Why I love quickie jobs – no job too small!

Today, a new client – a real estate agent – dropped me an email asking me to edit his professional bio. A client for whom I did some work last year emailed me the same day to have me proofread an important business letter. And a website owner wanted some existing text tweaked because it simply didn’t give the right impression.

Quickie jobs are always welcome at the wordmistress! When you need something done, and it has to be done sooner rather than later, I’m always happy to oblige if I possibly can.

The good old tradey line – “no job too small” – is fine by me. Small jobs not only pay bills but they are an excellent way for me to introduce the standard of my work to potential new clients.

Do you need:

• A professional bio written?
• A couple of product descriptions tidied up?
• The wording written for your classified ad?
• Some text tweaked on your website or in your newsletter?
• A tag line?A document proofread/edited?
• Your Facebook Page content established?

Just email or call and it shall be done!

Minimum 1-hour charge applies to any and all jobs.

Are you speaking Jibberish or Gobbledygook today?

What’s wrong with plain old English?  Nothing, you say?  Then why are so many marketing and PR ‘experts’ using Jibberish and Gobbledygook?  Do you ever read something and think: “Holy crap, I have no idea what that was all about!”

Welcome to the world of marketing-speak.  In an effort to sound as impressive as possible, the language used is designed to dazzle you with the company’s importance, its outstandingness and its absolute mission-critical, groundbreaking, industry-leading whallapaloo.  What? Exactly!  Obviously when writing material that’s meant to promote a company or a product, there should be a certain elevation to the use of laymen’s terms, but not to the point where it’s so lofty that no one understands it.  Honestly, what is the point of that?  To show off?  To promote the cleverness of the PR team?  Don’t you have a product to sell?

Stop trying to dazzle.  Ask yourself: “What does my customer NEED from me?”  Are you making your customers work hard just to figure out how you can help them? Or, in the (slightly-convoluted) words of John F Kennedy:

“Ask not what your customer can do for you; ask what you can do for your customer!”

Meanwhile, take a moment to read through David Meerman Scott’s The Gobbledygook Manifesto.  Download a copy here.

What’s the difference between a website and a blog?

It can be a very emotive question but the answer is so simple! The main difference between a website and a blog is intention.

A website is like your shop-front, your office; it’s where you do business. A blog is where you engage with your potential customers and the internet community in general.

What people get hung up about is whether there’s a technology differentiation between blogs and website. The simple answer is, not really. Sure, I could unleash a barrage of technical terminology, but frankly, that’s not my scene. I defer to others – experts – on technical matters because they do it so well! All I care about in my business is how to communicate with those invisible visitors who drop in to either a site, or a blog.

I love an analogy! Ok so here is the clearest way I know to illustrate the difference between a website and a blog.

Website = business premises
Your website is where your customers come to do business with you, and potential customers come to see if you have what they’re looking for. They could be ‘tyre-kickers’ or they could be ready to part with their hard-earned moolah. What they want is information about what you can do for them. Sell them a service, a product or a subscription. Whatever you’re selling, you’re in your shop (or office) and they’re coming to see if you have what they need.

Blog = part of the community
Blogging is akin to standing out in the mall, not too far from your store or office and shaking hands with passersby. Not in an in-your-face, ‘here, take this obscure-looking newspaper and read it’ kind of way. Talk about things related to your business. Let everyone know that you know what you’re on about. Eventually, the more they pass by you over a period of time, the more comfortable they’ll feel about stopping and actually asking for your opinion.

You can build a blog format into a website. You can make a website out of a blog. What really matters is the attitude, the intention.

Grammar bug-bears becoming more common

Ok look, you could be the best CEO that ever graced your industry. You might be the most influential Managing Director in your field. You might even have made one or two brilliant discoveries in science, economics or medicine. But unless you get these four grammatical necessities right, your report writing could make you look, well, silly.

These are errors that are so commonly made that it’s a wonder they haven’t made it into colloquial English, at least. But since I’ll never make an important contribution to science, economics or medicine, my contribution to the world will have to be to try and save the language from these dastardly deeds.

1. It’s, when you mean its. An apostrophe illustrates a contraction. “It’s” is a contraction of “it is”. The possessive pronoun “its” may seem wrong considering we use the apostrophe when allocating ownership of something to a person, such as “Peter’s”, but in this case, drop the punctuation.
2. Your, when you mean you’re. Again with the contractions. “You’re” is a contraction of “you are”. Simple, right? “Your” means something belonging to you. Just think when using these. It’s not hard.
3. They’re, there and their. And one more contraction. “They’re” is the shortened version of “they are”. “There” refers to a place. “Their” is another possessive pronoun.

It may seem elementary to point out these often incorrectly confused words but their mis-use is becoming increasingly common. The pedantic grammar nazi in me is happier just for blogging about it.

Are you sending email or ME-mail?

Never mind the statistics.  Don’t bother checking your email campaign stats.  Forget about checking who opened your email newsletters, who unsubscribed and whose email address bounced and who clicked through to your website. That’s all after-the-horse-has-bolted stuff!  You can’t close the gate now; the horse is already a couple of paddocks away!

No, what you need to do is ensure that you write the type of emails that will be opened.  And to do that, you need to start calling them ME-mails!

What did Seth say?

Me-mail is a term coined by marketing golden boy, Seth Godin during an interview in which he raved that “no one cares about YOU!” The man knows his stuff, how could he be wrong?  He was saying that if your factory’s productivity is up 12% and you email your subscribers about it … who cares???  But if you post some crazy online video that draws a laugh, a bigger chunk of people will care to open your email.

“What will you do for me?”

Right, so you don’t need to be creating freaky videos, but what you do need to take from his message is that every email you send to your subscribers, HAS to be about them!  It has to fix a pain, address an issue, solve a problem, make them laugh, make them angry, make them act or even make them cringe.  But unless you can reach through to the care factor in your subscribers’ anatomy, you can pretty much be sure that that horse will bolt, because you won’t have closed the gate.

Make ME-mail a priority for your next emailed newsletter.  Pretend you’re on the receiving end and ask yourself, yet again … “What’s in it for ME???”

Why YOUR business needs a web presence

Remember the quaint old days of painted signs on shopfronts and even though the phone numbers were missing a digit (or two, by the time 8-digit Australian phone numbers came into effect!), we all still knew how to give them a call?  Remember the Yellow Pages doorstop phone books?  Yes, they’re still around but when was the last time you actually picked one up to find a business?

We’re already a decade into the New Millennium, and the Internet demands you feed it!  Or to put it another way, your potential customers are looking on the Internet in massive numbers in comparison to the old Yellow Pages phone book.  If the only advertising you do for your business is Yellow Pages, then you’re falling way behind.

Today, consumers will see a web address emblazoned on a company car and it’s a hundred times easier to remember than a phone number.  It also tells you what the business is about.  Look at a business card.  If there’s no web address, how will you find out what you need to know about this company?  You’ll have to give them a call … during business hours and only if you can get a hold of the actual person you need to speak to.

Your business website is your 24/7/365 company sales rep
Your potential and existing clients can find out what they need to know at any time of the day, on weekends, public holidays and while you’re out getting a life.  Effectively written, all their questions will be answered so that if some of your site visitors are what’s known as ‘tyre kickers’, they won’t be taking up your valuable time asking irrelevant or basic questions.

And yes, you certainly do want your potential customer to know that they’re welcome to contact you by phone.  After all, some people – even if all the information they could possibly need is on your website – will want to be able to speak to a ‘real person’.  Fair enough too.  But give them the opportunity to help themselves first, via your well-written website content.

Your business website is a dynamic brochure
Those 3-fold glossy brochures are not only expensive to produce, but once you hand one over, it has to be kept handy for future reference.  You can bet it’ll have phone messages scrawled on it or at some point it’ll become an impromptu coffee cup coaster.  A business website is accessible, searchable and permanent.  Simply including your web address in all your marketing material means your ‘brochure’ is available whenever needed.

Technology is your friend, try to keep up
With so many people using smartphones (Blackberry, iPhone) and being able to access the Internet while on-the-road, you business website can be found using a simple web search.  If you’re a mechanic and someone’s car breaks down, they’ll be looking for a business that’s in the area.  Don’t let your competitor across the road win your business!

There is another reason why your business needs a web presence.  The fact is that it’s widely recognised that a business website is a core part of any company’s marketing strategy.  To be frank, if you don’t have a business website, then your business doesn’t exist and will get left behind in the dust.

What’s stopping you?
Is it all too hard?  Do you think it’s way too expensive to set up a business website?  Would you not even know where to start?  Whatever your reasoning, stop right there.  Contact me today to discuss your requirements.  A ten minute chat over the phone could have you breathing a sigh of relief once you find out how easy it can be to get on the web.

Should you write your own website content?

Many website owners underestimate the power of the written word.  Whether you have a product or service to sell, or you want to be considered the authority on your chosen topic, what you have to say matters … a great deal.  And how you say it matters even more.

1. Web versus print.  Writing for the web is something quite different from writing for printed publications and this is a fact that is overlooked frequently.  Whereas in a magazine you may see lots of long paragraphs, on the internet, the reader’s eye wanders around the screen in a way that it doesn’t when reading printed material.

2. Keyword saturation.  This element is vital in website content and is part of Search Engine Optimisation (SEO).  You want your website to be found by people searching for the kind of information you have to offer.  How are they going to find you if you don’t specifically mention what you are trying to sell (whether that’s information, a product or a service)?  Keywords need to be included in a concentration that will be picked up by the search engines, but not to the degree where the text no longer seems naturally readable.

3. Grammar, punctuation and spelling.  It seems fundamental and barely worth mentioning but in fact, correct use of the English language is becoming less common.  In today’s text messaging culture, the widespread use of the tightest possible abbreviations – across all age groups, levels of education and occupation – has brought about a sense of apathy in writing.  Grammar, punctuation and spelling no longer appear to be the aims in presenting a chunk of text to an online reader.  Sad, but true.  Yet readers still do expect to find well written, well composed material, and the writer’s credibility remains open for question on that basis.

4. Does your writing sell?  As the authority in your field, you no doubt have a bottomless well of information to offer.  And, unless you have a product or service that is unavailable from anyone else, then you have competition. Your website content needs to feature subtle – and also not so subtle – sales messages.  Calls to action, a focus on benefits instead of features, value identification and relatability with your target audience are vital.

5. Keeping content fresh.  Once your website is up and running, that’s not the end of the story.  In order to keep search engines trawling over your site and to keep visitors coming back, your website content must be kept fresh.  This can be done in several ways.  You can constantly update your product descriptions, changing the text here and there, adding new ideas, recipes, hints and so on.  You can post keyword articles to attract traffic, whilst also making new information available to your valued readers.  You can also create a blog, which should be updated at least every few days for the reasons mentioned above.

If you’ve never considered one or more of these items, then you really need to take a new look at the way your website content is written.  Use this information as a checklist to improving your website text and set about making changes.  Don’t short-change yourself or your target audience.  Consider hiring an experienced web copywriter to help.

Why your website is like an internet dating profile

Never before in history has it been so easy for the lay person to advertise so much about him/herself to so many people at the one time!  Thanks to Twitter, Facebook et al, plus countless dating websites, employment sites and blogs, you can not only promote a business, but target millions-strong audiences to find yourself a job, a friend or a spouse!

There is one thing common to all of these things: you have to project yourself in the best light possible!

Whilst at first it may seem it’s all about you, you, you, the truth is, even though you want the reader to know about YOU, you actually want to make it seem as though it’s all for THEM.  Your internet dating profile must naturally include your personal particulars - height, body shape, eye colour, hair colour, relationship status, dietary preferences and so on – but it also requires you to list the qualities you’re looking for in a mate.  AND, your profile’s readers will want to know what’s in it for them to contact you!

Matching your business with potential clients
Similarly, your business website should tell the reader all about your business, what products or services you offer, where you are, how long you’ve been in business and how to contact you.  You also need to illustrate to these potential clients what they can expect from you.  Consider adding the following to your website content:

About Us
Provides a somewhat personal touch and lets the reader know they’re dealing with a person or group of people, not just a business.

Mission statement
Clearly defines your company’s reason for being.  It also sets out the company’s future goals for expansion or growth and outlines the key values to which the business is committed.

Returns policy
Just having a returns policy provides your potential customer with peace of mind from the outset.  It also clarifies the responsibility on the part of both the customer and your business in the event that a product is not wanted or not suitable.

A map to your location
It’s never been easier to be found!  Google Maps makes long-winded instructions delivered by phone, a thing of the past.  Simple to incorporate into your site, your viewer can choose from Satellite View, Street View or Map View and can even print out clear instructions on how to get to you.

Frequently Asked Questions
FAQ’s are hugely helpful to website visitors, especially when you consider that the Internet keeps your business available 24/7, even if only online for part of each day or week.  When you can’t be contacted, FAQ’s can spare your readers – and you - valuable time.

Personal information
It’s certainly not vital that you provide a photograph of yourself or your personal information.  However, knowing more about the person behind the business can be the deciding factor between your site and another that offers similar products or services.  You don’t have to list your hobbies, your favourite colour or whether you have pets … save that for your personals profile.  Just add a splash of insight into the person behind the business and it’ll be very well received.

The 3 most common grammatical errors in web copy

Ok look, you could be the best CEO that ever graced your industry.  You might be the most influential Managing Director in your field.  You might even have made one or two brilliant discoveries in science, economics or medicine.  But unless you get these four grammatical necessities right, your report writing could make you look, well, silly.

These are errors that are so commonly made that it’s a wonder they haven’t made it into colloquial English, at least.  But since I’ll never make an important contribution to science, economics or medicine, my contribution to the world will have to be to try and save the language from these dastardly deeds.

1. It’s, when you mean its
An apostrophe illustrates a contraction.  “It’s” is a contraction of “it is”.  The possessive pronoun “its” may seem wrong considering we use the apostrophe when allocating ownership of something to a person, such as “Peter’s”, but in this case, drop the punctuation.

2. Your, when you mean you’re
Again with the contractions.  “You’re” is a contraction of “you are”.  Simple, right?  “Your” means something belonging to you.  Just think when using these.  It’s not hard.

3. They’re, there and their
And one more contraction.  “They’re” is the shortened version of “they are”.  “There” refers to a place.  “Their” is another possessive pronoun.

It may seem elementary to point out these often incorrectly confused words but their mis-use is becoming increasingly common.  The pedantic grammar nazi in me is happier just for blogging about it.  Thank you for your time!!

Press releases announce your news to the world

So you think you want to issue a press release.  Before you start working on it, you need to be mindful of a few things.

What results are you hoping to achieve from your press release?
Are you launching a new product?  Are you promoting a special event?  Perhaps you simply want to announce to the world that you exist!  It’s important that you identify what you want your press release to achieve, and also ask yourself if it’s newsworthy.  In order for your news to be considered useful for public consumption, there has to be something that stands apart your business, product or service from your competitors.  Or there has to be something that seems important or useful for the audience/readers to know.

Who is your target audience?
Determine who you would like to know about your news.  It could be potential customers, existing customers or even the general community.  You may rightly think your news and your company are very interesting and important, but the journalist who receives your release will only consider using it will appeal to his or her audience.

What’s your angle?
Stand out from the crowd!  If you open a cafe and you want people to know about it, you need to have an interesting angle to promote.  Perhaps you serve only fair trade coffee, or all the foods are prepared from scratch on the premises.  Find an angle that makes you different and your press release will be more likely to be picked up.

Keep in mind that editors and journalists receive scores of news releases every single day.  Give yours a distinct advantage by ensuring it’s well written, presented in a traditional format, contains an interesting angle and features your contact details.

Contact me for my special Press Release rates: $99* incl GST for a one-page release.

*Writing only. Submission extra.