Entries from April 2013 ↓

What is Vine?

It’s a way of capturing and sharing short looping videos. When we say short, we mean short, in fact 6 seconds of short. Adding them to your tweets gives you a whole new dimension through which you can engage with your audience.

That’s all sounds great, but how can it be used in a business situation?

Here at FCB, we’re always scouring the internet to find the best information on areas beyond our own expertise and this post from Socialmediaexaminer.com fits the bill when it comes to this particular subject.

The post goes through 16 ways businesses are using Twitter Vine to:

1. Engage their followers in conversation
2. Highlight their brand advocates
3. Display their work for a client
4. Offer relevant historical trivia
5. Celebrate the holidays
6. Get people excited about a new product
7. Take people inside their office
8. Attract customers to your exhibition stand
9. Educate and amaze
10. Bring people into their stores
11. Tell their brand’s story
12. Promote a contest
13. Bring presentations to life
14. Show off their products
15. Give fans what they want
16. Just randomly amuse their audience

Grab a coffee and take a look at the videos and see if they can give you the inspiration you need to dive into Vine.

You can see the post here: 16 Ways Businesses Are Using Twitter Vine

It’s a familiar story: you run a business and have to market it. It starts gradually, but little by little you start to build your customer base and your time shifts from marketing and promotion to fulfilling orders and customer service.

You become so obsessed by offering the best service possible your marketing activities slow right down.

After the initial rush of customers begins to dwindle you suddenly realise that you’ve taken your foot off the gas and have to start marketing like crazy again.

This cycle continues until you find yourself rocking quietly in a corner wondering why you started your own business in the first place.

Then you have a brain wave and call in the help of a professional copywriter to help you create the web copy, brochure content, emails, newsletters and case studies you need to keep the customers coming your way.

But then you realise that the copywriter you’re talking to hasn’t worked in your industry before.

What do you do?

Say goodbye to them, even though you get on and know they are the best writer out there?

I hope not, because if you do you’ve forgotten one crucial thing – you are hiring them because the have the expertise you need and that means they can write strong, persuasive and compelling copy for any industry.

What you’re about to read is an earth-shattering statement:

It is not necessary for a copywriter to have written for your industry before for them to do a cracking job for you.

Wow.

Two experts working together

The copywriter/client relationship is a collaborative one – they need you as much as you need them.

You are the expert in your field, your customers and knowing what they want. They are experts in getting that message across in an engaging, persuasive and powerful way.

That’s why you must be prepared to work with your copywriter.

They will delve deep into your knowledge wanting to know stuff like:

• What do you do?
• Who do you sell to?
• Why do they need your product/service?
• How do you help them?
• What would stop them buying from you?
• What action do you want them to take when they’re read this content?
• What makes your company different to all the others?
• How do you want to be perceived by your customers?
• What sort of tone do you want?
• What is your overall aim?

And that’s just for starters because they can only write about your business if you’re prepared to tell them about it.

Just saying, “I sell insurance so write me a brochure” isn’t very helpful. If you want a great end result you need to be on hand to provide all the information they need.

Think of the relationship as the coming together of two great minds with skills and knowledge that will complement each other perfectly.

What’s the best way to find the right copywriter for you?

1. Take a look at their website and see if what they say resonates with you
2. Take a look at their portfolio and read some of the samples, do you like their style?
3. Pick up the phone and have a chat with them or meet with them to see if you can get along

It’s as simple as that.

For many years now, businesses have turned to their trusted copywriter to create their website copy.

Why?

Because they knew that the way their content was written would have an effect on their search rankings, in other words they needed SEO copywriting.

Now for me ‘traditional’ SEO copywriting is no more, especially in light of Google’s recent algorithm changes that has put more emphasis on good quality writing as opposed to that which is over optimised.

Let’s face it, that’s not a bad thing as finally, we might be able to say farewell to those awful web pages that are completely incomprehensible because they are stuffed to the rafters with keywords.

So are copywriters now redundant?

Far from it.

Google adores good quality content. That means stuff that’s:

• Well written
• Adds value to the reader
• Interesting and relevant

And that means it should still be written by a professional because they do it every day and therefore are really rather good at it.

You see the misconceptions that SEO copywriting is all about including your keywords at least 15 times in your copy, or stuffing them all within the first few lines of your page, or just getting copy out there that the search engines read because people don’t read it anyway are exactly that, misconceptions.

SEO copywriting is and always has been about writing good quality content that’s focused on the reader and communicates with them in a conversational, simple to understand way.

Basically, the copy should always be written for the reader and not the search engines. Google or Bing aren’t going to come knocking on your door, credit card in hand, looking to buy your products or services so why write for them?

If you produce great content that entertains, educates and engages then customers will walk through your door because it shows that you ‘get it’.

Sadly, SEO copywriting has a long way to go before the myth of keyword stuffing is debunked for good. In fact, I was working on a web copy project recently for a client who, unbeknown to me, was working with some ‘marketing experts’ to get his business on track. He’d asked me to produce his web copy, which I duly did, focusing on the benefits and reader. After reviewing it and agreeing it, he then sent it to these ‘experts’ who came back saying ‘this is not SEO copywriting, there is no optimisation…’

Was I fuming or what?

After explaining once more about SEO copy and offering to send his ‘experts’ some information from Matt Cutts that backed up my work, they went quiet. It’s a shame, but that just goes to show how indoctrinated people are about SEO copywriting.

Over to you

I could bore for England on this subject, but rather than do that how about having your say?

Whether you’re a copywriter, marketer or business owner, what are your thoughts on this?

Leave a comment below, I’d love to hear your views.