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Out of ideas and out of the market

Wednesday, December 15th, 2010
Steve Kellas

Steve Kellas teaches web copywriting to businesses across the UK

You were a copywriting machine. Even though you had lots of other work in your marketing department, you figured that surely you’d be able to pull together the copy regularly. Your newsletter, or blog, or Twitter feed started out with gusto. You had your 3 articles to publish each month in your newsletter, you posted twice a week on your blog, you Tweeted like @chrisbrogan. Heck, you even had a calendar to follow.

And then it happened. You went silent.

It was small at first. You felt a little twinge of anxiety opening Twitter. You had nothing to say. No biggie, you skipped your Tweets for the day and went back to business.

Then a week went by and you’ve been too busy to blog. No worries. You’ll blog next week.

After 3 or 4 months of newsletters going out regularly, you suddenly ran out of content to email to your list. You felt like you were repeating yourself.

You need professional help

I have seen this happen time and again to busy marketers who felt they could keep up. And you can, for a while. But, eventually something else takes your attention away. You start to fall behind. Then, before you know it, your company is virtually silent online, and you’re out of the market against your more prolific competitors.

This is where the professional writer – the copywriter – can really be your best asset. Here are 5 reasons you need one:

  1. Your copy will be professionally written: Sorry, but if you’re not a copywriter, you’re not going to do a great job. You just don’t have a way with words like a pro does. It’s nothing personal. I’m not good at sculpture and mechanical things. So I pay someone else to be good at those things for me.
  2. Costs less than doing nothing at all: Your marketing works really hard, so why let it suffer by going silent after all that work? Or worse, losing customers because they stop receiving things when they expect them (newsletters, blog posts) and figure you’ve shut down?
  3. When you get busy, they keep writing: This might be obvious, but if you’re paying someone to do a service for you, they keep doing it until you stop paying. So, even if you go on holiday to Mallorca, your newsletter content will be written, your blogs will go up, and your customers will still get what they have come to expect – good content from your business on a regular basis.
  4. You don’t have to come up with all the ideas: Even though we copywriters do occasionally get ‘writer’s block’, we know what to do to get out of it. You probably haven’t had the experience too many times, so it’s harder to get un-stuck. We can help you in the ideas department. In fact, many of us thrive on coming up with ideas.
  5. Scalable content: you don’t have worry about succeeding. There. I said it. If your blog becomes popular, and you find that you should be publishing more frequently, then having someone who can ramp up with it is a great asset. After all, you are already really busy doing your marketing job.

Are you struggling to keep up?

Maybe it’s time you allocated a small portion of your budget and delegate the task of copywriting to a pro.

We’d like to help. Get in touch

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Posted in Blog Copywriting, Copywriting Services, EMail Copywriting, Social Media, web copywriter | No Comments »

Let’s Bring the Oscar to the Prom – How Not to Follow Friday

Monday, October 18th, 2010

Lira Leirner is the Social Media Consultant for Big Star Content

I’m an advocate for bringing Follow Friday back to basics. Tweets should be excellent SEO copywriting, Social Media marketing and communication in 140 characters, never a list of incoherent names. Let’s remember what the ‘Eff Eff’ of Twitter is meant to be all about.

As one of twitter’s most beloved traditions, similar to what the prom is to a Hollywood high school, the tradition and original concept has never been about popularity but about celebrating the end of the year – or at least the beginning of a new one. However, realistically, it IS about popularity. Twitter has slipped into a bad place regarding Follow Friday.

Tradition on Twitter

First of all, let me tell or remind you what “Follow Friday” is traditionally. It’s about suggesting Tweeple because you like their tweets and think others will too. It’s a little weekly prize, if you will. It’s a call-out for those whom you feel have contributed to the Twitter community in a fun, informative and enjoyable way, that week or in general. This means that you should suggest Tweeple based on their activity ON TWITTER.

Who deserves an Oscar and why?

Furthermore, in the same way as when you are actually giving out a prize or acknowledgment, it’s not just a name. Continuing with the theme of Hollywood, imagine the Oscars being merely a list of names of the winners, not explaining what film or role or position or even category it was that made the Oscar winners special enough to take home that much loved golden metal man. Without the build up, without the competition and most importantly, without the actual acknowledgement for each single one within their own time frame the whole occasion just wouldn’t be as valuable or special as it is. Obvious, right? This means that when you think someone is worthy of a call-out, you should actually write the reason for that honour and give each suggestion a whole tweet and make it poignant. There’s a reason they won that position. Tell your followers why that call-out is worthy of your weekly prize! And why they should follow whom you suggest.

Unlike the Oscar or the high school prom Follow Friday happens every week, not just once a year. That means it doesn’t have to be a three-hour long fest covering every imaginable category. Imagine having an Oscar ceremony every week! How very boring, time consuming, and even worse – repetitive. Keep it to a manageable 3-5 suggestions per Friday, each week suggesting someone different unless you REALLY like someone.

What Follow Friday is not about

When you look at your Twitter timeline on a Friday, preferably during lunch time, it looks like you’ve landed in a heap of autumn leaves. One can’t see the good trees aka tweeple from all the names that are listed and keep coming, randomly placed next to each other in a stream of tweets. It diminishes the fun, honour and genuine suggestion that Follow Friday is meant to be. So, in order to bring that back, please stop doing the following:

  • creating general lists of names to follow
  • clogging up the timeline with hundreds of Tweeple names all crammed into several tweets
  • suggesting Tweeple you want to please
  • suggesting your friends who are never on Twitter just because they’re your friends
  • suggesting your friends who are on twitter too much just because they’re your friends. Either they clog up everyone’s time line or they only talk in private providing nothing of interest to a new follower
  • suggesting the top ten random Tweeple who re-tweeted you even if they’re semi-spam
  • suggesting Tweeple you feel sorry for
  • suggesting Tweeple because they suggested you (just thank them instead)
  • and in some very bad cases, suggesting Tweeple who asked you to suggest them!
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3 facts that prove you need a UK copywriter who knows social media

Monday, September 27th, 2010

Lira Leirner is the Social Media Consultant for Big Star Content

This week I came across three pieces of information that made it crystal clear why the skills of a good UK copywriter in conjunction with sound social media knowledge is of increasing vital importance to a business that wants to succeed.

1. English is the world’s primary language

Stephen Fry, a British national treasure, uncovered for me yet another fascinating fact to join the numerous ones he has already infused into my brain. Out of an estimated 6.5 billion people in the world, 4 billion speak English. That’s more than two thirds! This is particularly important online, as that’s where the world’s “prime language” really manifests itself.

What this means for you: No matter where you are in the world, if you want an effective online presence then your best investment is to utilise the skills of a talented UK copywriter for optimal exposure. A web copywriter who really knows the English language with all its twists and meanings so well that they can understand which idioms, sentence formation and choice of words apply to a certain audience and most importantly, represent your company best.

2. The World Wide Web is dead, long live the Internet

In a highly controversial and discussed graph, Wired Magazine proclaimed the above sentence. They pointed out a classic stream of use throughout the day which makes one realize that, yes, we do use applications more than their actual websites. For instance, I read Google reader instead of going on the respective blogs. I communicate through Facebook, Twitter and Skype and read the news on Twitter or the iPhone application of the respective news ‘papers’. If not shopping in person and often WHILST doing so, I browse on eBay, net-a-porter or Amazon applications. Even email seems to be slowly dying in my personal habit as I only employ it for work, as my little helper or to communicate with my (relatively) tech-savvy grandmother. However, even then I am usually accessing it via the iPhone application. I could go on but you get the picture.

This fact was disputed (read the article on Boing Boing outlining which numbers were accounted for and make sure to read the comments as well!). However, for a great majority of busy businessmen and businesswomen this argument is applicable.

What this means for you: The SEO copywriter in charge of your company’s online presence needs to understand how your target audience accesses the content you put out there. They also need to be able to incorporate this in the choice of platforms and their respective rules of conduct and content output when writing content for you. You should therefore choose a UK copywriter who brings with them the knowledge of not only the audience they write for, but also the platforms these audiences use the most.

3. The rise of social media

Being a social media consultant, I have to fight the urge to say “Doesn’t that speak for itself?” but instead I would like you to watch this short yet mind blowing clip that we have discussed on this blog before.

What this means for you: By hiring a UK copywriter who understands not just the English language but also your audience, the way they use content AND social media, you will get a far better ROI and a greater conversion of clicks into cash. If you are a budding copywriter already I hope I showed you how important it is to understand social media – have a look at our Writing for Social Media course for more information.

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How the Right Hash Tag can Make Your Campaign a Success

Friday, September 3rd, 2010

Lira Leirner is the Social Media Consultant for Big Star Content

Last time I talked about how the hash tag can make you a more elegant copywriter and help you create a context for your Social Media content without wasting unnecessary space from the limited 140 characters.

However, there are many other uses of hash tags. In fact, this is not an official Twitter shortcut such as the @, which directs the tweet at the user you place immediately after the symbol. No, it has been introduced by the users themselves and therefore merely relies on a code of conduct and general consensus. But since it is the users we care about, and not twitter, that’s actually quite important.

Once you understand your audience and who you’re talking to, coining a hash tag to promote a Social Media campaign is only one step away.

Hash tags tend to shift a little here and there in the beginning of their existence. Make sure you’re the first to create yours or understand which ones are trending in order to plug into the already established hash tag. At the beginning they may look like #health2eu, #HealthForTheEUParis, #HealthConferenceParisEU2 etc. The variations are of course endless. The shortest version, however, often tends to win the upper hand and more often than not, very quickly establishes itself. In the case of the Health 2.0 Europe conference in Paris, the trending hash tag turned out to be #health2eu.

Topic or Event

This is used to a great extent for conferences but is also usually the type of hash tag which holds the majority of positions in the top trending topics. There are some famous recurring trending hash tags such as #NowPlaying and #ff (Follow Friday, I’ll be discussing this in another article), which is used across the different cliques and ages of twitter. Much like the ‘voice’ of a group, each has their own recurring hash tag themes and topics. For example, in my own group I see a lot of #TodayIAmWearing, a hash tag and campaign coined by UK Vogue.

Event hash tags almost deserve their own category for being such a popular use of hash tags that it even prompted some useful tools to emerge. In many cases, the hash tag for a conference starts with the official announcement, for example #health2eu and start of the discussion. This can range from excited chatter to logistics questions to already full on discussions. Events tags are one of the few hash tags that are easily and very quickly established with a majority of consensus. To get the most out of a conference hash tag, use some of the following tools, which allow you to respond, chat and update as well as follow:

  • http://tweetchat.com/ This is an extremely useful application which gives you three options to choose from and facilitates the use of hash tags tenfold
  • http://tweetgrid.com/ Useful for when hash tags are not quite agreed upon yet – you can create a grid with a window for each variation of the hash tag allowing to follow them all at once.

Rules

  • Keep it short
  • Tweets are real time feeds – dates aren’t necessary. Not #WorkMeet2010 – #WorkMeet will do and means it can be used again later
  • Use uppercase letters for each new word
  • Don’t use spaces or symbols such as ‘&* etc, it will break the tag
  • Use proper grammar. Not #YoureCool but #YouAreCool since #You’reCool will look like #You

Handy #Tools

If you’re using the actual twitter page, you can see trending topics on your homepage on the right side. However, sometimes it is advisable to use some helpful tools

  • http://hashtags.org/ Where you can see the trends neatly displayed in a graph as well as an even neater layout listing the users, actual tweet and time
  • http://www.whatthetrend.com/ This is a great place to understand what those trending topics on the right actually mean or stand for – a useful tool when you’d like to join in but don’t understand what the deal is 100%. You want to know before you engage!
  • http://twubs.com/ Particularly useful to find grouped trending tags ranging from conferences to news to TV

Go ahead, try it! But don’t forget to actually engage within the content of the rest of the tweet, otherwise the hash tag is just a lonely signpost.

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The # tag user is a more elegant writer

Tuesday, August 24th, 2010

Lira Leirner, Social Media Consultant

Yesterday I had an intense conversation in which it transpired that we no longer look at content in its own right. When you are being shown a photo album, it comes with commentary rather than five further pictures that would explain the content.

When you go to an art gallery, there’s a description next to the painting rather than several other paintings telling you the story of the artist’s life. When you watch a play, you’ve read the program rather than having an actor talk you through the production background and credits.

Moreover, when you see something on its own, you are more likely to either bypass it or search for supporting information. Content, especially supporting content, is everywhere and no more so than on here, the empire in which Google rains and SEO purrs by its side like a tamed tiger. The hash tag is the beautiful and popular twin-sister of the content tag.

Imagine an empty white space with a big window and a broken piece of furniture, which you just so happen to walk past on the way to work. This can mean a lot. It can mean a shop has gone bankrupt, emptied the space but dropped that piece of furniture. It could mean there’s a new pop – up gallery that hasn’t finished constructing the space – hence, there are no descriptions, titles or tags. What if you looked twice and there it said “Waste of Space” at the bottom corner of the window? How about a scratched out “Wo-lw-rth-“ or in really obvious cases “Shop coming near you soon”. Would that be clearer? Maybe not, but it gives you a second layer of information to explain the situation with.

Now imagine a piece of content that has no reference to anything but itself. Imagine you’re working on your spread- sheets and an automated Social Media interface such as TweetDeck makes a little “ping” noise. You look up and there it is, between all the headers and questions and links. Just a plain little tweet statement that says, “Leaves are green”. What on earth is that twitterer trying to say? But then you see a hash tag, and it all makes sense. It could be #ObviousStatements, #ScienceIsWrong, #EnjoyingNature, #ItIsNotAutumnYet, #IAmBored, #ResearchingPaint – anything. But it will make the tweet a lot clearer without disrupting the copywriting itself in any way.

Make the most of your 140 characters

This is particularly helpful when you want to make sure the SEO of your content is covered without having to add a whole other pointless sentence taking up any of your 140 characters of a tweet. You want to engage your reader but not bombard them with statements.

“You don’t ask visitors to do heavy lifting as soon as they come through the door either, do you? http://ow.ly/2lnUx #CopywritingTips”

  • The majority of the 140 characters are taken up by the interesting question or  content you want to pose to your readers
  • Although the question itself does not use the key words you need, anybody looking for copywriting tips will be able to find this tweet and with it, the link
  • It indicates the nature of the answer of the question without giving it away
  • It evokes curiosity and a higher possibility of tempting the reader to click on the link because they know it is relevant to them but are not sure how

If this were a tweet, I’d add #TheRightWayToUseHashTags. Imagine there was no hash tag description at all… People might have thought the question was meant literal and that the tweet was discussing courteous ways of greeting guests.

#HowNotToWriteTweets

  • “This is a Copywriting Tip.”
  • “One of our copywriting tips is wondering whether you should ask visitors to do heavy lifting as soon as they come through the door.”
  • “The right way to use the hash tag is as follows in an example”.

Hash tags can be used in many different ways and are helpful for SEO, online campaigns, which denote solidarity on a topic, and identifying trending topics such as #ff to join in, hereby ensuring a higher readership based upon miniscule use of words that could have meant missing out entirely. I’ll talk about the different uses in another #SocialMediaHighSchool article.

There’s nothing wrong with being mysterious. As long as it’s clear what you are talking about, of course.

Words by Lira Leirner (Big Star Content’s Social Media Consultant)

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The Wrong Way to Write Social Media Content

Tuesday, August 10th, 2010

Okay. I’m tired of it. I’ve had enough!

Would all the Twitter writers in the world who continually send out headlines of their blog posts, articles and other content please stop? Please?

I am so bored of seeing 4 or 5 of your posts daily on Twitter and all they ever say is ‘Here’s my latest post’ or ‘Insert headline copy that is almost clever’.

Talk with me, not at me

To those of you who a while ago figured out that you can actually talk with your audience, rather than at them – thank you! Thank you very very much for being an example for the rest of us to follow.

Thank you for posing interesting questions. Thank you for offering your interesting thoughts, your foibles and your lessons learned. Thank you for being you.

What’s in a name?

Social media is “social”. Social is defined as:

  1. living or preferring to live in a community rather than alone
  2. denoting or relating to human society or any of its subdivisions
  3. of, relating to, or characteristic of the experience, behaviour, and interaction of persons forming groups

(“social.” Collins English Dictionary – Complete & Unabridged 10th Edition. HarperCollins Publishers. 03 Aug. 2010. <Dictionary.com http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/social>.

By its very nature, social media includes other people.

When you churn out a stream of mini-adverts for your content, you risk putting off your readers because you are not including them, you are not engaging them. Just like ‘real social life’, when you meet a person who only ever talks about themselves, you stop listening and you make excuses to avoid them. You can and should post some official tweets just like you would tell about what’s happening in your life with friends and colleagues. However, it’s about getting the balance right.

The art of conversation

Don’t be that boring person. Try these techniques for engaging with your audience:

  • pose a question that you are struggling with or that you would like to know about your audience
  • suggest an interesting piece of content that isn’t about you
  • follow your followers and respond to their tweets
  • instead of just tweeting your headline, say how you felt when you wrote it: ‘I was frustrated by poor tweets, so I wrote this post’

I once heard a man tell his children they had 2 ears and 1 mouth, and should use them in that proportion.

With practice, and by listening to your audience, you will find that you’ll very quickly get a lot of inspiration from being social – and maybe so will your following.

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Social Media is like High School

Thursday, August 5th, 2010

Lira Leirner is the Social Media Consultant for Big Star Content

Yes you read that right. After those long lost years most of us try to forget, after all that success with your business and being a grown up and all, we’re back at the school gate again and have to learn those dreaded rules of social hierarchy, etiquette and wordentity.

Much like high school in a classic teenager Hollywood movie, being new is tough. You could get a lucky strike, and are sure to stumble upon many faux pas and need to slowly figure out the cliques, groups, etiquettes and subcultures yourself. UNLESS, of course, you are taken under someone’s wing. Someone, who already knows all this and wants to help you out and will tell you the answer to all the newbie questions.

This is our role. We are the guide that shows you the ropes. We explain the rules – the different tables, the lingo and etiquette. While there is no guarantee ever to make someone “popular”, it’s easier when you know the rules and have a strategy. Sure, it’s not about “getting the girl”, but a return on investment is expected all the same, and the results are similar along the way, only the content and the words are different.

  • Who to be associated with (determine your target followers and clients)
  • How to talk (your wordentity!)
  • What to talk about (content)
  • Where to interact (in the cafeteria or on the football field? – platform)
  • Which teachers to watch out for (which topic specific news sources to follow)
  • Who to watch out for and emulate (the celebrities in your field)

The advantage of social media is that, unlike high school, it is a social platform for all ages (age being one of the pockets of division to bear in mind when choosing who to mingle with).

The difference is we’re adults, and the way we can use social media is a lot more sophisticated than the school playground. This is important because as much as we remember how important it was to get a return on your investment as a teenager (be popular or survive at least), we know it’s not as important as getting a return on your investment as a business. To do so, you need to be more systematic than you are as a teenager. This is where we come in – we are the Sociologist conducting research into the patterns of social behaviour and its hierarchies with tangible graphs and qualitative interpretation AS WELL AS the mentor with the inside scoop because we are part of it, too.

The good news is: this time round, it’s the nerds who win. It’s the passionate, overtweeting, slightly obsessed know-it-all that ‘gets’ the most out of social media. So you can relax for now. Chose the nerdiest member of your team, the one who can’t stop talking about work and what it is your company is into, the most enthusiastic, slightly annoying broken record. This is your man for the representation of your company. And if my description applies to you, be proud. You’ll do well.

Actual nerds of the many fields out there are, apart from celebrities, those with most following, and that is the one big difference between social media and high school. In social media being passionate is what makes you cool.

It’s like they say – be nice to nerds, they will be your bosses one day. Social media is proof that this saying still applies and always will!

By Lira L. (Big Star Content’s Social Media Consultant)

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7 reasons NOT to hire a copywriter

Thursday, July 22nd, 2010

Derryck Strachan is the Managing Director of Big Star Content

As a professional copywriter I’m going to let you in on a secret that will absolutely blow your mind and save you money instantly (although it could cost you in the mid to long-term).

Not every business needs a copywriter.

Here’s the honest truth, no word of a lie, no spin, no exaggeration, no pulling the wool over your eyes. Here are seven great reasons NOT to hire a copywriter.

1. You have a lot of time on your hands

Surely everyone has enough time in their day jobs to blog daily, update web content on a regular basis, submit articles, write weekly emails to customers, respond to customer tweets, update their company Facebook status, write and distribute press releases, keep brochures new and relevant, update product descriptions to make them more saleable, add new product pages, write guides and articles to make sure customers have the latest information, ensure web copy is optimised correctly and implement a daily news feed? You have loads of time so you won’t need the support of a professional copywriter.

2. You are already trained as a copywriter

You might be a copywriter or content editor within a business working full time producing their content. In that case you probably won’t need any additional help when things get hairy, and you’re probably already keeping up with best practice in content strategy and web copywriting so you probably won’t need any support with training.

No doubt your organisation has fully bought into the need for investment in original content and gives you enough time and resource to do all this yourself – you may even have a large team of experienced writers to use so that you never feel overburdened with the sheer volume of work you have to produce. And they’ve obviously supported you by providing you with some clear brand strategy and content guidelines for all your work.

3. You don’t have any budget for copywriting

Let’s face it, when budgets get squeezed there’s simply no point in investing in new content. After all, when finances are tight you just have to put up with your search rankings falling, getting less coverage through PR, sacrificing your blog followers, and not being competitive with companies that have chosen to carry on investing in content. You recognise the fact that, although good content is crucial to almost every aspect of online marketing, you’ll probably be able to make up for it by er… cold calling? Print advertising? Trade shows?

4. The words on your website, brochure etc simply don’t matter

Perhaps you have a business that doesn’t need powerful words to communicate with customers? It’s all done through images, hypnotic symbols in some kind of subliminal slide show. Maybe you only communicate through video or audio (and you happen to be an experienced scriptwriter so you don’t need help with the words). Search engines and social media don’t matter to you. You’re going to do everything through animated gifs and high quality photography. Your customers will need no written information, no call to action – they will just KNOW what to do through the power of your visuals.

5. Your tone of voice is soooo unique

Your tone of voice, your personal writing style is so unique to you that there is no way on earth that anyone else could do it. Because obviously even the biggest stars write all their own stuff online: the celebrities, the Internet entrepreneurs, the personal brand name bloggers – they all do it themselves. Even busy managing directors, chairmen and women, serial business owners – they all make time to do all the writing for their companies/websites because it’s about them isn’t it?

There’s no way they would consider using guest bloggers, ghostwriters or common or garden copywriters to create a detailed set of style guidelines and tone of voice samples and then take over the onerous task of creating great regular content on their behalf without anyone knowing the difference. Would they? Even when faced with the obvious cost savings of using someone cheaper than they are, these dedicated people carry on writing everything themselves.

6. You don’t want any more customers

This one’s easy. Your business has outgrown you – it’s generating way more money than you know what to do with and, quite frankly, you don’t want the hassle. Here’s my advice: no new product pages, no sales presenters, no brochures and no press releases. Sack your copywriter and stop anyone in your organisation from writing anything new. If you stop writing about your new products or services, there’s no way anyone is going to find out about them – hey presto! No new customers. Of course, you’ll want to make sure you keep your existing customers happy so you’ll need some communication with them, unless…

7. You want to start letting customers go

STOP COMMUNICATING WITH YOUR CUSTOMERS NOW! No emails, no tweets, no blogs and no articles. If your existing customers can’t find out what’s happening in your company, get interesting insight into your sector or communicate with you through social media then you’ll soon meet your objective of shrinking your company. Good luck!

By Derryck S.

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