1. heatherlloyd: Taking time to put yourself in your target audience’s shoes helps you create copy that’s more targeted and less mechanical

2. charismatickid: If you read your copy out loud and you hear the same keyphrases over and over, it’s time to edit.

3. healymonster: Copywriting tip: Write like you talk. People get sucked into copy that’s easy to read.

4. CopywriterTO: #Copywriting tip: Get your readers’ attention by starting your copy with a compelling story.

5. Mainecopywriter: Copy Tip: Only 10% of your copy gets read. Use subheads to capture attention and draw the reader into the copy.

6. Cbreecopy: Tip: Shorter is not always better. Longer titles are more descriptive and provide better SEO.

7. caseyfleming: #Copywriting tip: Talk about your customers 90% of the time and your company only 10% of the time.

See the full list here. Thanks, Eric!

I contacted my friend, Kathryn Haley the owner of the recently-launched Vancouver-based business Home for Her to ask her about her experiences in setting up and maintaining the content for her online presence. Kathy’s business serves independent women homeowners by providing guidance and creating confidence in all areas related to owning a home. Because of the nature of her specialized business, she needs to communicate very clearly what she has to offer her target market.

Here’s what she wrote when she had put the finishing touches on the website:

This site is finally ready to go live and I am filled with excitement, exhaustion and hope.

I am excited because this process has taken me far out of my comfort zone and I have discovered I thrive on that feeling. I must…I seem to put myself there a lot these days.

I am exhausted because setting up websites is not my strength, and it has taken a lot of tweaking, screaming and several bottles of wine. It is a work in progress so please give any feedback or comments to help improve your experience.

There you have it. Putting the website together in the first place is not an easy thing. Frankly, this early step in developing a business can be so intimidating that some people realize that perhaps they weren’t ready to become entrepreneurs after all and quit the project entirely. (That’s awfully sad, but if you can’t do it yourself and you don’t have the budget or willingness to out-task the web copywriting, there aren’t a lot of alternatives — unless you’ve got one of those businesses that can thrive just fine without the web. Selling crack, for instance…). But those who do launch often find themselves re-energized and full of purpose as soon as their business goes “live”.

How do you maintain the website content? Well, you’ve got a few options. First, write the stuff yourself. Again, if you haven’t got the time or talent, the next option is to hire a copywriter, such as… me.

A third option which I often make use of myself to supplement my own efforts and maximize content freshness, is to cross-post content with strategic partners. Of course, it also helps build links which help gather Google juice to turn a lonely website into a well-trafficked, SEO-friendly site.

Whichever method you choose has benefits but can also pose challenges, as Kathryn notes:

The written content for the site comes from myself and from guest writers. I have posted a couple of articles that I have written myself. The content comes from conversations I have with design clients or friends and simply thinking about some of the biggest problems I have had to deal with over the 13+ years of being in the renovation industry.

Once I determine a topic and actually start writing it usually only takes about 1 hour to finish it. My challenge is getting into the head space to write… I find myself second guessing whether readers will think the posts are silly.

What kind of content seems to work best for Kathryn? It’s important to mix it up:

I believe it is the variation of writing styles, topics and experts that provides the best experience for the reader. It creates a ‘something for everyone’ site that has mass appeal. The variation of topics also allows me to use SEO on a wide range of keywords, maximizing exposure to Google and other search engines.

The site also benefits from the cross promotion that each writer brings.

Are you having difficulty launching your website? Or are you finding it difficult to ensure the content on your website is fresh and Google-friendly? If you would like a free consultation about your website content strategy or need a copywriter to get your articles written, go ahead and contact me

If you have other tips about creating and managing website content or just want to reply to this post, please leave a comment!

Is This Content Still “Fresh”?

Why is fresh important? Google loves new content on your website. Old content gets downgraded in search engines. Pages with fresh content gets crawled more often and also have a higher chance of getting noticed by customers, colleagues or Internet surfers who may just turn out to be unexpected but welcome evangelists for your organization.

Bottom line? Keeping your content fresh is an important part of your overall web marketing strategy.

A few points I wanted to make sure my audience came away with:

1) Don’t leave money on the table. A lot of the business owners and managers who showed up last week work for types of businesses that mainly get their clients through referrals and word of mouth. I got the impression that many hadn’t yet seen significant results from their blog, sales letters or whatever. But if your referral networks are already solid and presumably, you don’t want to put an upper limit on your total sales, doesn’t it make sense to invest a bit more time, effort and resources into your marketing and communications? Work on building that stream of revenue. Otherwise, you’re letting other businesses eat your lunch.

2) Your website, blog, newsletters, white papers, case studies and sales letters are basically business tools ultimately for driving sales. You don’t need to use all of them, but your communications strategy should use some of them. And you will want to adapt that mix of collateral over time. Test, analyze, adapt, repeat.

3) Having a cool blog is not the end goal. Having a cool, SEO-optimized blog integrated into your website helps bring in customers who might otherwise not find you online. While they’re reading your interesting articles, they will be tempted to click on your “Services” or “Contact Us” pages to connect with you on a higher level.

4) Success takes time and multiple connections. By sending out communications on multiple fronts (blog posts, case studies, sales letters, etc) you remain in the customer’s mind. When they need your service, they’ll remember you and they’ll call.

Vigorous writing is concise. A sentence should contain no unnecessary words, a paragraph no unnecessary sentences, for the same reason that a drawing should have no unnecessary lines and a machine no unnecessary parts. This requires not that the writer make all his sentences short, or that he avoid all detail and treat his subjects only in outline, but that every word tell.

“[Department head] Charlie [Standell] altered the entire thrust and focus of my operating instructions,” said a seething Leff, 31, upon seeing the final edit. “I toiled over it for weeks, crafting each phrase until it was perfect, but then he just goes ahead and changes it all around for no apparent reason.”

Added Leff: “The broiling directions, the safety warnings, the warranty guidelines… it’s all completely different.”
…
Standell defended the change. “A sticking point for me was the word ‘enjoying,’” Standell said. “You don’t really ‘enjoy’ a slide-out tray. I just thought ‘enjoying’ was off. Then, once I cut that, it became apparent to me that you don’t need any action words here at all: Just tell the reader what part of the toaster you’re about to talk about, and leave it at that. This was clearly a case of ‘less is more’—something that’s never been Ron’s strong suit. He has a real tendency to overwrite.”

It’s a funny story. But it does call attention to an issue for copywriters everywhere when dealing with their clients. Whether you’re writing website content, a brochure, sales letters or anything else, there needs to be reasonable expectations on both sides.

That means that if you hire a copywriter to write something for you, there has to be a reasonable expectation that a second draft may be needed to take care of some tweaks. This doesn’t always happen. Sometimes you’ll get it 100 percent right on the first shot. But not always.

“Tweaks” doesn’t mean that you get to ask for a wholesale rewrite of the content that’s going to take hours or days. So long as the contract and the client’s directions were clear, there should only be minor edits required for a second draft. Tell the copywriter what you want. He implements the changes and you’re done.

For instance, “could you change up the call to action on the services page to make it a bit stronger?” Or “I want to see another two bullet points in the products section that highlights our warranty. Can you extract something from the brochure copy you wrote before?” Or “I’d really like to see those conjunctions changed to more formal transitions.” Those are reasonable editing requests. Your copywriter should be happy to make the changes swiftly.

“Tweaks” do not include the following examples:

• “I don’t know what I don’t like about the content, but I want you to change it. Everything. Make it… I don’t know, more ‘flashy’? Can you get all 30 pages rewritten by the end of next week?”
• I know I assigned you to write only about three types of products and that’s what’s in the contract. But now the marketing department wants you to add information for our other widgets. But this is all part of the same project we hired you for. There’s no more budget for this.
• You totally nailed our messaging with your first draft. At least, that’s what I thought… and that’s what I’ve been telling you throughout our pre-approved review process. But now we’ve got a new guy in the communications department. He wasn’t part of this project, but he looked over your stuff and he needs some big changes to several sections…

Words aren’t widgets. Sometimes you need to massage the messaging with a second draft. And that’s totally fine. Just have reasonable expectations… on both sides.

The following screen shot is a good example of a site that provides multiple calls to action. There’s a phone number displayed prominently in the top, right corner. They have a menu and Zip Code search for local sales reps, as well as a banner ad highlighting their best item.

What is missing, however, are the words ‘Buy’ ‘Order’ ‘Now’, or anything else pushing the consumer to immediately purchase their goods.

The site does give enough information for a certain segment of the customer base to want to place a direct order. But there is no direct link for these customers to buy a product as they browse. With a simply hyperlink, the business could have gotten their call to action to actually link to… well, an action.

Contact us and we can give you stronger calls to action in your website content, brochures, sales letters and more

(Written for the WRITEIMAGE business copywriting tips blog by Chris Ryan)

Blogs are not just great for building a connection with your target market, promoting your brand and sharing information. They’re fantastic for search engine optimization. Google and other search engines love fresh content. And when you write on consistent themes, you’ll be building up keyword density that helps your customers find you.

“We’d just got back from a Dracula-Class Vampire Removal gig,” Steve recalls. “It was a really challenging job. We lost some good people that day. But that’s why they pay us the big bucks, right? Anyway, I get back to the office and my heart is still going a mile a minute. I can’t sleep, so I post a quick update on the blog, along with some video that I edited on my Macbook and uploaded to YouTube. Suddenly I’m exhausted, so I pour some holy water on my bites and fall asleep on the couch.

“Next morning, I see we’ve got links coming in from every vampire-focused blog and news feed in Canada and the phone starts ringing off the hook. The thing had gone viral. I tell you, that was a red-letter day for our business. We doubled our accounts receivable for that month.”

To be continued in part 5

There is no definitive model of what a business website needs to include. But the basic rule is that you need to provide enough information for the customer to understand why they need to contact you today. For companies that make money from their expertise and intellectual property, the trick is to entice people with good content that doesn’t give away your secret sauce.

Vampire Hunters Inc. needed to transform their site from a one-page static site into a more robust sort of platform for search engine optimization. I suggested adding the following pages for the basic content:

About Us
This is a pretty standard business website page that provides information about the company’s area of expertise. Describe your service offerings in general terms. You can also outline the size and geographic location of your company. Some firms also include information about how and when the company started.

This was a natural home for introductory information about Steve’s vampire hunting services, including his no-nonsense slogan, “We kill vampires dead” and his added value proposition, “ghouls dispatched at no extra cost”.

Some companies also like to provide information about their executive team on this page, though it may be better to display that information on a separate page, possibly a sub-page (“Our Team” or “Company Bios”). This page would be great for highlighting Steve’s highly professional crew, such as Joey “Chainsaw” Hannigan and holy water supplier Father Michael McEvoy.

Services
Depending on the range of your offerings, this section can range anywhere from a single page to 100 pages. Your website visitors won’t scan too far down, so if you offer several types of services, you’re often better off splitting them into separate pages. Use a main services page providing links to all of them.

The content on these pages should focus on the benefits for the customer. Remember, the customer doesn’t need to know the technical methodology for capturing and killing the undead. They just want to know that you’re going to solve their problem quickly at a reasonable price.

Vampire Hunters Inc. provided several services that customers could purchase individually or as a package. Their main offerings included Vampire Inspection, Vampire Extermination and Dead Vampire Ash Removal. Steve’s company also offered passive vampire security products such as garlic cloves and holy water. While it wasn’t apparent from Steve’s out-of-date website, he also offered zombie and werewolf removal services at very competitive rates.

Continued in Part 3, More Website Content That Doesn’t Suck

Superman Helicopter Tours

“Up, up and away!”

Dr. Strange Exotic Escorts

“By the Hoary hosts of Hoggoth!”

Human Torch Barbecue Lighters

“Flame on!”

Wonder Woman “Hera”-brand Red Pepper Humus

“Great Hera!”

Wolverine Repo Services

“I’m the best there is at what I do. But what I do best isn’t very nice.”

Hercules’ All-Year Christmas Store

“Receive thy gift!”

Spider-Man Green Power Co.

“With great power comes great responsibility.”