://allday.cc/blog/how-to-write-sales-focused-copy/feed/ 2 http://allday.cc/blog/how-to-write-a-good-love-letter/ http://allday.cc/blog/how-to-write-a-good-love-letter/#comments Thu, 11 Feb 2010 15:30:50 +0000 al http://allday.cc/?p=625 What with email, chat and social networking, who sends letters any more? Arguably, the long-letter format is a dying art. At most, we can expect the occasional postcard from family members abroad. But there’s one day of the year when you might want to say something a little more personal than ‘wish you were here’.

Love it or loathe it, Valentines Day is the mandated time of the year when we’re supposed to make a pitch for our lover’s heart. Some say it with flowers, with a special breakfast… or even a special ring to surprise their loved ones. But…

Keep it simple

It’s not Shakespeare. Nobody wants Shakespeare, either. He’s old and nobody understands him. But I guess if you’re writing copy for a living rather than plays about kings and murder, you’ve figured that out already.

But what you might not have worked out is that simplicity isn’t just about using common words. That’s just patronizing — and audiences hate that. Sure, you want to go easy on the thesaurus, but simplicity comes from using a minimal number of words in a short sentence, without redundancies. Treat your reader like a savvy, time-poor client. Pitch to him quickly in easy to understand language.

If you can say it in a sentence, don’t use a paragraph. Because people won’t read it.

Break up your text

Like I’ve just done. If all the reader sees is the two sentences above in italics, and not the preceding paragraph, they’ll have got my message.

Nothing is harder on the eyes than blocks of identical, lengthy paragraphs.

That’s doubly true on the web. But even on printed copy, if you’re working with material of any kind of length, break up the text. I’ve been working on a 5000 word brochure. I’ve already got it down to 3000 words. That’s practically an essay. But I can’t take out any more text without the client getting unhappy.

So instead I’m going to break up the text with

headings

italics
bold
and of course

• bullet points.

Avoid bad words

There’s definitely a list of words you should never use. “Fresh” is one of them. Nothing described as “fresh” ever sounds fresh. It sounds like a marketing consultant with a clip on pony tail muttering things like “fresh and funky” whilst stroking his goatee beard. “Funky” also means “smells bad,” folks. So if your text is funky, it sure as hell isn’t fresh.

I could go on for hours. Apparently, the world’s most hated word (if you’re a woman) is moist. I’m not sure why. Perhaps we’re all living in a pornographic cliche. But it’s a reminder: know your audience.

My pet hate is the word “basically”. You know. “What I’m basically trying to say is…”

Stop. When you say “basically” you’re saying to someone ‘hey, I’m smarter than you, and I’m simplifying for you, because I don’t think you’d understand.’

If you have to simplify, use the word “essentially”. That way your reader knows you’re leaving stuff out because he’s busy and you’re just presenting him with the main facts. Not that you think he’s an idiot.

Last but not least… avoid cliche.

Think about it. Where did that idea for a great blog post come from? If it came from “that guy you read last week” don’t bother, unless it’s a direct reply. You’re just rehashing other people’s material. I post once or twice a week. Because, honestly, that’s about how much I have to say.

It’s also acceptable to use irregular punctuation when you’re speaking in a conversational style. If you’re writing formally, don’t dare. You’ll just look uneducated. But if you’re trying to build up a rapport with your audience, use punctuation as you’d use breathing marks if you were reading out loud. Your reader will love you.

Sure, I’m a freelancer. I can (and do) spend quite a bit of time writing at home, in the garden, in my shorts. But it’s tough out there at the minute. If the work’s not there, the work’s not there.

On quiet days when I have nothing to do I don’t laze around sunbathing or watching TV. I get back to doing what I was trained to do — to write creatively.

I had a free afternoon today so I popped down to the cafe, set up shop, and knocked out a couple of thousand words of fiction. It felt good.

I won’t bore you with the details (there’s nothing worse than writers writing about writing), but copyblogger has it right. I may not be a poet (I never could make things rhyme) but I am a creative. Writing pure fiction stretches muscles that other forms of writing just can’t reach.

They’re muscles that need exercising from time to time. After all, I use the same set of skills that I use to write fiction to create quality copy — my imagination, my vocabulary, my sense of style.

Copyblogger thinks that the best copywriters are creative writers. I agree. It’s one thing being proficient, competent, clean. But good writing has soul — a good writer will breathe life into his words, whoever his audience may be. Too much copy these days is bland and lifeless and feels like it could’ve been written by a machine. The best copy will always be the copy that establishes a dialogue with your clients. Good conversation is good communication.

Work’s been picking up a bit lately. I don’t have as much free time as I used to. And, of course, clients have to come first. But I’m going to keep setting aside a couple of hours a day to write for pure pleasure. After all, if I didn’t get any pleasure out of writing, I’d be in the wrong game, wouldn’t I?

Some days I just love what I do.

There are plenty of exceptions to this of course. Sometimes I love nothing more than grabbing a cup of coffee and writing while I watch the world go by — the busier the cafe the better. I’ve even been known to take my laptop out to the woods and work sitting on an old felled tree. You never know when or where inspiration might strike. Changing your surroundings really can change your frame of mind.

But one thing I find very hard to deal with is a cluttered desktop. No, I’m not talking about the usual six or seven cups of writer-fuel (that’s coffee, folks, not whisky) that pile up around my desk over any given day. I mean my Windows desktop.

I’m actually a Mac user — I have been for years. But when they brought out dual-booting, I started using a clean install of Windows with Word on it and nothing else because it reduced clutter. Moreover it kept the temptation of my music and videos at bay. But Word itself is still pretty cluttered.

In the past when I’ve felt the need for simplicity I’ve booted up my old Sharp FW word-processor — no internet, no graphics, no music, no colour. Just a monochrome screen and a keyboard. And it’s worked.

But it’s hardly convenient. The thing’s an unmoveable brick. This weekend I discovered Q10. And suddenly everything changed.

Q10 is a basic word processing interface for Windows that mimics an old-style word processor, only with a few modern twists. It’s fully customisable — you can change the font size, the colour of the background, the colour of the text and so on…

But the point is, it’s totally minimalist. It is a fullscreen interface for you and your words. No windows, no start bar, no pesky Microsoft Messenger bugging you every ten seconds. Back to basics.

I’ll not ramble on when a screenshot tells you everything you need to know:

As you can see I wrote this blog post using Q10. But since it’s the weekend I’ve mostly been using it to batter out a bit of fiction and I absolutely love it. Everything flows brilliantly. I feel more in touch with my words than I have in years.

As a writer, it’s absolutely vital that nothing gets in the way of my words. No mess, no distractions. Q10 has doubled my productivity overnight.

If you’re a writer — casual or professional — and you’re suffering from desktop overload, you should check this program out. Mac users needn’t fret, either. There’s a similar program called Write Room here.

A hearty thanks to Q10. It might sound like hyperbole, but this incredibly simple program really has changed my life. But don’t take my word for it. Try it out for yourself.