Entries Tagged 'copywriting' ↓

After browsing the net the other day I came across this great post by Sherice Jacob for CopyBlogger – How To Write Copy for Short Attention Spans.

As a freelance copywriter I know all too well the problem you encounter when your audience suffers from the dreaded S.A.Ps or Short Attention Spans.

Sherice’s tips illustrate how this particular annoyance can be over come. I hope you find them useful.

No matter how gripping your sales copy is, it’s an unfortunate fact that the majority of people will only read the first few lines of it. Does that mean all the effort you poured into the perfect call to action is wasted? Not at all! But in today’s fast-paced world of communication, less really is more.

Taking into account that many people will be reading your copy from a mobile device or skimming after a quick search, it’s worth breaking up larger thoughts into small, mentally-digestible “chunks” for easy, quick scanning.

Begin With the Action in Mind

Many copywriters go about the process in reverse – filling up the valuable top left space with lofty promises no one really cares about and then spend the rest of the page getting to the product or service that’s going to bring the eventual offer.

While this type of approach is great for harnessing your long-term readers, you don’t want to alienate the visitors who are judging your site’s relevance for the first time. Some people, when they’re confronted with a long sales page, will skip right to the bottom to find out the cost, then jump right back up to the top if they feel it’s worth their time (are you nodding your head, too?)

So how do you attract the quick browser and convince them that your page is worth their time while appealing to the more serious reader who’s in it for the “long haul”?

So What?

One of the best exercises I’ve ever done to help with this process is to continually ask myself “so what?” Whittle down your copy to the raw benefits that directly engage your readers:

“XYZ company can save you up to $500 on your car insurance by helping you get a free quote online” – So what?

“Put an extra $500 in your pocket today” – Now I’m listening!

You don’t have to forego imagination for the sake of clarity either. There are some products where using the right word can make all the difference while still condensing the overall message – like so:

“XYZ chocolate makes a terrific gift. Order now for great savings and fast shipping” – So what?

“Get sinfully delicious chocolate delivered right to your door.” – I’m interested!

Strategic Chunking Retains Readers

Take a closer look at your pages – especially the very first paragraph. How can you condense and filter your message to attract the casual browser and convince them to stay? Are you making good use of headlines, sub-headlines, photos and captions? Does your call to action really call them to act or is it buried under heaps of text?

Try “chunking” your message and test it on your audience. You may be pleasantly surprised at how many more people stick around to keep reading!

Content is everywhere. Some of it is great – informative, funny, attention-grabbing, persuasive, powerful…some of it is, well, pants quite frankly.

You would probably be hard pushed to recall a great ad or piece of copy, but I bet you can remember the bad ones.

To avoid falling into the trap of producing bad copy, I have compiled a list of 20 sins that you should avoid.

1.  No attention-grabbing headline

2.  No sub headings

3.  No benefits

4.  No guarantees

5.  Spelling and grammar mistakes

6.  No testimonials (believable ones, anyway)

7.  No features

8.  No conversational writing or questions

9.  Over complex and long sentences

10.  No deadlines

11.  No strong call to action

12.  No free trials

13.  ALL IN CAPITALS

14.  Very few ordering options

15.  No visuals (all text is a bad idea)

16.  No comparison against competitors

17.  No emotional appeal

18.  Way too much jargon

19.  Text is either too small or too big

20.  Not enough white space

I’m sure you can provide further examples, if so I’d love to hear about them.

Sally Ormond is a freelance copywriter helping businesses become more visible in their market place, increasing their targeted web traffic and sales.

Her UK copywriting services help numerous companies in the UK and abroad.

I have written numerous posts on here about webcopy and how you should write it. Its all about writing clearly for your reader. Forgetting jargon and long sentences. Creating headings that make navigation easy. Basically making it easy to understand.

This post from Coppyblogger by Demian Farnworth sums its all up rather nicely. Read on and discover how easy it can be to write webcopy.

Everything You Need to Know About Creating Killer Content in 3 Simple Words

Creating great content is not hard. In fact, it’s quite easy. That is, if you understand three simple words.

If you summarized every single book and article written on writing for the web, you’d get these three words. Yet, no one–not even the experts, authors, or pundits–have ever consolidated all this knowledge into one simple, sticky formula.

Until now.

Write with these three words in mind, and anything you publish on the web will rivet attention, stoke desire, and get action.

Don’t believe me? Well, after you’ve read the rest of this article, give it a shot. And let me know what you think.

1. Clear

In less than four seconds visitors need to be able to comprehend what you wrote on your web page. I didn’t say “read.” I said “comprehend.”

Even before Steve Krug wrote it, the unbreakable law of the web has always been this: don’t make me think.

Your headlines, subheadlines, links, labels and navigation should all communicate clearly what lies in, under or behind them.

This is part of giving readers control. No tricks. Nothing clever or cute. Never lie. Just straight, uncensored, easy-to-digest truth.

Do it any other way and you’ll repel people. Bore readers. Lose money.

2. Concise

Writing for the web is a minimalist affair. Your words, sentences and paragraphs are short. Precise. Lean. Tight. Web writing trades in sheering off useless words. Cutting flabby paragraphs…

Even shedding entire pages.

Think that’s harsh? Jakob Nielson recommends you cut up to half of the words for every print page you plan to put on the web.

There’s a great benefit for you behind all this editing: You’ll become a ruthlessly good writer. You’ll get much better, in fact.

Best of all, writing clear and concise won’t make you boring or dull. Far from it.

3. Compelling

The Rich Jerk is irritating, annoying and loathsome. But he’s compelling. Interesting. Persuasive. That’s why he won’t go away.

Why? Because he’s tapped into human emotions—greed and pride—that pull people into his copy… whether they like it or loathe it.

You have to do the same. You have to uncover what makes your reader tick. What strokes his ego. What plucks his gut strings. What keeps him up at night. And when you uncover that hot spot, punch it.

If he’s a political junkie, wave breaking news in front of him. An Apple addict? Share the latest hacks and apps for the iPhone. A wine lover? Hustle the best bottles his way.

Whatever it is, give your reader what he wants. Or he’ll go away. It’s the law.

What About SEO Copywriting?

Forget about it. Seriously.

If you focus on writing clear, concise and compelling copy, you will naturally write keyword-dense copy. You’ll naturally write for the search engines.

In fact, that’s why I think the label SEO copywriter is redundant. Every web writer worth his salt is a SEO writer. At least they are if they write clear, concise and compelling copy.

The question is, content creator, are you?

What Do You Think?

Did I miss it? Are there more than three words that describe successful online content creation? Let me know and we’ll debate it.

About the Author: Demian Farnworth is Senior Web Writer for an international humanitarian aid organization and blogger for Fallen and Flawed.

While I was browsing the internet the other day I came across this blog post on CopyBlogger by Sonia Simone.

It really struck a chord with me. As an internet marketer, I have come to understand the power of content and when it is coupled with social media…wow!

It is such a powerful way of getting your opinions out there into cyberspace and of course, an incredible vehicle from which to promote you and your business.

Take it away Sonia…

Why Content and Social Media are a Powerful Match

Creating stellar content for your marketing is great. But great content doesn’t (quite) distribute itself. It needs vehicles for people to pass it along, discuss its merits, argue over its controversies, blog it, mash it, tweet it and even scrape it. Which is, of course, where social media comes in.

Social media didn’t create content marketing, but it’s an unsurpassed tool for getting it distributed. On the flip side, great content gives social media life, by giving people something more interesting to talk about than what they’re ordering right now at Starbucks.

Social media is the third tribe’s sacred hearth

The third tribe—the new breed of smart, savvy online entrepreneurs—are creatures of the social web. Gathering points like forums, Twitter and Facebook are the campfires that pull the tribe together. Some of us have been convening around digital campfires for a long time. (I found my first in 1989, before the invention of the World Wide Web.)

Social media has grown so explosively because connection is probably the deepest drive we have. The campfire gives us a place to share information about the day’s hunt, a forum to air out the tribe’s differences, even a place for us to consider new and better ways to build campfires.

No, it’s not a utopian picture. Our campfires are places for bickering and malice as much as for inspiration and community. But without a connecting place, without a central spot to bring us together for conversation, there is no tribe.

Our gathering places are never perfect. They’re human. Which is what makes them so extraordinary.

Great content is the third tribe’s saga and story

It doesn’t matter if you’re talking about the Yanomamo in the Amazon rainforest or friends at a barbecue in Teaneck, New Jersey. Anywhere people gather around fires, they’re going to tell stories.

It’s in the nature of the human animal to play with language, to create fables and songs and nonsense to entertain ourselves with. And it’s in our nature to make beautiful objects and embellish anything that will stand still long enough.

These instincts are alive today in great writing and imagery being shared all over the Web. The impulses that make us reweet a blog post or a fantastic Flickr image are the same ones that bring a superb Navajo weaver renown across four states.

Wonderful words and beautiful images capture our attention, no matter who we are or what technology we might have at our disposal. Our impulse to create, and our desire to remark on skillful creations, haven’t changed much since we started walking upright.

The third tribe is on the move

In addition to our passion for connection, the other remarkable human trait is adaptability.

No other animal can adapt to as many different ecosystems and environments as we can. We’ve built dwellings in Antarctica and in space. We’ve survived the Ice Age and world wars, tsunamis and earthquakes, and even Joan Rivers winning Celebrity Apprentice.

When the environment is stable, we get complacent. We settle into calm, self-satisfied habits for thousands of years at a time.

But when the earth starts to shake, we wake up again: the same smart, watchful, inventive and dangerous monkey we’ve always been at heart.

I’ve heard the current economic meltdown described as “economic climate change,” which I like a lot. We don’t know where it’s going to get unbearably hot and where the temperature will plunge to permafrost. The system is too complex to predict, except we know it’s going to change and it’s likely to change fast.

But some things won’t change. If we can sing a remarkable song, others will gather to hear it. And now, digital campfires connect us from Kuala Lumpur to Iceland to Dallas.

If I create content that’s worthy of attention, the world will show up and talk about it. I don’t know how they’ll show up in 5 years (or 5 months), but I know they will.

My job is to make something amazing, then use the global network of digital campfires intelligently to find the people who will love and appreciate it.

How about you? What songs and legends are you bringing to your campfire

Wouldn’t it be great if you knew exactly what to say to make someone buy from you?

Well, that is pretty much what this blog post will do. I have mentioned in the past that people have to justify their buying decisions, so all you need to know is how they go about it.

Think for a moment – how many times have you bought something you didn’t really need but you wanted? Come on, own up how many pairs of shoes do you own – or gadgets – that you managed to convince yourself you needed even though you didn’t?

I have compiled a list of 10 reasons why people buy products – see how many you recognise.

1. They want to make money – more money makes them feel more successful
2. They want to save money – maybe investing for the future to make them feel more secure
3. They want to save time – hands up who wants to work less and have more leisure time to help them gain a better quality of life
4. They want to look better – perhaps lose a bit of weight, tone up their body or have the odd nip and tuck to make them feel more attractive
5. They want to learn something new – a new skill will make them feel more intelligent
6. They want to live longer – by getting in shape and changing their diet they will feel healthier
7. They want to feel better – finally getting shot of niggling aches and pains will bring them relief
8. They want to be loved – no one wants to be lonely, everyone wants friends because they like to feel wanted
9. They want to be popular – whether it is to the degree of wanting to be famous or just to be liked it will make them feel admired by others
10. They want pleasure – by satisfying their inner most desires they will feel more fulfilled

Did some of those sound familiar? Just think about it for a second who doesn’t want to be more successful, more secure, have a better quality of life, feel more attractive, feel more intelligent, feel healthier, feel wanted, be admired or feel fulfilled? Isn’t that pretty much what we are all striving for?

All you have to do is convince your readers that buying your product will result in at least one of these ‘wants’.

As a freelance copywriter, Sally Ormond has worked with many businesses helping them save time and money while increasing their sales and market visibility.