'Net Features : copywriting

4 Writing Resources for Content Marketers

Amberly Dressler — Mon, 22 Apr 2013 18:02:00 GMT

Not all of us our Web Hemingways, and not all of us try to be either. But when we’re responsible for our company’s marketing initiatives, we must not only put together coherent sentences, but we must also drive consumers/users/readers to take action (e.g. click through, sign up, read more, etc.).

With that in mind, let’s review a handful of resources on writing and style that can help turn a perpetually blank page into content marketing at its finest.

The Associated Press Stylebook

Considered the journalist’s Bible, the AP Stylebook is handy for any digital enterprise, because it can create the consistency most marketing departments desire. It can also serve as the final voice of authority between coworkers, because it contains resolution to many disputed words, rules, abbreviations, etc. While it’s not much for inspiration, the AP Stylebook, often referred to as just AP Style or AP Style Guide, is an essential reference for writers to create a uniformed content marketing campaign. While this editor, prefers the traditional hard-copy book (with even a preference toward the spiral bound book, instead of the flat binding), the AP Stylebook is also available on the Web and multiple users can be added to a company’s account.

Writing Tools: 50 Essential Strategies for Every Writer

Think tools, not rules for this book by one of America’s most influential writing teachers, Roy Peter Clark. His book distills decades of experience into 50 tools that will help any writer become more fluent and effective. It’s a book any content writer will want to keep on their book, open any page and read again, because the information is valuable and easy to consume.

The Writer’s Idea Book:
How to Develop Great Ideas for Fiction, Nonfiction, Poetry and Screenplays

Thanks to the SEO impact of on-site blogging and links from contributed articles, the Web has made writers out of, well, people whose calling shouldn’t have ever included a byline. Luckily, there are guides like The Writer’s Idea Book that contains more than 400 prompts and exercises to help aspiring writers to generate intriguing ideas and turn them into quality content for company blogs or guest posts.

The Everything Guide to Writing Copy:
From Ads and Press Release to On-Air and Online Promos

This step-by-step guide to writing effective copy for a variety of media including print, Web, radio, trade journals, and much more is packed with tips and tricks used by the pros. The Everything Guide to Writing Copy is basic and more informational than example driven, but it’s a perfect starting point for those newly interested in creating copy that sells.

Check Out these Other Writing Resources:

Blogging Basics: Fighting Writer's Block and Learning SEO

Blogging for Success: Weekend Warrior

Exclusive: Writing Better Copy for the Web 2.0 Landscape

Pete Prestipino — Wed, 02 Dec 2009 21:30:00 GMT

by Bryan Eisenberg ::

Being data-centric with the ability to use that data to communicate to your customers effectively and in a human way is an important way companies will differentiate themselves in the decades to come. The job of copywriter will be a sexy one in the next decade.

Copywriters in the 1960s used to say that copy needed to be like a lady’s skirt: long enough to cover the essentials and short enough to be interesting. But as my brother Jeffrey recently observed, “The skirt seems to be getting shorter and shorter.” AdWords, Twitter (microblogging), social media, text messaging, Google’s seeming preference for pages 500 words or less and the continual assault of data on our senses is raising the bar.

Until recently, the copy challenge was mostly about providing relevance. Now, it’s about providing the same or even higher relevance but in fewer words. In Frank Luntz’s book, “Words That Work: It’s Not What You Say, It’s What People Hear,” he writes:

It is no accident that the most unforgettable catchphrases of the past fifty years contain only a single- or at most two-syllable words. And when they initially haven’t been so simple, someone inevitably has stepped in to shorten them. Just ask the makers of Macintosh (“Mac”) computer. And when was the last time you used the words “International Business Machines” rather than “IBM”? Federal Express is now officially “FedEx,” Kentucky Fried Chicken is now “KFC,” Oil of Olay is just “Olay,” and Dairy Queen now refers to itself as “DQ.”

“Power equals work, divided by time,” says my fellow copywriting trainer Jeff Sexton. “Your copy’s persuasive power equals its emotional credibility divided by the time required to read it. The trick isn’t just to say more with fewer words — it’s to say it more credibly with fewer words. That’s much harder to do but anything less usually fails. Unread copy is infinitely unpersuasive.”

To write great copy, you must adhere to three principles:
• It must be relevant.
• It must be credible.
• It must be as short as possible (not just short).

Notice how the word “creative” is absent. People don’t have time for you to be cute, play tricks, or gimmick them. They want the facts, and they want what they’re looking for now.

How to Write Better Web 2.0 Copy
Newspapers have long employed people to write nothing but headlines. This skill is desperately needed online. And, it’s very attainable using the power of the Web, and analytics. The Huffington Post uses A/B tests on multiple versions of its headlines to see what one will get the most clicks, then defaults to the winner after the first few minutes (it has that much traffic). Copywriters must get in the habit of creating multiple versions of their headlines (and sub headlines) to find those that work best. This is a great example of improving creative communication by being data centric. This will be a must needed tool for copywriters.

Kill the jargon, fluff, and hype. Not everyone can be the number one, premier, most trusted, scalable, most robust, and leading vendor. But if you do make a claim, make sure you can validate it immediately. Customers are more sensitive than ever to shoddy sales pitches and false claims.

Speak to customers in an authentic, human voice. Embrace transparency and authenticity and, wherever possible, embrace the voice of the customer. While you’re at it, make sure your copy has a voice that matches your brand; a voice that people will remember.

Stop haggling over copy length; customers don’t care. They care about getting the information they need from your copy, quickly. Make sure you answer their questions and close the loopholes in as few words as possible. Asking a copywriter what he thinks of an editor is much like asking a fire hydrant what it thinks of a dog — but editors who can slash copy to its meaty essentials are invaluable. Learn to trust their instincts, but feel free to test the edit with an A/B test.

Lastly, be sure to format your copy for reading online. Use headlines and sub headlines, bullet points and lists, short paragraphs. Use bolding and linking effectively and keep the reading around the eighth-grade level.

About the Author: Bryan Eisenberg is an internet marketing pioneer and is professional marketing speaker. Bryan is the recognized authority and pioneer in improving online conversion rates and was recently recognized as one of the top 10 User Experience Gurus. Eisenberg is the co-author of the Wall Street Journal, Business Week, USA Today and The New York Times bestselling books “Call to Action,” “Waiting For Your Cat to Bark?” and “Always Be Testing.”

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Discovering a Better Call To Action

Pete Prestipino — Fri, 13 Mar 2009 18:17:00 GMT

Web professionals must always be concerned with achieving multiple objectives - that will never change. Drawing people towards a website and keeping them coming back are often what dominates the headlines, but driving consumers through a website and down the conversion funnel is where many should be spending their time instead. Effective calls to actions are of paramount importance in this process, so let’s look at how to discover and develop “better” calls to action.

A call to action is defined as any action which visitors can take to complete your selling process. In a perfect marketing world, calls to action would be so perfectly crafted that users have no choice but to do exactly what you tell them. The problem is most never reach that marketing nirvana. They remain mired in tradition ("buy now," "add to cart") or are not specific enough ("click here to order") to motivate a user to do anything out of the ordinary. When consumers are provided with information, they're able to make better buying decisions. So, why not give them the information they need to make better buying decisions, and buying from you ... right now!

So how does a Web professional accomplish that? The calls to action that consumers encounter online should couple an imperative verb with an implied benefit. For example, “buy now” contains no reference to the benefit consumers will receive by doing so, and neither does "add to cart." A better call to action alternative might be one of the following:

Buy Now & Save on Shipping
Add to Cart – Save 10% Today

The question to ask when looking at your existing calls to action include:

whether the call to action is present at all;
if it is placed within the active window;
whether text calls are used along with image calls

There are some basic ways to review the effectiveness of the calls to action currently deployed on your website. While there is no substitute for testing different variations of landing pages and the specific calls to action for your own offers, taking even a cursory look could reveal where improvements are possible.

Here are a few different items to test with your calls to action:

Test the wording of both the button image and the text link, and ask what or where the implied benefit works best – in the image or the text?
- Also test the combination of words and phrasing (verbs and benefits) to determine what works best for your specific business niche.
If not using an image, or not using text, test the addition of one of these elements and measure the response.
- Also test the size, shape and font of the images and text.
Analyze how placement of the call to action and the actual prominence of the call to action affects conversion rate. While above the fold is better for the life insurance industry, perhaps it’s not for home and garden websites. The only way to know for sure is to test out various combinations.

Save Yourself - Spell Check On Your Own

Pete Prestipino — Tue, 20 May 2008 16:23:00 GMT

Spellr.us is a website tool that is getting some attention in the blogosphere, even though it's only in "beta-invite" mode. The solution spell checks websites and provides a monitoring service that regularly checks your website for spelling mistakes. Sounds pretty good, right? If you've got hundreds or thousands of web pages and are continually cranking out new content, a solution like this make some sense. So how much does it cost? Spellr.us is apparently looking at pricing models as in the registration they are asking what users would pay for a service (less than $50 or more than $50). For that price range, it better be pretty darn good considering the variety of free resources available to web professionals already. In fact, most offline and online document creation tools like Microsoft Word or Google Docs already have spell check built in.

Keep Your Copy Sharp

Mike Phillips — Fri, 29 Feb 2008 17:07:00 GMT

You hear it all the time: Content is King. And if you're a Website Magazine reader you've heard it here too. But you can have pages and pages of content that ends up harming your reputation if you're not careful. Misspellings, poor grammar and jumbled sentences can ruin any website, no matter how useful the information provided. When a reader of your website sees poorly-written copy they will immediately question your credibility. And it's not just for bloggers - messy product descriptions can be a major turn-off, sending potential customers to another site. For many, bad copy translates to unreliable information.

So, it's always a good idea to buff up on your writing skills. DailyWritingTips.com is a great resource. Not only does this site keep writing skills sharp, but even provides useful strategies - such as their recent post, "A Freelance Writer's Basic Guide to SEO."

And if you're not yet a Website Magazine reader, get your free subscription today!

Effective Headline Writing

Mike Phillips — Thu, 28 Feb 2008 18:10:00 GMT

Studies show that only about one in five people read past the headline of an article. I would venture to guess that number is even lower when it comes to press releases. Especially in a point-and-click world, grabbing a user's attention is critical. While scanning through PRWeb this morning, I came across two very good examples of headline writing about a topic that's not easy to sum up.

Example one: Headline writing gone awry.

OpSource Provides Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) Delivery for the New Rollbase Platform as a Service (PaaS) for Business Users

The problem: It's vague, I'm confused and not interested. Who is OpSource? What's a Rollbase Platform? Who are these "Business Users?" The headline is too long and makes my eyes glaze over. This headline may be intriguing to a select few, but lacks in mass appeal. On the upside, it's stuffed with a few keywords that may pop up when searched. This press release is intended to announce a partnership between Rollbase and OpSource that will help non-tech savvy businesses owners launch custom Web-based applications - did you get that from the headline? And if it's aimed at non-programming experts, why the jargon-filled headline?

Example two: Headline writing done right.

What SaaS Vendors Don’t Want You to Know about Software as a Service

Why it works: It's direct, concise and pulls me in. If you're interested in SaaS you're probably going to need to go through a vendor. And if there is something these vendors don't want you to know, it probably involves you saving money - always an effective headline element. In addition, anything promising inside information and making you a more informed consumer is an effective lure. This also has some keywords built in that may show in search results. This press release is promoting a webinar about ways to select SaaS vendors and save you from paying hidden costs - hinted at nicely in the headline while still urging further reading. This headline could be even better by removing "SaaS." It's spelled out at the end and provides an unnecessary stumbling block for the eyes.

What should be considered when writing headlines - especially for press releases - is what you're trying to accomplish. As noted before, the first example has some keywords stuffed in there that may be good for searches - if that's what people are searching for. The problem is that for general mass appeal, it's not going to work. The point of a press release is for it to be read. And confusing people from the start is just not a good idea. Detail should be reserved for the deck (the descriptive area below a headline) or for the first few sentences of the body of the press release. The headline's job is to pull people in, not turn them away. The rest of your copy can explain your service but you first need to get your readers wanting to know more.