Remember, Remember the 1st of April!

On 1st April, ReadCopy will have been on Twitter for a year; to celebrate we will be tweeting tips every hour on that day.

If you follow just a few of these tips, we will guarantee that your copywriting will be improved and you will be able to generate more website visitors, more readers reading your copy and a higher conversion rate.  This will equal more sales!

To join in the fun, get yourself to Twitter and start following us: http://www.twitter.com/readcopy

Twitter Countdown

Countdown to our Twitter marathon; this is probably one of the most intense copywriting tweeting sessions ever on Twitter.

We will tweet at least one copywriting tip every hour on 1st April to celebrate the fact that we will have been on twitter for 12 months, and this is our birthday present to all you wonderful people that follow us.

If you would like to follow us to get all these great tweets (they will not be available via our blog or website) then just point your browser to http://www.twitter.com/readcopy

People aren’t buying!|

It happens to the best of businesses; you’ve created a website, you didn’t ask a copywriter to help you but you managed to put the copy together on your pages yourself.

Let’s imagine you sell cars, you did everything you knew you needed to tell your website visitors:

  • You have been in business for 8 years
  • You have a large range of stock
  • Open 7 days a week
  • You’re the best

It looks OK, but what would your customers make of it?

  • You have been in business for 8 years – so what!
  • You have a large range of stock – so do all car lots!
  • Open 7 days a week – so do most car lots!
  • You’re the best – all car salesmen say this!

You haven’t answered any of the questions that your visitors want to know; more importantly, you haven’t answered the single most important question!

Why should they buy from you and not your competitors!

If you had engaged with a good copywriter from the start, they would have worked out this information when they started to work with you, then they could have crafted the best copy that will actually sell your services!

This is your Proposition; and it must be available for people to read on whatever literature you write, it will help people to decide that they should buy from you rather than someone else!


 

The Happy Copywriter

We don’t want to give you the illusion that copywriters are a gloomy lot; in fact most copywriters we know are very happy souls.
The important point is that copy written for either websites, newsletters, sales or marketing literature need to be upbeat and positive.  Writing in a negative viewpoint is a huge ‘turn-off’ for the reader and will mean that you promote yourself, your business, products or services poorly.

You might not mean to write in a negative fashion, but it could accidentally come out in your writing really easily.

Here’s a small series of examples:

Many people write “Don’t forget” in their copy; this is a negative term, its fair better to write “Remember”.
“Don’t delay” is negative.  “Buy now” is positive.
“You’ll get your money back if you’re not satisfied” is negative.  “Your satisfaction is guaranteed with our money back offer.” is positive.

We’re sure you can see from these small examples that positive writing is much better than negative writing.

So how do you write in a happy manner!

Training, knowledge and experience in copywriting helps, you could try to simply put yourself in a happy place before you start to write.
Write with a smile on your face and you are much more likely to write happier, positive copy; which in turn will help you engage with your readers more, helping you sell more!

Be happy, be a happy copywriter.

SEO Copywriting plays a critical role on getting more sales!

Everybody in business should now know that in order to make your business even more successful you need to be online, not only that, but you also need to be found by your potential customers.

Hopefully, everyone also knows that in order to be found online, you MUST adopt an SEO strategy for your website, this will allow you to rank higher on the major search engines (i.e.  Google, Yahoo and Bing etc).  These are the places that your potential customers will try to find your business online; and if they don’t find you, they’ll find your competitors!

However, now you are reading this, you might be able to steal the edge over your competitors, because we are going to tell you about SEO Copywriting and how that can help you succeed!

SEO Copywriting
SEO Copywriting is a writing style that has been developed to attract search engines to your webpages; the better you attract search engines the more traffic (visitors) you’ll receive, the more traffic you get, the higher your chance of selling more!

BUT SEO Copywriting is more important than that, probably more important than attracting search engines a good SEO Copywriter will write great copy that is attractive and engaging for your visitors, improving your chance of converting them to customers.

So it becomes important to optimise for search engines and visitors, a skill that many SEO companies just do not have, but with ReadCopy you can rest assured that your pages are safe with us, and we will write copy that search engines will love and so will your visitors.

Working with Web Designers!

We have started to get some ad hoc work with another web designer!

We love working with the technical community and know that together we can provide clients with a great looking website and fantastic search engine optimised copy.

If you’re a web designer and you are looking for a copywriter to work with you, then get in touch with ReadCopy (hello@readcopy.com); we can show you plenty of examples of copy we have written for websites; so you can rest assured that we will write only the best for your clients.

Writing and golf!

I’m reminded of an incident a long time ago when I was a young marketing manager, and we had a client offer to pay for a deluxe golfing trip for us; when I got offered a place I had to explain that I had never swung a golf club and wouldn’t be any use to the party.

My director understood; I didn’t have the skills for the task at hand, so I would be wasting my time and the businesses!

The problem is that many business owners and marketers don’t have much experience in writing or haven’t been formally trained in writing or copywriting, so like my experience with golf – they don’t have the skills needed for the task; but it’s incredible that unlike playing a sport, we are all expected to be able to do it, even if it isn’t the best thing for the business!

Makes you think doesn’t it!

It's all about them!

We had a sales letter some though the letterbox yesterday and I just want to point out one major problem with the way that they wrote their letter, this one problem put us off buying from them instantly and will also put off your prospects if you send the same type of thing out!

  • Always ensure that you talk about your prospect more than you talk about yourself or your business!
  • I don’t care how long you have been established, where you’re based, who your directors are, it’s all about YOU!  What about ME?  Your prospect!  Talk about what you can do for me!
  • As a quick rule of thumb, always ensure that you use “You”, “Your” etc more than you use “Us”, “I” and “We”.
  • This will help you write the message that your prospects want to read!
  • If you find this difficult, then do what we do and start with the word “You” and hopefully inspiration will flow.

If you are really struggling writing those sales letters, then get in touch with us and we'll do the hard work for you!

 

Googles Farmer/Panda

We have been asked by a few clients why the new Google algorithm has affected some websites in the US (it’s going to be rolled out soon to everywhere else).

Our answer is simple, Google Farmer/Panda update simply targets low quality websites, it ranks sites on the quality that they provide their visitors and if this is deemed to be low – then the site will appear lower in search engine rankings.

Google’s Matt Cutts (and others) have discussed what they have done and why on various websites, and it appears that they class a site as being low quality when:

  • The website does not have enough content to be useful to visitors (or shallow content)
  • The website has poorly written content (typos/grammatical errors etc)
  • The content of the website has been copied from other sites (usually content farms)
  • The content of the website is generally not useful.

With Google's latest update, having well-written, unique content on your site will help gain better rankings in future, something ReadCopy has been forecasting for sometime now!

How to write for websites

I’m sure all the readers of this blog understand that writing for print is entirely different from writing for websites!

But we do sometimes get asked "what is content writing" and how does it differ to any other type of writing!

So for those of you that want to know, where is the answer:

  • You need to make content short – visitors want to quickly read what you want to say then move on
  • It needs to be scannable so that it can be read quicker (consider using bullets or bold text to help)
  • Be direct – don’t be fluffy with your marketing – tell (and sell) it as it is.

Use website content to:

  • Answer visitor’s questions or concerns about your company, products or services.
  • Use a common language rather than your business-speak or made up words.

Or get us to write for you: http://www.readcopy.com/seo%20copywriting.shtml

Four rules of Copywriting

After talking to absolutely loads of clients since we launch ReadCopy, it’s been interesting to learn what the general view has been of copywriting specifically, but even more important to hear what people generally think about writing, from this we have compiled these FOUR key rules that need to be followed when you write just about anything!

1. Understand what you need to say – OK, you might think that this goes without saying, but tons of ‘writers’ out there still have no idea what they should or want to write about.
Even when they have a topic that they know they should be writing about, they rarely really understand what they need to say.

Understand your topic completely, really get under the skin of what you need to say; EVERY business, product and service reduces a pain that exists within your market somewhere, to promote it successfully you need to completely understand what that pains means to them, understand completely how you can take that pain away from them.
As an example, we obviously offer a copywriting services! But providing great words is only part of the pain a business might have, they also want to be certain that a) we will have a good turnaround on their work, b) it will as they want it first time with little need for rewriting/editing and c) whatever we will write will work!
To this end we are able to show who and what we have done in the past, the clients we have worked with (and continue to) go some way to showing that we fast, reliable and write successful copy!

How do you prove your skills are removing the pain from your prospects?

2. Talk to people, not at them! – interact with your readers, don’t just have a one way interaction with them on the page.

Here’s an example: “How often do you brush your teeth in a day?”
Now whether you wanted to or not, almost all of you would have thought of the answer as you read that question; amazingly through the medium of copy, we are interacting with you and getting you to participate!

We may go one to ask other questions about oral hygiene to get you thinking, and pretty soon you’ll come to realise that brushing at least twice a day is good for you.
That’s a better way to develop your copy and gain acceptance than just stating “Brush at least twice a day.”

3. If you can’t write, hire someone who can – writing is a skill, writing compelling copy is a massive skill.
We can all write, but can we all write exciting, creative and compelling copy that will lead your readers to take the action you want them to take?

The short answer is ‘No’; if you don’t have the skills then hire a copywriters to do your writing for you; copywriting are cost-effective and allow you to get on with managing your business!

4. Find your tone and stick to it – personality is really important when you write, you need to ensure that your copy is written in a consistent manner throughout, if you change your styles several times you’ll confuse your audience and lose your message completely.

Follow these four simple rules to improve your writing.

Google loves Copywriters

It’s true you know, Google is madly in love with us copywriters. You want proof?

Googles own editorial guidelines tell you that Google loves fresh content; it loves to see a website growing by the addition of well written, information rich copy.

This is what copywriters do best; they can create unique copy for your site that keeps you active and alive within Google’s search results, meaning that in turn, you get more website visitors.

If you want Google to love you too, then consider ReadCopy (www.readcopy.com) for your website copy, or simply write great, new copy for your site yourself.

Don’t shoot the copywriters!

This is just a reminder from all the copywriters out there to remind you of one simple fact: copywriters copy CAN help you generate interest in what you have to sell and actually help the sales process; but often we don’t get involved with the entire sales and marketing process, so our words can only go so far!

What we ask is that you allow us to work with you to help you understand the context of the copy that is been created!

So if for example we create a sales letter for you, think about the response mechanism!

Will you want potential customers to contact you via phone or visit your website?
If it's via phone, who is going to answer the calls? Do they know how to sell, are you confident in their sales skills?
If it’s a website response then is the landing page written in such a way to help your conversion rates?

If we write the landing page for you, what is your sales funnel and checkout process like? We can help you with all this.

Even before you have sent out the sales letter or email, are you sending it to a list of good prospects, are you sending it at the best time for them?

Is your proposition the very best it can be?

Copywriting IS important in the sales process, but so are many other factors; please engage with us and share information with us as early as possible!

As well as great wordsmiths, ReadCopy have some 15 years of experience in sales and marketing – so you know you can trust us to help you make your campaign the very best that it can be.