Entries Tagged 'freelance copywriting' ↓

Many of you know about me and my freelance copywriting business – Briar Copywriting. Well now you have the opportunity of learning a bit more about me.

The Guardian’s Careers Forum – Copywriting

On Friday 15th January The Guardian are running an online forum about careers in copywriting. So, if you are considering a career change or want to know about copywriting and how to get started, come along!

I will be amongst an esteemed panel of experts from the copywriting world. We have all come to the industry from different backgrounds so you’re sure to learn a lot from our experiences.

Visit the forum this Friday 15th January between 12pm and 3pm and post your questions to us.

It’ll be great to see you there.

Sally

Freelance Copywriter

In days gone by, most ‘SEO copywriters’ thought it enough to achieve that magical keyword density within their web copy to keep their clients happy.

WARNING – if your SEO copywriter tells you keyword density is still important, get yourself another copywriter.

There was an ad in my local paper recently from a company looking for a freelance SEO website copywriter. Intrigued, I responded with a few examples of my work and a brief explanation of SEO copywriting and what I would be able to do for them. The next day I got a call from them wanting to meet up.

That meeting was very enlightening. The guy told me he had spoken with a few people who’d responded to his ad – most of the SEO ‘experts’ couldn’t write and most of the SEO ‘copywriters’ obviously had no idea about the whole concept of search engine optimisation.

I had been called in because I was the only one who’d mentioned in my email that keyword density was not an important factor anymore. We had a very enlightening discussion.

Just plain chicken for me, forget the stuffing

You still see today websites that have their content stuffed to bursting point with keywords. In fact the copy is so jam packed it is unreadable.

Sure keywords are still important – more so in where they are positioned – but you’ll find natural writing will attract the required frequency of your keywords anyway. What is more important is the construction of well thought out, relevant copy that will be of interest to your readers.

Today SEO is more about relevancy and popularity – your writing has to make you an authority.

Come link with me…

In today’s internet environment, if you want to get great rankings you have to get people to link to you.

Links from other sites are like gold dust as far as Google is concerned which could have something to do with the strong emergence of social media marketing.

Before you can get any links you have to get your stuff noticed – sites such as Digg, Delicious, Stumble Upon (there are loads more) are great for this. Self submission can be frowned on so get a friend to submit for you. Creating strong headlines will give your stuff a great chance of being picked up.

Use a blog, Twitter, Squidoo or Hubpages to generate more links too.

Basically the more links you have coming into your site from other websites (relevant to your field), the more authoritative Google will see you and the higher in the search engine results you’ll appear.

Concentrate on…

• Relevant copy that people will want to read
• Making sure your keywords are in your headings, subheadings, page tags
• Use social media marketing
• Blog, Tweet, Squidoo and Hubpage
• Creating copy that will attract links

Need advice?

If you’re not sure how good your webcopy is and just need a bit of advice or guidance, get in touch and I’ll take a look for you (no tricks, no charge, no obligation).

Sally Ormond – freelance copywriter

Writing your own website copy can be a complete nightmare. Trying to distance yourself from your business to write about it objectively is incredibly difficult.

For a start you have to forget about blowing your own trumpet – readers don’t like that. Instead you have to consider what it is that you do for your customers. How do they directly benefit from your product/service?

Then you have to make sure you don’t include any jargon. You have to write simply – now that can be a challenge. So many people fall into the trap of thinking…

“I’m writing for the public therefore I must use incredibly complex sentences and unfathomable words to show my incredible intellect”

Well if you do, no one will read your website.

Don’t be something you’re not

Even if you manage to master all of that, you must be careful about how you portrait yourself.

Most local companies aim to achieve great rankings using local/geographical keywords. Why? Because you can get good results quickly and, if people are searching for local companies, they will probably use a town or county name within their search.

But businesses often have a desire to appear bigger than they actually are dropping local geographical terms within their copy in favour of the faceless national corporation facade. The problem with that is you’ll do nothing for your local rankings and end up being disheartened as you try to compete with the big boys for generic keywords that return millions of results.

It’s not all about size

A certain amount of illusion can be created by using “we” instead of “I” or words associated with large companies – “fleet”, “team”, etc.

But be warned – there is a reason why people search the internet for small local businesses.

To them, small businesses mean a high quality, personal service. They expect to pay a reasonable amount for goods and services safe in the knowledge they aren’t being ripped off by overly expensive items. If you try to show yourself as a large business it can convey negative connotations – expensive, inferior service, customers not being treated as individuals.

So think carefully before you start to write your copy.

Write to your reader, write simply, and tell them what’s in it for them.

Be proud to be a small local company – I know I am.

Sally Ormond – Freelance Copywriter

Happy New Year!

This is it. The start of a new decade bla bla bla…

So, what are you going to do differently this year? Are you going to move your marketing up a level or will  you just be plodding along as usual?

With the noughties behind us and the teenies stretching before us, now’s the time to review your marketing messages on your website, brochures, newsletters, emails etc.

Don’t go stale

Picture this: Monday morning, you drag yourself out of bed and stagger down stairs. You open the bread bin only to find a hard, stale piece of bread which is slightly green around the edges.

Do you:

a) stick it in the toaster because no one’s ever died from mouldy, past its best bread (yet)

b) chuck it away and find some fresh bread to eat

I’m guessing you’ve gone for option b).

Why? Because the bread is out of date, stale and lifeless.

So if you thought that was a pretty obvious choice to make, why do you leave your website copy and brochures untouched for months, years and (God forbid) decades?

Keep up with the times

Your marketing message will become just as stale as that piece of bread.

The copywriting in your original message was undoubtedly strong and compelling, but even copywriting can’t stand the test of time. You move on, your customers move on, priorities and products change – so why hasn’t your copy?

If you don’t keep your copy updated and relevant you might as well not bother marketing – and we all know what a pickle that’ll get you in to. I wrote a post a while back called 4 Resons Why Copywriting Services Work in which I used a famous example to illustrate why your marketing should continue:

During the depression of 1929-33(ish) Kelloggs in the USA (whose cornflakes were a health food at the time) continued to promote as heavily with adverts, posters etc as they had been doing before that. By the time the depression was over there were no other breakfast cereals that anyone had heard of and Kelloggs achieved almost instant market domination, a position they’ve held ever since.

Time verses profit

I can hear you all now shouting that you don’t have the time to start reviewing and rewriting all your marketing materials. Well, for starters, you don’t have to do it all in one go. Prioritise – start on your website first if that’s the first contact potential clients have with your company.

If you don’t have time, invest in the services of a freelance copywriter – yes, it will cost you but you’ll save time because a) you don’t have to write it yourself and b) because you won’t have to rewrite it because it will work first time because copywriters know what they’re doing.

Using a professional will help you save money and make money – think of it as an investment. You hire new sales people to generate more leads so why not hire a copywriter to produce copy that will generate leads and convert them into buying customers?

Take a look at your website and borchures – ready for a makeover? Start 2010 the way you mean to go on – lean, mean and ready for action.

I started out as a freelance copywriter nearly three years ago. During that time, not being the greatest face to face networker in the world, I have utilised the power of social media to drive my business forwards. That’s great if you ‘get’ social media but if the likes of Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook and the myriad other websites leave you cold, it can all seem like a total waste of time.

The down side of social media

If you don’t know what you are doing, social media could quite easily be the death of your business. Sound extreme? Well, it’s true.

You can spend hours playing with your Twitter account, Facebook Fan page and all manner of other forums and networking sites, but if you don’t have a clear strategy you’ll be heading for trouble.

Many people associate being busy with being profitable. But if your ‘busy-ness’ comes from the fact you’re spending hours sending out useless tweets rather than going out meeting and greeting and getting deals signed, you’re going nowhere fast.

Your social networking is there to compliment your traditional face to face networking. They should go hand in hand.

Social media for local business

Because it’s on the world wide web many people see social media as a platform for global networking. Yes, it can be that if you want, helping your company reach parts you never thought possible. But it can also be very effective on a local level too.

Networking events aren’t always the most targeted way of meeting new and valuable contacts or clients. Most of the time you never quite know who you’ll meet. By using the power of online networking you can change all that.

Here are a few suggestions to get you started:

Start a local group online

Use sites such as LinkedIn or Facebook to start local discussion groups. This is a great way to get in touch with other local businesses and share ideas.

Hold a meetup/tweet up

Get together with your online local networking groups. Find tweeters from your area and arrange a Tweetup. This is a great way to firm up those online relationships you’ve already started.

Facebook targeted ads

If you have a Facebook fan page (here’s my freelance copywriting page – feel free to become a fan, it would be great to see you there) use Facebook’s targeted advertising service to get your name in front of local prospects.

Google local 10 box

If you’re not already there, get yourself listed in Google’s local 10 box and get yourself in front of people looking for local businesses like yours.

Above all, if you’re using social media make sure you have a strategy and stick to it. Plus compliment your online activties with going out meeting and greeting.

Sally Ormond – freelance copywriter