Sadly I’ve been spending my time on other ventures and have failed to keep my finger on the copywriting pulse. I’m going to be making some subtle changes this year to the site in an attempt to make it more user friendly and to help get more people to contact me for work. I’ve had numerous pieces of work throughout last year and I’m going to push on to try and increase the amount of work I get through here (fingers crossed). If this strategy becomes too much like hard work, I will be considering selling the site and giving it to an owner who will use it more than I do. Either way, there will be activity!!

Cheers,

Mike

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Their time is precious, with many emails being viewed on their blackberry or iphone or simply by their secretary without getting any further.

The content needs to be direct and to the point as they can sense waffle and sales from a mile away.

A personal approach is ideal to get passed both the external and internal spam blocker. Although they know it is an automated send out, it’s nice to see that we tried to make it personal, that we made an effort. Copywriting has always had this difficult challenge, however targets of this calibre make a decision on even the smallest mistake.

So, focusing on title, content and call to action (CTA), I need to make sure the whole thing is compelling, informative and actionable.

Title
If you knew how to write the perfect subject line, you’d be the most successful writer in the world. Subject lines are often the first and largest hurdle to get over. You need a professional tone that is engaging and “clickable”, b2c tricks don’t work here, no “limited time only” or “save 25%” With b2b catchy titles just won’t do it, your message matters too, you just need them to read it.

Content   
Good content is paramount to a successful email strategy. High level communication has to be personal. CEOs and directors are people too, they are smart and can smell a sales pitch from a mile away. Being personal feels honest, a friendly approach, leaving jargon at the door to ensure you have their attention, not have them thinking a spam machine has been pumping out email after email.

A tidy CRM makes this job a lot easier, instead of “dear sir/madam” have “dear *first_name*”, sure they’ll know your CRM is getting used, but at least you tried to make your email personal, you’ll be surprised how far that goes.

Be honest. If you are inviting them to an event, be honest about the event, don’t lie about the panel or big up a speaker, directors and CEOs know each other, and often know each other well. The last thing you need is someone picking up on an extension of the truth.

Sent by
Let’s be honest, getting an email from a “sales officer” or “business development manager” or even “marketing manager” always has the sense that there is a hidden agenda (which there is). Try and get someone on a similar level to you targets to contact them, people respond well to equals and that is no different in the upper echelons of business. Send it from a director, a CEO or board member. Have a bit of guile.

Techy bits
- Have your email wired with analytics, find out bounce backs and click throughs to give you as much information to review your campaign.
- customise sent from addresses and names, don’t send it from salesgenerator@yourcompany.com or reply to sales@yourcompany.com. We have a natural spam filter and as soon as you see the word “sales” in an email that doesn’t appear to sell, you can kiss that contact goodbye.
- spelling punctuation and grammar! – I know this should be standard procedure but you’d be amazed how many emails manage to get sent out with spelling mistakes and wrong email addresses or phone numbers. Your email represents your business, if they think you can’t string a sentence together they are going to be brimming with confidence about your ability to deliver.     

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I think it’s slowly coming back! It started a couple of weeks ago when I decided to see where this page was ranking. Low and behold it’s numero uno for “professional copywriter” and “professional copywriting”. This was obviously a pleasant surprise as I already had Bing and Yahoo under my belt.

But what had i’d done to have influenced the positioning, in short, nothing. For weeks this site has only shown twitter updates and that’s about it.

If I ever needed proof that Google enjoys fresh content, this would be it.

I’ve noticed an increase in traffic 20-50 per day and I’m quite proud to be ruling the roost. Not only have I captured top stop it was almost done entirely automated.

I essentially did the following -

  – thought of a keyword phrase “professional copywriter”
  – bought a relevant domain (as above)
  – bought an SEO kick ass theme (wp thesis)
  – did the meta data dance (keyword optimize pages)
  – added the right plugins (basic seo compliancy and syndication/twitter tools)
  – linked my site from a couple of my personal pages (twitter, linkedin etc)
  – footer optimised
  – wrote 12+ articles on the train home on my android (like now)
  – set my blog to announce all my tweets on a weekly basis.

Leave for 2 months until ready. Still pink on the inside.

This military style keyword optimising with very little linking (check using seoquake) was all I needed to dominate a niche.

The next thing on my list is SERP domination. Position 2,3,4 here I come!

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Saw this video today from Dailymotion.com. In short, it rocks! It may have little to do with copywriting, in fact it has nothing to do with copywriting.

Enjoy!

When writing for clients, the most important part is their client base, their customers and the people they are looking to convert. Depending on the type of customers they keep depends on your writing style and inevitably effects your copy.

Writing b2c. (Business to customer) is predominantly an easier readership, than b2b(business to business) simply because the people reading your content are often the decision makers, they’re often the people who want what you sell and have the money in their pocket to buy it.

From a copywriting perspective this makes life a little easier, identifying why they want your product, what appeals to them and how they feel when they have your product is pretty easy to write, basic market research and demographic analysis will give you what you need to know.

Another big benefit of b2c is the fact that there is one person reading your copy, the same person wanting your product and the same person holding the money, in b2b it’s quite different.

In b2b the content has to show them the benefits of picking you, for everyone that reads it, both secretary, manager, buyer and director all need to see the benefits of picking you, each person has different needs and will have different views of your product.

Allow me to explain…

The secretary – these are the people you should focus on predominantly, not only are they your first port of call in communicating with a potential client, but they also tend to read the most copy. How many directors ask their secretary or PA to look for a particular service. “Find a decent web agency, decorator, restaurant, training provider, etc. You can name anything and at some point, a secretary has made the first decision in picking you. A recruiter friend of mine called secretaries “the gatekeepers” and I couldn’t agree more, they are your first way in and often all you need.

Managers – in larger organisations managers will often be looking to acquire a particular product and service. In the dog eat dog world of middle management you need to look after number 1, so much so it carries into how they read your copy.
When choosing you they want to make themselves look brilliant, make themselves look like they’ve done the job, bought the best product or got the right service. Here they might not actually care about what YOU do, but how it will make THEM look.

Copywriters the world over accept that sometimes your readers don’t care what you sell!

Directors – The big fish are often the trickiest, as now your copy has to please 2 readers at the same time. A director has asked their secretary to find a product or service, you’ve managed to get on their list of 5, the list is then emailed or handed to the director(s) for them to make their decision, you copy needs to please them too!
You need to determine the balance between quality and price that exists in your marketplace, how much do your clients like good value compared to high quality, try and give them both. In an ideal world writing for a director is very similar to b2c again, you just need to add facts and figures to emphasize you USPs.

B2b content is often more difficult to write, but the rewards are always greater, business sales and contracts are often large and in turn people are willing to pay more if you can help them get a sale.

I’d love to know your thoughts on b2c vs b2b and how it affects your marketing strategies.

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Sorry I haven’t written for a while! It’s been chaos at work!!! Often happens with a top heavy cash flow and bad organisation (sorry for the internal work joke! Ha!).

I thought I’d adapt the ole’ Thesis theme as I’d kinda got carried away with java plugins, hard coding, and essentially getting further and further away from the nature of the blog. Writing!

I’ve therefore stripped it down to the bare essentials and will give it the occassional tweak were I deem fit. All I can promise is that it will be clear, concise and straight to the point, similarly to good copy!

Have a good weekend guys and gals and will hopefully get a relevant post up over the weekend.

Regards. Peace

Mike

Professional Copywriter, SEO, Nude Model

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Enjoy!

Eats, Shoots and Leaves by Lynne Truss

I thought I’d start with an writer’s book rather than a copywriter’s book due to the fact that in order to be a successful copywriter, you firstly need to know how to write. Truss endeavours to find the perfect style of writing pointing out how we can all develop and learn as writers. Eat, Shoots and Leaves is an essential read for anyone looking to write anything.

The Web Content Style Guide.

This book offers the secret on how to keep your writing crisp and precise, I’m sure that many of you already know what it takes to produce proper online content, but to reiterate the online copywriting philosophies of old, it does make a wonderfully good read. Don’t be annoyed if you feel patronised consider it a reenforcement of knowledge!

The Guardian Style Guide

The Guardian Stylebook is an incredibly honest manual which offers clear, direct and sound advice whilst also remaining to be very entertaining, The guide cover many topics on writing as a whole and therefore often skims over elements, this however still remains an absolute must. The Guardian offer a downloadable version on their site, but for the work gone in to it and the information it contains, why not get a bound copy!

Alternatively you could get some RSS goodness from this blog and keep an eye out for upcoming reviews on the material – But seriously these books are worth their weight in gold (so is the RSS!)

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