Social Media Copywriter

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! 

"I’m a freelance copywriter in my spare time, and have been for 20 years.  For the last few months I’ve been in a rut, feeling generally uninspired and just plain wondering if I’m just any good at this.  Marketing is continually evolving, the social media thing can be overwhelming, clients expect miracles—you’ve been there, I’m sure.   Anyway, stumbling upon your site today I actually felt excited about what I do.  The passion you have for writing jumps off the page.  I used to feel that same passion and thought it had left me.  Now I know for sure it’s still there."

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…

Part of a professional copywriter's job is keeping up with the other pieces of marketing, not just the copywriting. That means delving into information like MarketingSherpa's new Wisdom 2010 report, 34 pages of stories from the marketing trenches on everything from social media to email marketing to search to...you get the idea.

The words I write as a freelance copywriter don't stand alone. They have a context, whether in a website or an email or a brochure or a press release. And they might not even work if they're not targeted to the right audience and delivered in the right way.

So all of us freelance copywriters have an obligation to stay current, not just catchy. For me, I'm paying more attention to social media. I've been working as a blog copywriter for almost two years now, but there's more to adjusting to social media. I'm looking at how I can provide content as a copywriter that fits this new paradigm of Facebook and LinkedIn and Twitter. Or if I even do! Does socia media require a professional copywriter to be effective? I don't know yet! I know it takes a blog copywriter to create quality blog content at the right frequency. :-) But as far as the rest of it, I do not know yet.

It's also interesting to see an increase in requests for script writing. Video is definitely on the rise! And kudos to the companies that realize a good video still requires a good, professionally written, script! 

Even if you're not a freelance copywriter or professional copywriter, take a look at the Wisdom 2010 report. We can get too isolated sometimes, too caught up in the marketing efforts we're embroiled in at our own companies. It's good to get a fresh perspective and start taking a new approach to marketing, including copywriting. :-) 

 

As a freelance copywriter who helps out clients with small business marketing, I am constantly on the lookout for new information to pass along to copywriting clients, especially as social media takes center stage.

I'm already pushing blogs as marketing tools, but these days I'm looking out for nuggets on Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter, trying to wrap my head around how these tools can be put to use for small business marketing.

So this article of using Facebook for your small business caught my eye when someone retweeted it, but it's more of the same: talking about the how, but not the why, and definitely not about the "how to make money" part of the how.

I'm a copywriter, yes. Words are my business. Web writing is my business. Email copywriting is my business. But I also owe it to my copywriting clients to be up to speed on other marketing channels, so I can make sure my work as freelance copywriter fits with their other marketing efforts.

What small business folks lack more than anything are time and money. What they need more than anything is sound advice.

And that doesn't mean telling them how to set up a Facebook page, and to make sure they have lots of friends and family to get to follow them. That means telling them how to make money, how to market their business and convert prospects to customers using Facebook.

But sadly that means looking beneath the surface of the shiny new thing that is Facebook. And articles like this only encourage more small business folks to jump on the Facebook bandwagon, wasting precious time on a tool they don't know how to use let alone necessarily need.

Am I simply grumpy because I didn't get to ride my horse today? Or am I grumpy because I too am a small business owner and I wants facts, not Facebook.
 

This Seattle copywriter is finally updating the We Know Words web site. It's a running joke that I need to hire a website copywriter to keep the web site maintained! But a pleasant lull in the copywriting business is making the update doable.

Part of the update is simplifying the site since I now rely more on blogs as marketing tools. (More on that in my next blog.) But I as a copywriter have a tendency to get a little fond of copy. As a result, I'm posting an article on email newsletters here since it's being deleted off the copywriting web site. It's an oldie but goodie and maybe a bit unusal to spot here since I've become such an evangelist for blogs as marketing tools. Why would I be encouraging the use of email newsletters? Granted they are not necessarily the best choice for small business marketing, but for the right size business, and right business, email newsletters are still great for marketing, even in an age of social media. Enough explaining, here's the article...

Market with email newsletters
Perhaps the hardest part of marketing is to keep doing it. The irony is, this is also one of the most important. One contact with a potential customer is less effective than repeated contacts over time. We also live in a world of skepticism and doubt, a world where trust matters more than price when people make buying decisions.

To market effectively, you need to establish and nurture a relationship with a prospect. Ditto for existing customers: Once someone has bought from you, don't assume she'll be back someday. You must stay in touch with her on a regular basis so she'll think of you next time she's ready to buy, and possibly refer you to others in the meantime.

So how do you stay in touch with your past, present and potential customers on a regular basis? E-newsletters. An e-newsletter is perhaps the most effective and cost-effective way to build and maintain relationships that earn their trust. And trust is crucial to sales.

E-newsletters reinforce your other marketing efforts too by:

·         Driving traffic to your Web site through links and special offers.

·         Establishing credibility and positioning your business as a leader and resource.

·         Improving your search engine rankings: Archiving the newsletters on your Web site adds to your content, and search engines love good content!

So why are we suggesting email rather than print? It's cheaper than printing and mailing a hardcopy version, for one thing. Plus you don't know if a snail-mailed newsletter even gets read or if it goes straight into the recycling bin. With an emailed newsletter, you can know right away how many people opened it and even how many clicked on a URL to go to your Web site. Email marketing also gets a higher response rate than direct mail: 10-15% compared to 1-2%.

Of course, as with all good marketing, your results depend on doing your e-newsletter correctly. Newsletters that are infrequent, boring, purely promotional, or sent to people who didn't ask to hear from you only harm your marketing efforts. But do your email newsletter right, and you will reap the rewards of that ongoing contact as you build relationships, earn trust…and make sales.

Earlier this week, this freelance copywriter spent the day on the Seattle waterfront at Market to the Max. As always happens at these marketing conferences, my brain went into overdrive with blogging topics! Here’s the first…

During a (disappointing) panel on getting results from social media, I heard one insightful statement: Large companies can use social media to have small conversations. (Social media meaning blogging, social networking like Facebook, Twitter, etc.)

And that’s one more advantage small business marketing has that too few small business owners take advantage of. If you’re small business blogging, you’re already having small conversations. And you’re uniquely positioned to do so. The CEO of a major corporation might blog (or seem to blog using a ghost blogger), but you’re not going to walk into his factory and meet him in person.

But if it’s Michael at Kona Kai or Harpreet at Punjab Sweets, guess what? You are going to meet them in person when you walk into their place of business.

Part of the appeal of spending your money with a small business is knowing the owner and/or staff. There’s a real relationship there, one that can grow and be nurtured via small business blogging.

Small business blogging also enables you to tell stories that engage, to keep people up-to-date on your business and events, to even turn customers into evangelists when they can share your content.

I’m not sold on other social media tools for small business marketing. But I’m definitely sold on small business blogging.

Another (also disappointing) panel on blogging made me aware of how much confusion there is about why to use blogs as marketing tools, especially for small business blogging. More on that in this copywriter’s next blog…

I’m experimenting this year. No, not with my hair or my clothes or my cooking. With my networking. I’m going to try networking primarily online this year, rather than in person.

I’ve spent the past eight years involved with a variety of networking groups, including BNI, my local chamber, the PSAMA, and particularly the Seattle Direct Marketing Association (SDMA). In fact, I was an SDMA board member for four years and was president two years ago. I love networking, and that’s how I’ve marketed my copywriting business since starting We Know Words back in 2000. I love meeting new people, I love talking to strangers, I love learning about the marketing challenges others face and thinking up ideas for helping them.

But as someone who doubles as a copywriter and a marketing maven, I also have an obligation to my clients to be as up-to-speed on new marketing trends as I possibly can be. And that means not just knowing about them, but using them too.

Clients have moved beyond asking me about copywriting topics like email copywriting and SEO writing. Now they ask me about blogs as marketing tools, Twitter, Facebook, wikis and other Web 2.0 and social networking tools. I’ve dipped my toes into the social media waters, but haven’t plunged in completely. The only way I can do that is to market online vs. in person.

As my friend Joe pointed out yesterday, marketing in person is a lot more fun! Yes, that closet full of Ann Taylor clothes might get a little dusty. But in order to stay useful as a copywriter who is also a resource for her clients, this copywriter is reading up on Twitter, blog carnivals, blog pinging and more. Using blogs as marketing tools also is akin to SEO writing: You have to follow all the same principles of keyword rich content and frequency of updates to make it work.

The irony is, like the We Know Words copywriting Web site, when I get busy with copywriting clients, it’s my Web site, my blog, my marketing that gets pushed to the side. Not this year, however!

Have you switched from in person to online networking? If so, I’d love to hear about it. Either post a comment here, or email me at sharon@weknowwords.com.

Today I got a fun email from a company that normally sends me a fairly dry email newsletter. The timing was perfect. Even though I’m primarily a copywriter, it’s my job to know about many aspects of marketing, especially up and coming trends. I’d been thinking on all the case studies and whitepapers I read about social networking that apply to B2C marketing, but was wondering how well the approach will work for B2B.

Then I get the “Can Water Cut It?” email from Flow International with a link to a video featuring Flow Man and asking the question “Can Water Cut a Titanium Golf Club?” Flow makes industrial strength water jets that can cut anything. See the video at http://www.canwatercutit.com. You can also watch them cut a cell phone and a blender.

The videos are tongue in cheek and deliberately amateurish and the approach works. I just watched them with my 10-year-old and her friend and they were impressed. But more importantly, the manufacturer with extreme cutting needs is going to be blown away watching these! And watch them he or she will because they are fun, not “work.” Compare cutting up a coworker’s annoying cell phone to watching a dry online demo!

As soon as I got the email, I contacted Doug at Flow. Doug said they started the videos after attending the Online Marketing Summit in Seattle (where I ran into Doug!). And the videos are working. Flow is starting slow with a gradual introduction but they’ve already gotten leads from the videos!

On the site they let people like us submit ideas for things to cut. And people are! Doug says, “We've already received a bundle of interesting ideas on what people would like to see cut (for example, plasma TVs to laptops to boulders to bread).”

Just this morning I read an article about integrating email and social media. Flow’s “Can Water Cut It?” videos are a perfect example of doing just that.

Kudos to Flow for figuring out how to harness social networking and video for marketing an industrial product in a B2B marketplace!

OK, back to copywriting on a rainy Seattle afternoon… 

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?

Last week this Seattle copywriter went to the Online Marketing Summit in Seattle. Although most of the information was stuff I already knew, I took notes and had about eight blog post ideas jotted down, prompted by the day’s presentations. I was delighted to have so much blog fodder, knowing I could post every day for a few days and have sweet Sarah, my Client Success Manager at Compendium Blogware (whose job it is to keep the bloggers blogging!), praising me for my blogging frequency. But alas, I lost my notes! And I don’t lose things! Especially anything related to copywriting. Frustrating!

One thing I remember though: Although the Online Marketing Summit is, of course, focused on online marketing meaning anything from email marketing to web usability, there were two recurring themes I noticed throughout the day:

1) Social media: Again and again presenters either framed their talks around social media, or the attendees asked questions related to it.

2) Face to face: Several times I heard people say something akin to “nothing can replace in-person, face-to-face communication.”

Do you notice those two themes go together? When companies are using social media to market, they are able to act more like they are marketing in person. Think blogs as marketing tools, where you have a real person doing the talking, not a generic, faceless company. Or the segmentation that can be done with email marketing: Your marketing can be very targeted and specific to an audience, making them feel like you are talking just to them. How about User Generated Content (UGC) where the users are creating the content for you, as real people talking to your audience “face-to-face”?

Perhaps most exciting is how doable this is for small business marketing. From small business email marketing to small business blogging, this Seattle copywriter sees plenty of opportunities.
 

Just something to think about… Meanwhile, I’ve ransacked all my recycling bins and my car and my purse, but I remain convinced those notes are around here somewhere. And ransacking my brain isn’t helping: I’m coming up empty, trying to remember all my great blog ideas!