Category: Copywrite/Advertising

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Copywrite/Advertising Devotional/Christian Living

Step Out in Front of the Crowd: How to Add Speaking to Your Writing Life

As a devotional or Christian living writer you have a burden to share the message God has laid on your heart. Your blog, books, and articles can help you reach your audience. So can speaking.

My Read the Hard Parts blog started because I want to encourage women to dig into the hard parts of Scripture, the ones we usually skip like Revelation or Ezekiel. Although I have taught children at our church for my whole adult life I never thought about speaking to adults until I had to give an announcement about social media to two hundred men at our denomination’s pastors conference. After this short announcement I got a lot of feedback about how well spoken I was. I was surprised! Then on the drive home I felt the Holy Spirit say to me “it is time to speak.”

Shortly after that experience, I learned what I could about how a writer can find opportunities to speak. And now I have spoken to almost a dozen ladies groups.

Here are some tips that worked for me for starting out as a speaker:

Develop a couple of topics

Have about three talk topics that are related to your writing. Since I write about the hard parts of Scripture, I started out with a talk on Revelation, one on Proverbs, and then one on how to read and understand the hard parts. I came up with a talk title and a short paragraph of explanation for each topic. I did not develop all the details of the content of my talks until I had a group request that topic in particular. I also decided that I would be willing to create a new talk that would fit the needs of any group that requested one on a particular topic. If I develop a new talk for a group then I can offer that talk to others.

Start Local

Next I created a flyer with my contact information and the topics of my talks. I visited local churches in the area and the libraries. I was nervous every time I did one of these cold calls, but I prayed each time that God would guide me and direct me where He wanted me to go. I also contacted churches in my denomination and let them know I would be available to speak at any event they may be having. I also asked to teach in my own local church and we created a women’s Sunday School class so we could study Revelation together.

Online Presence

In addition to handing out my flyer, I also added a speaking tab to my website with the talk descriptions. I would also highly recommend creating a free profile on womenspeakers.com. There is a location based search on this site so this is especially a good way for nearby churches and Christian groups to find a speaker who they don’t need to fly in from out of state.

Use Video

When I started to get some requests for more information about my speaking, I was often asked for a video clip of my speaking. At first I didn’t have any, so I improvised by sharing my Instagram TV videos and Facebook live videos and even some audio of myself as a guest on a friend’s podcast. Once I got a speaking engagement lined up, I invited a friend along to take pictures and videos to use as examples for future requests. You don’t need to video the whole presentation. Just a clip will do. The organizers just need to know that you are confident as a speaker and pleasant to listen to.

Build Some Excitement

Once you have a speaking engagement lined up, post pictures of your preparation. Share pictures on social media of your travels to the engagement.  Share pictures from your actual engagement. Hopefully some others in the crowd will share, too. All these social media postings will help build excitement around your speaking and will pique other’s interest as well. Take along some freebies and a sign-up sheet for your email list so that those who hear you speak can have opportunity to connect with your writing, too.

Writing life can be isolating. Speaking gives me the opportunity to connect with my audience in person. At my speaking engagements I listen to the questions the ladies have about the hard parts of Scripture so I can address them in my future writing and speaking. Plus I love the “a-ha” look on their faces when they understand a part of Scripture in a new way. Speaking reminds me why I am writing to begin with—to help women find simple truths in hard parts of Scripture.

Rachel Schmoyer is a pastor’s wife who is loving her church life. She writes about the hard parts of Scripture at readthehardparts.com. She has had devotionals published in the past, but now she is looking forward to getting her first Christian Living book published. You can connect with Rachel on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, or Pinterest.

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Copywrite/Advertising

The End

The end — the two magical words every struggling reader wants to find and every author wants to write. Knowing when to type those words and nothing else is critical to authorial success.

It’s just as true for copywriters as for fantasy novelists. In fact, an article on Re:Worded says,

“Half of copywriting is knowing when to stop writing.”

So when – and how – do you stop writing?

  • Before you think you’re done. Have you ever started a new TV show or series of novels, got wrapped up in the plot and characters, and then watched in disappointment as quality fell off? In TV, it’s called “jumping the shark” — that point at which the show turns to gimmicks instead of a story to keep you intrigued. The creators of the hit series Breaking Bad avoided this problem by setting an end date for the story at the beginning of their work. When writing advertising or marketing copy, you could try writing your ending first, too.
  • When you hit your word count. Long-form articles rank better on Google than short-form articles do. Google loves an article that hits 1,000 words because the bots get more clues for what the article is about. Write longer articles, and your clients should love seeing their SEO rank rise, which is good for you. The downside? Long articles easily confuse or bore the reader. Make sure your content is valuable and easy to scan.
  • After asking a powerful question. Most people don’t want to read your opinion or listen to your knowledge, anyway. They just want to share their own. So end your blog post, article, or social media piece with a powerful question. Readers can voice their thoughts in the comments, doing some of your work for you!
  • Upon introducing a new topic. If you are pumping out content once or twice a week for a company, you could easily create 100 articles a year and soon run out of topics. When you realize you’re introducing a concept that could be its own piece, make a note of it for a future article and stick to your original subject. You’ll wish you had. Trust me.

Talking about quitting is counterintuitive, isn’t it? We live in a culture that bombards us with the message: “Never quit. Never give up. Never abandon the ship.” But quitting isn’t always a bad idea. If you smoke, quit. If you’re doing something you deplore for no reason, quit. When you’re done with a project, quit.

“One of the mistakes writers make,” says world-renowned journalist Malcolm Gladwell, “is that they spend a lot of time thinking about how to start the story and not a lot of time thinking about how to end it.”

Gladwell’s insight applies to more than journalistic pieces. It’s true for copywriting. It’s true, perhaps, for life.

The part of my story that involves writing a regular column for Almost An Author ends with this article. For the past two years, I’ve written on humor, drip campaigns, storytelling, laryngitis, copywriting history, and the freelance life. You’ve laughed at my jealousy-induced rant about Carlton Hughes and my story about my grandfather riding a horse down the theater aisle during a movie.

You were also gracious enough to congratulate me when I wrote about getting fired as an agency copywriter and launching my own business. In fact, your encouragement is part of why I have found success as a full-time freelance writer and editor.

Thank you.

For me, the fun has been in watching this site grow, change, and mature and in getting to play a part in its development. Winning that designation as a Top 101 Writing Site from Writers Digest was the cherry on top.

So before my column jumps the shark, I’ll leave this space for someone else to help A3 keep getting better. In the meantime, I’m launching a podcast in the spring, juggling several new clients, and tackling an intriguing project that I landed (where else?) through a fellow A3 columnist.

I’ll definitely keep an eye on the amazing articles over here, and I’ll put them on Twitter when I can. You can connect with me on LinkedIn if you want to talk about writing, reading, or weird ideas. Now get off A3 and go write.

THE END

PS: When and how do you plan to end your story? What’s the best ending you’ve ever read?

Holland Webb is a full-time freelance copywriter and digital marketing strategist living near Greenville, SC. His clients are leaders in the online retail, higher education, and faith-based sectors. Holland has written for brands such as U.S. News & World Report, iLendX, Radisson, Country Inn & Suites, MediaFusion, Modkat, Great Bay Home, IMPACT Water, and BioNetwork. He is a featured writer on Compose.ly, and his monthly copywriting column appears on Almost An Author. You can reach him at www.hollandwebb.com or at hollandlylewebb@gmail.com.

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Copywrite/Advertising

Add Some Holiday Sparkle to Your Copywriting

Everything feels magical at the holidays. More smiles. More laughter. More glitter.

Here are some ways to sprinkle holiday sparkle into your copywriting.

Know your client’s holidays. Sometimes you are so caught up in your own holidays you forget not everyone celebrates the same way that you do. Know what your client believes so you don’t end up putting Merry Christmas on a Jewish person’s business Facebook page or signing off an email for a Muslim business owner by mentioning the Savior’s birth. Not good! Even if the business owner celebrates a particular holiday, they may not want you to mention it in your copywriting because of the beliefs of her client base. To be safe, ask your client if they want the holidays mentioned outright in your copywriting or social media posting.

Know your client’s location. No one in Florida is dreaming of a white Christmas. That is why they moved to Florida—to escape the cold slushy mess from the north! If you do have the go ahead to mention the holidays, do so in a weather-appropriate way. If you are writing for New Mexico, don’t paint the picture of a winter wonderland. This tip applies all year long. If you are writing for a company that concentrates on local business, know the local weather and a bit of the local culture so you can write with that particular audience in mind.

Know the feelings of the season. Even if you cannot mention the holidays by name, there are a lot of feelings that are amplified during the holidays that can be mentioned to connect with potential customers. Family time, togetherness, and time to reflect on what’s really important are some common themes. And don’t forget the New Year. This is the time when people are setting goals for themselves and feeling empowered to make them happen. How can your client’s service or product improve the customer’s life? This is really something we should be doing all year long, but people are more willing to hear it when New Year’s Day comes.

Let us know in the comments. How do you add holiday sparkle to your copywriting? Are there any types of businesses you’ve had a hard time when it comes to mentioning or not mentioning the holidays?

Rachel Schmoyer is a pastor’s wife, mom of four, and a copywriter. She also helps Christians find the simple truths in the complex parts of the Bible at readthehardparts.com. Her other writings and publishing credits can be found on rachelschmoyerwrites.com.

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Copywrite/Advertising

4 Books that Fueled My Copywriting Imagination

Normally, when you search for a definition, you are looking for a way to narrow a term or concept. But the more I read about copywriting, the broader my understanding of copywriting becomes.

Copywriting is a boundless genre with limitless applications. Every time I bump into another copywriter and we swap writing stories, I am amazed at the uniqueness of his or her experience. I think to myself, “What a great idea! I’ll have to try that!”

The same happens when I “meet” another copywriter through reading their book.

Here are four books that fueled my copywriting imagination:

Writers for Hire: 101 Secrets for Freelance Success by Kelly James Enger. This book takes you step-by-step into the journey of freelancing. Most of the freelancing examples from the book are related to magazine article writing, but the concepts were useful for copywriting as well. Kelly emphasizes a personal touch by giving thank you notes to those she interviews, and she stresses the importance of keeping up on the business end of your writing life with invoices and paperwork.

Building a Storybrand: Clarify Your Message So Customers Will Listen by Donald Miller. People don’t really read emails or websites. They skim them. It’s not facts and figures that capture a skimmers attention. Storytelling captures attention. Donald Miller teaches you the simple elements of storytelling and applies them to business copywriting so you can catch the attention of customers and consumers and inspire them to participate in the call to action. Brilliant.

How to Write Copy That Sells: The Step-by-Step System for More Sales, to More Customers, More Often  by Ray Edwards.  This book is very practical with how-tos and templates for emails, websites, direct mail, and more. Includes tips and guidelines for social media posts as well which is an often overlooked area of copywriting.

102 Ways to Earn Money Writing 1,500 Words or Less: The Ultimate Freelancer’s Guide by I.J. Schecter. This book opened my eyes to unique writing possibilities that I never would have noticed otherwise. Wherever there are words, someone was paid to write them. My kids get tired of me saying it, but whenever they read a billboard or the bag that contains their fast food meal, I say, “Someone was paid to write that, you know.”

Sigh.

“Yes. We KNOW, Mom!”

Also, don’t be shy at initiating to ask if a business needs a copywriter. Even a big company. Send out an email describing your experience and your interest in writing about their service or product. The worse that can happen is… nothing. They never write back. The best case scenario? You land an awesome copywriting gig.

You don’t have to write fiction to be a creative writer. Open your eyes and take a look around you. What words are needed? Could you be the one to write them? Search #copywriter on Twitter and ask what kind of copywriting others do. Meet new people. Share your stories. Inspire each other to use your imagination.

Rachel Schmoyer is a pastor’s wife, mom of four, and a copywriter. She also helps Christians find the simple truths in the complex parts of the Bible at readthehardparts.com. Her other writings and publishing credits can be found on rachelschmoyerwrites.com.

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Copywrite/Advertising

Niches: How and When to Find Yours

Online copywriting gurus say you need a niche if you want to make it as a content marketing writer. Are they right? Do you need a copywriting niche? If so, how can a newbie discover the right one? What if you want to change later? Do you choose based on what you know, or what you’re interested in?

Continue reading “Niches: How and When to Find Yours”
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Copywrite/Advertising

What Aretha Franklin Taught Me about Copywriting

When I heard that Aretha Franklin had passed away, I felt the urge to listen to her hits. After some R-E-S-P-E-C-T, I came across You Make Me Feel (Like a Natural Woman). Aretha sings about her man and all the little things he does for her. All those little things add up to the big thing: how the man makes her feel. When it comes to love, that’s the main point: how a person makes you feel.

The same is true in copywriting. Yes, you describe a product or service in a blog post, email, website, or a social media post. But the company or product isn’t really the main thing. The main thing is how the customer or client feels.

I first came across this idea while listening to Donald Miller interviewed by Dave Ramsey. Donald Miller told business leaders that they are not the hero of their company. The customer is. Whatever a business is selling, it needs to be communicated by how it makes the customer the hero.

In his book, Building a Storybrand, Donald Miller says, “If we position our products and services as anything but an aid in helping people survive, thrive, be accepted, find love, achieve an aspirational identity, or bond with a tribe that will defend them physically and socially, good luck selling anything to anybody. These are the only things people care about.” And what are these things? Feelings.

The same concept applies to all kinds of writing, not just copywriting. William Kenower in his book Fearless Writing: How to Create Boldly and Write with Confidence puts it another way. Kenower says to writers: “you are a merchant dealing in emotion.” In a novel or a short story, there is an appropriate time to end in sadness or loss. The difference in copywriting is you are moving the reader from their negative feelings into the feelings of the hero. Feelings of triumph and belonging. Feelings of victory.

So what does this actually look like in copywriting?

Before I write anything about the business or product, I imagine how the reader feels. Why did they Google the topic I’m writing on? What problem do they have in their life? How does that problem make them feel? Then I write a few simple feelings statements at the top of my page so I can keep them in mind as I write.

For example, if I am writing about air conditioning repair, I think about what it feels like on a summer day when your air conditioning is on the fritz. I’m sweating. I’m frustrated. I’m afraid of how much it’ll cost. I am impatient—I want it fixed NOW! I jot down these feelings at the top of the page.

If I am writing for a senior living facility, it may be the children of the seniors that are reading what I’m writing. They are worried about their parent’s health and safety. They are stressed out caring for their job, their kids, and now having to take care of their parents, too. They might be in conflict with their parent since they are trying to talk them into to moving to a facility. They feel a burden of responsibility to do the right thing for their parent.

Once I have those feelings listed at the top of my page, then I describe the product, service, or topic from the writing assignment. Keeping those feelings of the reader at the top of the page guides me to describe the product or service with words that soothe the reader and enable them to be victorious over their situation.

Once I am finished describing the product or service, if the assignment calls for it, I end with a call to action that tells the reader what to do so that they can be the hero. Like “call to schedule an appointment so your family feels cool again” or “contact us to give your mom the best care possible.”

Lastly, I go back to the beginning feeling words and turn them into a short story, just one or two sentences long, that describes a situation that will sound familiar to the reader. This short story serves as a hook to grab the reader’s attention. It makes the reader say, “yes! That’s exactly how I feel!” so he will read on.

Writing copy with feeling takes more work than simply describing the product or service, but your copy will yield results that other copy doesn’t. And business owners notice when your copy is the most effective. Next time you write copy, picture your reader crooning like Aretha, “you make me feel…” Identify their needs. Make them the hero.

In addition to copywriting, Rachel Schmoyer writes about finding simple truth in complex parts of Scripture at readthehardparts.com. A pastor’s wife and a mom of four, she is involved in the children’s ministry in her local church. Rachel is represented by Michelle Lazeruk of WordWise Media. You can connect with Rachel on Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram.

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Copywrite/Advertising

5 Copywriting Courses for New or Experienced Writers

Freelancing is the future of work, and copywriting looks like it’s the future of advertising. Freelance copywriting, therefore, can be a career that grows with you through the next few years.

If you’re thinking about launching a full-time career in copywriting, you may be asking what courses can help you get started or get better as a writer. Some people are looking at entire degrees in copywriting, others at university-level certificates, and several at short online copywriting courses.

To be clear, you do not need a degree, certificate, or course to become a copywriter. All you need is a client that will pay you to write for them. Courses can help improve your skills, though, as well as give credibility to your pitch.

I’ve listed five well-known copywriting courses below and included a few thoughts on each.

  1. Copywriting Mastery Bundle

The CNN Store sells this course, which includes 63 short lessons spread across an hour and a half of videos. The course begins with a quick overview of fundamental topics such as developing a mental image and using Maslow’s hierarchy of needs to understand customer psychology. The course goes for $24, and you get a lifetime access. CNN’s Copywriting Mastery Bundle provides a broad but shallow overview of copywriting as a career and is best suited to people who are just now exploring copywriting. For that, the price seems very affordable and the content looks helpful. I doubt that the course would grant much credibility on a writer’s resume though.

  1. StoryBrand Copywriter Certification

Founded by New York Times bestselling author Donald Miller, StoryBrand is a marketing company that relies on the power of story to help their clients sell products and services. Miller and well-known copywriter Ray Edwards teach the StoryBrand courses in the copywriting certificate program. Their curriculum requires you to spend two days at an in-person seminar, which costs nearly $5,000. I’m a long-time fan of Miller’s thinking and writing, and I believe wholeheartedly in his approach. That said, I will never spend $5,000 on a 2-day course.

  1. Content Strategy for Professionals Specialization

Offered by Northwestern University through Coursera, this specialization includes four courses and a capstone project. Each course requires 1-3 hours of study each week and lasts three weeks. The capstone project takes 3-4 hours per week and lasts four weeks. The program costs $49 per month, and students get to enjoy lecturers from the Northwestern faculty and beyond. This course sequence explores subjects such as interactivity, gamification, content trends, social media, and analytics. In the capstone, learners develop a content strategy for a fictional start-up company. If I were choosing any course listed, I’d pick this one. It’s affordable, deep, and interactive.

  1. AWAI’s Accelerated Program for Six-Figure Copywriting

American Writers and Artists, Inc (AWAI) claims their course is “written by the industry’s top copywriters who have generated billions of dollars of sales from their copy.” Certainly, they offer a large catalogue of classes, and they’ve been around since 1997 so they’re doing something right. The $495 price tag could be well worth the money, but I’m deeply suspicious of AWAI. Their claims about their alumni’s success seem grossly overblown. I can definitely imagine a skilled, hard working, and well networked copywriter earning a six-figure salary. I cannot conceive of anyone raking in a million dollars a year as AWAI claims. Plus, the reviews online are mixed at best. You may find AWAI works for you, but I’d go into this one eyes wide open.

  1. Master of Arts in Journalism at the University of Missouri

If you’ve got the time, money, and stick-to-it-iveness for a master’s degree, the University of Missouri may be the place for you. Sites like USA Today and College Factual regularly rank Mizzou’s journalism program among the country’s best, and the school offers an online master’s degree. Students must complete 37 graduate credits at about $500 per credit. Mizzou is one of the few schools that offers a concentration in strategic communication. Earning a master’s degree means making a serious investment of time and money. But if it’s your goal, Mizzou is a great place to start looking.

Work is changing. More and more people believe it’s better to build your own sandbox than to play in someone else’s, and copywriting is a great gig for writers looking to engage in commerce and earn a living. Taking a course or certificate may help you improve your work and generate more income for your family. Choose the right program for you, and get started learning more.

Good luck.

Holland Webb is a full-time freelance copywriter and digital marketing strategist living near Greenville, SC. His clients are leaders in the online retail, higher education, and faith-based sectors. Holland has written for brands such as U.S. News & World Report, iLendX, Radisson, Country Inn & Suites, MediaFusion, Modkat, Great Bay Home, IMPACT Water, and BioNetwork. He is a featured writer on Compose.ly, and his monthly copywriting column appears on Almost An Author. You can reach him at hollandwebb.com or at hollandlylewebb@gmail.com.

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Copywrite/Advertising

The Top 12 Principles of Copywriting According to the Voices on LinkedIn

Are you on LinkedIn? If so, let’s connect. If not, please join us.

LinkedIn is your online watering hole for conversation about business, work, marketing, entrepreneurship, communication, and more. I get a kick out of how the most business-oriented social media platform is also the most personally supportive.

Since I’ve also secured several paying clients on LinkedIn, I try to hang out there. Not long ago, I asked my marketing friends on the platform for their top 12 principles of copywriting.

Here’s what we came up with.

  1. Write with your reader in mind. (Holland Webb) I kicked off with this one. If you want to pour out your soul, keep a journal. Copywriting isn’t about you and me. It’s about them – the customers.
  2. Avoid confusion. Clarity trumps persuasion. (Jasper Oldersom) In most modern copywriting, we aren’t trying to convince people. Instead, we are inspiring and informing them so they will trust us with their business. Leave the clever prose behind, and focus on being clear, accurate, and honest.
  3. Omit needless words. (William Strunk and Mike Robinson) Here’s what Mike actually wrote, “Never say any more than you absolutely, totally, completely necessarily need to, lest you end up using far more words than it actually takes to convey your point, which may have been lost in the maelstrom of complicated, multitudinous words that really saw you just dancing frivolously around the main point, which, as you already knew from the beginning but had a word count to fill, is, in fact, a century-old dictum: Omit needless words.”
  4. If you got more ‘we’ than ‘you’ in your copy, you’re doing it wrong. (Becky Stout) It’s hard to get clients off the “me, me, me” message, but when they make the shift, the results are immediate and amazing. Plus, isn’t business more satisfying when it’s about others instead of yourself?
  5. Increase your life experiences, and always carry a notebook. (Justin Oberman) Writing gurus often give this advice to budding novelists, but it works for copywriters, too. Your varied life experiences give you more points of connection with your readers.
  6. Get rid of (horse hockey). (Sayantan Sen) I edited this one to keep within Almost An Author’s family-friendly guidelines. Sayantan’s original language is more accurate, though. Say what you mean. Cite your data. Stop talking.
  7. If you have to use the words “storytelling,” “brand,” or “program,” you’re doing it wrong. (Ebin Sandler) Yes, please! Jargon, hip language, and cliches have no place in your prose. Use them in the rough draft, but on the rewrites, ferret them out ruthlessly. Replace them with meaningful words and phrases.
  8. Think benefits, not features. (Yetta M.) This one is hard especially since clients will push back on it. They’ve designed something they want to tell the world about, forgetting that few people care about its every bell and whistle. Instead of listing what makes a product good, set up scenes that show the customer using the product in ways that make life better.
  9. Read what you’ve written, edit, rewrite. Repeat. (Naheed Maalik) This one shouldn’t need to be said, but it does. It definitely does. Because there’s no editor standing between you and the “publish” button on a WordPress blog, you have to be your own editor. I like to submit articles a week or two in advance, and then I ask the client to let me at it with the red pen before they publish it.
  10. Speak the truth. (Sara Miriam Gross) Have you seen those old snake oil advertisements from the 19th century? Apparently, those elixirs could cure everything from the vapors to smelly feet. Of course, they were probably either poison or 90 proof grain alcohol. The advertisers lied. Don’t do that. Today’s readers are sophisticated and will see right through you. Besides, it’s unethical.
  11. Use social proof + rich testimonials whenever possible to support the claims you are making. (Michal Eisikowitz) Credibility is the king of content. Trust is hard to build and easy to lose. Put everything you have into making sure you’re words ring true no matter how your readers test them.
  1. Use action words, and make claims that won’t be future disappointments. (Tzvi Zucker) Avoid the passive voice, linking verbs, and bland pronouns whenever you can. In that respect, copywriting is like every other kind of writing. Keep it interesting; keep it truthful.

So that’s it from the voices over at LinkedIn. What would you add to our list?

Holland Webb

Holland Webb is a full-time freelance copywriter and digital marketing strategist living near Greenville, SC. His clients are leaders in the online retail, higher education, and faith-based sectors. Holland has written for brands such as U.S. News & World Report, iLendX, Radisson, Country Inn & Suites, MediaFusion, Modkat, Great Bay Home, IMPACT Water, and BioNetwork. He is a featured writer on Compose.ly, and his monthly copywriting column appears on Almost An Author. You can reach him at hollandwebb.com or at hollandlylewebb@gmail.com.

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Copywrite/Advertising

What It Is Like to Copywrite for Your Own Clients

I broke into a cold sweat when I read the email. Could it be true? I reread the email. Yes! The email was from friend of a friend asking to hire me for copywriting and social media managing. I was excited and nervous at the same time. Up until that point all my copywriting had been through a digital marketing agency. Now I was going to try my hand at managing my own official client.

While the basics of strong copywriting remain the same whether you write for a digital marketing agency or for your own client, the relationship between you and your own client is different than when there is a digital marketer in the mix.

What is it like to copywrite for your own client?

You are in control of how much you charge. I felt so awkward the first time I negotiated a price with a client, but, as with most things, it gets easier. For my first couple clients, the price I quoted was much too low and I underestimated how long some of the tasks would take to complete. I learned the hard way to ask detailed questions about all the tasks so I had an accurate estimate of how much time was involved. I would also recommend quoting a higher price than you initially think to leave some room for negotiating.

You communicate directly with the client. When it’s your client, communication is all up to you. There is no digital marketer initiating contact to find out the client’s needs and wants. Depending on the client, this can be a blessing or a burden. When the client is happy with your work, you get to hear the positive feedback first-hand. On the other hand, when things are not going well, you will hear that as well.

You may be doing more than just copywriting. This varies from client to client, of course, but for some clients I have done social media managing, email newsletters, or email marketing. I have even been asked to do some in person marketing. Other clients needed me to upload their blog post and pictures into their website. It’s helpful to know some basic SEO best practices so that your writing can be most effective. The more skills you have, the more valuable your copywriting can be to your client.

Copywriting for your own clients can be a joy. It’s a chance to step out from the shadows and have your name and face be connected to your work. If you are ready to secure your own great clients, check out Holland Webb’s guide.

Rachel Schmoyer is a pastor’s wife, mom of four, and a copywriter. She also helps Christians find the simple truths in the complex parts of the Bible at readthehardparts.com. Her other writings and publishing credits can be found on rachelschmoyerwrites.com.

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Copywrite/Advertising

What It’s Like to Write for a Digital Marketing Agency

Since I became a copywriter, I have written for my own clients and for digital marketing agencies. Each arrangement has its pros and cons, but my preference at this point in my life is to write for digital marketing agencies.

What is a digital marketing agency?

A digital marketing agency takes care of a company’s online presence. They come up with a plan to create effective internet ads, website content that turns leads into customers, and engaging social media profiles. A digital marketer knows SEO and keeps up with the latest online trends. A digital marketing agency could be just one person, a team of people, or a large organization.

What does a copywriter write for a digital marketing agency?

A big part of writing for a digital marketing agency is writing blog posts for business websites. Blog posts are a type of content marketing. Content marketing is any writing that sets up the business as an expert in their space and allows them to give free information to build a trust relationship with potential customers. Blogs are the perfect place for a business to do this online, but this could also include newsletters or even social media posts. Email marketing can be content marketing as well.

What it is like to write for a digital marketing agency?

Each digital marketing company works a little differently, but for the most part, I am given a blog topic to write for a particular business website. Then I research the business and get to know their voice and how they are trying to help the reader. Are they formal and informative? Or friendly and fun? What life problem for the reader is the company trying to solve?

Then I research the assigned blog topic on reputable websites and write the blog post according to the instructions given to me. Some companies want 300-500 words. Others want 1,200 words or more. Some digital marketing agencies supply me with a complete outline of the blog post including keywords and how many times each should be included. Some provide reliable resources for information on the topic which means all I need to do is write. Other agencies simply tell me to write a blog post for a particular website and I have the freedom to choose the topic and the keywords. Depending on the business, this could be fun or frustrating.

By far, blog posts are the most popular type of content marketing writing assignments, but I have also written emails and social media posts as well. If you are going to write for a digital marketing agency, it’s a good idea to have multiple skills or at least be willing to learn new skills. A good place to start learning the basics is Digital Marketing for Dummies by Ryan Deiss and Russ Henneberry.

Pros and Cons of Writing for a Digital Marketing Agency

You don’t have to talk directly to the client. Talking to the client and figuring out what they want and need takes time. Some clients are hard to get a hold of. Others communicate through massive brain dumps that you have to sift through and organize. Being the writer means the digital marketer has the responsibility of organizing the assignment before you begin your work.

The downside of not talking directly with the client is when you have a question or need a clarification. Then you are forced to play whisper down the lane to get answers. That also takes time and information could get lost along the way.

The client doesn’t know who is doing the writing. From the client’s perspective you are an anonymous writer on a digital marketing team. Even if your blog post is well-written and has a great response, you will not be revealed as the author. You will not build publishing credits under your own name. When you write for a digital marketing agency, there is no quest for personal glory. Any win for the client is a win for the whole team and you have to be okay with that.

Your writing can have maximize impact for the client. Unless you understand SEO, keywords, and the whole digital marketing picture, you will not have the knowledge necessary to make your writing the most effective it can be for the client. If you write with a digital marketing agency, trust and follow the instructions of the digital marketer so your writing can have maximum impact. If you ever want to have your own clients or if you simply want to grow as a copywriter, you will have to know more than just effective writing. Watch with curiosity how a digital marketer structures your writing assignments. If you are writing for your own clients, you won’t have this insightful input.

You don’t get to pick what to write. This varies from digital marketer to digital marketer. With one digital marketer, I have regular clients for whom I write month after month. Since I know the clients and what has been written already, I have a lot of freedom in choosing blog topics. For other digital marketing agencies, I have no say at all and simply work on assignments as they are given.

Invoicing is simple. With your own clients, you need to invoice each one and keep track of who paid and chase down those who didn’t pay. If you write for a digital marketing agency, you can write out one invoice to the marketer with all of your writing and know you will be paid. All the digital marketers I have written for have been well-organized with payments and paid a fair rate, on time, without any problems.

If you are getting started as a copywriter or looking to expand your copywriting opportunities, seek out a digital marketing agency to partner with. You’ll gain guided experience that you can use for future clients whether you get clients on your own or through other digital marketers.

Are you a digital marketer? What advantages are there to having a copywriter on your team? Are you a copywriter who writes for a digital marketer? What pros and cons have you had in your copywriting experience?

Rachel Schmoyer is a pastor’s wife, mom of four, and a copywriter. She also helps Christians find the simple truths in the complex parts of the Bible at readthehardparts.com. Her other writings and publishing credits can be found on rachelschmoyerwrites.com.

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Copywrite/Advertising

Seven Steps to Get Started or Get Better At Copywriting by Holland Webb

This month marks my one-year anniversary as the copywriting guy on Almost An Author. Have I convinced you yet that writing for business is the way to go? If not, go back and read any of my 13 articles on this subject. I’ll wait for you.

But if this is the year you’re going to earn cash with your wordsmithery skills, here are seven quick steps to get you started.

  1. Make it your habit to work with, not against the client. This tip comes from my friend, former editor, and now novelist Emily Golus. She says, “Your client may not have a way with words or understand advertising, but they DO know their business. Pay attention to nuances that reveal what matters to them. For example, your client may sell widgets, but it’s clear their real passion is helping people save money. Build content around that–it’s advertising gold, and the client will love it.”
  2. Don’t try to be too clever. Writing teachers emphasize creating a powerful hook. So you should. But resist the temptation to fill the page with witty prose. Why? Witty prose is all about how smart you sound as the writer. But copywriting isn’t about you. It’s about your reader. Easy-to-read text filled with helpful information turns readers into buyers.
  3. Learn to do fast and accurate research that helps your client. Remember your client’s goal: to earn the reader’s trust and their business. Smart, spot-on, and simple information does that. Don’t embarrass your client by putting fake news on their site. Instead, make sure your sources are solid. Try to find academic journals, major publications like the New York Times, or even source links on a Wikipedia page. Avoid weird sites or information you can’t corroborate with data from at least three separate sources. In general, websites ending in .org, .gov or .edu are more credible than those ending in .com or .net.
  4. Start with who you know. This tip comes from friend and fellow Almost An Author writer Rachel Schmoyer. She says, “Ask a friend or business you know well if you can write for them. You may not even get paid for the first thing you write, but you need something to put on a resume and get experience. My first experience was for a farmer I know. I wrote a weekly email in exchange for bread and eggs!”
  5. Study the basics of SEO. The acronym SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization. It’s the way to draw the right traffic to your site by using keywords that search engine bots can understand and use to index the page correctly. By saying learn SEO, I don’t mean you have to outsmart Google. In fact, it’s foolish to try. But you can use basic tools like Moz to search for quality keyword phrases to build your content around, and you can learn to make backlinks work to your client’s advantage.
  6. Speak your client’s language fluently. Spend time listening to your client. Write down exactly what they say. Clean it up, position it positively, and make it fit the audience. Hand it back to your client. Listen to them exclaim about how smart they sound.
  7. Proofread like your life depends on it. I’ve heard all the excuses: Breaking the odd grammatical rule on purpose can add great effect to your piece. Grammar changes. No one knows if that comma goes there or not. People don’t buy your product because you dotted every “i” and crossed every “t.” I know. I agree. But still spell your words correctly. Remove extraneous verbiage. Punctuate sentences with the right dots and dashes in the right places. And please, oh please, fix your misplaced modifiers. HemingwayApp and ProWritingAid are two of my favorite online tools for cleaning up my writing. You can use them or find other sources that work for you. Remember that basic proofreading will go a long way toward helping you land and keep clients that can pay you for your hard work.

If you want to get started as a copywriter or make the leap to doing this full time, use the seven steps above to get you going. Copywriting is worth the work. I pinky swear it.

BIO

Holland Webb is a full-time freelance copywriter and digital marketing strategist living near Greenville, SC. His clients are leaders in the online retail, higher education, and faith-based sectors. Holland has written for brands such as U.S. News & World Report, iLendX, Radisson, Country Inn & Suites, MediaFusion, Modkat, Great Bay Home, IMPACT Water, and BioNetwork. He is a featured writer on Compose.ly, and his monthly copywriting column appears on Almost An Author. You can reach him at www.hollandwebb.com or at hollandlylewebb@gmail.com.

 

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Copywrite/Advertising

Sweet Talking Goliath – How to Write for Google, Facebook, and Amazon by Holland Webb

Global digital marketing is a $209-billion-dollar-a-year industry ruled by five titans – Google, Facebook, Amazon, Alibaba, and Baidu. Any business that markets products online needs to understand and work with one or more of these companies in order to win customers.

As a copywriter, your job is to write for your clients in ways that help them slip through the portals these five agencies have created.

How will you do that?

Let’s start with a quick look at each of these digital players:

  • Google is the world’s largest search engine by revenue. It processes 40,000 searches every second, and it owns YouTube – the world’s second largest search engine. Google knows what we want to know.
  • Facebook is the behemoth of social media. It has 2 billion active users and earns $27.6 billion in gross revenue per year. Facebook knows who we know and what we like.
  • Amazon controls the ecommerce market. About 55% of online shopping trips begin at Amazon (people skip Google altogether) and 45% of them end there. Amazon knows what we buy, what we wish we could buy, and what we buy for our friends.
  • Alibaba and Baidu are Chinese companies. If you do not write in Mandarin Chinese, they may not (yet) be relevant to you.

Companies need (and pay) writers who can craft reader-centered copy for each of these platforms.

Small business owners may feel like a rag tag band of soldiers facing five digital Goliaths. They don’t need to worry. You’re there to slay these giants not with smooth stones from a sling but with sweet words from your pen.

Any kind of writing for the internet means crafting a killer headline, using bolded subheadings, putting information into bullet points, providing helpful solutions to readers’ problems, verifying your research, and loving white space. Still, each company needs something slightly different.

How to write for Google. Start with specific, long-tailed keywords. Type your topic into an SEO helper like Moz. It will pull up popular articles and top-ranked keywords. Use these to start defining your article. Next, figure out the questions you want to answer. Some of that is common sense, which is not something you can find on the web. You can, however, use answerthepublic to enhance your ideas for questions. As more and more people use voice search on Google, including key questions in your text will bump you up the results pages.

Finally, write as geo-specific as possible. I just finished a series of articles for a marketing agency on Vancouver Island. They wanted each of the three closest towns mentioned in the article. Sophisticated companies can actually track readers on mobile, determine if they are near their store or a competitor’s location, and send the information or coupons based on their location in real time.

How to write for Facebook. Start with a simple question. Don’t be too esoteric. Facebook isn’t the place to dive deep into the netherworld of the reader’s psyche. Something catchy but short. Answer or expound on that question in a few well-chosen words. You can always offer a link to a longer article. Make sure whatever you say is credible and valuable to your reader. End with a clear, defined call to action. As with all copywriting, strive to be positive and upbeat.

How to write for Amazon. The most personal of the big agencies, Amazon anticipates customer needs and makes offers early. In Amazon’s case, personal means specific. Your titles need long tails showcasing the most relevant keywords first. Remember that Amazon’s buyers are purchase-ready, so they need to know that what your client offers is exactly what they want to buy.

After building your title, describe the product’s features and tell how it solves the customer’s problem. You don’t need to stuff your descriptions with keywords, but you do need to include specific, solution-focused search strings in your text.

Most of writing for Google, Facebook, and Amazon is about putting yourself in the reader’s place. What does your reader want to know? What problem are they trying to solve? Who are they trying to connect with? What do they want to buy?

Help them, and they’ll love your client for it.

Holland Webb is a full-time freelance copywriter and digital marketing strategist living near Greenville, SC. His clients are leaders in the online retail, higher education, and faith-based sectors. Holland has written for brands such as U.S. News & World Report, iLendX, Radisson, Country Inn & Suites, MediaFusion, Modkat, Great Bay Home, IMPACT Water, and BioNetwork. He is a featured writer on Compose.ly, and his monthly copywriting column appears on Almost An Author. You can reach him at www.hollandwebb.com or at hollandlylewebb@gmail.com.

Categories
Copywrite/Advertising

Watch Your Language, Content Writers! We’re Not Advertisers by Holland Webb

Content Marketing (noun) def: marketing that tries to attract customers by distributing informational content potentially useful to the target audience, rather than by advertising products and services in the traditional way: content marketing through blogs and email newsletters.

Continue reading “Watch Your Language, Content Writers! We’re Not Advertisers by Holland Webb”
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Copywrite/Advertising

How Laryngitis Makes You a Better Copywriter by Holland Webb

I didn’t speak until I was three years old. To everyone’s relief, I finally talked and did so in full sentences but only to my mother.

Months passed before I spoke to my grandmother for the first time. I said … well, I see no need to repeat the conversation word-for-word. Let’s just say it ended with my grandmother saying, “Any little boy that can talk like that can talk. Now, you talk to me!”

Other than a short bout with laryngitis when I was 11, I haven’t lost my voice since.

Having a distinctive voice is a good thing for a writer, though, right?

Not always. In some of the most lucrative forms of writing, your own well-developed voice will trip you up. During a 2014 interview, Michelle Medlock Adams said, “I worked hard at finding my voice, and then once I found it, I was hired as a ghostwriter and had to lose my voice and find someone else’s.”

If you want to be a copywriter, you’ll lose your voice, too.

Voice, in the writing sense, refers to an author’s individualized style. It includes a writer’s unique use of punctuation, syntax, diction, and word choice to create a piece that sounds like no one else. For fiction writers, voice is a critical component of authorship. It’s how you can tell the difference between a work by Leo Tolstoy and one by Dame Barbara Cartland. Voice distinguishes an author.

As copywriters, however, we don’t showcase our own voices. Instead, we imitate the voice of the brand we write for.

In practice, that means copywriters use the vocabulary, idioms, and sentence structure that best reflect that brand’s image in the public’s mind. Does the brand want to seem top-shelf or approachable, edgy or family-friendly, chatty or formal? Your style needs to match that.

Vocabulary

A company may give you a list of vocabulary words in their style guide and ask you to use them or avoid them. I wrote for one hotel that didn’t allow the word “cozy” because it sounded too rural. A higher education marketing agency didn’t permit me to say “wages” because “salary” was more elegant. And a pet retailer banned the word “owner” because it perpetuates the stereotype of cats as property.

With small companies, you may have to make your own lists. When starting a project for an online home fashions retailer, I spent two hours creating a word bank by combing competitors’ websites for word-choice ideas.

I suggested the phrase, “inspiring good looks” for a brochure on cedar shingles. The marketing folks asked me change it to “inspiring breathtaking beauty.” It matched their audience’s expectations more exactly.

That’s what we’re talking about.

Idioms

What about idioms? One current client, a major international brand, insists I avoid all idiomatic phrases. The rest of my clients are mid-size companies, and they like me to slide some conversational bits into my prose.

A few words of caution on idioms:

First, be sure you’re using an idiom not a cliche. “Buy our brand-new product or be left by the side of the road” may be clever if you’re selling auto parts. For most written pieces, however, “left by the side of the road” or “left by the wayside” is more cliche than idiom. That’s one example. You can determine when you’ve crossed the line yourself.

Second, don’t get overly folksy. Unless you’re writing for a brand modeled on the old TV show Hee-Haw, being too down-home can sound offensive. I’m a Southerner, and I can tell when you’re a Yankee trying to imitate us. Half my family is black. I can tell when a writer isn’t black but is trying to sound like it. Just don’t do that.

Finally, idioms are like jalapeños. A few will add spice. Too many will send your readers sprinting to the bathroom.

Sentence Structure

As with any kind of writing, the best copywriting includes sentences that are long and ones that are short. Punchy sentences. Explanatory sentences. Informational sentences. Questions. Directives. And interjections. Your writing should still ebb and flow with varied sentence lengths. That said, make sure your sentence style reflects your brand.

Here is sample feedback I’ve received from brand content managers about sentences:

  • Don’t use rhetorical questions. That’s not the image we’re going for.
  • Try to stick to a tone that’s more informational while still establishing a relationship with the reader.
  • Watch your use of the passive voice.
  • Change the structure of your sentences so you aren’t opening two in the same paragraph with a dependent clause.

Finding your voice is an important part of becoming an author. Losing it is equally vital if you intend to write content for corporate or non-profit clients. Try writing a piece and then rewriting it in the same voice as your favorite author or company. See how it compares to your original.

A bout with writer’s laryngitis might be just thing you need to polish your work. And soon, you’ll have editors and marketing directors saying, “Any writer that can write like that can write. Now you write for me!”

Holland Webb is a full-time freelance copywriter and digital marketing strategist living near Greenville, SC. His clients are leaders in the online retail, higher education, and faith-based sectors. Holland has written for brands such as U.S. News & World Report, iLendX, Radisson, Country Inn & Suites, MediaFusion, Modkat, Great Bay Home, IMPACT Water, and BioNetwork. He is a featured writer on Compose.ly, and his monthly copywriting column appears on Almost An Author. You can reach him at www.hollandwebb.com or at hollandlylewebb@gmail.com.

 

Categories
Copywrite/Advertising

Your Guide to Writing Effective Email Drip Campaigns

Email campaigns work wonders. It’s true that emerging college graduates consider email an outdated form of communication, but the rest of us still happily open and read the informative goodies stashed in our inboxes.

Companies, in particular, rely on email. It’s cheap and effective. So they send us information, articles, coupons, stories, and videos through email. Most marketers use a drip campaign, which is a series of automated emails created in advance, sent over time, and intended to accomplish a single goal.

The folks at Pinpointe Marketing tell us that drip campaigns get 80% higher open rates than single emails and generate 50% more sales ready leads. These leads make larger purchases more often than those who don’t experience the drip campaign.

What does all that mean for us writers? Drip campaigns make money for businesses and nonprofits. In turn, they fork out cash to savvy copywriters who create their email content.

How to write an email drip campaign:

Add value to your reader’s life.

Do you read every email you get from all the lists you signed up for? Of course not. No one does. You open the messages that appear to give you something valuable, such as a coupon, a free gift, helpful information, or valuable connections.

When you compose a marketing campaign, send something free with each email. It can be a link to a blog article or ebook, a short video clip, or a coupon. You don’t have to give 50% off every time, but you do need to make sure your recipients have a reason to click “open.”

Test everything.

Unless you’ve run tests, you don’t know what works for your readers. Choose different kinds of subject lines. Vary the length of your emails. Try image-heavy versus text-heavy content. Send the emails on different days of the week and under different signatures.

Too many writers decide that short form copy works or that images aren’t necessary without knowing for sure what engages their unique audience. If you have 5-10 emails in a campaign, you have a lot of opportunities to uncover the truth about what your readership will respond to.

Use a warm, friendly style.

Gone are the days when marketers could send out emails that sounded like corporate memos or old-timey letters. Today, few readers perceive a formal message as respectful. Instead, they think it’s cold or impersonal.

How can you sound friendly in online communication?

  • Avoid corporate speak such as “attached, please find a copy of the document referenced above.”
  • Use first and second person pronouns. “I” and “you” are friendly words.
  • Be positive. A single negative sentence may convey powerful emotion. More than that, and your email starts to sound whiney and critical.
  • Use contractions. I know your teachers told you never to do that, but I’m telling you it’s time for a contraction revolution.
  • Strive for the active voice. It’s unbelievable how sneakily the passive voice can creep into your writing. To fix it, copy your text into Hemingway. This free app highlights in green every passive voice sentence in your document. Rephrase your passive voice sentences until the green disappears.
  • Don’t overdo it. There’s a fine line between corny and creative. If a client, editor, or friend says a line is hokey, they’re right. Cut it.

Remember the P.S.? It’s the best part of the whole email!

As a kid, I thought it was so cool that you could add something after the signature just by saying P.S. (I was easily enchanted.) But guess what? Everybody loves the P.S. When scanning a letter or email, your reader looks for their own name, the signature, the P.S., and the first line before deciding if they want to read it.

What do you include in a P.S.? Try to encapsulate your entire message into one or two sentences. If that’s not possible without Herculean effort, go for restating the call to action.

Send one last email.

After the campaign ends, write one last email to your readers. Thank those who responded. To those who didn’t respond, tell them they missed out and you’re a little annoyed. It hurts to send this email, but often that final (slightly huffy) message gets results from fence-sitters who don’t respond to charm. Send it when you have nothing to lose.

Email drip campaigns are one of content marketing’s most effective and cost-friendly strategies. Learn to write them well, and you’ll improve your value to your customers.

What’s in your inbox? Have you seen some great examples of valuable emails from companies or non-profits you support? Share them with us in the comments!

Holland Webb is a full-time freelance copywriter based in the lush upstate of South Carolina. His writing focuses on making technology accessible to non-techies and selling household goods to urban-dwelling Millennials. He can be found at www.hollandwebb.com.

Categories
Copywrite/Advertising

The Freelance Writer’s Guide to Securing Great Clients

Career success as a freelance copywriter depends on your ability to secure the right clients. If your clients cost you time, wear down your emotions, or pay you a pittance, you can kiss your career goodbye and head back to a cubicle. And who wants to do that? Not I!

Here’s how to secure the best and dodge the worst in clients so you can make a living and have fun doing it:

Avoid people who can’t make up their minds.

My rule of thumb says if a client takes longer than four weeks from initial conversation to an up-or-down decision to hire me, they’re out. I’ve heard all the excuses: We’ve been busy. Something else came up. School started. One client actually told me, “I’ve just been so full of grief because my son’s girlfriend broke up with him that I haven’t called you back.”

If a client is too busy to hire you now, they will be too busy to work with you later. They might be great people with a strong mission, but they’re not ready to employ a freelance writer. Your time is money. Don’t waste it.

Look for clients who know exactly what they want.

The ideal client already knows the project and can send you a brief or talk you through it in 30 minutes on the phone. If it’s ongoing work—the best kind—then they can tell you what they will generally expect you to accomplish every month. They also know if speed, quality, or quantity of work is most important to them.

Your prospect doesn’t have to nail down every detail before a project begins, of course, and additional work is often welcome. But use caution when conversations go like this:

You: What exactly is it you’re looking for?

Prospect: That’s what I expect you to tell me.

End that conversation with a firm: I’m not the right freelancer for you. Good luck in your search.

Anything else is a waste of time.

If they don’t want to pay, run away.

Set your fee, and stick to it. I sometimes quote a higher price than I actually expect in order to give some negotiating room, and in those instances, I’ll drop back to a lower dollar amount if the client asks me to. But I no longer give away work for free. Yet I remain amazed at the people who ask for it.

After 15 years of working for non-profits and schools, it kills me to say this. But I refuse to work for another charitable organization unless there is a marketing company acting as the middleman. As a freelancer, I’ve never had a good non-profit client nor have I had much luck with companies that are one-person operations.

If you want to help out a charity or friend, write them a check, but don’t let have them free work. They’ll leave you unpaid and feeling disrespected.

Does your prospect have a hiring process?

Most companies expect you to send them a resume, a link to your portfolio, and maybe a short writing sample. If the client wants more than that up front, it could be a sign they have grandiose ideas about themselves. As a second step, you might do an interview, take a writing test, or craft an audition article. These shouldn’t take more than an hour to do. If it looks like a major undertaking, the client should pay you for your time.

Whatever process the client uses, make sure that it exists, is formalized, and is fair to everyone involved. Ask yourself: If this company doesn’t know how to work with me before we sign a contract, how will they work with me after we sign a contract?

Can they onboard you like the navy? Or do they toss you a lifesaver and expect you to dogpaddle in the ship’s wake?

If the client expects more than a single project, how will they onboard you? Are you contracting with a marketing firm? Ask what your relationship will be with the client. Contracting directly with the client? Ask whom you’ll report to, how they expect to communicate with you, and what kind of deadlines you’ll be working on.

Some companies have no experience with remote contract employees. Others do this kind of thing all the time. It probably doesn’t matter what their process is, but one needs to exist. Without it, you can spend a lot of time feeling frustrated.

As a new freelancer, it’s tempting to latch onto any job that comes your way even if it’s a volunteer gig or the client seems sketchy. Don’t do it. You’re worth more than that. Plenty of good clients need you. Find them. Do great work for them. And enjoy a long and fruitful relationship with the best.

Holland Webb is a full-time freelance copywriter based in the lush upstate of South Carolina. His writing focuses on making technology accessible to non-techies and selling household goods to urban-dwelling Millennials. He can be found at www.hollandwebb.com.

Categories
Copywrite/Advertising

5 Elements of Storytelling

Once Upon a Time: Trade Secrets of Copywriting from Ancient Near Eastern Storytellers

The internet is abuzz with storytelling. Novelists, filmmakers, and playwrights have been churning out narratives for years, but now copywriters stake their claims to the elements of story. We’re no longer selling products; we’re now telling a brand’s story.

Donald Miller, CEO of Storyline and New York Times bestselling author, says, “Telling a good story is the key to being understood.”

We moderns are not the first people to discover story’s power to connect, of course. Humans have told stories since pre-historic times. Who was it but the ancient storytellers who gave us the towering tales of Homer, Beowulf, Canterbury, and Genesis?

What’s the first story you remember reading? Or writing? Or hearing? I remember reading Charlotte’s Web and crying for hours afterward. That’s how I knew I loved story.

According to Persian legend, Scheherazade told the greatest stories of all time. She, perhaps, was the first content marketer. Certainly, she had more riding on her success than most of us do. After the king of Persia’s first wife proved faithless, he married a string of women. Each subsequent wife spent one night with him before he had her executed. Scheherazade chose to end the massacre by marrying the king herself. She cleverly spent her one night telling the king a story. She stopped at the climax and refused to continue until the following night. The king spared her in order to hear the end of the story.

The next night, Scheherazade finished the story and began another, stopping again at the climax. This continued for 1,000 stories over 1,001 nights until the king relented his decree of death and made Scheherazade his queen. Her stories became The Arabian Nights.

What about Jesus? Nearly all his teachings contain a story. Jesus, though, didn’t tell stories for their own value. He typically left the characters unnamed and the endings open—as if he intended his hearers to see themselves in the story and then finish it in their own lives. Sort of like a good content marketer would do, only Jesus also redeemed the world while he was at it.

Drawing from these examples, how can we use the power of story to sell products through great copywriting? Let’s take a quick look at the 5 elements of story and how they influence writing for business.

Turn to Donald Miller again. “A story is a character who wants something and has to overcome conflict to get it.”

Character – In story theory, a main character is “the player through whom the audience experiences the story firsthand.”[1] Who is the main character in a business’ content? The reader is a popular answer, and it’s often true. Sometimes, however, another character stands in for the customer. Think about Flo from Progressive, the Geico Gecko, the “Dude, you’re getting’ a Dell” guy, and the old lady who asked “Where’s the beef?”

Have an identifiable main character in your business’ story.

Setting – What’s the time and location in which the character faces conflict? Fiction and narrative non-fiction require a setting to ground the story in the reader’s imagination. Why does setting matter for content marketing? Because the setting in your story needs to be the one your reader wishes he or she were in.

Set your story where the reader or customer wants to see himself go, not where he already is (‘cause that’s boring).

Conflict – All stories need conflict.* Without it, you have a series of events, not a story. I’m reading Crossing the Line, a great novel by Bibi Belford. I want to keep going because I have to resolve the conflict. But I can’t stand to keep going because I know the conflict’s going to get worse before it gets better. That means, of course, that the author did her job with the conflict element of her story.

If you sell diet products, your reader’s conflict is between fatty food and health food, between the gym and the sofa. Stoke that conflict until the readers have to see it resolved in their own lives. (For examples, see Jesus’ parables.)

Plot – Is your brand’s or business’ plot emotionally engaging? Think a story about a business can’t stir your emotions? Check out this ad for Kleenex, this one for life insurance, and this one for a brand of automobiles. I’ll wait while you collect yourself.

Don’t let your brand’s story appeal to people’s greed. Stay true to the better side of human nature. We could all use a little grace, after all.

Theme – Flannery O’Connor, the South’s greatest storyteller, said, “People talk about the theme of a story as if the theme were like the string that a sack of chicken feed is tied with. They think that if you can pick out the theme, the way you pick the right thread in the chicken-feed sack, you can rip the story open and feed the chickens. But this is not the way meaning works.”

Theme flows naturally from the other four elements. Don’t try to shove it in there.

If you write fiction, tell me what I missed. Are there other elements of the story? Other links between writing novels and writing for business? Anything else that would make the links between storytelling and copywriting clearer?

The internet’s abuzz with storytelling. Why not add your voice to the conversation?

*All novelists who are able, please stand and shout your agreement. Thank you.

[1] http://dramatica.com/theory/book/characters

Holland Webb: I love telling the stories that people put down so they go take action. I’m an advertising copywriter by day, an aspiring novelist by night, a parent, a dog-lover, a prison volunteer and a follower of Jesus.

Categories
Copywrite/Advertising

Why Am I Writing This Anyway?

If your lifelong dream is to write Bible studies, craft devotional guides, or create fiction for today’s Christian woman, you may not ask this question. On the other hand, if you mainly write about cat litter, bed sheets, and communication software, it might come up every now and then.  

Those last three topics probably weren’t what you had in mind when you breathlessly announced at your Bible study, “God is calling me to be … (dramatic pause) … a writer.” You probably imagined yourself crafting prose that would uplift souls, uproot injustice, and upgrade your credit rating. Copywriting, if you’re good at it, can do the last bit but not the first two.

[bctt tweet=”For copywriters, the art and science of writing aren’t about ripping open the layers that guard your soul ” username=””]

For copywriters, the art and science of writing aren’t about ripping open the layers that guard your soul or introducing people to life-changing esoteric truths. It’s about moving products and selling services in order to make money for the people who hire you to write.

Let’s face the ugly truth, y’all. We’re hacks. (I’m reminded of Hyacinth Bucket saying to a journalist, “If I were the victim of gross indecency, you would have been round here quicker than a split infinitive. …Illiterate hack.”)

Recognizing that we’re hacks leads us back to the original question: Why am I writing this anyway? When translated from the original languages, that question means: Is my work worth anything to the world?

And so we come to the heart of the matter—Does my work matter? Do I matter?

You know I’m not going to say No, you don’t matter. Why don’t you give up trying to write, you silly twit, and take up a real hobby? So at this point, you can skip to the end, leave a glowing comment, and open the refrigerator to see what’s landed inside it in the last 30 minutes. I’d rather you stuck with me, though. There’s a particular reason copywriting matters.

[bctt tweet=”Copywriting starts with a problem. It’s not the obvious problem.” username=””]

Take my cat litter box client for instance. What’s the problem they solve? Is it just that they keep people from seeing and smelling cat waste by containing it in an elegant box? At one level, yes. But let’s probe more deeply into the cat litter. (Wear a mask.)

What problem do the cats themselves solve?

Our average customer is a single apartment-dwelling woman in her thirties who is living in a major urban area. Why does she have a cat? Probably because she’s lonely. The cat is company at night. He’s someone who cares if she comes home. He depends on her. Needs her. Loves her.

Cats solve loneliness. We help our clients take care of their furry problem-solvers in ways they can feel good about. My client isn’t just solving the problem of cat stink. They’re also helping their customers take care of the creature that alleviates loneliness and isolation in a profound way.

In Bird by Bird, Anne Lamott writes, “If your wife locks you out of the house, you don’t have a problem with your door.”

[bctt tweet=”Effective solutions start with correctly identifying the problem.” username=””]

Effective solutions start with correctly identifying the problem. What problem does your client’s product or service solve? What basic human pain does it help alleviate? Maybe they’re not selling cancer drugs, but they’re selling something that makes someone’s life better. Otherwise, they wouldn’t be in business.

You’re writing matters because your client’s products matter to someone, and they probably matter on a more deeply emotional plane that you think. That’s why copywriting counts. That’s why you’re doing this.

I think you and I would benefit from a broader vision of what’s important. Of course, devotional or fiction writing that touches the soul is important. But writing that helps someone take better care of the cat that’s alleviating their loneliness matters, too.

It’s a myth that the only writers who help people are those who write the Biblical novels, the devotions, the Bible studies, and the marriage helps. The writers who help people are the ones who pay attention to other people’s needs. Those are the copywriters.

[bctt tweet=”The writers who help people are the ones who pay attention to other people’s needs. Those are the copywriters.” username=””]

Penelope Trunk says, “Your idea … is generally a wish that your own passion is a gift to other people. But ironically, most (people trying to do good) are not paying attention to other people at all. And most entrepreneurs who are raking in money are paying very careful attention to what helps other people.”

Are you paying attention to other people’s pain? If so, your words can help people make choices that alleviate that pain is positive ways. And people will pay you for that.

Copywriting, like all writing, counts not because it’s deemed “beautiful” by snobby critics or “bestselling” by relieved publishers. It counts because it helps change people’s lives.

Why do you write sales copy? Tell us in the comments.

Holland Webb: I love telling the stories that people put down so they go take action. I’m an advertising copywriter by day, an aspiring novelist by night, a parent, a dog-lover, a prison volunteer and a follower of Jesus.

Categories
Copywrite/Advertising

Making the Leap to Full-Time Freelance Writer

You will go out and leap like calves released from their stalls. – Malachi 4:2

Speaking of vulnerability, I’m about to open the kimono with you today.

Scary, right? I once had a boss who used that phrase—open the kimono. My colleague Joanne and I traveled to Uganda for a week. When Joanne came by the room to get me for a meal, I opened the door clad only in my hotel-issued bathrobe.

“Holland! Put some clothes on.”

“Don’t you want me to ‘open the kimono’ like the boss always says?”

“No!”

To this day, Joanne will ask me if some event happened on our trip to Tanzania or our trip to Uganda, and I will say, “Uganda. It was where I almost ‘opened the kimono’ for you, remember?”

Bonding with coworkers is always a blessing.

Anyway, I’m opening the kimono for you today. Last Friday, I officially became a full-time freelance copywriter. No more working for the man. No more putting in office hours. No more boring projects forced on me from on high. No more health insurance. No more regular paychecks. No more … you get the picture.

I’ve gone from saying I can’t believe this is finally happening for me to saying Sweet Home Alabama, I need a job with benefits.

Because of how everything transpired, I believe God opened this door. Most of the time, I feel like the calf released from his stall, leaping and gamboling about the field. The rest of the time, I’m wondering why no one is medicating that calf and then remembering the calf doesn’t have a prescription plan anymore.

On my third day as a full-timer, I’m offering you 5 things I’ve learned from making the leap to full-time freelance copywriting:

  1. Long-term relational investments pay off. I went from an average of 10 hours of freelance work per week with three clients to an average of 35 hours of work per week with the same three clients. I have several warm leads, too, thanks to writer and designer friends I’ve gotten to know over the years. Invest in your current clients. They’re your best bet to a secure future.
  2. It takes time to build a freelance client base. I started freelance writing for profit when my former colleague Joanne (see above) asked me to pick up the slack after her last copywriter took a full-time gig. From one small job to a full-time client base took three years. That was with God doing miracles along the way. We’re playing the long game, my friends.
  3. Have your marketing materials in place. My website is in production, but I wish I’d pushed it harder, sooner. Still, an online portfolio, references on LinkedIn, business cards, and a sizeable Twitter following can get you a long way toward securing new clients. They demonstrate credibility, and as copywriters, credibility is what backs our currency.
  4. Discover your niche. We start out writing anything anyone will give us to write. Since my first clients were non-profits and that was my background, I used to say “I’m a non-profit copywriter.” It was a non-profit strategy, let me tell you. Now I can say I specialize in writing about household products for urban-dwelling Millennials and in technology for non-techies. It’s still pretty broad (and believe me, I’ll write anything for a buck), but it’s a far more lucrative niche than non-profits. Having a niche helps establish my style and interests in prospective clients’ minds. Having agency experience helped, too, but it’s not vital.
  5. Ask your copywriting column fans for leads. If you are fortunate enough to author a copywriting column for an awesome site, ask your legions of fans to send you leads. Some people who read your column are aspiring novelists or Bible study writers, but they run into organizations that need writers all the time. They can pass those leads along to you – please! As copywriters, we don’t need degrees or certificates. We just have to write good copy that converts readers into buyers or donors.

So there you have it, my friends—a story about kimonos and calves and how God opens new doors when He’s ready, not when we are.

What leaps are you making in your writing career? What precipices is God kicking you over? What fields are you gamboling in like a young calf released from its stall?

Is God calling you to make a writer’s leap? You can open the kimono in the comments—metaphorical openings only, please.

 

 

Categories
Copywrite/Advertising

Put the Horse in the Theater and the Cow on the Roof -How to write sales copy that gets results

Did I ever tell you about the time my grandfather rode a horse down the center aisle of a movie theater in the middle of a show?

Pop (my grandfather) grew up in a small town in south central Kentucky. When this story happened, he was in his late teens—the age immortalized in the song lyric “old enough to know better, still too young to care.”

Pop saw a horse tethered on the town square, and an idea imprinted itself on his mind. He untied the horse, jumped on board, and trotted it to the end of town in a 1930s version of joyriding. At the town’s limits, though, there was only the Cumberland River, which at that time had no bridge. With nowhere to go, Pop turned the horse around and headed back to town.

For a teenage boy, joyriding a horse from town to the river wasn’t enough of a thrill. It was time to up the ante.

Pop saw the perfect opportunity. The town’s movie theater had just opened its doors. For a small fee, viewers could watch jerky, black-and-white Westerns. A show was in progress. People were inside. Another idea imprinted itself on his mind.

Somehow, Pop got that horse through the doors of the theater and rode it down the center aisle. The darkness, the unfamiliar sounds, and the (screaming) people inside terrified the horse. It went berserk in the middle of the theater. Somehow, Pop and the theater’s owner got the horse out of the theater and onto the square where it took Pop for a less-than-joyful ride back to the end of town. Before they reached the river, Pop fell off, and the horse found its own way home.

It was the one and only story Pop ever voluntarily told about his youth—except the one about the time he and his friends put a cow on the roof of the school.

What this has to do with copywriting (why you should keep reading)

Imagine being in the audience at a movie. It’s dark. It’s cool. There’s a story about horses and cowboys flashing in front of you. Maybe you’ve got an arm around a girl, or a guy has his arm around you. No wild man on a horse rides down the aisle. The movie ends.

You get home that night. Someone asks, “How was the movie?”

You say, “We had a good time. It was a Western. We ate popcorn.”

That day would eventually be lost in the haze of many such days.

But what about the people who were in the theater the day Pop rode a stolen horse down the center aisle? I bet those people had an electrifying story to tell when they got home! And I’ll bet they didn’t forget that day for a long time.

They were probably having a good time watching a story on the screen, but it was becoming actors in a far more dramatic and immediate story that made the day memorable for them.

I really do get to copywriting. Keep reading.

Today, an audience of people is consuming stories on blogs, on social media, and on printed letters stuffed in their mailboxes. The world is snowed under by written content, and storytelling is king. Your story must arrest the attention of a world already focused on a competing story.

How will your story be heard amidst all the noise? You’ve got to ride a horse into the middle of their movie.

To stand out, your story needs three elements:

Urgency

Call people to act now.

Remember the Law of Inertia? A body at rest will remain at rest; a body in motion will remain in motion. Your readers are at rest, and delay is comfortable. Don’t let them stay passive.

Urgency is especially important when writing fundraising letters. If you’re writing an appeal about a child who needs eye surgery or he’ll lose his sight, that’s not a good time to let your prospective donor delay. If what you wrote is true, your readers need to act now.

Make your prospect feel like they’re in a crowded theater with a wild horse. Act now, or get trampled.

Involvement

Ultramodern companies are using gamification as advertising. Why? Because people want to feel involved in what they buy or give to.

If you can make your copy fun and engaging, do it. A sense of play will lower people’s natural defenses. That’s why sales pieces often include chachki in the envelope. Your game or chachki should be logically connected to your copy’s message, though.

In some cases, you’ll have no control over the pieces in your package except the copy. In that event, make sure the copy engages readers. Make them feel like they’re right there, players in the story themselves.

The people in the movie theater that day went from watching people wrangle a horse on the screen to actually wrangling one themselves. Which made a more powerful impact?

Surprise

If your readers can guess every turn, every bridge, every swamp, and every stop on the way to the predictable end, your story is boring. Surprise them! Let them watch a jerky black-and-white Western for a few minutes before you ride a real horse into the middle of the theater.

As I said in an earlier piece, fiction and copywriting have a lot in common. Both require a plot full of twists and turns that leads to a satisfying but not predictable ending. Don’t bore your reader.

Want your copy to stand out in a sea of stories. Include urgency, involvement, and surprise. A stolen horse probably doesn’t hurt either.

What are some of your tips for writing copy people will remember?

Holland Webb: I love telling the stories that people put down so they go take action. I’m an advertising copywriter by day, an aspiring novelist by night, a parent, a dog-lover, a prison volunteer and a follower of Jesus.

Categories
Copywrite/Advertising

Why I’m Jealous of Carlton Hughes And 5 Things Copywriters Can Learn from Him

 

The Internet is swooning over Carlton Hughes.

As of this writing, Carlton’s last comedy writing article here on Almost An Author has three times (3x!) the number of views my May article on copywriting has. And the comments? I had a single polite note from the associate editor. Carlton, on the other hand, got a ton of women writers chiming in on his comment thread.

If I were twelve years old and there were no parents around, I’d moon him for that. And then I’d run. Fast. Nah, I wouldn’t do that. Carlton would slither home and tell his mom. Then, we’d all be in trouble—me for doing it and you for “letting it happen.”

Sad fact, guys: comedy is going to outperform information every time. Do you want to make them buy? Make them laugh.

Here are 5 lessons copywriters can learn from comedy writers:

  1. Start with the “I/You.”

What’s the first word of Carlton’s opening line? It’s “I.” And the last word? It’s “someone” (implying you). Writing for content marketing is a two-way conversation between the business and the reader. Use the actual words “I” and “you” over and over again in your drafts until you master the art of conversational writing with a purpose.

By the way, make sure the “I” isn’t you. Does the business owner sound hip and smart? Your prose needs to sound hip and smart. Does the CEO sound down-home and folksy? Your copy needs to reflect that. Write in the voice of your client, not your own voice.

  1. Be vulnerable.
    We live in the age of vulnerability. We trade in information, and we have few secrets. By sentence four, Carlton has hinted that a glimpse of his personal woundedness is coming. Great comedians use their own woundedness as the currency that buys laughter. Businesses can trade with that currency, too.

When one of my clients had a banner weekend, they wanted me to create an article that didn’t gloat about their success. Instead, I wrote about the company’s concern that rapid sales growth might not be good news for their clients. In the article, we asked tough questions and answered them through an outside interview. We didn’t say we were the best, biggest, and baddest software company in the history of the world. Rather, we let our customers know we’re on their team no matter what.

  1. Look at the layout.

How long are Carlton’s paragraphs? One or two sentences, right? It makes the article easy to scan, doesn’t it? You’re tired of hearing me ask rhetorical questions, aren’t you? Comedy writers do short and catchy well. Copywriters can, too.

Also, see how Carlton bolds and italicizes his words. While this trick can be overdone, pulling out the best lines with bold fonts, italics, or designs can be a great idea. (Badly done, it can also be a ghastly idea so have a professional designer take a peek at it for you.)

  1. Be funny.

For some reason, we think of advertising, sales, or information about business as dry and boring. But nearly anything can be funny if you make it so. I used to teach middle school so let me insert this warning: Some things are not funny! Avoid those things.

I have a client who retails business-related software and hardware to mid-size companies. Let’s just say writing for this client is not an exercise in jocularity. For an article entitled The Benefits of Vendor Consolidation, though, their notes listed one benefit as “one number to dial, one leadership team to negotiate with, and one neck to wring.” I left the “one neck to wring” phrase in, and they published it. It helped humanize them a little.

  1. Use contrasts to your advantage.
    Carlton wrote, “Bunn completed his speech, and I assume he returned to his room to write another bestseller. On the other hand, I trudged across campus through a monsoon to my lovingly-appointed Ridgecrest room and got real with God.”

See what he did there?

Returned versus trudged through a monsoon

His room versus my lovingly-appointed Ridgecrest room

Write another bestseller versus got real with God

That’s genius.

Harness the power of the contrast. Are you writing for a non-profit that helps homeless people? Contrast the life of a homeless person today with that same person’s life after your reader makes a gift. Are you writing about pricey cat litter boxes? Contrast the life of your reader’s cat today with the life it will have once the reader has purchased the box.

All great comedy, like all great copywriting, is emotionally impactful storytelling designed to provoke a response.

Carlton, your comedy writing article got a response. Readers loved it. Women sighed over it in the comment thread. Copywriters took notes on it.

You want my response? Head outside and look up. See that big, white moon in the sky? Imagine I hung that there just for you. That’s my response.

Readers, if you’d like to share your thoughts on how great comedy writing and great copywriting are alike – or if you’d just like to rag on Carlton a little more – the comment thread is open.

I have to go inside now, and I probably won’t be back out for a while. Carlton called his mom and told on us.

About Holland:

I love telling the stories that people put down so they go take action. I’m an advertising copywriter by day, an aspiring novelist by night, a parent, a dog-lover, a prison volunteer and a follower of Jesus.

Categories
Copywrite/Advertising

A Guide to Starting Your Copywriting Career Or 5 Ways to Make 6 Figures on the Beach (maybe)

 

Have you heard the online buzz about copywriting? Make $100,000 a year writing! A laptop and an Internet connection are all you need! Work on a beach in Costa Rica!

They’re clickbait, but they can reel me in. And you know what? Those headlines aren’t entirely misleading. If you love writing and it’s been your long-time dream to be a full-time writer, then copywriting is the simplest and most straightforward way to make that dream come true.

You really can write copy from anywhere, and you can earn a living doing it. Sound good? Then, let’s get you started.

What is copywriting?

          Copywriting is crafting words in such a way that you cause people to take action. Usually, action means buying a product or service. Copywriters work for companies, marketing agencies, non-profits, and sometimes government agencies. It’s one of the highest-paid writing jobs available, and it’s a fast-growing field.

Some copywriters work in offices, and others work from home or their favorite coffeeshop. Can you make $100,000 a year working from a beach in Costa Rica?

[bctt tweet=”Can you make $100,000 a year working from a beach in Costa Rica? ” username=”@WebbJohnpaul @A3forme”]

Actually, yes. Probably not your first year, but you can eventually make a living and work from anywhere you like with an Internet connection.

          How do I get started?

You do not need a degree or a certificate. Please don’t spend money taking an expensive online course or earning a certificate from a college. For pity’s sake, don’t get your master’s degree in order to become a copywriter. You may find that one of those things is right for you later, but to start with, just write.

Few marketing teams care what degree you have, anyway. They want to see your portfolio, instead.

“But I don’t have a portfolio!” you say.

Make one. You can write for your church, a local non-profit, a friend’s business, or even publish on your own LinkedIn page. Here’s a secret – your pieces can even be unpublished. Just make sure they’re good. There’s a website called www.journoportfolio.com that lets you put a small selection of your own articles online for free. Attach that link to your resume. Voila! Portfolio. You’re in the game.

          Where can I find jobs?

Online. From friends. At local advertising agencies. With non-profits.

Sign up for freelance sites such as Upwork, Hubstaff and LinkedIn Profinder. Upwork can be a race to the bottom so I recommend you don’t bid on the lowest-dollar jobs even if you are totally green. Most of those jobs will accept second-language copywriters in India or the Philippines who can afford to underbid you. Bid on the mid-level jobs to start with – $15 to $25 an hour range. Once you have more experience, bid on the higher paying jobs. On Hubstaff, you don’t have to bid. You can apply to job posts, or a company can approach you if they like what they see.  You set your own hourly rate on Hubstaff before applying to anything.

Another effective strategy is to send a brief introductory email with a link to your portfolio to every advertising agency in your area. You can find them all online. Tell them you’d like to be added to their stable of freelance writers. They’ll probably have a process for hiring freelancers. Usually, that’s a phone interview and a writing assignment. If you sound sane and do a good job on the assignment, you’re in. Sometimes, you just have to do a good job on the assignment. Sanity is optional.

Be careful with non-profits. The small ones often do not see the value of your service or have the money to pay you. But larger ones with ongoing programs and paid staff are always communicating with their donors. Your best-known local non-profit just might need some copywriting skill in the marketing department. Send them an email and ask.

          How much do I charge?

          Have you seen those headlines claiming copywriters can make $75 or $100 an hour? Well, some can. They have thick portfolios with samples they’ve written for household brand names. Years of experience. Connections. You’ll have those things one day, too.

For now, I suggest starting in the $15 to $25 an hour range. Alternatively, you could charge by the project, such as 5-10 cents per word or $30 for a blog post. Once you’ve built a solid portfolio, move to the $25 – $45 an hour range. Many agencies have a set fee they offer for a project or as an hourly rate. You can accept their offer or pass on it as you like.

Do not write for peanuts, or because someone begged you. If you are good enough to be asked, you are good enough to be paid for your work.

[bctt tweet=” Do not write for peanuts, or because someone begged you. If you are good enough to be asked, you are good enough to be paid for your work. ” username=”@WebbJohnpaul “]

          How do I grow as a copywriter?

Write. A lot. Get yourself a fierce copywriting editor. There are several websites with plenty of free educational content about copywriting. Some of my favorites are Kopywriting Kourse, Copyblogger, and Freelance Hustler.

Bid on new kinds of jobs. Have you been writing blog posts? Bid on a video script. Have you written long form content? Bid on writing a series of short e-blasts.

What about searching out a different kind of client? I’ve written for an international development agency, an urban charter school, a genetic research facility, four hotel chains, a high-end cat litter box company, a Bible college, a construction and engineering software solutions retailer, and a land development company.

So, what are you waiting for? Get started making that portfolio. And when you deposit your first check, look me up on LinkedIn and drop me a line to tell me about it. I’ll celebrate with you from my beach house in Costa Rica.

About Holland Webb

I love telling the stories that people put down so they go take action. I’m an advertising copywriter by day, an aspiring novelist by night, a parent, a dog-lover, a prison volunteer and a follower of Jesus.

Categories
Copywrite/Advertising

SEO? SEM? PPC? I need an LOA.-Holland Webb

Nothing freezes your brain faster than a series of meetings on the minutiae of government grant management. Trust me. In 2009, I had to attend a lengthy conference in Uganda where they taught us exactly what snacks and beverages could be funded with federal dollars and how to apply U.S. government accounting standards for hotel stays in parts of the world that don’t have hotels.

The unkindest cut of all, though, was the acronyms.

Hundreds of acronyms were tossed at us by serious, gray-suited government bureaucrats with the power to take away the funds they had just generously awarded us.

Finally, one woman, far braver than I, raised her hand. “All these acronyms are hard to keep track of.”

“Oh, we know they are,” the speaker replied. “That’s why we created an LOA.”

“An LOA?”

The speaker laughed. “It’s an acronym that stands for List of Acronyms.”

Trust the government to create an acronym for an acronym. I’ll admit, though, that the LOA was a big HELP.

Starting out in copywriting, especially writing for the web, you may feel the same way. Job descriptions toss around a bunch of acronyms like SEO, SEM, PPC and more. They’re hard to keep track of, so here’s a brief LOA for new copywriters.

  • SEO – Search Engine Optimization
    SEO draws the right traffic to your site. Search engines like Google, Yahoo!, and Bing have bots that crawl through a site, reading it in order to index it properly. Once the bot knows what your site is about, the search engine can pull up your site when a web user types in a related string of keywords.Let’s say your site gives advice to aspiring writers. Someone at home types, “advice for new writers” into a search engine. SEO makes it easy for the search engine bots to know that your site is about that very same thing and to rank it highly in its returns.What does SEO mean for you as the writer? Before you write for a website, do some keyword research. Find what keywords people are using to search for your topic. Be specific. Long keywords rank better than short ones, and they are more likely to get you in front of people who are interested in what you have to say, sell, or do.

    You can try searching some different keywords yourself to see what ranks best, and you can use tools like Google Keyword Planner or Moz to identify high-ranking keywords.

    Once you have pinpointed some helpful keywords, use them strategically throughout your text. Try to fit them in the title, your metadescription, your images’ alt tags, and the body of your text. Old SEO models required keywords to appear a minimum number of times in exactly the same order. Today’s search engine bots are sophisticated, thank goodness, so we don’t have to stuff our text with keywords to get it to rank. Write naturally, focusing on the message.

    Voice search is increasingly popular. At least 20% of Google’s mobile searches are voice searches. That means people are asking questions of search engines instead of typing strings of words. Why don’t you ask those same questions in your text? The bots will recognize the match and put your page near the top of the search results.

    So how does a copywriter use SEO to write great content? Simple. Imagine you’re a robot charged with reading and indexing web sites. Ask yourself what searchable terms and phrases would get your site indexed accurately. Use those terms in prominent places in your text while still sounding like a human being.

  • SEM – Search Engine Marketing
    SEM is the whole bunch of bananas – SEO, paid search, social media marketing, you name it.

    • Paid search is when a company pays a search engine to rank their site.
      Have you done a Google search and noticed the top ranked sites have a box with the word Ad in it next to them? These sites have paid Google to rank them near the top.
    • PPC (Pay Per Click) is how those sites pay Google for ranking them at the top or bottom of page one.
    • SMM stands for Social Media Marketing. SMM uses Twitter, Facebook, and other social media sites to market products and services.

Why do copywriters care about SEM? Because it affects how you write.

Companies test their keywords and calls to action using PPC. You may have to write several of these for a company to test before they discover what works best. Social media marketing may have you writing Tweets, Facebook posts, and Instagram messages that match your web site, blog post, eblast content, and the video script you wrote for the new YouTube video.

  • CRO – Conversion Rate Optimization
    Now that SEO and SEM have helped prospective buyers or donors find your site, CRO is what encourages them make a purchase or donation while they’re there. Copywriting, as we discussed in my article last month, is all about conversion. We don’t just want readers; we want buyers. CRO increases the percentage of web site viewers who take action.Why does CRO matter to copywriters? Because if our CRO numbers are not good, we’ll get fired. The company that hired you to write for them exists to sell a product or service. Keep CRO in mind as you craft your prose, and you’ll be in business for a long time.

So there you have it, folks, a brief LOA for newbie copywriters. Let me know your adventures in copywriting acronyms in the comment section below.

Holland Webb: I love telling the stories that people put down so they go take action. I’m an advertising copywriter by day, an aspiring novelist by night, a parent, a dog-lover, a prison volunteer and a follower of Jesus.

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Copywrite/Advertising

I’m in This Thing for Converts

 

You’re a copywriter. Not a novelist (okay, maybe at night). Not a screenwriter. Not a poet. A copywriter.

What does that mean?

Unlike those other writers, you’re not seeking readers. Not really. At the root of things, you’re seeking buyers.

It’s sort of like a preacher on Sunday. (I’ve been a preacher so I can use this example with impunity.) What does the preacher look for when gazing out across the sanctuary? A bunch of rear ends warming seats? That’s just the start.

One enthusiastic minister blurted it out to me once. “I’m in this thing for converts!”

As a copywriter, so are you.

Our readers aren’t perusing our prose for chuckles and entertainment. They’re after information that will inspire them to buy the right product or give to the right charity. What you want is for your reader to take action.

Whether you are sitting at your keyboard crafting an email campaign for a Christian organization or climbing the town water tower with a can of spray paint and your ex-girlfriend’s number in your jacket pocket, you are writing for the same purpose–results.

Your prose is successful when your reader responds. Sign up for an email list. Follow the company on Twitter. Add a name to the petition. Ultimately, buy the product.

When a web visitor takes action on a site, that’s called conversion. And that’s what you want your prose to do—convert people. If you write for a Christian organization, conversions may be literal conversions. If you write for a company, maybe not.

How does writing for conversion differ from other kinds of writing? Here are three ways:

  1. Essay writers say, “Your writing needs an airtight argument with a beginning that includes a clear thesis sentence followed by three supporting statements and winding up with a defined conclusion that closes the argument’s circle.”

Ad copy editors say, “Your writing is part of a sprawling global conversation that has no beginning and no end. Don’t close the loop.”

If you close the loop, you give away the end of the story. What’s left for your reader to do?

Effective ad copy takes your reader right up to the crisis moment and stops. An irksome feeling that something remains unfinished nudges readers to become buyers. Resist the urge to conclude. Instead, let the reader finish the story by making a purchase or donation.

  1. Traditional writers say, “Good writing is grammatically correct, spell-checked, and proofread.”

Ad copy editors say, “Good writing is interesting.”

The need for written content to be interesting is almost universally acknowledged. But we don’t teach how to be interesting in print. We teach the rules of grammar.

Want evidence that the best writers don’t need to follow the rules? Look at some of today’s most effective advertising copywriters, the Chick-fil-a cows. Those guys are horrible spellers! But nobody cares that the cows can’t spell. They’re interesting. They’re funny. They keep you eating chicken.

Note that most ad copywriting also requires correct grammar and spelling. But those things alone aren’t going to get results.

  1. English teachers say, “I’m assigning you a paper that will be between seven and ten pages long.” And you write ten, even twelve, to prove that you are doing the most work possible.

Ad copy editors say, “Be brief.”

Brief writing is difficult to do, but brevity collects readers. Penelope Trunk says she takes 30 minutes to craft a single tweet. Mind you, a tweet is 140 characters or less. I could pound out 140 characters in no time flat. Perhaps that’s partly why Trunk has 134,000 Twitter followers, and I don’t. It’s hard to pack interesting, quality content into a tiny space, but it often works.

One caveat: there’s some evidence that long-form content gets readership and response better than short-form content does. Fundraising appeals, for instance, often generate more income when they are two or more pages long. The only way to know for sure is to test your readership.

Be brief doesn’t always mean be short. It just means stop talking once your piece concludes the first time.

For copywriters, conversion is key.  How do you convert your readers into buyers? Brief, interesting copy that leaves the reader with unfinished business on his hands is a great start. An inspiring call to action—in which you encourage the reader to convert with a direct statement—can transform some readers into buyers.

What are some things you’ve discovered about writing that converts? Do you have any war stories about web site content, email blasts or fundraising letters that finally pulled those readers off their pews and down front to join the congregation, either literally or metaphorically?

Did someone else’s brilliant copy snag you?

Tell me about it in the comments.

Holland Webb: I love telling the stories that people put down so they go take action. I’m an advertising copywriter by day, an aspiring novelist by night, a parent, a dog-lover, a prison volunteer and a follower of Jesus.

[1] Read more:http://www.touchstonemag.com/archives/article.php?id=26-02-018-v#ixzz4WJX3Txy8

Categories
Copywrite/Advertising

Say It Like Sayers- How the Queen of Copywriting Introduced the King of Kings to a Nation at War

December 1941. London. The worst of the blitz just ended. A nation at war faced Christmas. The BBC’s charge? Uplift the spirits and strengthen the spines of Britain with a radio drama about Jesus. The whole nation will tune in. Needed: One writer who can tell history’s most powerful story to a people facing unprecedented evil.

Who did the BBC choose to write the play The Man Born to Be King?

A genius.

Was it C.S. Lewis? Nope. It was Dorothy Sayers. And you know how Sayers got her start as a wordsmith?  If you guessed “advertising copywriter,” you nailed it in one. Give yourself a chocolate.

Sayers spent the years 1922-1931 writing ad copy. Her clients included a mustard company and the producers of Guinness beer. She is credited with coining the phrase, “It pays to advertise.”

Dorothy Sayers wasn’t just any old copy hack, and I don’t mean to give the impression that she was. She was one of the first women to attend Oxford University. Her scholarship of Dante is legendary. She was an acclaimed novelist and poet. Her works on theology, feminism, and creativity are cited regularly by writers today. But with all that talent, she spent nine years writing about such riveting topics as mustard and beer. In fact, her first novel was entitled Murder Must Advertise and is about the death of a copywriter in his office at an ad agency.

Some folks might argue that it was Sayers’ theological scholarship or skill as a novelist that earned her the privilege of writing The Man Born to Be King. She was a heavyweight theologian and novelist, for sure, but I believe Sayers alone could write the BBC’s most important religious and political work because she was an ad copywriter at heart. That means everything she wrote, she wrote with her audience in mind. She wrote with a creative eye on those people who would turn on their radios, shush their children and enter into a story world that lit their homes with hope in a time of deep darkness.

            The radio drama, The Man Born to Be King, proved to be among the BBC’s most controversial productions ever. One religious group even claimed the fall of Singapore was proof of God’s disapproval of the program.

Why such a fuss? A passion play is pretty dry fare for church folks these days. Not in 1940s England though! The BBC even had to garner special governmental permission to include Jesus as a character in the production. And what a Jesus he was!

Sayers made her characters speak in the everyday slang, jargon and accents of 1940s Britain. The Biblical characters were just like the hearers’ neighbors, full of conflicting motivations and common human feelings. It was dramatic. Thrilling. Immediate.

Mailboxes at the BBC soon swelled with letters from people telling how the drama had indeed uplifted their spirits, strengthened their resolve, and in many cases, reintroduced them to a life lived in the Spirit of the Man born to be king. C.S. Lewis read the play every Holy Week. In his letter to Sayers, Lewis wrote, “I shed real tears (hot ones) in places.”

Dear Aspiring Novelist, do you want to write a narrative that can bring tears to the eyes of C.S. Lewis and inspire a nation to live its faith in the face of evil’s onslaught?

Start by writing advertising copy.

All the time that Dorothy Sayers wrote about beer and mustard, she was learning how to communicate with the average British buyer of her day. She knew what he spent his money on, so she knew his heart and imagination. Better than any other scholar or novelist, she knew those folks had no time or emotional space for a scholarly, erudite, and high-sounding Jesus. If He was to matter to them, He had to talk like them. His friends and neighbors had to sound like their friends and neighbors.

Where did Sayers learn that? At Oxford? Hardly. She learned it staring at a blank piece of paper, wracking her brain for a way to make mustard meaningful.

I write ad copy for hotel chains, and we call that “guest-centered copy.” When I worked in non-profit communications, we called it “donor-centered copy.”

What does it mean to write with your audience in mind? Three quick things:

  1. Tell them exactly what they want to know. Avoid pure marketing speak. Since the time readers spend on websites can now be measured in nanoseconds, every word has to be informative as well as interesting. As my editor told me, “Don’t just say the hotel is an oasis of comfort. Say what makes it an oasis of comfort.”
  2. Use everyday language. Unless you are writing advertising copy for a swanky brand, stick with plain language. Someone recently said to me, “It’s Dollywood, not Hollywood.”
  3. Imagine the scene from the reader’s or buyer’s perspective. What feeling do they get when they imagine themselves swimming in your hotel’s pool, spreading your mustard on their sandwich, or pouring out a glass of your brand of beverage? Evoke that feeling.

Of Jesus’s passion, Sayers’ wrote, “God was executed by people painfully like us, in a society very similar to our own.”[1] Because she was an advertising copywriter, Sayers got – really got – people “painfully like us.”

Want to write a write a story that’s powerful enough to bring C.S. Lewis to tears? Learn to write buyer-centered ad copy first. You’ll be amazed what it does for your storytelling prowess. Oh, and did I mention that writing ad copy pays?  Yep, it pays to advertise.

About Holland Webb

I love telling the stories that people put down so they go take action. I’m an advertising copywriter by day, an aspiring novelist by night, a parent, a dog-lover, a prison volunteer and a follower of Jesus.

[1] Read more:http://www.touchstonemag.com/archives/article.php?id=26-02-018-v#ixzz4WJX3Txy8