Internet Copywriter

Is business slow? Maybe now is the time to figure out where your website needs improvement…and do it, before the economy picks up and you get busy again.

Websites prove the age-old adage, “Out of sight, out of mind.” That’s why horrid sites stay that way—we don’t see them, we don’t do anything about them.

Bad sites don’t sell. Bad sites don’t do anything but make you look bad. Can you live with that?

Now, when business is slow, is the time to take a good, hard look at your website and figure out how to make it better…so it makes you money.

Very few websites are the best they can be, or even close to being decent. I’ve been a website copywriter for 13 years. I’ve seen some pretty bad websites.

And I’ve developed a low-cost method for assessing websites and recommending simple changes that can add up to big improvement. I call them website assessments. Not a glamorous name, yet a fitting one, because the report I give clients is straightforward and easy to act upon.

If you’d like to take advantage of this downtime to improve your website, hire me for a website assessment. I’ll review your website. Then I’ll give you a written report and roadmap for improving it as your time and budget allow. Implement all of the suggestions or only a few. Change it yourself or hire someone else to. As long as you do something.

Most of these changes will be basic because people go online to find information, not to be impressed with fancy graphics. There also basic because my experience is that of a website copywriter, not designer. I’ll also give you suggestions for ranking better in the search engines, so people find your site.

When you hire this website copywriter to review your site, here’s what I’ll do:

• I’ll interview you to figure out your target audience and their perceived problems.
• I’ll figure out why they go to your site, how they get there, and what they want to do when they get there.
• I’ll listen as you tell me what you want them to do there.
• I’ll assess your website based on all this information to see how well your website is doing its job.
• I’ll present you with a detailed report outlining recommendations for improving your site to make it a better information and sales tool.

A website assessment costs just $500 for up to seven web pages. A measly $500 for a detailed reporting that spells out what you can do to improve your website as a marketing tool. Best of all, with your assessment in hand, you can make the changes whenever you want, as your time and budget allow.

The recession will end. The economy will pick up. And customers will be back. Be ready to be busy by making your website better now while you have time.

Take it from this website copywriter: Your website has to be good, otherwise you’re missing out on opportunities…especially if you’re not even getting found on the Internet in the first place!

And when the economy does pick up again, the better your website works, the faster you’ll recover from this recession!

To see other assessment I’ve done, to ask questions, or to get started, call 206.459.8225 or email Sharon@weknowwords.com.

Although I see my role as a professional copywriter shifting as the world shifts more towards social media, taking me from Copy Writer to Copy Coach, I predict, I'm paying attention to social media, and have been for a while. 

I get Facebook and LinkedIn and, of course, blogging, since I teach people to use blogs as marketing tools.

But Twitter I continue to struggle to understand. For some businesses, it makes perfect sense. Or else, they've figured out how to make perfect use of it.

Take the Liquor Barn for example. I love their tweets! http://twitter.com/liquorbarn Every day they have a Drink 4Cast 4 2Day that's a drink suggestion tied to some historical event, or celebrity birthday, or anything noteworthy of the day. For example, the Earth Day drink forecast was for Rain Vodka.

These are clever, like little bits of trivia. They don't tell you "come to our store" so they are what I call indirect marketing, a bit of feel good that gives warm fuzzies and builds brand.

Is your online copywriter or company doing something clever with Twitter? Do tell! Post a comment! 

In an SEO newsletter the other day, I read the Twitter question of the week regarding how often should one blog. The answers were all over the place because...

It's the wrong question! 

How often one should blog depends on one's blogging goals. Even as a professional copywriter who ghost blogs for clients, I blog with different frequency depending on their goals.

Below are some of the blogging goals I've come across as a freelance copywriter. Figure out which ones applies to your blog, then you'll know how frequently to blog: 

Blog Goal #1--Internet marketing via SEO: If you're blogging to get found in search engines, then first off I'm assuming you have a great list of targeted keywords picked out. But that's not what this copywriter blog is about, so we'll just leave it at that. As far as frequency, you must blog frequently to win searches. You want to be found in Google? You'd better be blogging at least once a day, preferably more often. The more general (and popular) your keywords, the more often you must blog. For some companies this will even mean hundreds of (very short) blog posts PER WEEK. I'm not kidding. This is not simply blogging. It is Internet marketing, and like all types of marketing, you have to put something in to get something out. In this case, your time.

Blog Goal #2--Thought leadership: You're probably doing this to market yourself, not your company. If you want to build a reputation among your peers, your customers, your friends, you don't have to blog as often, and your blogs will be longer and more meaningful than those of the person pounding them out for SEO. You can blog as frequently or infrequently as you want, because it will be the content that matters, not the keyword usage.

Blog Goal #3--Meaningful blogs that also work for SEO: This is my favorite kind of goal as a ghost blogger, because the content should have real value but it also includes keywords for SEO. If this is your goal, you're less concerned with search engine results, so you don't need the frequency of hundreds of posts per week...but you still need some frequency. As a professional copywriter who ghost blogs for clients, I do one post per day for this goal, as keyword rich as I can make it and as meaningful too.

Obviously if you're using blogs as marketing tools your goals might be a mix of all these. And if you're blogging for other reasons, like to write a book, and not to blog, this copywriter blog post is irrelevant. :-) But I hope this helps you realize that when asking how often to blog, that's the wrong question to ask first. The question to ask first is, "What do I want to accomplish by blogging?" 
 

I’ve heard this question from several small business owners lately: “Why have a Facebook page for my business?” As I re-evaluate what I do as a professional copywriter in the age of social media, i.e. the age of user generated content, where the customers create the copy, not the copywriter, I see my role shifting from Copy Writer to Copy Coach. So I take this social media marketing stuff very seriously!

To answer the question of “why,” I made some notes which you’ll find below. If you have anything to add, definitely post a comment! That is social media!

It’s Web 2.0, user generated content (UGC)…people want to talk back to you, and they want to talk to each other about you. Now that is their expectation, that they will be able to. And Facebook enables that.

It’s free.

It works for B2C companies with loyal customers who want to be engaged by the brands they believe in. If you have a ho hum product or service no one gets excited about, a Facebook page is likely a waste of time.

Facebook pages show up in search results, so it can help with your SEO and getting found when people search online.

You can have a vanity URL that’s easy to share and direct people too, like www.facebook.com/yourcompanyname.

Facebook (and Twitter) icons are now commonplace on websites and in emails, encouraging people to fan (or follow) your company. This is still new enough that people will.

For a small business, a Facebook page can replace a website. You can do all the marketing you want via your Facebook page, even solicit email signups. The only thing it can’t do is online transactions (i.e. letting customers buy from you).

If you go this route, your Facebook page is far easier to maintain and update than a website, and you don’t need to pay for hosting.

You can engage prospects and customers in a way you simply can’t with a website or even a blog.

It’s automatically viral. When someone becomes a fan, that shows up on their profile page. And they can easily invite others to be fans. Imagine someone doing anything like that with your website! It’s inconceivable.

Facebook integrates seamlessly with Twitter and blogging. I don’t want to turn this into a “why use Twitter,” but there is an SEO benefit to using Twitter, and when you have your tweets integrated with your Facebook page, you are updating your Facebook page without effort.

I also don’t want to turn this into a “why use blogs for Internet marketing,” but there are several benefits to blogging, among them SEO and credibility. And, like tweeting, your blog can be automatically posted to your Facebook page, keeping content fresh.

Maybe Facebook is going to become a bigger and more important marketing tool than websites. Facebook can be where you engage, build relationships with customers, and market. Your website might only be where business done, downloaded, bought and sold.

Your customers are on Facebook. It’s the third largest “country” in the world in “population.” That’s how many people use Facebook. In the age of social media marketing, guess what? You follow them. You go where the customers are. And the customers are on Facebook.

Still not convinced? Watch this short video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sIFYPQjYhv8.

And by then I hope the question is: “Why not have a Facebook page for my business?”

Need a Copy Coach to help you get started? Sharon@weknowwords.com standing by…

Just read an article by a very respected SEO copywriter talking about Title tags. If you do any SEO copywriting, or you work with your SEO copywriter, you’ll know the Title tag is a critical part of your search engine optimization (SEO).

(If you don’t know, read a quick tutorial I just wrote for another blog here: http://smallbusinessblogging.wordpress.com/2009/10/02/small-business-blogging-for-internet-marketing-why-your-title-is-soooooo-key/.)

Normally I really respect this SEO copywriter’s opinion, and, knowing how important Title tags are I was excited to read this article to make sure I know everything I need to to be a kick ass Website copywriter…but in this case, I was disappointed in her advice because in all honesty I think she’s just a wee bit wrong.

Why? Because she talked about including the company name in the Title tag. I disagree, unless your business is well known and people are searching specifically for YOU (meaning your business). Even still, if that’s the case, does your company name belong in the Title tag?

People use search engines like Google to solve problems. The problem might be they need a new keyboard for their laptop, or they’re searching for a new horse, or they’re researching an arch pain in their foot…there are likely as many problems to be solved as there are Internet searchers!

But your Title tag has to match their search in order to work. That means the keywords in your Title tag must match the keywords they’re typing into the Google search box.

Is searching for We Know Words solving a problem? Only if the problem is they are looking for my copywriting company specifically. But if that’s the case, they probably already know to go to weknowwords.com. More likely they are searching for a freelance copywriter, or a Seattle copywriter, or a Website copywriter, or an SEO copywriter…meaning they don’t know they want to hire me, Sharon, as their copywriter, they only know they need to find a copywriter.

Including the words “We Know Words” in my Title tags would be a complete waste of space.

I agree with the author that Title tags are so important and I’m glad she’s talking about them. But too many people will likely follow that SEO copywriter’s expert advice and waste precious SEO real estate with company names that don’t belong. L

You can market your business on the Internet without being or using an online copywriter. Use press releases  and an online press room. And here’s how, in an article written a couple of years ago by Marina Parr, when she worked for We Know Words as a copywriter. It’s great advice for anyone with a Web site who wants to improve their SEO! So here it is again…

Who needs on online press room? You do. But the reasons go beyond reaching the media and gaining coverage in next day's newspaper. These days a press room is just as much a "customer room" as it is a place aimed at journalists. Build one correctly, and you're able to use online press releases to tell your company's story directly to whoever is searching on the Web, boosting your credibility with both media and your potential customers. And with customers shopping online for everything from flowers to shoes to cars to enterprise management systems, they are just as likely to end up researching you at your press room as the reporter at the local paper.

Fact is, your online press room's real power is in boosting your visibility on the Web, a cluttered place where search engines crawl through content everyday looking for new, updated information. It's the kind of information that you can naturally add to your press room through online press releases, recent articles and awards, and much more without using and online copywriter or SEO copywriter. So not only are you telling your story to Wesiteb visitors and journalists alike, but your press room's fresh, search engine friendly content is helping people find you in the first place by using press releases for SEO.

An online press room, at its heart, is all about you. It's your best chance to use online press releases to tell your story from all angles, whether it's facts and figures, photos and bios, or logos and slogans. Configure it correctly and fresh content will build your web presence, help the media "get it right" when writing about you and help you connect directly with customers who may not have been looking for you in particular, but will be glad they found you! And you'll be glad to find out you can achieve that kind of SEO without using an online copywriter.

Now that you're convinced you'd benefit from online press releases and a press room, here are nine tips to help you build one relatively quickly and painlessly (really).

Nine tips for building an online press room that builds your online presence

Tip 1: Consider your online press room as an extended About Us page. This is your opportunity to present facts and figures-from when you started your business to where you're located to how many people you employ. It's also a place to flesh out your company's philosophy, give kudos to key employees, note awards you've won and post articles that have been written about you-or in some cases, for you.

Tip 2: You can pump up your online presence further by using press releases for SEO, sprinkling keywords that people naturally search on into the online press release copy you post. It's a simple way to boost your search engine rankings-and get found.

Tip 3: And when you suddenly have a story to tell, your press room positions you to communicate directly with the media, giving journalists instant access to critical information about your company. In addition to being used in online press releases, that information can be boiled down into two to three sentences for journalists to copy and paste into their own stories with little editing. It makes it that much easier for you to help the news media define who you are, rather than them defining you.

Tip 4: Even though you're using press releases for SEO, this is still online PR. Make sure your press room includes all the ingredients the media needs to write and report their stories. That means including key contact information--both email addresses and phone numbers--so reporters on a deadline can reach the right people right away. Also be sure to include a corporate bio and include basic data, including when the company was founded, the number of employees, location, gross annual revenue and other objective, background information that can be dropped into a story.

Tip 5: Think in terms of pictures when thinking about online PR. Nothing tells your story better than pictures that add a human element. So be sure to include photos of founders, directors and other key players. It also helps to have a jpg of your logo, as well as a scenic shot of your operations. Again, you help shape your story by providing reporters with the photos you choose.

Tip 6: Both in your online press releases and your press room, offer easy-to-find links to other information customers or reporters might be looking for: information about the company and its principals, information about your product or service such as product sheets or case studies, recent articles written about your company, etc. An online press room has to be straightforward and not overly salesy. Reporters will spot the hard sell and click away, and so will regular customers who happen to wander into the press room, either on purpose or by chance.

Tip 7: To use press releases for SEO, regularly create online press releases and submit them via an online service like PR Newswire. Or simply add them to your site as separate pages, and link to them from your press room. Regularly can be just twice a year, if necessary, just make sure it's regular (keeping in mind that they more frequently you update content on your Web site, the happier the search engines will be with you). And even if you don't spend the money to submit them online, still add them to your Web site. It shows both prospects and search engines that you keep your site current. After all, these days your online press releases about getting covered in the New York Times; as they're about telling your story to a potential customer as much as to a journalist.

Tip 8: Include a descriptive sentence or two with links to your online press releases, so journalists and regular folks know what they're clicking on. Too many press rooms provide long lists of press releases without enough supporting information telling someone why they should click on a link and what they'll find if they do. Without that summary information, visitors won't bother to click-and you miss the chance to enhance how you're viewed and written about.

Tip 9: Don't treat your online press room as a last-minute afterthought. Think of it instead as a portal to the rest of your Web site-and your company's credibility. Your press room can be-and should be-one of your most information rich, keyword loaded, always changing sections of your Web site. Your press room is also your opportunity to provide visitors a more personal look at you, your employees and your company. And because people don't always enter Web sites through the home page, prospects searching online for information might find your online press room first. So make the most of it by giving it plenty of your attention.

In short, your online press room is really a full view of you and your company, as well as a tool for SEO. Think of yourself in front of the dressing room mirror and take advantage of every angle-from the pictures you post to the articles to the press releases you use for SEO to a three-sentence corporate summary that can be quickly copied and pasted. You're in charge of how you present yourself…and how you get found online in the first place. The power is in your hands. Use it!

And if you find that this sounds too hard and you do want to hire an online copywriter or SEO copywriter to help, go for it. That or use blogs as marketing tools instead!

A few months ago, I roughed out the text because I was getting quite a few questions about small business blogging from fellow small business owners. This is by no means a definitive guide, but someone suggested this morning that I post it to my own blog, so here it is:

Why do you want to start small business blogging?

First, be clear on your goals. I hope you are small business blogging for three reasons:

1. Search engine optimization
2. Thought leadership
3. Relating to customers

What will your small business blog be about?

Second, decide what your focus will be. What the heck are you going to blog about? What can you talk about that other people might not be? What topic gets you excited and would be easy for you to write about? For example, my friend with an Indian restaurant wants to blog. Possible “themes” for her blog are: vegetarianism, Indian culture, running a small family-owned business, having an ethnic restaurant in a redneck town, cooking, Indian food, recipes, being a single mom running a restaurant, food allergies, etc.

Another example is my local florist. I’m trying to get her to start small business blogging because she’s very online marketing savvy when it comes to pay-per-click, but less so for SEO. I’m also trying to get her to blog because she’s so knowledgeable and well-respected and she could be even more so. I’d love to see her write a blog as the florist expert, offering advice like when to start choosing the flowers for your wedding, seasonal suggestions for wedding flowers, plants as corporate gifts, catering advice, maybe she talks about her favorite catering venues. She could talk about the price of flowers as impacted by gas prices, how to keep flowers fresh, etc. I see it as “advice” oriented.

Or consider my small business blog: Although I’m primarily a Seattle copywriter, my real passion is marketing, and my beliefs about being customer-centric. (Stated at the top of my blog: helping people talk to customers not at them.) My goal with my small business blogging is to get people thinking a little differently about marketing, while still using keywords that are helping my blog get found for copywriting. In the future, I’ll be doing more consulting and speaking, so my keywords will shift, but the blog’s theme will stay the same. So on the other hand, my goal is also to get people thinking about me in a certain way.

Your small business blog title

Third: Decide on the title of your blog. Make sure it reflects your blog’s focus, but also your keywords if you’re small business blogging for SEO. For example, when I started a blog for an email marketing agency, I chose “Email Marketing ROI” for the title, so the URL included those words. (It now has a different name.) And that was the theme of the blog: improving email marketing ROI by providing useful information.

Set a small business blogging schedule

Fourth, set a schedule for small business blogging and adhere to it. Blog at least two times a week, but if you want search engine results, do it more often. I have a Task in Outlook that pops up a reminder for me every Tuesday and Thursday. In that task list is a running list of topic ideas (more on that later). If you have produced an email newsletter or another publication, you know you have a production calendar to stick with. Think of your blog the same way.

Round up the bloggers

Fifth, consider having more than one person at your company blog. It doesn’t have to be the CEO or the marketer writing the blog. In fact, the best blog content might come from someone who works with customers every day, or on the shop floor. The first person would have insight into customer concerns, and the other into production. Both would produce great blog content that an executive or marketer might not think of.

Be clear on your keywords

Sixth: If you’re blogging for SEO purposes, determine your keywords. Use a free keyword research tool like SEO Book (http://tools.seobook.com/keyword-tools/seobook/) or Google Adwords (https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal), or maybe you already know your keywords you want to win? Then look at how competitive the search landscape is for the terms you want to use. Remember, more specific keywords won’t be used by as many people, but they’ll get you found by the smaller group of people who are a more targeted audience for you. The less often you plan on blogging, the fewer keywords you’ll be able to use enough to compete. But come with 4 or so keyword phrases. Long-tail keyword searches seem to do well in blogs. Keep this list in mind every time you blog and use your keywords, in a post title and in the post itself. I usually write a blog post, then go back and sprinkle in a keyword or tool. And I admit it, I don’t focus on the SEO part enough sometimes because I get caught up in the topic. J

Do you want editorial control?

Seventh, think about editorial control: If more than one person will be small business blogging, do you want administrative control so content is reviewed before it goes live? Will someone be proofreading blog content before it gets posted?

Developing your voice

Eight: When you first start, you don’t necessarily have to post those initial blogs. Just write them in a Word document first, or even on paper. You’ll want to write a few to get your voice, a sense of how you want to come across. But do be yourself, do be natural and a real person.

Coming up with topics

Now the “hard” part (not really): small business blogging!! The biggest hurdle for people seems to be topics. What will we blog about? If after reading this you still don’t know what you’ll blog about, let me know…

Keep a running list of topic ideas. Then when it’s time to blog, use one of the ideas (then make sure you delete it from your list!). If you have a recurring task in Outlook, like I do, you keep your list there. Then when Outlook pings you, you’ve got your idea list right in front of you. But once you start blogging, you’ll start seeing topics all around you. I use one of the topics on my list maybe every 3^rd or 4^th time because something will have happened that prompts a blog post in the mean time.

Look for ideas in the newspaper, trade magazines, in other blog posts. I even get ideas from the radio and from conversations.

I haven’t done this yet, but try and use photos sometimes. Not cheesy ones though, don’t include photos just for the sake of photos. Or clip art, ugh! But real photos of real people, like your staff or your customers. Videos too…

I saw a blog that copied and pasted in press releases verbatim. I wouldn’t recommend this because search engines hate duplicated content. It’s better to blog on the press release and link to it. And if your company creates press releases and posts them online (and you should!), write a summary of the press release in your blog and link to it.

Link to other sources. If you read a blog that makes a good point, write your own blog post with your take on it, and link to the original blog. Ditto for online news articles, video clips, etc. You can link to anything. Consider subscribing to a couple of email newsletters or other blogs just to get your own thought processes going. Your reactions to what you read are also valid blog content.

Link to studies and reports that are released. Some bloggers are the filter for their readers, helping their readers find important information without having to look for it.

Talk about what’s going on with your business: Are you going to be at a tradeshow? Will there be live music at your tavern? Are you moving?

Be creative in thinking about what content will be interesting. Like my business is a copywriting agency, but I don’t tell people how to be copywriters. I try to help people be better marketers. If you owned a coffee shop, you wouldn’t necessarily blog on your coffee shop, that would get boring fast, but you could blog on the coffee industry perhaps, because you could still use your keywords.

Include customer testimonials with an introduction, maybe “We received a great email from Susan Smith about her new vacuum, and just have to share it with you…”

Never forget that small business blogging is about being real. You could even include a recipe! Say you had a staff potluck and Joe’s potato salad was a huge hit. Talk about the party and include Joe’s recipe.

Please don’t post just to post. I have a friend that does that because his only concern is SEO, and that means he’s putting a lot of useless stuff out on the Internet. L I want subscribers to my blog, and if I did that, just posted blogs based on keywords, subscribers wouldn’t stay very long because I wouldn’t be providing useful information!

That’s my start on blogging basics. Please, please let me know if it was helpful or not by commenting!!

If you already know how to harness the technology, this program will teach you how to choose one marketing tool over another based on sound business principles. If you're still completely oblivious about how best to put email marketing, blogging, SEO, web analytics and more to work, then here's your chance for an overview that won't help you master all these online marketing tools, but will help you know enough to make sound marketing decisions.

A program like this is great for people already working in marketing, and I'm so glad they started it! But we still need to be teaching interactive marketing at the college level too. I wonder how long until that happens?

I was just on a web page looking up the root of a word and I saw an ad for weight loss. No surprise there. But the ad must have been for surgery because the image in the ad was of internal organs. I assume the stomach, I don’t know the human innards very well. And my reaction? Gross! What in the world are they selling!

Well, they’re not selling what the customer is buying! They are selling weight loss surgery, but the customer is buying weight loss. The best image to have there is one of a skinny person, silly advertiser! Sure, you use surgery to achieve the weight loss, so that’s what you’re selling. But that makes for a bad ad no matter how good your online copywriter.

Think about it…

You are selling mattresses but your customer is buying a good night’s sleep.

You are selling small business blogging software but your customer is buying search engine optimization.

You are selling sports cars but your customer is buying status.

Before you do any copywriting, blogging, small business email marketing, anything, make sure you get out of your head and into your customer’s: What is she really truly buying from you? Sell that!

Right now, answer the question: What is your customer really buying?

And about that word I was researching? Sure enough the words smite and smitten are related. This Seattle copywriter thinks that’s pretty funny!

The landing page.

It is fast becoming the bane of this Seattle copywriter’s existence.

It’s such a simple thing in a way, the page a prospect lands on after clicking on a pay-per-click ad or after getting an email promotion.

So why am I complaining?

Well, it could be my ex is bugging the heck out of me right now so I’m in a pissy mood, but I suspect it has more to do with the ignorance around landing pages. Too many marketers go about them all wrong. I run into this all the time as the online copywriter responsible for developing landing page content: What the We Know Words team can do in copywriting is limited by so many other landing page factors over which we have no control…but over which I try and exert some influence, albeit futilely.

But I’m not going to blog on how to make your landing pages right because that’d be a looooonngggg blog, and because a great little guide from Pardot will put you on the right path. Go to Pardot’s web site and get it at http://www.pardot.com/company/white-papers/landing-page-conversions.html. It’s just a primer, but surprisingly, the basics it covers are just the very basics I find myself arguing about with copywriting clients all the time.

Even if you think you are a landing page rock star, get it and give your current landing page approach a quick checkup.

Now, to put my ex in his place…kidding!!! I’m holding back, I promise.

My head is swimming with blog topics this week, all around email. First I went to the StrongMail email marketing conference Monday morning, then yesterday downloaded a fantastic report from MarketingSherpa on common email newsletter mistakes. So bear with me, but there are so many topics to take on…and so many seem like they’d be no brainers but I see our copywriting clients make email mistakes all the time.

Heavy on my mind right now is how many times marketers forget to make use of their non marketing emails. For example, I’ show the Welcome email can be the most often read email. So after someone subscribes to your email newsletter, for example, you’d send them a welcome email. But are you using it to reinforce your voice and brand? To remind them of all the benefits they’re going to get as a subscriber? To confirm for them that they made a smart choice when they handed over their email address? Or is your welcome email (if you’re using one, and you should be) generic and dry and dull?

Another missed opportunity is the transactional email. For example, yesterday I posted a press release (about our upcoming talk on online press releases) at PR Web, and received just a straightforward, boring confirmation that thanks me twice and has the order details in it:

Dear Sharon,

Thank you for your recent order of $80.00 with PRWeb.

Order Summary

Invoice/Tracking Number: xxxxxxxxx

Date Paid: February 05, 2008

Payment type: Credit Card (Visa)

Paid to: PRWeb

Order Details:

- PRWeb Press Release - $80.00

Order Total: $80.00

Again, thank you for your order.

Sincerely,

PRWeb Staff

Excuse me, but that’s it? I just spent 80 bucks on this, and yeah, I want a receipt, but how about something more? Something like:

Dear Sharon,

Thank you for entrusting your news to one of the Internet’s most popular press release distribution sites. After the release date (noted below), be sure to keep an eye on the useful metrics so you can track how well your press release is doing. And if you have any questions, don’t hesitate to contact us at ….

Then give me the order details. (And can we just outlaw the word "sincerely"? There are so many other wonderful ways to sign off!)

That’s not so hard, is it? To be a bit human and to reinforce their marketing message?

Heavy sigh. It happened again. Someone called to have us rewrite their Web site and of course they think their site is pretty good, they like the copywriting on it, it just needs a little touching up, because they’re going through a rebranding, etc., etc. So I go to their site and see that not only the copywriting is bad, the design sucks, the navigation is clunky, and I’m on the fourth page before I can even figure out what this company sells!

Web writing like that can only come from one place: in house.

If you think you’ll save money on copywriting by developing Web content in house, you might be right in the short term, but you’re wrong in the long term. Because the writing won’t be as customer-oriented or as good as that written by an outsourced, objective and expert Web writer. And that means you’ll lose potential customers—and therefore revenue—over time.

The adage is true: You never get a second chance to make a good first impression. And on the Internet, you have what, three seconds to make that first impression. Your Web site is also your virtual sales force. There isn’t anyone standing behind that prospect pointing out the information missing from the site, helping the hapless Web site visitor through poor navigation, or compensating for sucky design. Your Web site is all alone. So it has to work extra hard. And that means having the right message delivered in the right way…right away.

So make sure your Web writing rocks from the start.