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You might think copywriting and photography don’t share any common ground, but when it comes to small businesses managing their own marketing – they do.
Take copywriting for instance. I’m assuming if you can read this, you can also write. But there’s a world of difference between being able to just write … and writing effective copy.
Today, most people have mobile phones with built-in cameras. You might also be the proud owner of a digital camera. So yes, most of us can take photos, but we can’t call ourselves photographers.
I’d never thought about photography in the same light as copywriting until I attended a networking meeting a year or so ago. Bruce Boulton of Lantern Photography spent his minute introduction time showing a product picture which had been taken by his client. I was very impressed! It was a good picture.
Then Bruce followed it up with a photograph he’d taken of the same product. And that was the difference. His photograph was awesome … and quite stunning. There is clearly a world of difference between just taking pictures … and professional photography.
Copywriting is the same. And, like me with Bruce Boulton’s demonstration, you might not see the difference until you compare your writing to our copywriting. Much of our work is online content, which not only calls for good writing skills, but also a good understanding of SEO. It’s important to use the right words, in the right places, and in the right way.
Alison Smith has a beautiful holiday cottage near Portpatrick in Dumfries and Galloway. She recently asked us to rewrite some of her website copy to help her SEO and improve the visitor experience. This is what she said …
“Now I know why you’re a copywriter and I’m not.”
Small businesses have a difficult decision to make when it comes to buying services like copywriting and photography. They often feel they can’t afford to spend the money.
On the other hand, there are times when you have to take into account the difference between price and cost.
If you spend days trying to write your own copy when you could be earning money doing what you do best, it will cost you a lot more than using a professional copywriter. A piece of writing which might take you days can be done in hours by someone with skill and experience. If you write your copy and it doesn’t boost your website ranking and your sales, that will cost you money too.
If your business sells a product online, then professional photography is essential. You need to consider how many sales will be lost because your product images don’t have that all-important WOW factor.
So while it’s sometimes difficult to justify the cost of outsourcing something you feel you can do yourself, weigh up the benefits. If your budget is limited, think about doing it in stages. For example, you can choose the most important pages of your website and have those properly written first. As time goes on, you can work on the rest of your site. Select the most important products for your photography campaign and work on those first.
When it comes to choosing a copywriter, a photographer, or anyone else offering professional services, do your homework. There are as many second-rate writers and photographers as there are dodgy builders. So don’t base your decision just on price … check them out first. Take references and find the right person for you.
And finally, remember while photography and copywriting have a lot in common, there is a big difference between price and cost.
If I had a £5 for every time someone said, “I don’t want a lot written – it’ll only take five minutes”, I would be rich. The fact is no copywriter will attempt to write something as important as marketing copy in a few minutes. If they profess to … I would seriously doubt their professionalism and standard of work.
Long copy or short copy?
Many people assume it takes a lot longer to write 500 words than it does to write 50 words. Wrong! It is much easier to write 500 words on a given subject than to summarise that message into 50.
Try it for yourself: write a twenty word sentence and then try to say exactly the same thing in four or five words.
Writing short copy needs economical use of words, command of the language and a great deal of skill. It’s not something you can do in five minutes.
The copywriting process
Before starting writing, your copywriter needs to understand your business. That takes time. If you engage your copywriter on an ongoing basis, they will of course become knowledgeable about you and your company, which speeds up this part of the process.
Your writer will also have to be briefed. They must understand the ‘proposition’. For example: they need to know the purpose of the copy, how and where it will be used, and who your target market is. That takes more time.
With that information under their belt, your copywriter will move into the planning stage. Everyone works in different ways. Some writers will plan the copy on paper or make a list of the main points perhaps, while others map it out mentally. Time-consuming research is often needed too. How are we doing for time? Is that five minutes up yet?
The next stage is actually writing the draft copy. While an average typist will have a typing speed of around 40 words a minute, remember this is a copy typing rate. It does not allow for the creativity and time needed to craft powerful copy.
Once the draft copy has been written, it must be printed and checked. The copywriter will check every word carefully to make sure it is correct, accurate and is delivering the right message. Here at WORD-right, the copy is always checked by two different people. That’s because when you try to proof something you’ve written yourself, you only see what you think you’ve written, not what is actually there. Is the time up yet?
Next, the copywriter has to compose the email to you, attach the file and send it – OK that bit doesn’t take long!
Now it’s over to you: the client. You might want some revisions. So the copywriter goes back over the copy, ‘tweaks’ it, and the printing and checking stages are done all over again.
So even if you just want a short bit of copy, can you really expect anyone to do all that in five minutes?
We had an interesting conversation this morning in the WORD-right copywriting office after David McCarthy spent some time trying to find someone online. This person is an accountant with her own practice. He found her website, but no mention of her name anywhere online.
A staggering number of people who provide professional services don’t actually use their name on their websites. Instead, they hide behind an anonymous company name. In my opinion, this is a big mistake, because people search online for people.
You are much more memorable than your company. That’s because you are a real person! If for example, you’ve met someone at a networking meeting, they are much more likely to remember your name is John Smith and you’re a marketing consultant, than trying to remember something like JMS Associates.
If someone recommends your services, the chances are they’ll say something like, “Speak to John Smith – he’s really good. I don’t remember his company name, but you’ll find him online” Now if John Smith can’t be found online, he might be losing valuable opportunities.
We regularly see traffic on our website or our blog from people searching for others – perhaps their name is at the bottom of a testimonial or they have been mentioned in our blog. Yet they don’t have a presence on their own website – they are invisible!
So if you run a small service business and you want referrals, make sure people can find you. Get your name on your website,and on sites like LinkedIn and make it easy for people to contact you.
Google your name now and again and if you’re not there do something about it – make sure you’re not the Invisible Man (or woman).
The correct use of a capital letter is something almost guaranteed to tie someone’s knickers in a knot. Capitals are missed out where they should be used, and used in abundance where they shouldn’t.
So if capital letters are your stumbling block, here’s an explanation which might help …
Capital letters at the start of sentences
The first word in a sentence must start with a capital letter. That’s not just because we’re picky copywriters, it actually serves a purpose. The capital letter helps people to scan read the information. It helps identify where a new sentence starts. That way, we can understand what we’re reading. Without the capital letter, all the sentences appear to run into each other and you end up with gobbledegook.
Proper nouns
No matter where it is used in a sentence, a proper noun should always be started with capital letter. If you’re unsure, a proper noun might be someone’s name or the name of a place. For example: Fred and Thelma live in Manchester. Fred, Thelma, and Manchester are proper nouns.
Using a capital at the start of someone’s name is about recognition and respect. We are all unique and individual, so to omit the capital suggests that person is like all the other Freds or Thelmas in the world.
Proper nouns are used when describing something specific. For example: if we write about the British Government, the word ‘Government’ is describing a specific establishment, so it needs a capital letter. However if we were to write about governments in general
... ‘and governments today are expressing concern about …’
we wouldn’t use a capital G. That’s because we are not referring to a specific government.
The personal pronoun – I
If you’re writing about yourself, the word ‘I’ should always be a capital. Sadly, text speak is creeping into our language and all too often people don’t bother. That might be OK among friends, but if you’re writing for your business, it looks sloppy. If you’d like more information about the importance of avoiding ‘text speak’, check out our earlier post on the subject.
Abbreviations
Capital letters are always used in abbreviations: BBC, AA, RAC, etc. But just to muddy the water, this does depend on the abbreviation.
For example: MiDAS stands for ‘Minibus Driver Awareness Training. The letter ‘i’ is not a capital because it is the second letter of the word ‘minibus’. It has been used to make the abbreviation more user-friendly. Because the ‘i’ doesn’t stand for a separate word, it doesn’t warrant a capital letter.
Capital letters in titles
If you’re writing the title of a book, or a TV programme perhaps, these should always be capitalised.
However, if you’re writing for something like a website or a brochure, you might want to include headlines or titles in your copy. You have a number of different options here. Rather than re-inventing the wheel, why not take a look at our earlier post which explains which is the best way to use capital letters in titles and why.
Capital letters and search engine optimisation
In today’s world, everyone wants to get their website on the first page of Google. And a frequent mistake is using capital letters on keywords in the hopes it will help. Sorry folks … it won’t. Google and the rest of its search engine cronies won’t score you extra points for popping in unnecessary capital letters.
Instead, using capital letters on random keywords on your website might do more harm than good. The search engines won’t care one way or another. But doing this actually makes it harder for your human visitors to read what you’ve written. Again, you’ll find out why on our earlier post.
So if this has helped you un-knot your capital knickers , don’t forget to leave a comment below.
If you’ve ever heard the term ‘content marketing’ and wondered what it’s all about … read on. Content marketing isn’t rocket science but it does reap rewards.
Trends change in marketing as they do in everything else. Terminology changes too, which can be confusing. How do you find your way through the endless maze of marketing jargon … inbound marketing, outbound marketing, relationship marketing and even such incomprehensible terms as ‘Nano Campaigning’ and ‘Horizontal Integration’?
Content marketing has its share of aliases too: article marketing, customer publishing, branded content, etc, etc, etc. Whatever it’s called, you can be sure the days of high pressure, foot-in-the-door sales techniques are long gone. Today’s customers are more informed and
sophisticated – they might want to buy, but they don’t want to be sold to.
Content marketing is a popular online strategy and its simple name sums it up perfectly … writing content which is published online. It is an effective and proven way of increasing sales. With statistics showing as many as 80 – 90% of people research online before making a buying decision, it isn’t hard to see why content marketing is so effective.
Content marketing isn’t about selling. It is about informing and (much as I hate the word) ‘empowering’ your prospective customers. Tell them what they want to know, give them the information to help them make decisions, answer their questions, and you are more likely to make the sale.
By writing informed articles about your product or service, you boost your credibility. You also increase your ‘internet footprint’, which in turn helps your website’s SEO (search engine optimisation). The more you work at your content marketing, the more awareness you create.
As I said earlier, content marketing isn’t a thinly disguised sales pitch. Writing ‘how to’ or ‘about’ articles is powerful. Fun articles attract a lot of interest – we all like to be entertained. Banbury solicitors Brethertons, published a very amusing article in December about why eating mince pies on Christmas Day is illegal. It received hundreds of hits and was circulated widely on social media channels.
One company which uses content marketing to great effect is Simply LED in Milton Keynes. The company, which sells LED bulbs, publishes regular articles on every aspect of LED technology. Posts on the Simply LED blog include facts, uses for LEDs, how to install them, and their use in domestic and commercial applications, to name but a few.
The company has made itself an authority on the subject of LEDs without any sales pitches or ‘buy now’ calls to action. They even write about LED applications and products they don’t actually sell, simply because they know their prospective customers want the information.
Simply LED has invested heavily in its content marketing. As a result, the company dominates the front page on Google on LED-related searches. This in turn drives traffic to their website and online shop .
So give it a go, and think about what can you write about today to kick start your company’s content marketing.
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