You sit down at the keyboard, all full of cheer and smiles. It’s a new year and you are psyched up to tackle the to-do list. You have decided to be your own copywriter this year. You’re going finish those new web pages, spruce up the old landing pages and actually get your email newsletter out on time each month.

That’s when the dread hits you.

I call it ‘copywriter dread.’ Some call it the January Blues. Perhaps you prefer ‘back-to-work-itis’?

Whatever you call it, there are ways to beat back the dread and get productive with your copywriting no matter what time of year.

Here are three verified (by yours truly) super effective ways to kill the dread.

1. Borrow a page from Nike’s playbook

‘Just do it’ was such a wonderful campaign because it was so precisely insightful into the workings of human nature. We don’t always know where to begin.

Sometimes being a web copywriter isn’t easy. Self-doubt There’s a blank page just staring back at you. Your colleagues, friends, customers and strangers will ‘judge’ your writing.

As human beings, we all need to be pushed at times, and at other time all it takes is one small action.

So, just write.

Sit down and start writing. Write anything. Write about not being able to write.

2. Outline

Whenever we run web copywriter training workshops, I always tell the participants to outline their work.

Why?

Because it helps the copywriter in you to let the ideas flow, getting them down on the page by committing you to just doing the outline and not worrying about the writing part (yet).

When the blank page looks back at you like the local bully, you can fight back and just do the outline (see above for Nike-related inspiration). Here’s how I outline a web page:

• Topic and angle: this will become your headline. It doesn’t need to be creative; in fact some pages are better off just saying what they are (e.g. About Us). If you’re blogging, play around with ideas until you find a compelling twist to your topic that will attract attention when you share the post.
• Goals: what is the one thing the page needs to do? Get shared? Get sign ups? Convince readers to look up the pricing? Whatever it is, outline it and write the reader to the goal. Set a primary goal, and if necessary, a secondary and tertiary goal. Any more than that is an indication you have too much going on or don’t know what you want from the page.
• Main points to cover: I try to keep it to the 3 or 4 main points. This keeps my writing tight and helps reduce the chances the reader will be distracted and head off before finishing my page.
• Call-to-action: tell the reader what they should do next. This relates to your goal, but don’t forget the opportunities along the way to create valuable links to further content and to your secondary or tertiary goals.

3. Write a bit at a time

Being part of a copywriting agency brings with it a lot of topic-switching. Sometimes this can be distracting, but often it’s inspiring and creative.

I usually like to write an entire piece all in one sitting. But there are days and topics that require more effort. So I break the process down into pieces.

If you have outlined your work (you should!) then you can focus only on writing each section at a time. This will help your motivation, but also keep you focussed on the topic at hand, and on-target.

That’s it. Just write. Start with the outline. Write each section at a time.

Before you know it, you’ll have reached the end…

It’s not track changes. Nor is it red pens.

These are the tools of an editor and they are useful in providing corrections to text. Most editors are very good at using these tools and most writers accept the advice of the editor, albeit reluctantly.

Unless your project is at the proofing stage, they are entirely the wrong way to feed back to your copywriter about the copy they have written for your brand or business.

Here’s what you can do instead:

Use the ‘insert comments’ feature

Relieve the burden and hours spent reviewing copy by using the more useful feature of the Office and Adobe suites; the comment.

As I pointed out last week in how to get what you need from your copywriter, if you are in the habit of rewriting the copy instead of explaining your ideas or objections, you are not getting the most you can from the relationship with your professional web copywriter.

When you use comments and explain why a passage isn’t working, or to praise a particular phrase that you like more than others, you will be collaborating with the writer and still keeping a hand in creating the language that makes up your brand.

This is productive and it’s a better use of your time (it’s quicker to explain than to make sure it’s all corrected properly). Commenting helps your copywriter and copywriting agency to understand your position and apply a consistency across any new or previously written copy. It also gives them the space to work their magic on your behalf, instead of taking pure direction without any input.

Here’s an example:

Now the copywriter knows why you have a preference and they will use it in all future copy.

Try speaking to each other

Sometimes it’s just easier to talk to someone and explain your views and ideas.

It’s also a good chance to build rapport with your web copywriter. The more you can do this, the more passionate the writer will be with your brand, business and ideas.

Above all the professional copywriter wants to get it right. And they are adaptable.

Copy people are good at expressing what your brand needs to say to your customers in many ways. Speaking to your copywriter will allow him or her to explore alternative concepts with you, putting you at the heart of decisions in the early phases of writing.

Do you use another feedback mechanism?

We’d love to know how you collaborate with your copywriter to get better results. Do you use email, Twitter or Skype?

Let us know in the comments.

It is a common misconception that once you work with a copywriter or copywriting agency, you lose all control of the words and the message.

Nothing could be further from the truth.

Here are a few tips to help you feel more in control of the process.

Begin with a brief

Whether it’s your first or fiftieth project with a copywriter, beginning with a solid brief is a sure way to get your points across and to keep the writer focussed. A good brief will tell the writer what you want to talk about and will outline who it is for.

It is the copywriter’s job to craft the copy for that target audience; to translate the ‘what’ of the brief into the persuasive language that convinces an interested person to take action and buy your product or service, or sign up for your report.

A good brief:

• outlines, instead of prescribes: this is a ‘brief’ after all; by outlining the important points you allow the writer some room to write; you are paying for their expertise and prescribing will only weaken your copy
• is specific in purpose, never generic: if you aren’t sure exactly what the web page, brochure or email is supposed to accomplish, then your writer can’t know either; explain what outcome you want, who you are talking to, and the specific purpose of this communication
• defines the scope: this is as much a protection for you as it is for the copywriter’s time; by defining what is ‘in’ and what is ‘out of scope’ you ensure your writer is clear on what needs doing, and you ensure you are paying only for what you asked for

Ask for an early draft

As a copywriting agency, we routinely produce a first draft of one or two passages or web pages to establish the tone and direction before we run off and produce the whole project.

This helps us as copywriters to know if we’re getting closer to what you envisioned for the project. It also helps you to provide early input into the messages and into the direction of the piece as a whole, before everything is written.

This really does save time for everyone in the end, so don’t be shy about asking to see something early on.

Explain your thoughts and ideas, instead of using ‘track changes’

Rewriting someone else’s work provides very little value to the relationship and it doesn’t help the copywriter to understand why you have a particular piece of feedback.

By explaining to your web copywriter why he can’t use a certain turn of phrase, or why you don’t like a particular passage is the most effective way to have input on the writing.

Professional copywriters know how to take your explanations and apply it to both the passage you indicated as well as across the whole project.

When you allow your copywriter to know the boundaries like this and to understand your way of thinking, you are giving a professional the freedom to work his or her magic, and you are creating a relationship that will ensure you get what you need from your writer – their best.

Did you resolve to make improvements to your landing pages this year?

Our copywriting agency clients are right there with you. These marketers and businesses are taking a look at the last twelve months and forming plans for the coming twelve.

The first thing on their list is improving conversion rates on their landing pages.

They know that using a web copywriter to create engaging copy that connects and sells to their customers is the most cost-effective way to improve their pages.

Here is a summary of a few of the ways our copywriters are doing this:

1) Focussing the copy on one page goal

Begin by writing down the SINGLE goal for the page – what is the one thing you want people to do on the page?

When you identify this goal, write all the copy on the page directing the reader toward that one goal.

Only then can you think about 2 more goal options for the page and how these will work together with the main goal.

If the visitor doesn’t buy (read, compare, call) today, what else can you offer?

• Could they sign up to your newsletter?
• Is there another offer that might be better suited to their interests?
• Instead of losing them to a ‘back button’ pique their curiosity with more content elsewhere on your site: blog posts, articles, whitepapers, even an interesting comment.

Some marketers will tell you to have only on achievable action on a page, but I believe that is poor customer service. For most of the businesses we work with, they find that it’s better for them to move visitors through their sales message across their site than to give them no other option but ‘escape’ or ‘convert’ on a landing page.

2) Rewriting the call to action to focus on the action

Sometimes our web developers and designers are in a rush and they drop in buttons and calls-to-action that DO the action, but don’t tell the visitor what to expect.

Web copywriters rewrite buttons, link text, ad copy, and calls-to-action to support the page goal from number 1 and to remind the reader what action they are performing. This helps conversion and it’s good usability.

The usual newsletter sign up button saying ‘submit’ focusses on the technology of the form, not on what the person is doing (or wants to do). Instead, we write actions like ‘sign up’ or ‘register’ or ‘subscribe’ depending on the context to support the visitor’s understanding of the intent.

I don’t like submitting to anyone, but I often register for content or subscribe to mailing lists.

3) Brushing up the SEO copywriting

We’re a copywriting agency and we often are asked to review, write or rewrite SEO copywriting for our clients’ landing pages. This is either because they have a new SEO programme they are implementing, or they are improving or amending their keyword selection.

The exact activities vary depending on the topic and the content we’re working with; but, generally we’ll look at:

• SEO keywords and how they are used throughout the page
  • focus especially on the headings, first paragraphs, and link copy
• Image ALT attributes and keyword use
• Meta tag copywriting such as HTML title tags and meta descriptions

With the Google updates of last year, SEO copywriting is now (thankfully) about quality content, not ‘keyword stuffing’ so you need to understand the SEO side and the composition side of copywriting to do this the right way.

Here are a few posts on SEO copywriting that might help:

• Which comes first, links or content?
• What does Google’s Panda update mean for my content?
• How do I choose keywords?

by Steve Kellas

What blog would be complete without an end-of-the-year review? I’ve been looking forward to writing this blog post for some time, because for this copywriting agency and many of our clients it has been a big year.

There have been some massive changes in how the work of a quality web copywriter is viewed by both the search engines and marketers. For the first time in a long time, I feel satisfied that the gaming of the search ‘system’ is (temporarily) on hold. I feel like we all are heading in the right direction in terms of producing the best possible copy and content for our customers that we can, and the search engines are rewarding this effort by giving higher rankings to truly honest and valuable businesses in their niches.

This year has also been a productive one for the copywriters here on the blog. We’ve done a few series of posts that covered topics that are dear to us.

Now, on with the review.

Google changes the game for SEO

I think this is the biggest web copywriter story of the year.

In early 2011, Blekko was the first off the mark in responding to something that we all knew – the first page of search results on the search engines was full of poor quality, low-value content. The kind of copywriting that was pumped out by low-paying content mills milking new writers who thought they could make a buck or two. It was the sort of end-game where everyone lost.

We wrote about Google’s response and how these moves by the search engines showed Why your copywriter just got a lot more valuable.

Well, that was February, and things move fast in the web copywriter world.

In March, Google (finally) did something about copywriting spam by actively reducing the ranking of low-quality (and low-value) sites. It started penalising sites that didn’t put any effort into the quality of their copywriting.

All these algorithm changes became known as the “Panda update” and it’s still being smoothed out and actively worked on. We wrote in July about the Google Panda update and what it meant for your content.

SEO today is no longer about ‘stuffing’ as many keywords as possible into a page. It has to be what it always should have been: writing a well-crafted and valuable page about a specific topic. Natural keyword use through proper copywriting would win out by the end of the year, thanks in part to Google and the other search engines stepping up to battle content spam.

Big Star Copywriting Blog Series

Not as big a story as the Google changes, for sure. But, we did write a few series this year that I thought were a pretty good attempt on our part to share a lot of the experience and ideas that we have about copywriting in general, and on the topics themselves. Here they are again for you to enjoy:

Web Copywriting Dissected – this series covered everything we could think of to help you write better website home pages and calls-to-action, all the way through to contact pages and forms; including tips on writing towards your page goals.

Ask an SEO copywriter – this series was post-Panda. We wanted to cover the new SEO copywriting best practices, using good content as the anchor point for all SEO activity. Beginning with Which comes first, links or content?, we moved through SEO topics such as choosing keywords, meta data and its importance in SEO, and using keywords with video.

Email copywriting – this is something we get asked about a lot and we wrote a series based on best practices and our insights into how to write and manage a regular newsletter.

Some other copywriting highlights

There were many other successes and highlights from the year, and I’m sure you’ve had your own share too.

Here are a couple more things of note from our blog over the past year:

• Whitepapers turn out to be one of the hardest working pieces of marketing content you can produce
• Early in 2011, I put together this list of the Top 5 websites for learning about web copywriting. Throughout the year these sites continued to provide valuable information on how to improve copywriting. I still recommend them, and in 2012 I may just add to the list.

Thank you to everyone we worked with these past 12 months. We look forward to working together again.

All the best for 2012.

by Steve Kellas

I have written on this blog many times about why regularly reviewing your web copywriting builds trust. It is also the best way to ensure that your content is up-to-date and selling your products (and your business) in a way that fits with your current business plan.

As a web copywriter, I know how incredibly important to review the copy for accuracy. A lot can change throughout a year, and mistakes do happen.

December is the perfect time of year to adjust, re-calibrate the message and fix what didn’t work. Here’s a quick guide to getting this important task done.

Review your stats

I like to take the guesswork out of being a copywriter. That’s why I begin by looking at the numbers.

Review your web stats to see which pages were popular, which had longer dwell times (page duration) and which ones had the lowest bounce rate.

Now read those pages and ask yourself a few questions: Why did this page do well? What about it makes it compelling? Why do my prospects look at this page more than others?

Try to be critical in this exercise and be specific in what you take away from it, because you can use this information to improve your other pages.

Review your page list

One key area that our copywriting agency looks to review each year is the page list (or sitemap) of the main pages of your site. I don’t include blog posts or news articles in this review, because that content is something you want to keep.

Look at the main pages and sections of your website and think about whether you still need those pages or if something is missing.

Evaluate whether the page fits your business objectives and your sales strategy. If it doesn’t fit, read the copywriting on the page. Would that copy work better somewhere else? If not, get rid of it.

Does your strategy need more content to support it on your website? Figure out where new pages could fit, as well as how they will be linked from (and to) other pages.

Review your key messages

Cultural changes, shifts in strategy, and ever-changing offers mean that key messages may be out of date, old-fashioned, tired or, at worst, totally inaccurate.

This is the perfect time of year to review those calls-to-action and key sales messages for consistency, accuracy and relevance.

Ask yourself how the message fits your strategy. Check the stats again to see if has been working. If not, look at ways to tweak it.

Hiring a web copywriter or copywriting agency is a good idea to help give you perspective and evaluate what is (and isn’t) working.

This doesn’t mean you that will have re-work everything from scratch. Many times, you might simply need an evolution of the message.

Best to know for sure, though.

What about SEO?

Search engines are always changing (evolving) and updating their search algorithms, and your SEO copywriting needs to keep up with the times too.

This past year saw a major overhaul of Google’s search algorithm in its infamous Panda update, and several minor updates that have, by all accounts, completely changed the SEO world.

Mobile is taking a bigger share of the visitor stats and next year it will likely overtake desktop. Or at the very least, match it.

In fact, all your content marketing can use an annual review. So whether you do email marketing, ebooks, whitepapers or online guides, this is the time to review it and make sure you’re ready for the coming 12 months.

by Steve Kellas

“With half a loaf and a tilted cup, I got myself a friend.”
The Havamal, Old Norse Poem

Sharing is an age-old form of persuasion. Even the smallest amount of sharing goes a long way to winning a stranger over to you. The Vikings knew it. Dale Carnegie knew it. Copywriters know it too.

As a web copywriter, I see many pages of boring website content; copywriting that describes a business or product but never engages by telling me why the business exists and why I should use them.

I didn’t invent these copywriter techniques, I picked them up from some of the best in the business. I learned from these talented people that copywriting is more than just listing what something does, or telling people facts. It’s about connecting on an emotional level to the people that support a business.

#1 – Tell a story

“Make your copywriting about the audience.”

One of the easiest ways to do this, is to tell them a story.

That’s because we have been telling each other stories since we first spoke to each other around the fire. It’s a natural way to get across a point of view and to relate something to others.

Copywriters have used storytelling techniques for ages to help their target audience relate to the message they are trying to deliver – to win them over.

Web copywriters are no different, though them medium is non-linear, a story can be told on every page. This is why blogging is such an effective marketing tool.

In their Introduction to Business Blogging, Hubspot shows us the evidence for compelling storytelling through blogging:

• B2B companies with a blog get 67% more leads (than those who don’t)
• B2C companies with a blog get 88% more leads

Looking across all segments, they point out that companies that blog get 55% more web visitors than those that don’t blog.

Whether you are a copywriting agency, a roofer or FTSE 100 company, your story is interesting, unique and can be very good at selling your expertise in your market niche.

Tell stories about your business: why you started it; why you believe in it; what it does for people. Tell stories about your products or services: why you created them; what happens when people use them; what people need to do to use them too.

#2 – Anticipate objections

The two most powerful words in marketing belong to your customers:

“Yes, but…”

When your customer is able to get away from your page, website, brochure or newsletter saying “yes, but…” you have lost.

Whenever I begin any copywriting project, I ask for all the “yes, buts.”

What are the main objections the target audience has to using your product or service or business? Make a list and then construct your story in a way that deals with each objection in turn.

• Are you more expensive than a competitor? Explain why.
• Could your customer do the service themselves? Tell them why you can do it better/faster/cheaper than DIY.

2 and half – Share

I revealed this technique right at the beginning of this post, so I’m just giving it a ‘half’ here in the list.

This is sometimes called ‘reciprocity’ in marketing circles.

Whatever you call it, sharing your story, sharing valuable information, sharing insights, and sharing failures too, are all ways of bringing your audience closer to you emotionally.

It will surprise people.

Like a good plot twist, surprising your audience is a great way to keep them engaged right to the ‘end.’