Freelance Copywriting – BT Live Web Chat

Welcome to the live web chat on copywriting for business. My name is Sally Ormond and I run Briar Copywriting. I have been freelance copywritng for about 18 months or so working with a diverse range of clients across many industries.

So, if you have any questions about copywriting – whether for the web or offline – I will do my best to answer them for you.

Hello everyone, thank you for joining us today for the Live chat.

Thank you to Sally for hosting this today.

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Many thanks, and over to you with your questions!

Basically whatever you are writing, always make sure your write for your reader. By that I mean always keep in your mind what it is that they want – i.e. the benefits of whatever you are providing for them – why will it make their life better?

Always avoid the ‘me marketing’ trap whereby companies talk about themselves without thinking about what their customers want – after all the customer only wants to know what’s in it for them.

Really, if you can keep your writing conversational you won’t go too far wrong.

Really it depends on what you are writing. Indeed most DM that you see is very long and works (although I never read that stuff as I don’t have time!). Basically it should be as long as it needs to be to get your message across.

Personally I prefer keeping things short and sweet – the punchier the better.

Yes, copywriting is incredibly important for SEO. I always write webcopy with the reader in mind and not Google. That isn’t to say that it is not SEO’d to the max.

Always use your keywords in your H1 headings and sub headings and in the first line of copy following these headings. Then they should appear within the content too – you should look for a density of arounr 3 to 5%.

If you follow that, your writing will remain reader friendly whilst being SEO friendly too.

If I read anything like that I switch off immediately, but that’s just my opinion. In my view, you sales pitch should be strong and to the point. Sell the benefits let them know what the features are and a strong call to action – that’s all you need.

Headings are always difficult – you need to grab their attention by identifying what you are selling and why – give them a hook, something that will draw them in, whether its a price cut, discount, guarantee, your unique selling point.

It’s not easy and probably is the hardest part of any writing, but done well it will work.

If you are stuck list the benefits and find the one that really catched your attention and lead with that one.

The American Style sales letter is those that tend to go on rather a lot – you’ve probably seen them. In print form they can be several pages long. You can also find web pages written in the same style – they are the ones you seem to be scrolling down forever which different font colours and sizes with the CTA right at the end.

I’m not aware of any sites that provide stats like this – it would be interesting to see something like that so if anyone knows of any perhaps they would be good enough to post the link here.

Yes, I write loads of articles and yes, it’s agreat way to get my name out there into cyberspace.

If you have the time and patience then definitely write them yourself. However many companies simply don’t have the time to do this type of promotion. Therefore they hire someone to do them for them.

Here is a quick headling writing guide:

1. What are you selling? – be specific and make it interesting
2. How much is it? – use this in your headling if the price is important
3. What is in it for them? – this is the hook
4. What happens if it doesn’t work? – do you give them a guarantee

An example of an excellent headline that followed thi formula is the Dominoes PIzza Add headline:

Hot Pizza Delievered to Your Door in 30 Minutes or Less or It’s Free!

Always write for your reader
Avoid using jargon
Always sell the benefits of your product/service

Your direct mail piece doesn’t have to worry about SEO for a start. Therefore you can perhaps be a bit more creative and unrestricted in what you write.

The direct mail also has to be strong enough to draw your reader to your website for example if that is where they have to got to buy or sign up for your service.

Your web copy has to also ‘look right’ – people tend to scan read web sites so that is something else that you have to bear in mind when laying out your copy online.

They are very different modes of communication and therefore this is bound to be reflected in the writing style adopted for each.

Time is always an issue. Blogging can be time consuming. Normally what I do, is that I have a book next to me so whenever inspiration for a blog hits I write it down. Then I maybe spend 20 minutes a day (or thereabouts) writing the blog posts. They don’t have to be long, so I can knock one or two out in that time. Then I just add them to my blog and schedule them.

For newsletters, assuming this is going out to your customer base, you need to spend more time on these to ensure you are getting the right message across and the right content.

Normally I take a week to write mine, when working with clients I normally give up to 2 weeks to make sure then end product is what is required.

It is time consuming but something that is necessary and will pay dividends if done well.

Normally for web pages I would say use as many words as necessary but without going to far beyond the scroll down point. There is nothing worse than a web page that is about 1000 words long.

I would say about 300-400 words would be a good length. You wouldn’t really want to go beyond that.

Make sure your copy is broken up with plenty of headings, sub headings, bullet points and white space – that will make it much easier for people to read.

Make it interesting – that is the key. If it doesn’t capture their attention then they won’t read it!

Provide benefits (there’s that word again), and advice that will make your readers’ lives easier.

Emails are like mini newsletters – the art with these is to provide information, capture attention and get the reader to act all in the space of about 100-200 words max.

You need a stong headling (which is your subject line), a powerful first line with a hook that will get them to read on, and finally a stong call to action – normally a hyperlink through to your sales web page.

The problem with any style that becomes popular is that eventually it becomes cliched.

Trying to come up with a unique approach is difficult so I would recommend that you write in a style that is reflective of you and your company.

I find that writing that is conversational works best – it helps to build rapport with your reader. As for future trends…if I could forcast them I would be doing them now and be ahead of the game , but seriously no one knows what’s round the corner and it will be interesting to see what happens.

Mainly because a sea of text is rather daunting. It becomes more palatable when images are used. Of course, they should be relevant to the content of your newsletter and should add something to it rather than just being there to be pretty.

It would rather depend on the medium you were using.

If it is for a website then definitely, video is a great way to interact with your audience. You have to remember that not everyone likes to take on board information through reading text alone therefore visuals and videos are great to add variety.

It can either be embedded and referred to within the text to make a point clearer or it can simply be added to a side bar (like the one on my blog).

Personally I don’t think it would work for newsletters – but I am always ready to be convinced otherwise.

There are lots of copywriting courses out there if you search on Google. I’m not sure how good any of them are though.

The same goes for books but I can personally recommend “Write to Sell, the Ultimate Guide to Great Copywriting” by Andy Maslen and also “The Well-Fed Writer” by Peter Bowerman. If you want something more specific to web copywriting ans SEO then “Content Rich” by Jon Wuebben is also good.

Yes, that can be a difficult balance to achieve. Perhaps you should look to write ‘my 10 top tips for…’ or something like that. What is it that you sell?

It depends on the length and content – it can be done in a day. but really the more time you have the better. Often you will need to produce several drafts of the newsletter before it really begins to gel.

If you missed any of the chat, you can replay it in full from the blog.

Best wishes, I’ll now close this chat.
Amy