Web Writing

"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."

Sigh...

Why is it people think anyone can be a copywriter? I just did a rush job as a website copywriter trying to save a project for a poor soul with hardly any budget or time. She had been sucked into what I think sounds like a shifty web designer deal. He hired some friend of his to write her website. She didn't like the copy. She turned to me in desperation, with little money and a hard due date of today.

I deleted 90% of the crap I was given that the supposed freelance "copywriter" had done. It wasn't poorly written. It wasn't wrong. But it wasn't doing its job. This guy had gone off on some tangents that while potentially helpful information to a prospect later in the sales cycle were totally irrelevant and useless as far as the website's job: marketing this person.

Not only did I delete most of the thousands of words, I completely redid the sitemap. None of the copy made sense, none of it, not even the structure.

In only seven hours, I did the best I could and the client now thinks I'm a goddess. (I even did some basic SEO, but very little.) But it's not going in my freelance copywriter portfolio because I know how much better it would be if I'd had the time. And this woman has to move forward with a "good enough" website, having wasted money on the schlep.

Too many freelance writers pass themselves off as freelance copy writers. They think because they can write, they can write copy. And people seem too accepting of whatever their writer gives them. So we get literally millions of bad websites, poorly written direct mail, spam instead of email copywriting, ads that do nothing but take up space in a magazine...I could go on and on.

The best copywriter is the copywriter who knows marketing as well as she knows words. And she knows her strengths. I am strong as a:
 

• Website copywriter
• Email copywriter
• Whitepaper writer
• Case study writer
• Newslettter writer

I do not do, because I don't know how to do:
 

• Script writing
• Speech writing
• Presentations (OK, I can do these, I just don't want to)
• True journalism
• Catalog copywriting
• Those convoluted direct mail pieces that have letters and postcards and...

I know my strengths, I know my limitations, and I'm honest about both. Every professional copywriter should be.

People, if you are hiring a freelance copywriter, be picky! Don't assume simply because they say they are a copywriter that they are. Ask for proof. Don't be afraid to question the samples you're given. Expect more.

This is your marketing, your branding, your voice, your reputation. Do you want the best copywriter for the job? Or any ol' freelancer with a laptop?

 

Web writing can be a tricky business for a professional copywriter: You're never quite sure what you're going to be working with for a design, sitemap, clarity of message...I wrote my first website in 1997, if you can believe it, way before I even knew what a professional copywriter was! And in the 13 (gulp) years since then, I don't think I've done two website copywriting projects that were the same.

I really like what we were just able to do for Contract Controllers, a CPA firm, and this was a first for me: They had a set template and sitemap for me to work with, because of the company doing their site. But they were smart enough to know that even with a design that wasn't one-of-a-kind, their message better be! 

So they called me in as their professional copywriter. (Am I being self serving here? Probably, but this blog really is about them!)

They were great to work with, and the project went smoothly for this website copywriter. But I give them kudos for recognizing the need to stand out, to have a unique message.

I was a little frustrated with the company putting together the site because they wouldn't let us use unique Title tags (critical for SEO!). And certain elements couldn't be changed. But for the most part as the freelance website copywriter, I'm a happy camper because Contract Controllers got a decent looking site that tells their story.

See the site at http://www.contractcontrollers.com.

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.
 

I just got off a conference call for a new website copywriter project. I call these kickoff calls, and I warn my new copywriting clients that they will be answering a lot of questions during such a call. That's because of my mantra about talking to customers, not at them. The only way I as the freelance copywriter can truly write to the customer is by understanding where the customer is coming from, his pain points and challenges, her worldview.

During the past hour, I didn't ask a single question about the services provided by my web writing client. I only asked about their customers. And in doing so, I learned about the services offered...from the customer's point of view. That's exactly what I want, as the copywriter, to tell my client's story from the point of the customer.

And it was a great call because more than once I'd ask a question and the client would pause, say, "That's a great question!" then give me a very thoughtful and insightful answer...because they had to think about it! That tells me it's good info for me, as the copywriter!

Talking to your customers, not at them. It's not hard. It's just different. And effective.

Last week as part of our 12 days of Christmas festivities, I took my daughter and her friend to the Washington State History Museum and then to dinner at the Old Spaghetti Factory. We got to the restaurant early, before 5:00 even, but because it was the holiday break, there was already a wait for a table.

The hostess said 10 minutes but sat us in less than five. The two girls were both surprised and impressed! Plus we got a table in the trolley when the hostess had only replied “maybe” when we requested it.

That shows the power of under promising and over delivering. And the power of the experience. Our dining experience started out on a positive note, and even if things had gone wrong from that point forward, our attitude was bound to be good and our meal enjoyable.

The hostess could easily have said, “Oh, it will just be a couple of minutes.” But the restaurant gained an emotional advantage when she said 10.

The girls were still talking about this when we walked to the car after dinner. Their reaction made such an impression on me, I’ve been looking for a copywriting lesson to pull from this. This approach works in marketing and sales, but in copywriting?

As a freelance Seattle copywriter, I try to under promise and over deliver on projects, meaning I often over-estimate the amount of time I think a project will take (and therefore the amount of the final bill), then I happily get the project done in less time and delight my clients with a bill under budget. (This doesn’t happen every time! But I finally after 9 years of doing this learned it’s easier to over estimate and charge less than the opposite!)

But when it comes to the actual copywriter end product--the website, email, direct mail postcard, ghost blog, whitepaper or press release--how does a copywriter under promise and over deliver, and should I?

I do cringe when clients ask me for copywriting that promises the moon and I suspect they can’t deliver it.

Alternatively if someone can offer the moon but I as the copywriter don’t tell prospects that, we likely won’t get their attention in the first place, meaning what we deliver is irrelevant.

On the other hand, I’m relentless at times, hounding clients to give me a moon to promise. I recently worked as a Web site copywriter for a client with a wonderful story to tell…and they reined me back in copywriting wise again and again and again.

I don’t have the answer. I know I don’t like to get less than I expect when I spend my money. And I often do! I’m delighted when I get more than I expect, which happens on occasion. But the sad thing is, I’m delighted when I get just what I expect because I’m so used to the over promise, under deliver that seems prevalent today.

Does that mean my clients must promise the moon…and then deliver even more than that? That would certainly wow the new customers and turn them into lifelong fans. But is it possible?

I don’t have the answer. Only a fond memory of two young ladies learning the power of the under promise, over deliver approach.

Because I detest updating my Web site, being a copywriter, not an html guru, I don't put recent copywriting samples up on it. I told myself I would start blogging on projects as I completed them instead, so at least somewhere online, this copywriter would be showing off her prowess with samples.

It's December 28 as I type this copwriter blog, and I think I maybe blogged on recent copywriting projects um...twice?? This year I resolve to do better! And not only because potential clients need to be able to see my work and the types of companies I work for, but because they might learn from seeing these samples too. Or not. Maybe blogging on my copywriter projects is purely self serving! 

This project took a while to go live when my Website copywriter role was over, so I was delighted to see it finally. In those cases, I often have forgotten what I wrote by the time I see the finished product, so it's a pleasant treat to see the Website copywriting with fresh eyes and think, "hey, that's pretty good!"

The Website is www.maxsampartners.com and the challenges were unique. I didn't have to worry about keywords and SEO, but I had a very restrictive template to work within, which dictated not only the word count for each section and page, but the character counts even! Seriously, headings, captions, text, bulleted lists...every section had a set character count to work with.

It was a totally different Website copywriter experience for me as a result, and fun! Fun trying to make sure I was getting the core marketing messages across while still being compelling and interesting and all within a tight space.

And as much as I love being an SEO copywriter, it was nice to take a break from keywords and thinking on all that stuff.

Here’s another analogy for proving marketing is like dating: Think of personal ads. Why? Because words can woo.

Even with online dating sites like Match.com, you don’t rely solely on the photos. Heck, plenty of people (mostly men for some reason) don’t even put up photos. The words still matter. You read someone’s profile and decide if it resonates with you or not.

Let’s take search engines and search results as an example…

Like your personal ad, you can write these to say anything you want, as long as they also have the search terms you want to get found for. The goal of this search result is first, to get found, and second, to get someone to click through and go to your site, for this copy to resonate with the prospect. You don’t get to use any pictures, so it’s like the personal ads of old, when people put their ads in newspapers.

Now think of the search result someone gets when searching on Google, using the We Know Words copywriting Website as our example. Type Seattle copywriter into Google and sure enough, We Know Words is on the first page (under that horrid local search map, gads I hate those things!).

What people get for a search result is the title tag and description I’ve written for a particular page on the We Know Words Website. In my case, this is really bad, I don’t know that it would resonate with anyone, honestly…  

Marketing writer - Seattle copywriter portfolio of web writing and ...

Copywriting portfolio of ads, brochures, case studies, datasheets, emails, Web content and more showcases the singular talents of the marketing writers at ...

But besides the fact that this Seattle copywriter is maybe acting like the cobbler whose children have no shoes, my advice is still sound. J Have your copywriter, whether freelance or in-house, write your website copy, brochure copy, email copywriting, whatever it is, as if she were copywriting a personal ad.

If I were to rewrite my title tag and description as a personal ad, keeping in mind that I have to achieve both search engine optimization (SEO) and conversion (getting people to click on the link and go to my site), I could do it as:

Marketing writer - Seattle copywriter portfolio of web writing and ...

Searching for a stellar freelance Seattle copywriter? See complete portfolio of print copywriting, email copywriting, Web copywriting and more.

I want to keep marketing writer in the Title tag, because it ranks well in Google, but I’m pushing Seattle copywriter as a keyword a bit more so it’s in there twice now. That’s my SEO. But I also made it more action oriented.

OK, maybe not the best example of having your copywriter write marketing ads, but like the cobbler, this copywriter has to get some client work done! No more indulging in blogging for now!