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Copywriting Tip: Why Bad Writing happens to Good People

David Denis — Mon, 10 May 2010 16:00:08 +0000

It’s called a POINT for a reason — it’s not dull.

Most people, probably you in fact, are scared by hard concrete words. We think that we must use safe language. Language with the teeth and claws pulled out. Language that is soft, squishy and fuzzy. We think sounding obtuse makes us sound smarter.

The urge to de-fang strong direct sentences is a powerful one. The fear of offending someone, or excluding something makes us queasy. We are afraid to write with words that poke at, or strike, or (God Forbid) even explode upon the reader’s consciousness.

Listen to what Dan Heath from Fast Company says about this, as applied to the writing of Mission Statements.

This is not just about your mission statement. It’s about your website. It’s about your brochures, tear sheets, email campaigns and print ads. It’s about any message you put out there to promote your business that sucks because you were too scared to say it outright and let it go at that.

Stop trying to sound like a PhD in Blabology (unless of course you actually are a PhD in Blabology). Start writing and talking like a real flesh and blood human being with a beating heart and a brilliantly electric brain. Your readers will respond with cheers and hoots and hollers and probably more than one standing O. Why? Because they like reading things that don’t sound like they were penned by a moron.

Got it? Good. Now go do it. I dare you.

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To learn more, or request a quote visit http://www.rocksolidwriting.com/freelance-writer-quote/

Copywriting Tip: Exploit the Curiosity Gap

David Denis — Fri, 07 May 2010 15:09:19 +0000

What’s Your Copy Writing Secret Weapon?

The “Curiosity Gap” is the difference between what you know and what you want to know. When used properly, there is no defense. Your readers will be unable to resist the lure and will come to your website over and over again to satisfy the itch of their curiosity.

It’s not just about headlines, as in the example presented here by Dan Heath of Fast Company. It’s about providing value that your clients and prospects really want. If you regularly post information that is useful, helpful or revealing, people will keep coming back just to see what you are going to post next. The Curiosity Gap will draw them in.

It’s not all about keywords and search engines. It’s also about content and visitors.

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David is a freelance writer for hire offering article writing, sales letters, training manuals, speech writing, seo content, sales writing, blog articles, copywriting service, sales scripts and business name ideas.
To learn more, or request a quote visit http://www.rocksolidwriting.com/freelance-writer-quote/

Content is Exercise – Blog Post

David Denis — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 00:38:49 +0000

In a recent post on her Fast Company Blog, Wendy Marx came up with a great twist on an old saying.

The saying goes that Content is King. And these days that’s becoming more and more true. I can see it as someone who works to make a living providing content. Many of my clients are small to medium businesses — tile cleaners, pallet makers, management consultants, shipping and fulfillment specialists, roofers, pest control technicians and so on. Their common thread is they all aim to bring in new customers using internet marketing tools like websites, blogs, and email. Content.

These aren’t big companies with enormous budgets. Nor are they on the cutting edge of business practices. They are the kind of bread and butter businesses that form the DNA of our economy. Individually, they may not need the volume of content of the multinational corporation, but they certainly need content and need it on an ongoing basis. It’s a matter of both quality and quantity — and frequency. Your successful content strategy must

Offer information that actually helps your prospects and customers
Create enough content to be actually useful
Provide new content regularly to maintain the interest and attention of readers.

That’s why Wendy Marx is spot on when she says Content is Exercise. Read her blog post to see what she means and a list of important questions you should be asking about your content strategy.

Google Likes Websites with Quality Content

David Denis — Thu, 07 Jan 2010 01:40:05 +0000

I talked yesterday with Neil Burtt, CEO of You Promote in Concord NH. Neil observed that the Google search algorithm seems to be shifting, so that quality content is more important than ever for creating high search engine rank results. It’s not all about the header, the title bar, and the meta tags. Google likes websites that give web users what they need, and it rewards those sites with higher search ranking that make them easy to find.

This is especially critical for small businesses that want their websites to pull in qualified prospects and create selling opportunities.

When your website contains strong compelling content that answers the searchers questions, everyone wins. In its Webmaster Guidelines, Google explains how it views content as part of the whole Search Engine Optimization recipe:

Create a useful, information-rich site, and write pages that clearly and accurately describe your content.

Make pages primarily for users, not for search engines. Don’t deceive your users or present different content to search engines than you display to users, which is commonly referred to as “cloaking.”

If you have plentiful, high-quality content that accurately describes what your business does, Google is more likely to place your business higher in the rankings. That means your prospects will find you more easily.

Once they find you, quality content becomes even more critical. It is a standard principle of selling that people buy BENEFITS, not features. If your website describes your product, but does not help people to quickly see the benefit of your product, you won’t get the return you seek from your web marketing investment. Good content should move your prospect to act, and that action should be contacting you.

If writing copy and content isn’t your thing, then get some help to get it done right. Don’t underestimate the power of well-crafted paragraphs for your business website. It need not be fancy, but it should drive customers to your door. What happens then is up to you.

Rock Solid Writing can provide your website with compelling, high quality content that will create more opportunities for your business. Go to the Request a Quote page to contact me about how I can help you get the most from your web investment.

Quality SEO content gets search engine results

David Denis — Fri, 11 Dec 2009 18:56:38 +0000

The good folks at Danconia Media services note some recent changes in they way Google handles local listings. This may have some powerful effects on the internet landscape, especially for smaller businesses that depend on trade from their immediate area. This may or may not be a bad thing, but as the Danconia blogger observes, “Obtaining organic search engine results will now be more important than ever.”

In the big picture, these changes mean that the results your business gets from organic search are going to become more and more important. When your prospects search for your business, what are you doing to show up high on the search results listings? Of course you must pay attention to your keyword research, meta tags, alt text, headings and all that. But none of that really works properly if you don’t have compelling content that is fresh, valuable to your prospects, and well written for web searching.

Writing is the key

Basically, its all about the content. Make sure your website contains useful, well-written information that will be a resource for your prospects and draw them back to your site repeatedly. What’s more, don’t just set it and forget it. Regularly post new content to keep your site fresh. Sure it takes time and effort, but better organic search results don’t happen by accident. They must be cultivated.

Note these comments from A Beginners Guide to SEO Best Practices:

Having good content is one of the most important things you can do for your page. Like I said earlier, content is the foundation for SEO, you need to have great content. Not only is it better for users if you have really good content, but search engines’ algorithms try to reward pages that have great content. If you have good content people will be more likely to link to you, causing search engines to see more value and authority in your page.

You must offer web copy that has appeal to both the human reader and the search engines. It’s not an either/or proposition. It’s really both/and. When you offer content that hits the sweet spot for both kinds of readers, you can really start to hit it out of the park in terms of search results.

Make it easy for your clients to find you. It’s a beautiful thing.