How To Hire Effective Content Marketing Writers and Editors

via Content Marketing Institute http://contentmarketinginstitute.com/2014/01/hire-effective-content-marketing-writers-editors/

By GRANT BUTLER published JANUARY 8, 2014

Share CMI

• Twitter314
• LinkedIn184
• Facebook108
• Google
• Pinterest
• Print

We’ve all heard the theory: It’s easy to hire good content writers because so many are being fired from traditional media, such as newspapers and magazines. Unfortunately, this just doesn’t seem to be the case.

I’ve run a corporate writing agency for 15 years, and hired many writers and editors. During this time, the media industry in Australia (where my firm is based) has been imploding. Australia’s largest newspaper publisher alone has cut hundreds of journalism jobs in recent years. Despite many of those people being among the finest writers in the country, few have become content marketing writers. And there’s good reason why.

How do you evaluate an effective content marketing writer/editor for content “newsroom” positions? How can you determine whether a journalist with a strong portfolio can generate material that’s engaging to customers, appropriate for your organization, and unlikely to create legal or other headaches? I use a methodology I call WRITE: Write, Rapport, Interest,Trust, and Edit. 

Write 

First, be sure your candidates can write. That may sound trite, but you’d be amazed how many people present well and have appropriate resumes, but lack a real aptitude for writing. And be warned, journalists can be published for years and even rise high despite having mediocre writing skills. Their saviors are the bosses and copy editors who fix their spelling, grammar, and even facts.

To avoid getting caught out, ask candidates where they believe their strengths lie; give them short writing, editing and proofreading tests; and ask their references what the person’s first draft copy is like. And be sure to verify they can write quickly enough to meet your needs. 

Rapport 

Hire people who will play nicely with others, in your newsroom, throughout your organization, and with external parties. To succeed in journalism, you need to be fast, independent, and good at dealing with people, passionate about delivering valuable information to readers, and at least a little bit ruthless (as the press baron William Hearst allegedly said, “News is what somebody does not want you to print. All the rest is advertising“).

These attributes can be usefully redirected to writing successful content marketing for your organization. But many journalists simply can’t or won’t make the transition from the high “church” of journalism to the “state” of business copywriting.

Make sure candidates understand what’s expected of them and can explain whether they see themselves doing this type of work for the long haul. Also be sure they’re happy to go from having their name in lights to being a ghostwriter for others, if that’s your model.

Interest 

The most effective content marketing writers are genuinely interested in the material about which they write. Check that your candidates are interested in more than a paycheck. They should have an infectious enthusiasm for your field to draw out the best from their sources, build resonance with readers, and go the extra mile for you.

Trust 

It’s vital to hire writers you can trust to produce copy that is not only engaging but also on-brand and low-risk —and to do so as autonomously as possible. This means they must be alert to legal issues as well as myriad other considerations — from your organization’s sales objectives to political sensitivities. This is especially true today, given the fast pace of social media.

However, trust is a two-way street. Having found writers you can trust, it’s important your organization empowers them. You need a newsroom that has a strong say over what is ready to be published — and what isn’t.

Empowerment is also important if you want to retain writers. Many journalists in particular will happily transition to writing content marketing material, especially if they’re coming from commercial environments such as consumer or trade publications. But they’ll become frustrated if they can’t create strong content that’s consistent in style and messaging. (There are many ways writer frustration can take hold, including letting executives make arbitrary changes that ruin the tone or flow of copy, sanitizing content to suit corporate agendas or making content transparently self-serving, and being so slow to approve material that it gets published too late to interest readers.)

Edit 

A strong writer should be just as capable at editing material written by others as writing their own. This is a key skill within a newsroom because so much content is first drafted by others (whether subject matter experts inside the organization or freelance writers).

You want writers who can grasp the overall shape and logic of written material, and help refine it by restructuring sentences, paragraphs, or whole documents. They should also have a strong knowledge of spelling and grammar such that they can leave copy in good shape after editing — but don’t expect them to be quite as eagle-eyed as dedicated copy editors.

Reaching critical mass

Once you’ve hired great individuals, the final piece of the puzzle is to focus on how they’ll work together as a team. News organizations offer useful models here. First, they tend to feature three layers:

•       Editors (leaders) who come up with high-level ideas and ultimately control what is published
•       Writers who produce the bulk of new material and may edit contributions from others
•       Copy editors who ensure final material is high-quality and aligned to brand and style rules

The other tip is to focus on building a “writerly culture” within your newsroom. You’re bringing together a group of people who love words and enjoy things like writers’ festivals, Scrabble, and storytelling over red wine. So indulge them.

5 Tactics for Content Creators to Increase Content Consumption

via Content Marketing Institute http://contentmarketinginstitute.com/2013/11/tactics-content-creators-increase-consumption/

By HEIDI COHEN published NOVEMBER 18, 2013

As a content creator, you can produce the best content in the world, but if it doesn’t break through the clutter and motivate your target audience to want to read it, it holds little value, no matter how well written it was, or how much time and effort you spent on developing, optimizing and distributing it!

Think of your content as a gift you give your readers. Content creators need to include intriguing packaging to entice readers and make sure they will want to “open” it.

Here’s a story to illustrate my point:

For a school holiday gift grab bag, one of my classmates brought in a huge box wrapped in shiny gold paper. The box seemed too big to be worth the small spending limit we were given, so we were all hoping to grab it as our gift. Naturally, the first student to pick chose the box, and inside he found a series of wrapped boxes, each containing a coin. Together, the coins added up to the amount of money we were allowed to spend — thus delivering on the expectation, but in a more enticing way. The box looked like it held something of high value, making it the most desirable choice for potential “users.”

If you would like to deliver your content value in a similarly desirable way, here are five actionable content marketing tips for maximizing content consumption that the experts don’t talk about.

1. Hook readers in with a great headline

Take it from one of the original “Mad Men,” David Ogilvy: Only one out of five readers gets beyond the headline. Therefore, take the time to ensure that your headlines pack a maximum punch. I advise content creators to start with these tips:

1. Spend time at your local magazine stand: Dead tree (i.e., print) magazines perform based on the power of their headlines. Study what makes them tick, particularly high-circulation publications, like Cosmopolitan.
2. Read Jon Morrow’s 52 Headline Hacks: Jon has cracked the code on headlines and shares his knowledge for free. (BTW, you can check out his Problogger article to understand how he does it.)
3. Give your headlines one last tweak before content goes live: While it can be useful to have a working headline to start off your writing process, it’s a good idea to go back and take a second look at it at the end of your process to make sure it’s the best it can be.

2. Include eye candy

Humans are visual beings — it’s one of the traits that has kept our species going. Thus, it should come as no surprise that 90 percent of the information we take in is visual, and that we process images 60,000 times faster than text. Even more important for global audiences is that visual content often spans multiple languages, where text-based content may not.

Some considerations here:

1. Add at least one image to your content: Use a picture related to your topic near the top of your text. Think of it as an advertisement for your content.
2. Incorporate photography: To make your images more memorable, select one that includes a person, since people are programmed to look at pictures of other humans.
3. Consider adding visuals other than just images: Instead of writing a bunch of text, content creators should think about producing a video, designing an infographic, or developing a presentation to convey their desired messages.

3. Format your content for optimal reader appeal 

Avoid “THDR” (“too hard, didn’t read”) or no one will consume your content, no matter how good or relevant it is. Make your content quick and easy to consume and absorb by following these tips:

1. “Chunk” the information you present: Use short paragraphs that don’t look intimidating, and use outlining or highlighting to facilitate easier reading.
2. Add bolding to guide readers through your content: Presenting hunks of seemingly endless text turns readers away, but bold text helps guide the eye and break up long content passages into more digestible bites.
3. Use easy-to-read fonts: While you may think typefaces with curlicues and script add a touch of fun to your content, these enhancements may not be legible for the average reader — particularly if they are viewing your content on a tablet or smartphone screen. Use “fancy” fonts sparingly, if at all.
4. Avoid microscopic type: Too-small type practically screams that you don’t want people to actually be able to read your content. Take pity on your readers, many of whom might need reading glasses (i.e., are over the age of 40), and use at least a size 11-point type in your content.
5. Check for color contrast: Ensure that there’s sufficient contrast between your text and the background it appears against. Also skip neon colors, like acid yellow, which can distort the text.

4. Optimize content for search

 Make sure your content is findable on search engines, by following these suggestions:

1. Focus each piece of content around one keyword phrase: The more focused you are, the better.
2. Incorporate relevant links: Provide links to the original source of information. Specifically, add links to reputable third parties, as well as to other pieces of content you have created for your business.
3. Add text to non-text content: Understand that search engines can only read text, so make sure you add meta-data to your images, videos, and other image-based content, so that search engines can index them.
4. Use Google+ authorship: This helps protect your content, and make sure it is associated with you and your business.

5. Encourage social engagement

Maximize social interaction by removing obstacles and fears that hinder sharing. Often this relates to writing text. Bear in mind that your readers have a “Don’t make me think!” attitude, so make sure each share takes as little effort on their part as possible:

1. Add social sharing icons at the top and bottom of your content:  Alternatively, consider using a persistent sharing option. In either case, make sure that it’s easy for visitors to share your content.
2. Incorporate other forms of sharing in the body of your content: Use tools such as ClickToTweet to enable sharing without the need for readers to think about how they can do so.
3. Encourage comments by asking a question at the end of your content: Post a comment policy to provide guidelines for commenters. And to ensure valid comments don’t get lost, employ a commenting tool. While this helps minimize comment spam, don’t forget that you will still need to monitor your content forums to clear out any inappropriate comments that may have slipped through the filters.
4. Respond to the comments you receive: Reply to people who take the time to comment on your content. It is just good manners, and it increases the social proof. Further, ask guest authors to monitor their posts and add responses for at least two days after you have posted their content on your blog or other outlets.

Packaging your content well will maximize your content consumption. To further improve your results, test out which of these five tactics work best for your target audience. Remember it’s not a matter of getting the largest number of readers but, rather, attracting the readers who represent the greatest potential for you to meet your content marketing objectives.

What tips have you found to be the most effective for improving content consumption and why did they work best? Please share your thoughts with us in the comments section.

Writing for Screens: What You Need to Know

via Online it ALL Matters http://onlineitallmatters.blogspot.com/2013/12/writing-for-screens-what-you-need-to.html

Monday, December 9, 2013

How much do you know about the way the human eye works? Listen to this video where Ahava explains how people read on screens versus print and why that's so important for you as a digital writer and communicator.

Then check out these great blogs and tutorials on writing for the web:

• Effective Web Writing: In this blog, we talk about essential elements for creating digital content
• Writing Great Links: In this video, Ahava explains how to write great links
• 5 Ways to Make your Links More Effective: In this blog, we explain 5 proven tactics for creating great links that will increase your pages’ rankings
• Why the Inverted Pyramid is Still so Important: In this video, Ahava explains how to think about writing for the web

A Guide to Content Optimization for 4 Key Content Types

As content marketing gains recognition as a viable online marketing strategy, businesses are producing content of all types at an accelerated rate. But what good is compelling content if it can’t be found? The truth is, if it can’t be found by your audience, it won’t be very successful, which is why content optimizationis such a crucial step in the content marketing process.

Through content optimization, you are providing essential data that search engines will use to determine what your content — and, by extension, your business — is all about. Search engines then use this information in the search results they display for relevant keyword terms or phrases. As content in the form of text, images, videos, and news is now included in these search results, the content optimization processes you use should be tailored to the types of content you are producing. 

Below are some tips on how best to optimize content in each of these four key formats — text, image, video and news:

Optimizing text

Website content optimization is crucial for all written text, but it is particularly important for landing pages that include information about other content pieces.

Title tags: One of the most important elements of website optimization is the title tag. In HTML code, the tag “(title)” is used to set off the page’s title tag, which tells the audience what the page is about in just a few words.

Title tags are used in a number of places to describe the content. For example, they are used by search engines as the link text for each search result they display. Additionally, they are often used on social media networks to describe the page when someone shares the content. The title tag also appears at the top of the browser when the page is viewed, and if the browser is tabbed, it will be the name of the tab for the page being viewed. As a result, title tags are not just important to search engines; they serve as meaningful ways to describe your page’s content for your audience.

Meta descriptions: Meta descriptions are typically displayed in search engine results pages (SERPs) as the descriptor text for each result, making it a key piece of information for your audience.

The meta-description should accurately describe what visitors will find when they click to your content (see REI example below). Successful meta descriptions concisely state the purpose of the content page and include applicable keywords. This is your opportunity to sell searchers on clicking through to your page, so it’s best to avoid generic descriptors, like “Welcome to our home page,” that don’t really tell them anything about your content or give them a reason to click through. In addition, search engines limit the amount of real estate available for descriptions — normally about 150-160 characters. Any text that goes beyond that will likely be cut off.

Meta keywords: Meta keywords are somewhat similar to meta descriptions. And although the meta keywords tag doesn’t seem to directly help improve page rankings, they have been known to potentially hurt search engine rankings if the tag is “overstuffed.”

Some webmasters have been known to paste as many keywords as possible into a meta keyword tag, hoping their presence will prompt inclusion in additional search results. However, that is not the case, so it’s best to err on the side of caution and include only a few truly relevant keywords in this tag.

URLs: A keyword-rich URL provides search engines with even more descriptive information about your content. So, in addition to optimizing content tags, your URL structure should be optimized to ensure that it is straightforward, meaningful, and contains the appropriate keywords that are relevant to your content. When appropriate, you may want to incorporate long-tail keywords into your URLs, so users seeking more specific results may find your content more easily in their searches.

Optimizing images

As consumers frequently search for images, the visual content you display on your website also needs to be optimized for discovery. Not only are images included in specific “Image” searches on search engines, they can also appear in the main “Web” search results — if the search engine determines that your image is relevant to a particular search term or phrase. In fact, your images may appear on a SERP even when your other content pages don’t.

Unlike text optimization, search engines can’t derive full meaning from image-based content — yet. (Though it’s certainly a goal all search engines have for the future). Though they largely rely on the context of the page (i.e., the text, and the text-related tags) an image appears to identify its relevance to a search query, the meta tags that are used for each image also play an essential role in determining its contextual meaning. Types of meta data that can be optimized for images include source (i.e., file location and name), alt, and title tags. To achieve the best results in search, all of these image tags must be optimized.

Alt tags: Alt tags serve as alternate text to describe the image when the image is not available to be displayed. This is key for several reasons:

• An image may not be displayed if a user’s internet connection is particularly slow, or if the page fails to load correctly.
• Additionally, if text-reading software is being used (e.g., for users with visual impairments), it is the alt tag that gets read aloud to describe the images that appear on the page.

For these reasons, and others, it’s important to choose simple, yet keyword-rich phrases in your alt tags to describe your website images.

Image tags: Similar to alt tags, image tags designate the words that should appear when a user scrolls or hovers over an image. They also help your audience understand the context of the image, so the tag text you choose should describe the image accurately and contain relevant keywords.

Alt and title tags are imbedded within the image source code as follows:

<title=”vanilla ice cream cone with rainbow sprinkles” alt=”ice cream cone” img src=”icecreamcone.jpg” />.

Filename: Though the alt tag and image title tag clue search engines in to what the image isof, an appropriate filename goes one step further — it provides contextual information on how the image relates to the other content on the page.

Just like your images’ alt and title tags, your image filenames should include the keyword that you’re optimizing your content for. So, rather than uploading your image files into your website using a filename like “DC000245.jpg,” try to use descriptive names, like “icecreamcone.jpg.”

File size: As mentioned previously, a user may see alt tag text, rather than an image, if a page does not load correctly. One way to decrease the chances of these page-load problems is to adjust the file size of your images, to make sure your website can handle them properly. Both large image files and image-heavy content pages can make your website load slowly or not at all — both of which may result in lower search engine rankings. Therefore, I recommend reducing your file sizes as much as possible, without forgoing the quality of the image.

Optimizing videos

Today it’s easier than ever for anyone, including marketers, to produce video content. From the many videos that have gone viral, we’ve learned that videos don’t necessarily need to be professionally recorded or scripted to be successful — they just need to be interesting, enjoyable or useful, and compelling.

To get started, create an optimized, branded channel for your business on the video site of your choosing. Having a branded channel increases brand recognition and provides leverage for your other content. Next, optimize your video as follows:

Video titles: Your video title should contain relevant keywords, but should also appeal to your audience’s interests. Dull titles that are overly keyword-conscious will lead visitors to believe that your video is just marketing hoopla. Your goal should be to draw people in with a catchy title that entices them to watch your video through to the end.

Video descriptions: A video description should clearly portray what the video is about, and should set viewers’ expectations on what they will see by watching. Though your description should include keywords, it should primarily be written in a way that addresses the needs of your audience, not just of search engines. Lead your video descriptions with a link to the page on your website that is most relevant to the subject matter, so viewers know where they can find the additional content and other information you provide.

On-site optimization: As with images, when posting video to your site, be sure to optimize the description and title tags, as search engines use those tags to understand video content and context.

Once your video has been optimized, most sites you might use to host your videos, such as YouTube and Vimeo, provide embed codes that you can paste into your website’s HTML — this will allow visitors to watch your videos right on your page, rather than having to visit the video site. Optimize your video’s filename just as you would with images — i.e., incorporating targeted keywords.

Optimizing news

Every business owner that has a website is a publisher. Similarly, every business owner online today has the capacity to produce and report on industry-related news. Whether it’s through a blog, a “news” section on a website, or through social networks and other brand communication outlets, optimizing your news content can help your organization get recognized as an insightful source of relevant industry news and thought leadership.

Yet, online news is a highly competitive space, which makes it tough to generate news content that will rank on search engines and get discovered. This means you must carefully and correctly optimize your news content in order for it to get discovered and drive the ongoing reader interest that will benefit your business.

Here are some key considerations involved in news content optimization:

Google News: In order for your website’s news feed to be included in Google News results, you’ll need to submit your blog or press release sections directly to Google News. The news team at Google will review your content and, if approved, include it in news search results. Keep in mind that Google News has explicit requirements for all sites that want to submit news content.

Static URLs: To publish news content that ranks along with other authentic news sites, you will need each article to exist on a static URL — meaning that every article you produce is created on its own separate page on your site.

Keywords: Like all other content types, your news articles should be keyword-optimized. Though the body of your article should include your relevant keywords, make sure your content is not over-optimized (i.e., stuffed with keywords). Additionally, if your news piece includes photos or video elements, be sure to optimize each according to the guidelines outlined above.

Headlines: News headlines should be interesting and grab your readers’ attention. Just like a web page ranking in regular search engine results, you are aiming for your news content to rank highly in news results. To achieve this, your news content will need to have complete metadata, including the keywords you are targeting.

Overall, content optimization is an integral part of the content development and marketing process, and should be treated as such. If your content producers consider each optimization point when developing text, image, video, and news content, the optimization process will go much more smoothly. After all, your content won’t be as successful as possible without being fully optimized.

via Content Marketing Institute http://contentmarketinginstitute.com/2013/09/guide-content-optimization-key-content-types/

Designing The Words: Why Copy Is A Design Issue

• By Sam Wright
• September 12th, 2013
 
• Content, Web Design
• 19 Comments

The relationship between copy and design has beencovered many times on Smashing Magazine. Working in a content-focused industry, we need to keep this issue pretty close to heart; creating great copy is pointless if it is visually uninspiring or unreadable. Likewise, if the content doesn’t deliver, then even the most attractive page won’t hold the reader’s attention.

Yet much of the discussion so far has concentrated on issues such as microcopy — the small bits of text that instruct the reader on how to interact with the website — and the minutiae of user experience. This stuff is essential, of course, but in this article we’d like to broaden our focus to look at some of the fundamental mistakes behind bad copy.

We’ve chosen to do this for two reasons. First, we hope it will help budding writers out there avoid the most common pitfalls of the job. Secondly — and perhaps more importantly — we want to stress the importance of content as part of the user experience mix.

A while back, Elliot Nash discussed the responsibility of the designer. Designers “want control of the entire user experience,” he said. “We want to ensure repeat use, and high engagement — and to do so, we want to design every little piece of whatever it is we’re working on. After all, we are largely responsible for the performance of the result.” However, he argued, “most of us don’t want to own the work it takes to execute this full scale implementation.” For us, leaving the copy out of the equation is a fundamental error.

In practice, design is a process that should happen with content, not just for it, and the practice of creating a page full of lorem ipsum and getting the copywriter to fill in the blanks just doesn’t cut it anymore. The cross-discipline approach of using design as a way to clearly communicate information, known as communication design, is growing. However, no matter how clearly laid out a design is or how elegant the infographics are, our number one visual tool for relaying information to the audience is well-written text.

The Importance Of Editing

Bill Beard has written about the importance of using techniques such as multivariant testing to optimize microcopy. With large bodies of text, this becomes more of a challenge. Fortunately, authors, journalists and copywriters have been wrestling with this challenge for years, which is how we came up with the concept of editing. The main difference between editing and testing is that, rather than observing an average member of the public navigate your copy, you enlist someone who has a wealth of experience in working with the written word.

A lot of editing is nuts and bolts stuff: fixing the grammar and punctuation, removing repetition, and making text easier to scan. However, like many user-centered design practices, it also means delving into the fundamental assumptions behind your writing, addressing how you think about the words, your audience and yourself. It is this process that will turn a precocious but essentially terrible teenage poet into a good writer. Yet, looking at so much of the copy online, in magazines and on billboards, we can see that plenty of professionals out there haven’t yet mastered it.

Below are the three things that every writer and copywriter must learn to avoid:

1. Self-Importance

Of all the mistakes new writers make, this is probably the most understandable. When you begin writing, you want, first and foremost, to make your mark. Your writing isn’t just another entry in the world’s growing collection of largely unread manuscripts; it’s a definitive text that future scholars will paw over for hidden meaning for years to come. You’re the voice of a generation, damn it!

Copywriters face the same problem. By now, probably about half the words ever written were penned for marketing purposes, and you don’t want your work to be another drop in that increasingly deep ocean of marketing blah. You want to stand out, to be something special. That’s why you end up writing copy like this:

“It’s not a journey. Every journey ends, but we go on. The world turns and we turn with it. Plans disappear. Dreams take over. But wherever I go, there you are. My luck, my fate, my fortune.”

Believe it or not, this wasn’t written in the Moleskin of a sensitive teenager. It was written by professionals, advertising a globally recognized brand with a budget big enough to hire Brad Pitt to read it like so:

Both the poor souls behind this crime of an advert and the 15-year-old who writes poetry about how everyone is superficial except himself have the same problem. They both want to stand out, to draw prestige, to be memorable; however, whether due to youth or the fact that they sell scented liquid, they don’t actually have much to say.

So, how do you avoid doing this yourself?

One of the most common pieces of writing advice in the world is “Write what you know.” Conversely, it’s a good idea to know what you’re writing about. You will often save yourself a lot of trouble simply by asking, “Why would anyone want to read this?” The answer could be “because it’s useful” or “because it’s funny” or any number of other reasons, but you should be able to answer that question before putting words to paper. I’m sure no one asked why anyone would want to hear “The world turns and we turn with it.”

It’s a line that doesn’t actually tell the audience anything. It’s the sort of vacuous line that sounds meaningful but contains no information. You can argue that it’s making the case for Chanel No. 5 as a constant in an ever-changing world, but the portentous tone and the layering on of hilarious faux-meaningful truisms, such as “Every journey ends, but we go on,” drown out any point the text could have conceivably made.

The teenaged poet is likely to get better as they get older because they will learn more and will have more to write about. By the same token, if your copy is to carry weight, whether for an advert, marketing copy or a company website, then you’ll need to know what you’re trying to communicate and why anybody would want to hear it.

2. The Wrong Tone

Young writers are a lot like magpies, happy to steal anything that looks shiny and put it to use in their own creation. Studying Shakespeare in school? In it goes. Read Edgar Allen Poe’s The Ravenand thought it sounded cool? You’re having that. Enjoy the teenaged banter in Buffy the Vampire Slayer? That goes in, too.

The result is a sort of Frankenstein’s monster of a writing style. And you know what? That’s fine. As with most things, imitation is a great way to learn how to write, and, with time, copying the good bits of others will mutate into something that conceivably sounds like your own voice.

The same is true of professionally written copy. When Barclay’s heard of cash machines being described as “holes in the wall,” it liked it and took it. World of Warcraft liked the Chuck Norris jokes (or facts) that were getting passed around a few years ago and so got Chuck Norris to appear in an advert based on them.

But if you don’t take tone into account when writing copy professionally, the results can come out a little on the weird side.

For example, check out Kingpin Social. This company offers courses in social interaction. Fair enough — plenty of people out there find it difficult to talk to others, and a company that offers techniques and training to help you overcome that difficulty would be welcome. The problem is that the website uses phrases like, “We will teach you to utilize proven social methodologies that will provide you with success in your personal, career or corporate relationships,” and “Every person deserves the confidence to achieve the optimal result in every social situation.” Imagine somebody using phrases like these in conversation; what opinion would you form of them?

A course like this needs to appear inviting to people who are worried about coming out of their shell, while also demonstrating that this company is made up of people who are good at speaking with others. Using words like “utilize” and “optimal” achieves the exact opposite effect.

The only reason anyone uses those words in marketing copy is to appear clever, and using words to appear clever is what bad teenage poets do. Never say “utilize” or “optimal” when you can say “use” and “best” instead.

Sometimes you end up with a patchwork effect — for example, using a simple, effective phrase like “What We Do,” and then following it up by telling readers that you are “a performance-based retail marketing technology and analytics company focused on helping retailers deliver relevant advertising that converts.”

In user-centered design, one often speaks of “personas.” A persona is a fictional character who represents the typical person you are designing for. You would think about their needs, their wants, the knowledge they will bring to your design, all of which will help you to construct a design around them.

A good way to avoid this pitfall in your own copy is to try the reverse. Think of your client’s business as a character you’re writing dialogue for. What sort of person is this business? What are their likes and dislikes? What sorts of things are they likely to say? Read the copy out loud. Does it sound like the sort of thing your imaginary person would say? If not, why not?

A particularly good example of this is the Scottish craft breweryBrewdog. Everything, from its website to its packaging, is written to sound like somebody you wouldn’t mind going for a beer with — passionate, funny and just a little surreal.

Brewdog — passionate, funny and just a little surreal…

The Dead Pony Club drink is introduced thus: “Being shot from a Hoppy Howitzer beats the hell out of trotting round a submissive paddock. That’s why the internal combustion engine got mounted onto two wheels.” But it avoids the territory of “The world turns” by adding, “This pale ale is chopped, tuned and ready to roll. Fuel up and hold tight, this little thoroughbred kicks like a mule.” However unpoetic the language, there’s never any doubt that the copy is talking about beer.

3. Self-Awareness

This is perhaps the hardest and most important thing for any writer to learn. It’s why many of us just don’t bother. We all dive in at the start without hesitation, enjoying the sheer joy of creation for its own sake and assuming that we’re producing pure written gold merely because we’re the ones doing it — until one day, it suddenly occurs to us, “What if I’m not any good?” Yes, I know, it was a surprise to me, too.

Some writers simply shake this thought loose and carry on as before. Many others stop right then and there, too paralyzed to ever dare setting down another word. However, every writer has to go through this step before they actually start being good. It’s when they start asking the question mentioned at the beginning, “Why would anyone want to read this?” and they start working to come up with a good answer. It’s when they start trying to read their work with eyes other than their own; and if you can’t do that, then copywriting really isn’t where you want to be.

Writers who struggle to overcome this obstacle are often so focused on selling their product that they forget the advert will appear in a wider context — with disastrous results. This is probably why Sony produced a series of incredibly racist billboard ads for its Playstation Portable. It’s also likely why American Apparel thought Hurricane Sandy was in any way an opportunity for social media marketing. At the time of writing, the Royal Bank of Scotland has just hit a marketing disaster because its campaign, which tells people to “Search RBYes,” doesn’t take into account that Google autocorrects “RBYes” to “Rabies.”

Sadly, teaching someone to “be more self-aware” is not really possible. Most of us learn to do it by making a lot of mistakes. But, more than anything, it takes a bit of imagination, the stuff that both copywriters and designers are supposed to have in droves. Of course, this doesn’t mean that designers now have to be fully proficient copywriters who can proofread and redraft words while setting layouts. Nor does it mean that copywriters need to be wizards with design software (although a little knowledge of the basic tools and concepts wouldn’t hurt). However, it certainly means that copywriters and designers need to work more closely together than ever before.

CONCLUSION

If you would like to learn more, we strongly recommend reading The Craft of Words, Part One: Macrocopy by the Standardistas, a great exploration of how design and copywriting intersect. All too often, design and copywriting take place in their own little bubbles, with each practitioner unaware of what the other is doing. But for the copy to be of any use, the writer needs to be aware of the context in which it will appear.

Front page image credits: Sean MacEntee.

(al, ea, il)

via Smashing Magazine Feed http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2013/09/12/why-copy-is-a-design-issue/