guide - Express Writers

Separating the Wheat from the Chaff: 14 Traits to Look for In Your SEO Copywriting Service

December 31, 2020February 13, 2017 by Adam Oakley

Finding a good SEO copywriting service is no joke. In addition to being professional, the service you hire must also be knowledgeable, experienced, and able to turn on a dime to accommodate your needs. Sound like a tall order? It is! We hear new clients tell us all the time horror stories about their past experiences. Writers that didn’t pan up to the promises, didn’t even have experience in the industry they swore up and down they did, and deadlines that were left in the dust. My team, founded on high principles, has been around for six years now. We know a thing or two about values, and what it takes to create content that fulfills every need for clients. We’re here to share today the key elements to look for in an SEO copywriting service that will put the “wheat,” not the chaff, in black and white for you. Keep reading! Defining SEO Copywriting SEO copywriting is the marriage of two essential skills: SEO, and copywriting. While each of these things has existed separately for many years, the focus on bringing them both together has arisen in response to increasingly intelligent search engines and increasingly discerning consumers. SEO used to be aimed at optimizing content so search engines could find it. This often entailed keyword stuffing, black-hat link building tactics, and spammy content pasted across every page of the site. Copywriting, on the other hand, used to be aimed only at sales. The copywriters of old were the great salespersons of the web – pitching ideas, pushing products, and doing anything they could to get an early, interested, underwhelmed audience to bite (ah, for those low-volume internet days to return to us again!). Today, though, both of those things have shifted. Within the last several years, search engines have gotten smarter, and major names like Google have begun to penalize sites that use the SEO tactics of yesteryear. Today, spammy links, crappy content, and over-stuffed keywords simply don’t fly. That’s not where it ends, though – Google has also begun to push for better-quality, more user-focused content, and customers have followed suit. Today, readers want quality, informative, relevant content that helps them solve their problems, and Google wants SEO that optimizes for readers just as much as it does for people. Because of this, SEO copywriting has become an essential service for successful companies near and far. Today, SEO copywriting is critical for businesses that want to target their customers and help to solve problems and relieve pain points with the aid of unique, relevant, and high-quality online content. Why Hire an SEO Copywriting Service? Every business needs online content, and that online content needs to be optimized for reader experience and search engine visibility. With few exceptions, most marketers don’t have the time, expertise, or resources in-house to create this type of content or to optimize the content they’ve already created. Without a centralized plan for improving SEO and crafting great content, things begin to go to pieces. Content comes out disorganized or irrelevant, and SEO falls by the wayside. This is why it’s so critical for companies who are serious about their success to hire an SEO copywriting service. In addition to helping make SEO and content creation a more cohesive, cooperative process, a good online copywriting service has dozens of additional benefits, as well. Some of the largest are as follows: Increased traffic: Right now, 61% of internet users around the world search for products online. Unless you’ve crafted enough targeted, custom content to catch their attention, you’re going to miss out on significant amounts of attention for your site. A good SEO copywriting service can help you identify your customers, and then develop material that speaks directly to them, contributing to increase your site views and help your brand become a household name. Boosted leads: According to HubSpot, companies with websites ranging between 401-1000 pages earn 6x as many leads as businesses that only have between 51-1000 pages. When you hire an SEO copywriting service, one of the top priorities will likely be to create blog and web page content. As you create blogs, for example, each new blog is an additional page for Google to index. This helps boost your site’s visibility and increases the number of leads your site will draw through organic traffic. Increased relevance to customers: Today, customers use web content to answer questions and gain new information. When your company creates custom content meant to cater to these purposes, you become more relevant to your consumers, which is good for brand recognition and customer loyalty. Decreased costs: While inbound marketing is drastically more efficient than traditional, outbound marketing, it’s also significantly less expensive. In fact, HubSpot reports that companies save an average of $20,000 each year by migrating to inbound marketing tactics. 14 Traits of a Worthwhile SEO Copywriting Service 1. Clearly defined boundaries SEO copywriting services are not SEO-only services, and it’s important to understand that from the get-go. While a good SEO copywriting service has an extensive understanding of everything that has to do with search algorithms, and likely conducts Google-specific duties like keyword research and on-page optimization, it’s unlikely that an SEO copywriting service will do anything like updating your link profile, for example. With this in mind, an SEO copywriting service should neither define itself as an SEO company nor should it attempt to tackle the most convoluted aspects of technical algorithms. These jobs are best left for other, more technical firms. When an SEO copywriting service clearly defines what it is and isn’t, you can bet that the content delivered will be high-quality and that the scope of focus will be narrow enough to provide you with targeted, quality service. 2. A willingness to work with your company’s brand A professional SEO copywriting service will morph to adapt to your brand. Everything from the company’s voice to their approach should shift depending on your unique target audience and preferred tone. While this may sound like a tall order, copywriters are chameleons by nature, and altering these things to provide you with a good experience … Read more

An Argument for Long-Form Content: Why it Works, What Lengths to Create, & 5 Long-Form Creators That Win

June 19, 2024January 31, 2017 by Adam Oakley

There’s no way around it, if you want to publish content that truly works for your online presence. Long-form content is more valuable, more exciting, and more relevant to readers than shorter-form content. It’s also less common. While it might sound insane to start creating long-form content while we’re living in a world of increasingly short attention spans, swimming upstream is sometimes the only way to the goal. Here’s some real inspiration for you on the subject. Joe Pulizzi, founder of Content Marketing Institute, and a leader in content marketing, wrote this in an exclusive CMI subscriber email this month (read the actual email here via PDF): “…Nearly every marketer we talk to has run to shorter posts, shorter social media updates, shorter videos, shorter podcasts … thinking that audiences don’t have the desire to invest themselves in content for a longer period of time. But they absolutely do … if the content is worthwhile. Those marketers who take a longer form approach can immediately position themselves and their stories as differentiated simply because of the length. When all your competition is going small, maybe it’s your time to go big.” In the same email, Pulizzi points out that: Huffington Post has recently doubled down on its efforts to create long-form content. All-star Youtubers are creating videos that are 10 or 12 minutes long. Tim Ferriss’s recent bestselling book, Tools of Titans, is a whopping 671 pages. Today, long-form content is the best way to stand out online. But why, truly, long-form content–why does it work?–and how can you create it for your brand? Let’s discuss this timely topic. [bctt tweet=”Why, truly, are we pro long-form content for a strong online presence? Why does it work? And how can you create it for your brand? Read @JuliaEMcCoy’s guide ? ” username=”ExpWriters”] Long-Form Content, by the Numbers Long-form content isn’t just important because it’s different – it’s important because it works. By providing more space to include relevant information, and giving audiences a chance to settle in and get comfortable with your brand, voice, and content, long-form material manages to convert at higher rates, provide a higher ROI, and earn more engagement. Here are a few fast stats to prove it: The average length of posts in the top 10 spots of Google is 2,000 words. While it’s possible for short-form content to rank well, long-form content is the winner when it comes to front-page results. Long-form content gets people to stay on pages 40% longer. Kissmetrics reports that, in addition to staying on their long-form pages longer, people exposed to long-form content also viewed 25% more pages than other visitors. Long-form content earns more social shares. When it comes to social media, long-form content earns more shares and engagement than standard blog posts. Longer content helps position you as a leader in your industry. It’s tough to bluff your way through 10,000 words, and readers know that. When you create quality, long-form content, you position yourself as a leader in your industry, standing out even further from your lazy counterparts who would rather get by with 300-word blurbs. The Long-Form Guide Revolution One great place to see the power of long-form content is in guides. Today, long-form guides are doing incredibly well. While it’s tough to earn great results if you’re not writing specific, targeted, honed guides, ultimate guides are another thing. Instead of rambling and losing readers, these guides target in on one topic and dominate all facets of it. Covering things like InDesign and landing page lead generation, these guides are killing it in the online world right now. Because they’re extensive and in-depth, these long-form guides have longer lifespans than other forms of content. This is because they can be reused again and again. After they’re researched and published online, it’s easy to make a large book from them, for example, or break them down into a long-form SlideShare presentation. Need a real-life example? Consider Joanna Wiebe, who wrote a guide to copywriting formulas. It’s called “The Ultimate Guide to No-Pain Copywriting (or, Every Copywriting Formula Ever).” The piece sits at 5,000 words and takes more than an hour to read! It also includes a table of contents to follow: Useful, extensive, and helpful to readers, this piece has earned more than 6,000 shares and 151 comments. It also ranks well at the top for “copywriting formulas” in Google. 5 Examples of Bloggers Rising Above with Long-Form Content Now that you know why long-form content is so critical, let’s take a close look at a few prominent bloggers who are putting out excellent long-form content today. 1. Tor Refsland Tor Refsland, the face behind TimeManagementChef.com, has been featured on top sites like Lifehack, JeffBullas.com, Ahrefs, Post Planner, and Blogging Wizard. On his own blog, he’s famous for consistently publishing 10,000-30,000-word monster blogs. Thanks to the time, energy, and effort these blogs take, he’s been recognized as an award-winning, top blogger who was first invited to speak at key events just 18 months into blogging. For an example of what Tor Refsland is capable of with a blog, check out this piece, titled “Business Coaching, 20x My Revenue and Being Slapped by Frank Kern.” It clocks in right around 13,000 words and features so many segments and sections you’d think you were reading a novel! While the piece is long, though, it manages not to be overwhelming. This is because Refsland does a few things beautifully. For one, the entire article is broken into highly digestible segments and short paragraphs, so you’re never faced with a brick wall of text. Example: He’s also funny, and his humor feels like a trail of bread crumbs, leading you through the story step by step. He’s a pro at using punctuation, formatting, and headlines to help usher people through these monster blogs, so you never get bored or discouraged. Try this post: How To Attract the Right Clients By Doing Business Nude. It’s seriously funny. Tor’s incredible copy is a large reason he was on my podcast last year! 2. Adam … Read more

How to Write a Business Case Study

January 10, 2024December 1, 2016 by Adam Oakley

Business case studies can have a massive impact on your marketing, done right. While they cost time and effort to create, they can be a stellar tactic to draw new customers to your business and help you earn new clients. Unfortunately, many people aren’t sure how to start when it’s time to write copy for them. If you’re one of the many individuals who wants to learn how to write a business case study, but just aren’t sure where to get started, my simple guide is here to help you step-by-step – another installment of our #howtowrite series! What is a Case Study? A case study is a piece of content, published by a company, that outlines their success or effectiveness in dealing with a client. It’s commonly used as a piece of marketing content and can be incredibly useful since it helps would-be clients understand how the agency or professional has excelled in the past. Virtually every successful online company uses case studies, and Express Writers is no different! Earlier this year, in fact, we published a case study that showcases how we helped a client boost their revenue by 77% after creating some product descriptions for them. Case studies are more than just a piece of self-congratulating marketing material (this is an incorrect assumption that many people hold about these unique content types), though. In fact, they’re meant less to stroke the company in question’s ego than they are to help would-be clients understand how a given company can assist them. The Top 4 Benefits of Why You Should Learn How to Write a Business Case Study So, why go to all the time to create your own case study? (It IS a ton of time and effort!) If the “what is” didn’t argue in favor already, here are key reasons to spend your time finding out how to write a business case study, and putting one of your own together. Business case studies have many advantages. The top four are as follows: 1. Case studies allow a company to use storytelling to bring their product to life Whether it’s a service or a hard-and-fast consumer product, a case study is an excellent way to illustrate it and help bring it to life for new customers. Just like any great novel, a good case study has a beginning, a middle, and an end, with a conflict and a resolution. It’s a wildly effective way to make somewhat complex products real and can go a long way toward improving the way your clients perceive your offerings, especially for new businesses. 2. Case studies provide peer-to-peer influence Peer-to-peer influence is a massively important thing, and case studies are wonderful at fulfilling it because they offer the view of a customer rather than a company. While it’s a company that publishes a case study, the entire thing is dedicated to recounting a customer’s experience. Direct quotes, statistics, and more are standard, and these things are fantastic for helping would-be clients to see the value in a company. 3. Case studies offer real-life examples We’ve all heard about how critical customer reviews are for conversion rates, and case studies take this one step further. By providing real-life examples of your product at work, paired with glowing customer reviews, they can help new customers feel more confident in your company and take the leap to convert. For an example, check out this case study excerpt (from our own clientele based case study): 4. Case studies are powerful word-of-mouth advertising Because a company must ask permission from a client to use his or her data in a case study, the inclusion of a customer in a case study often leads to some brand evangelism that can help boost your company’s visibility and improve your conversion rates. How to Write a Business Case Study: Your Complete Guide in 5 Steps So, you want to write a case study, but you’re not sure where to begin! This guide will help you get started. 1. Identify your best possible avenue for data When it comes time to write a case study, you might have multiple cases to choose from. The first part of being successful, though, is narrowing these things down. For your case study to succeed, it must contain just the right information, and it’s critical to ensure this from the get-go. To determine which of your various cases would be the best fit for a study, look at them and evaluate whether or not they contain the following elements: A significant challenge. This could be a tight timeline, a complicated issue, low sales numbers, or even a need for entirely new software integration. A satisfying solution. For your case study to fall into the realm of storytelling, it needs a solution that customers can relate to. A series of substantial benefits. The final component in a case study is the benefit. An excellent case study should feature several benefits that your customers can relate to deeply. The benefits will be even more compelling if they’re solid statistics like we used when we say we boosted the client’s sales by 77% year-over-year. The more granular, the better in this case. 2. Write your case study (5 key tips) Now comes the tough part – the writing! While it’s true that writing a case study requires a different set of skills and a different voice than everyday writing, it’s far from impossible. To ace your DIY case study, follow these tips: Choose your voice carefully Depending on your brand and the content of the case study, you can write it in either the first or third person. Either approach will work, and most case studies use a mixture of both. EXAMPLE: Our client-based case study at Express Writers does this, and it flows quite nicely. If you’re going to use a combination of both the first and the third person, though, be sure that you’re enhancing the third-person parts with direct quotes from the client, as straight third-person voice can sound overly narrated after a while. Make … Read more

How to Write Content for a Blog

August 25, 2022November 29, 2016 by Adam Oakley

Blogs are synonymous with online content. They stand out as some of the most popular and widely used formats for content today. But, here’s a million dollar question: how do you write them? If you’ve ever wondered how to write content for a blog, you’re not alone. While it’s true that writing blog content can be challenging, it doesn’t need to be, and my simple guide is here to help you learn the steps. Read on for tips on how to write content for a blog, another short how-to post in my #howtowrite series! [bctt tweet=”Need some pointers on creating good blog posts? Here’s a nutshell guide on our own Write Blog, covering #howtowrite a blog. ” username=”ExpWriters”] Why Blogs Matter In addition to communicating valuable information to readers, blogs also serve important SEO purposes. When they’re well-written, they relate to Google and other search engines that a website is authoritative and relevant and that the writer well-versed on a given topic or in a given industry. Additionally, blogs are a critical platform for any company that wants to build a well-rounded content strategy and are essential to companies striving to bond with their clients and showcase their brand voice. Without a blog, it’s difficult to build up a consistent brand voice, and companies are finding that blog content consistently stands out as one of the most relevant and trustworthy sources of online content out there. To be exact, they’re the fifth most trusted source of online content among readers. What’s more, blogging has the potential to have a massive impact on a company’s leads and engagement rates. The more blogs you publish, especially if they are SEO optimized with the right keywords, the more people will find their way to your site and its content. And if you’re writing your blogs well, they’ll want to stay, share, and download. How to Write Content for a Blog: 6 Simple Tips to Start Using Now If you want to learn how to write content for a blog, you’re in luck. These simple tips will help you get started. 1. First Things First: Know Your Audience Knowing your audience is essential to writing good blogs. If you’ve never built a target persona before, now is the time to do it. In addition to giving you an idea of who you’re speaking to and what they care about, a target persona will also serve the critical purpose of helping you get inside your readers’ heads and solve their most pressing problems for them. When you understand your blog’s audience, everything else can flow naturally. It’s critical to remember who your audience is throughout the writing process, and keep them in mind as you work to craft content your readers can depend on. 2. Spend The Time to Craft Great Topics Topics are the lifeblood of your blog, so it pays to come up with great ones. If you’re having a difficult time harvesting blog topics, turn to trusty sources like your website FAQ and Quora. These are often untapped gold mines of great ideas and outstanding information, so it pays to pay attention to them. As you craft the topics for your blog, pay attention to which perform well and which don’t. This will give you a good idea of what you should be crafting going forward. 3. Make Your Hook Captivating The hook, or the opening part of your article, is one of the most important components of all of your content. With this in mind, spend some time making sure the beginnings of your article are as good as possible. They should be constructed to grab your reader’s attention and keep it. This means including relevant facts, stats, and information. It also means addressing the reader directly and ensuring that you know your audience well enough to know what will appeal to them. 4. Organize Your Blogs to Make Them More Readable While many people bypass this detail, organizing and optimizing your blogs is essential. To make your blog content as readable as possible, organize them into small, digestible chunks and ensure that you’re never presenting your readers with dense blocks of information. In addition to making your content more user-friendly, breaking it into approachable pieces will help to make it better for SEO. For an example of a blog with good formatting, check out this piece on the Write Blog about blog optimization: It’s super long-form, so we even added a visual Table of Contents to tell the reader what’s coming and keep them on the page. Here’s another piece that exhibits great formatting, on Search Engine Journal: 5. Write Evergreen Content Evergreen content will become the cornerstone of your blogging strategy, but only if you let it. Evergreen content is the type of content that users can visit at any time and count on it to be relevant. It’s also the kind of content that will earn you blog views long after the publish date of the content itself. With this in mind, publish evergreen content whenever possible on your blog. It will boost your content strategy, and your readers will thank you. 6. Keep Writing Writing a blog can be tough, but it’s critical to keep going – even (and especially) when it gets hard. If blogging were easy, everyone would do it. Because it’s not, though, it’s up to you to find ways to make the blogging strategy work for you as much as possible. When you run up on writer’s or topic blocks, talk to people in your community and look at blogs you admire. This simple strategy will help you stay on the bleeding edge of the industry, even when you face the challenges that all bloggers do. Great Blog Content Starts Here While it’s true that great blog content is hard to come by, it’s also true that you can learn to create it with a few simple steps. This guide gives you the framework you need to learn how to write content for a blog, and begin crafting your … Read more

How to Write Content for a Website

December 31, 2020November 29, 2016 by Adam Oakley

While content has many applications, ranging from social media to marketing and beyond, website content is by far one of the most common things that people want to learn how to write. Designed to attract reader attention, provide value, and offer information, website content is the foundation of all content around the web, and it’s essential to know how to write content for a website in a fast, effective, and compelling way. To be as useful and impactful as possible, website content can’t be rushed, sloppy, or completed with only a half-hearted effort. Instead, it needs to shine with relevance and value. Here’s everything you need to do to learn how to write content for a website, and distinguish yourself from the crowd, in a nutshell guide in my #howtowrite series. Focus on Value First – Always Think, for a moment, about why people interact with website content. They’re coming to a website to find out something about a company, a product, or a service. Maybe they’re a new customer looking to learn more about what a company provides. Maybe they heard about a cool new product and wanted to learn more for themselves. Maybe they’re looking for a specific product and they want to do their research before they commit to buying. No matter what the case may be, website content is an essential vehicle for value and relevance, and it’s critical to provide this accordingly to customers. With this in mind, website content must feature a few elements that are different and more pronounced than other types of content. For example, it’s got to be more in-depth than social content, more professional than some blog content, and more personal than most marketing material out there. To put it another way, people want to learn about your company, your brand and your mission through your written material, and it’s the job of website content job to do just that. Want more on the topic of “how to write?” I wrote a best-selling book all about it! How to Write Content for a Website: 7 Steps to Compelling Material If you’re setting out to write website content, but you’re not sure where to begin, start with these tips: 1. Be original. When we say “original,” here, we mean it in both senses of the word. On one hand, the content you publish on your website should be original in that it doesn’t appear anywhere else on the web. While this may sound like a simple concept, 29% of sites currently feature duplicate meta content, so it’s wise to pay special attention to the fact that everything on your site is original, and that you’re not lifting pieces from yourself or from anyone else. Secondly, the content on your site should be original in that contains your unique brand voice, outlook, and mission. Again, people come to your site looking for relevance and information and the best way to provide them with this is to be as relevant as possible. 2. Create strong headlines. If you didn’t know it by now, strong headlines are the center of all things content, even (and especially) on your website. While the purpose of headlines is indeed to drive interest, headlines are also a good place to think about how best to provide relevance and information. Ideally, people should be able to visit your site, look at your headline, and understand what the purpose of a page is and what types of information they can expect to find there. With this in mind, creating your best headlines will go a long way toward making your content more informative, and can help boost the engagement and conversion rates of your pages. Blog topics require extra thought and care. For example, check out this list of strong headlines on SEJ – their most popular post section: Using powerful adjectives – “Ridiculously Effective” – is a great way to garner interest in your headlines. We have a list of top power words here. Looking at your competitors and using BuzzSumo to search most shared content topics in your industry is a great way to be inspired and start a list of fantastic topics. 3. Provide relevant links, prices, and information. The more information on a website, the better. If you’re writing a pricing page, for example, input links to related services and provide your users with all of the information they may need to make smart decisions. While some people believe that including things like pricing on websites isn’t a good idea, customers are often grateful to have as much information as possible, and this small step can go a long way toward boosting the functionality and relevance of your site. We have a Transparent Pricing page on our website, which clients have always said they appreciate: 4. Seek to provide answers in your website content. When you write social media or blog content, a part of the process is knowing your audience well enough to address their fears, concerns and priorities. With website content, knowing your target audience is equally important, only you have to know them well enough to anticipate their questions and answer them before the customers have a chance to ask themselves. When you do this, it helps show your readers that you understand their issues and that you’re willing to take a step into their shoes. It’s also a great way to make your pages more engaging, actionable, and targeted. 5. Be accurate. Everything featured on your website should be accurate and current. Pricing information, for example, should always be up-to-date. You shouldn’t feature outdated services or bygone facts on your website, and it’s absolutely essential to ensure that the information you do provide is as accurate and interesting as possible. In addition to helping your readers connect on a deeper level with your material, this will also provide a better user experience and a more exciting website for them. 6. Add images and video to your website pages. A picture is worth a thousand words, and visual … Read more

How to Write Content for Social Media

December 31, 2020November 28, 2016 by Adam Oakley

Social media has become a massively valuable platform in recent years. With millions of active monthly users, an incredibly diverse base of users, and reach to virtually every corner of the earth, it’s clear why the various platforms in the social media family, ranging from Facebook to LinkedIn, have stood out as such valuable and relevant places to share content. But how, exactly, do you craft content that performs well on these diverse and different platforms? In one of my first #howtowrite series, I’m here to share with you! Read on. How to Write Content for Social Media: 10 Tips Since social media is such a varied and unique environment, it’s critical to ensure that you’re writing the right content at the right time. Here’s how: 1. Optimize what you write according to the platform you write it for. Twitter is different from Facebook, which is different from Google+, which is different from Twitter! To make the most of writing content for social media, it’s critical that you take the additional time and effort needed to also optimize the content you write for the various social platforms for which you write it. For example, do you know which of your readers frequent which platform? Do you know how long content should be for said platform, or how to present your content so that it performs the best it can on a given platform? If not, now is the time to learn. Optimizing content for the platform you publish it on is critical, and it’s essential to master this skill accordingly. Want more on the subject of “how to write?” I wrote a book all about it! 2. Add images. Images are as critical for social media content as they are anywhere else. To make the most of your social content, fill it up with images once you’ve written it. Beautiful stock photos, in-depth screenshots, and even personal pictures can go a long way toward improving your content and making it feel more approachable and friendly for your readers. To understand why this is so important to good social media content, think for a moment about how you regard posts with images vs. posts without images in your own social media news feeds. Which are more likely to get your clicks? If you answered “posts with images,” you’re not alone. While people only remember 10% of what they read, they remember 65% of what they see, and pairing a relevant visual with your social media content can help it stick in your readers’ heads. 3. Keep your audience in mind. Your audience is critical when it comes to social media content, and if you don’t know who they are there’s no way you’re going to be able to address them properly. With this in mind, do everything you can to build targeted personas, research your audience, and develop a solid understanding of who they are and what they care about. In addition to allowing you to tailor your content more effectively, this step will also help to ensure that the posts you publish on social media will have a wide, broad reach with the potential to extend well beyond your audience. 4. Keep it about other people. Social media can be an echo chamber for narcissism, so it’s important to keep your content focused on other people. If you’re one of the many social media users who finds it tough to contend with other users who publish self-centric posts on a regular basis, take heed. Instead, keep your posts broad and externally-focused for the best result. 5. Become a master of headlines. Social media headlines are critical to your click-through-rate, and they can make or break the success of your content. With this in mind, follow the best practices for stellar headlines. In addition to earning you more clicks, a simple tip like this can easily boost the success rate of all of your social media content and ensure that you’re as close as possible to going viral online. 6. Experiment with different content types. Social media is a great place for all sorts of content types, ranging from articles and blog posts to videos and infographics. To build a well-rounded and unique content strategy, try your hand at all of them. In addition to giving your fans something to look forward to, this approach will also help expand your content horizons and teach you what works best with your audience and what doesn’t! 7. Address your readers. Social media works best when its personal, so don’t be afraid to address your readers directly. The personal “you” makes more of a splash in the news feed than anything else, so it’s smart to include it. 8. Cover trending topics. Social media is an excellent place to tap into current events and web-wide trends. In addition to the fact that these things will generally perform well with readers, social media content has a relatively short lifespan, so using it to cover current events is a great move. With this in mind, don’t hesitate to look to trending hashtags, news sources, and industry events to come up with topics for your next batch of social media content. 9. Keep it concrete. Social media isn’t a place to get obscure and experimental with your headlines or your content. Since people skim through social media feeds so quickly, concrete, tangible, unique headlines and topics will perform the best. Don’t forget to give your readers something they can hold onto. 10. Don’t make promises you can’t keep. If readers click your title expecting one thing and they get another, they’re bound to be disappointed, and rightfully so! With this in mind, make sure your headline and the content beneath it deliver what’s promised, and don’t be surprised if your CTR drops when this stops happening. Learn how to Write for Social Media & Gain Serious Brand Attention Social media continues to grow, and learning how to write content for social media is more critical today … Read more

How to be a Creative Copywriter: 5 Unique Tips From Inside the Industry

December 31, 2020November 3, 2016 by Ashley

I got my degree in Literature. In school, my days were spent waxing poetic about Russian authors and attempting casual leans with boys in skinny jeans and black turtleneck sweaters. It’s understandable, then, that when I graduated and became a full-time copywriter, I got some raised eyebrows from the Foucault-worshipers of my alma matter. I’ve actually had some of my art-school friends tell me, in no uncertain terms, that being a copywriter is “selling out,” and that it’s certainly a “disappointing waste of creativity.” I, however, respectfully (and vehemently) disagree. While many people regard copywriting as a boring industry that’s as devoid of creativity as Joan Rivers was facial expressions, this simply is not true. In fact, I’d argue that being a great creative copywriter requires an entirely different type of creativity – one that very few people master. Copywriting requires rabbit-from-a-hat sleight of hand, and it takes a massive level of creativity to muster that. After a few years of writing marketing copy, though, creativity can atrophy a bit – especially for writers who haven’t found a copywriting niche they love. If we’re to succeed as creative copywriters, though, we need to find ways to continue being as creative as possible. That’s what I’m here to talk about today. Creativity & the Copywriter: A Love Story Without creativity, there can be no great copywriting. While copywriting is synonymous with marketing, marketing is changing faster than the speed of light. Because of this, people who sacrifice creativity in the name of mass-produced, boring material risk getting lost in the stampede of companies, consumers, and search engines who want something different. Today, more than 27 million pieces of content are shared online every single day, and there’s no sign that this trend will slow anytime soon. In light of this, the only way that marketers, writers, and brands can get noticed is to be creative. Think about companies like Poo-Pourri, Dollar Shave Club, Innocent Drinks, and ModCloth. They didn’t get where they are by scraping content and recycling ideas. Instead, they rose to the top by being creative in every aspect of their marketing – from their visuals to their copy – and it’s because of this creativity that they continue to stand out as some of the most unique brands in existence. As brands like this prove, you can’t climb the ladder without creativity. People get bored and leave if you fill their pages with boring content, and your chances of staying afloat on the content sea decrease every single time you sacrifice creativity in the name of traditionality. How to Be a Creative Copywriter: 5 Essential Tips So…creativity matters. What next? Even if you are a creative person with an artistic background and unique ideas, creativity suffers fatigue, just like everything else. Fortunately, these five tips can help you be a more creative copywriter, starting right now. 1. Channel Your Inner Don Draper If you watched the hit series Mad Men, you know that Donald Draper is an idol to the marketing world. If you want to succeed as a creative copywriter, one of the best things you can do is channel him. Feel free, however, to leave the alcoholism and adultery out of the picture. Instead, what you want to channel is Draper’s ability to identify a story in any campaign. It doesn’t matter if you’re writing ad copy for an insurance company or helping a startup build their website content – identifying the story within the campaign is the most essential thing you can do to keep your creativity alive. Fortunately, there are dozens of ways to do this. Put yourself in the company’s shoes: why are they passionate about what they do? How do their products make the world a better place? If that doesn’t shake anything loose, put yourself in the customer’s shoes: how will this product help you enjoy your life more? What would draw you to the company in question? Within every campaign, content order, and keyword sheet, there’s a story, and it’s up to you as a creative copywriter to draw it out. Don’t believe me? Consider this meme. It pretty much tells you everything you need to know about why channeling your inner Don Draper is so critical to good copywriting: 2. Take a hint from print copy While many people believe that print copy and digital copy exist on different planets, they overlap more frequently than people understand. You can come out on top as a creative copywriter simply by taking some hints from the world of print copy. Since I’m a lit major, here’s the example I’ll give you: the opening lines of major novels. And since I already mentioned my love of Russian authors, here’s the one I’ll call out: Lolita. Considered by many to be one of the greatest novels of all time, Lolita opens like this: “Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins. My sin, my soul. Lo-lee-ta: the tip of the tongue taking a trip of three steps down the palate to tap, at three, on the teeth. Lo. Lee. Ta. She was Lo, plain Lo, in the morning, standing four feet ten in one sock. She was Lola in slacks. She was Dolly at school. She was Dolores on the dotted line. But in my arms, she was always Lolita.” Is that literary? You betcha. A little too clunky for marketing copy? Absolutely. But is it compelling? It is, without a doubt, one of the most compelling things I’ve ever read. While Lolita is a great example, there are others like it. Consider “Call me Ishmael,” or “As Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from uneasy dreams he found himself transformed in his bed into a monstrous vermin.” Both of these are equally attention-grabbing, and there’s a lot that a modern-day copywriter can learn from them. While we’ve all heard that the headline and opening sentence of a piece of copy are two of its most critical parts, too many copywriters bulldoze through these things with no style or grace. As this selection of opening … Read more

10 Deadly Mistakes Most Copywriters Make

December 31, 2020August 22, 2016 by Adam Oakley

Copywriters: they make the web go round. Bad news? They’re only human, though. So, of course, they make mistakes. It’s natural that even the best copywriters make mistakes. What you should know, though, is that some mistakes are more dangerous than others. If you’re a professional copywriter, avoiding the ten deadly mistakes that most copywriters make can benefit your career and help you earn clients. Copywriters Beware: The 10 Worst Mistakes of Online Copywriting Read on to learn more. 1. Plagiarism Believe it or not, plagiarism can happen… even if you don’t mean for it to. According to Google, plagiarism is simply, “the practice of taking someone else’s work or ideas and passing them off as one’s own.” While most copywriters believe that plagiarism only happens when you copy, word-for-word, an entire article from someone else’s page, it can be much more insidious than that. In many cases, plagiarism can happen when copywriters are tired, busy, or stressed, and as a result, aren’t paying enough attention to properly citing their sources or re-phrasing ideas they’ve gleaned from other online content. Unfortunately, plagiarism is deadly no matter how it happens. Google isn’t particularly concerned about why you plagiarized a piece, and they’re happy to de-rank yours or your client’s content if they stumble upon copied text. Because of this, it’s essential to keep a close eye out for plagiarism. One of the best ways to do this is to use an online plagiarism checker, like Grammarly or Copyscape. While it may seem like one more step in your copywriting pursuits, it’s a valuable one that can protect you from serious trouble down the line. We’re currently building the world’s MOST POWERFUL online duplicate content checker (plagiarism finder)! Check it out and sign up to test it at beta.Copyfind.com! 2. Taking pictures directly from the search results Including a colored visual in a piece of content increases a person’s willingness to read it by a whopping 80%, so it’s understandable that you want to include images and videos in your content. Be careful how you do it, though, since simply pulling visuals directly from the search engine results page could easily wind up in a lawsuit. Online content is protected by copyright laws, and violating these laws by using someone else’s work without their express permission can result in a significant problem. Because of this, it’s critical to be careful about the visuals you use. To be on the safe side, pull visuals from high-quality stock image sites like Pexels or take your own screenshots or pictures. Whatever you do, be sure that the images you include are clear, quality, and relevant to your text. This keeps them interesting rather than confusing. Check out our free resource list of 20 top free stock photo sites. 3. Publishing sloppy content No matter how precise you are, typos are inevitable, and failing to read through your content before you publish it results in mediocre results that damage your personal brand. While most copywriters believe that a simple once-over with the Microsoft Word spelling & grammar checker is sufficient, this couldn’t be further from the truth. While this software will help you catch misspelled words, it won’t often catch misused words (“there” instead of “their,” for example) or chunky, confusing writing. Because of this, it’s critical to read back through everything yourself. Proofreading is a skill that’s essential to the success of copywriters everywhere, and it can indeed spell the difference between quality content and a disappointing turnout. For added confidence, you may even want to run your content through a grammar-checking software like Grammarly, which will pick up on things like passive voice and misused commas. While this is a simple tip, it can help your content stand out from all the rest. 4. Getting the voice wrong In many ways, copywriters are masters of transformation. In addition to being able to write well and produce content quickly, they must also be able to transform their voice to cater to a client’s specifications: formal one day, conversational the next. Unfortunately, many copywriters miss the mark on this. Developing a myriad of voices is a little bit like bodybuilding – it requires time, effort, and some degree of skill. If you haven’t taken the time to develop your various voices and tones, you’re going to lose clients to the copywriters who have. Because of this, it’s essential to master a variety of voices and to ensure that the one you’re currently writing in is indeed the one that your client wants. 5. Being too wordy Modern copywriters know that less is more, and it shows in their online content. Today, brands want simple, succinct content that helps them convey a brand message and connect with their consumers. They’re less interested than ever in verbose, drawn-out content that loses the marketing message and makes it difficult for readers to discern meaning. Because of this, today’s copywriters need to focus on keeping it short and to-the-point. Content that is too wordy makes it difficult for the reader to focus and, over time, can result in decreased conversions and leads for the client. Because of this, simplicity is key and the copywriters who know how to cut the fat are the ones who will ultimately succeed in the world of online content creation. 6. Forgetting the CTA Aside from the headline and opening sentence, a call-to-action is one of the most important lines in a piece of content. When copywriters forget to include it, then, the entire piece of content loses its authoritativeness and fails to adhere to the goals of the sales funnel. Meant to drive users to action, a call-to-action is a simple line that essentially tells viewers what to do next – be it click, download, share, or buy. Without it, readers are less likely to take a given action and the success of the content declines rapidly. In light of this, copywriters must know how to craft compelling, clickable CTAs that drive readers to want to act. This improves the efficiency of the content and … Read more

Keep Calm and Write On: A Guide on How to Handle a Negative Online Review

December 31, 2020June 30, 2016 by Adam Oakley

Imagine this… You sit down at your computer one fine morning, coffee cup in hand, and begin to make your online rounds. You check all the usual things: social media, analytics, blogs, and email – until you gasp in horror and stop in your tracks. Someone has left you a negative online review! While this is a shocking and upsetting experience, you’re not alone. Ever heard the saying… Haters Gon’ Hate? The truth is that any business that works with customers on a regular basis is bound to get a bad online review or two, and while it’s never a fun situation to be in the middle of, a negative online review doesn’t have to be a catastrophe. HelpScout reports that for every one customer who lodges a complaint, 26 customers stay silent. Kind of sucky: but a fact. Although it feels bad when it happens, you won’t be (anything close to) scarred for life. By the end of today’s post, you’ll actually learn that it could be a good thing! And negative online reviews have happened to us too: so I can tell you, personally, that you’ll come out of the fire refined. 5 Key Tips You Can Put to Immediate Use in Handling A Negative Online Review In five steps, here’s a simple breakdown of what to do post-apocalypse (after you’ve received that yucky online review). 1. Stay calm Refer to our Keep Calm & Write On graphic. (Save it, print it out, hang it up, do whatever you like.) You’re a business owner: you work hard for your company, and it’s understandable that finding a negative online review would make you feel hurt, sad, and even angry. If this happens, though, the first thing to do is to stay calm. Nothing good ever came from blowing up at a negative online review, and you’re liable to do irreparable damage to your company if this is the path you choose. As a general rule, it takes 12 good experiences with a company to make up for one negative experience, so you could be digging yourself a big hole with your customers if you fly off the handle before thinking through things. Instead of being reactionary, take a step back from the review and give yourself a bit of time to consider the situation. Begin by sizing up the content of the review. Is it factually correct? Is there a way to address or resolve the problem for the customer? Does the review offer insight into something your company could do well to fix, anyway? For example, if a customer at your restaurant complains that it took 30 minutes to get a glass of water after sitting down, and you were indeed tragically understaffed that night, there’s a simple solution. In this case, the correct path would be to apologize to the customer and offer a comped or discounted meal the next time they return. Once you’ve addressed the complaint, you could even consider hiring more staff or implementing different protocols to prevent that type of situation from happening again. If the report is factually inaccurate, however, your approach will be different. While malicious reviews don’t happen very often, they do happen. Luckily, there’s a way to deal with them. If someone is making dishonest or defamatory statements about your company, it’s within your rights to ask the third-party review site to remove the comment. This is true regardless of whether the review is on Yelp, Facebook, or Google. Keep in mind that getting reviews removed can be an extensive and arduous process, so it’s one to undertake carefully. First of all, you’ll need to provide proof that shows the review is factually inaccurate. If you can’t do this or can’t wait for the third-party site to decide on the review, set the record straight in the comments section below the review. Just remember to be neutral and professional to avoid making the situation worse. Take it from Amy’s Baking Company – which won catastrophic web-wide recognition when the owners repeatedly and aggressively lashed out at a displeased reviewers on Yelp. As if the above wasn’t bad enough… So, there you go on a brief rundown of what not to do. Now, let’s look at best next action steps. 2. Take Action/Offer a Solution Customers don’t often go out of their way to write negative reviews for no reason, so it’s in your best interest to heed the review and do everything in your power to rectify the situation. Your first case of action here is to determine if this is a legitimate customer – because you can only service the legit negativity. We hate to say it, but yes, there are people out there who will leave fake negative reviewers (are either paid by competitors, are the competitor themselves, are are acting out of personal angst). If you know this is a stranger, and not a legitimate complainer: well, here’s one scenario you could take inspiration from. I’m going to tell you a little story. The Story of Jane, Bill, & Will: (Or, the Art of Handling the Fake Negative Review) Let me run you through a story about what we’ll call Bill the Fake Reviewer Writer. Bill heard of a made-up negative story about a company, word-of-mouth, from Jane. Jane was fired from her company just that week. At Jane’s very frequent pushing, Bill went and published a fake review on Jane’s company. He was amped up by Jane and wrote a lot of angry words, calling the company names and even going as far as to put libel on the company owner. It was a weekend and late in the evening. Still, the company social manager was online and saw the angry posts being left by Bill; he alerted the company CEO within minutes of it happening. Let’s call that CEO Will. Will took a breather (see #1). After ten minutes, he immediately replied to Bill, cordially starting with hello. Then he stated facts: 1) we’ve never served you and 2) please provide proof on and who is spreading information about the things you’re currently stating. Bill couldn’t, told by Jane … Read more