Effective copywriting is about having a good mix of SEO copywriting skills, online writing skills, and a solid understanding of your target audience and your overall marketing objectives.
Good copywriting can help your content get found, convince people to buy your product or service, and convert readers into fans. In other words, good copywriting is essential to successful marketing.
Here are some of our favourite tips for effective copywriting.
Know your audience. Having an understanding of your target market will help ensure that your message is accurate. Ask yourself, who is your audience? What do they need? What is your competitive advantage or benefit to your audience? Make sure to direct your copy at your readers with personal statements and pronouns, like “you” or “we”.
Do keyword research. Get your content found by usng keywords to increase your SEO ranking. To start, look at your site’s analytics and see what keyword phrases visitors are using to come to your site. Think about your audience, what keywords would they use to find your content?
Optimize headlines, subheads and summaries with keyword phrases. Once you have your keywords, use them in your headings, subheads and summaries. Read over your copy and see if you’ve included your keywords and find ways to incorporate them without changing the meaning of your copy.
Optimize meta data (meta titles, meta descriptions & URL tags) with keyword phrases. Include your keywords in the following:
Meta titles: This is the text that appears above the URL in the browser window. It is also the text used by search engines to display links on a search results page. Users are more likely to click on a page title that includes their search phrase or keywords.
Meta descriptions: These are the tags that appear in the head section of website code. The meta description of each page should include a keyword-rich description of the content on that page. Search engines often use this description as the text blurb in search results.
URLs: You want to have keywords in your URLs that match a possible search phrase. This is because users are more likely to click on a link that contains their search phrase.
Heading tags: It is important to use keywords in your heading tags, because these tells search engines whether the content on the page is relevant to a user’s search.
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Tell a story. Identify the story within your product or service - what is compelling or remarkable about what you are trying to sell? Create something worth talking about, tell the people who want to hear it, and they will spread the word.
Pinpoint a problem, then solve it. What problem is your audience experiencing? What difficultly are they having? Position your product or service as a solution to this problem.
Provide authority and social proof. Your content needs to be credible. Use success stories and testimonials to provide proof to what you are saying. Include credentials, experience, authority statements, degrees, rank and/or fame.
Another tactic is to make readers feel like they are missing out. “Don’t be left behind…” or “Have you heard? Everybody is talking about…”
Use numbers. Numbers catch readers’ eyes, particularly when they’re scanning copy on the web. As Ken Beaulieu from FuelNet points out, using numbers to evoke emotion can be very effective. “Harry and David, the fruit growers in Oregon, talk about their pears by saying, ‘Not one person in a thousand has tasted one,’” says Robert Bly, author of The Copywriter’s Handbook. “Putting it that way makes it sound exclusive.”
Make your copy rational.List the reasons why your audience should buy your product or service. People need justification for their purchasing decisions.
Create a sense of urgency. Create a sense of urgency around your copy. Stress uniqueness, limited quantities or deadlines for taking action.
Urge commitment and consistency. Appeal to a reader’s previous actions. “Since you’ve read this, than you may be interested in…” Urge readers to be consistent in their behaviours. “In the past, you’ve enjoyed the Boxcar Marketing blog so I know that you’ll be interested in our whitepaper…”
Be a Friend. Write your copy as a trusted friend. Be likeable and position yourself as a peer of your reader.
Use logical organization. Can readers easily scan the copy to see if it is relevant to them? Do you have a clear call to action? What do you want your reader to do? Have you made things easy by offering limited choices, a clear benefit statement and clear paths through the content?
Check for consistent style. Example: email vs. e-mail, etc.
Check all hypertext links and button copy for benefit-laden call to action. Example: [link]Yes, I want prize-winning azaleas.[/link]
Read aloud. Does the copy sound as though it is being spoken by a real person? Is it warm? Friendly? Reassuring? Remove or rewrite any commands that sound threatening or scolding.
Put aside for at least an hour—overnight is better.
Reread. Rewrite. Re-edit.
Posted by Crissy | Email to a Friend | Of course, you should follow me on twitter here
Facebook Pages aren’t a new feature, (although they keep changing the types of pages available), but when creating a Facebook Page it is difficult to know which type of page to choose. And Facebook doesn’t make this easy—once you’ve chosen a page type the only way to change is to delete the page and start again. To stop this from happening I explored the page types and the best, basic Facebook pages that I’ve found are these two:
Local Business > Professional Service This page will give you fields for address, phone number, and hours (which you can leave blank), website URL and general info about the company. Default tabs include: Wall and Info.
Brand, Product, Organization > Professional Service This page will give you fields for when the organization was founded, company overview, mission and products. Default tabs include: Wall, Info, Photos, Discussions.
New: Community Pages
Facebook introduced Community Pages in April for all of the unofficial pages that users have created in support of random topics or causes. If a page becomes popular enough, Facebook will give administration over to the Facebook community—like a wiki.
Community pages provide a space for fans to gather and express themselves while Pages can remain a space managed by brands.
I was at Northern Voice two weekends ago and I went to a great session with the CBC’s Lisa Johnson and the Vancouver Sun’s Kirk LaPointe, on how journalists use social media. At the session, LaPointe argued that there is no news problem or audience problem in the newspaper industry; the problem is, in fact, a business one.
This got me thinking about how newspapers are adapting their businesses to the online space in order to succeed in a digital world. What best practices can we find?
After gathering notes from the Northern Voice session as well as comments from The Globe and Mailand The Texas Tribune here’s a list of best practices for the industry:
Online Marketing Best Practices for Newspapers
Your online presence should be different from your print presence. They are different mediums with different strengths - adapt to each one separately. According to Kirk LaPointe, the Vancouver Sun spent the last 5 years getting their newspaper as close as possible to their website and now they are going spend the next 5 years moving the newspaper away from the website. They’ve realized that differentiation is key.
Twitter is a great tool to use as a social scanner. Both the CBC and The Globe and Mail use Twitter to stay on top of what is going on so that they can respond quickly if something arises.
Email alerts are important.The Texas Tribune uses email alerts to stay on top of things. Set up alerts with story keywords and you’ll get story ideas and sources delivered to your inbox.
The topic, not the headline, is the centerpiece. Online, people search by subject so your subject matter is more important than a catchy headline.
Engagement is not a frill. You need a strategy of engagement with your audience. For example, the New York Times doesn’t have just one twitter handle. Instead, they have subchannels that personalize the feeds - like @nytimesbooks and @nytimesart.
Create communities. By engaging their audience in personalized ways, the New York Times has created communities of readers. The Globe and Mail has experimented with Cover It Live to build community. Cover It Live is a live-blogging/discussion tool that provides a platform for hosting live blogs and is easily embedded in a story page. The Globe and Mail has used it for their coverage of the budget, the CRTC hearings, a subway shooting and the Obama inauguration.
So how do you measure the success of your efforts? While most newspapers haven’t quite figured out how to make money online (LaPointe says that the Vancouver Sun dedicates 50% of their time to the web yet makes less than 5% of their revenue online) there are other factors to consider. The Texas Tribune recently looked back on what they’ve learned over the last 6 months and listed the important numbers for them. Namely, they are able to measure brand awareness, (number of unique visitors to their site and where they are coming from), loyalty (number of return visitors), and engagement (average length of time spent on the site).
What do you measure as indicators of online success with your newspaper?
Posted by Crissy | Email to a Friend | Of course, you should follow me on twitter here
Google Analytics gives you the ability to add users to your account and to grant them different levels of access. This is useful for when you want to share access to others in your company or when you hire an outside consultant who would benefit from looking at your web stats (like us). Here’s how to grant a user access:
Sign in to your Google Analytics. Click on Analytics Settings in the top left corner. Click on the User Manager tab near the bottom of the page. Note: you will only see this tab if you have administrative access to the account. If you only have user access, you won’t see the tab.
Click Add User.
Enter the user’s email address. For example: .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address). Note: The email address must be a Google Account. If you’ve used iGoogle, Gmail, Google Groups, AdWords or Google Checkout you already have a Google Account. If not, you can create one here.
Choose the Access Type for the user. Your options are: View reports only or Account Administrator (this allows the user to edit your account settings).
Select the websites that this user will have access to. Click Add to move them into the Selected Website Profiles list.
Click Save Changes. The user can now login to your analytics using their Google Account email address and password.
If you want to edit the access for an existing user, click User Manager and find the user in the Existing Access list and click Edit. Here you can edit the user’s Access Type and the profiles that the user has access to.
When you give someone access to your Google Analytics, you are not giving them access to your Google Account. You are assigning their email address only to your Google Analytics account so they will only be able to view your Google Analytics reports.
If you need more help, here’s a video:
Posted by Crissy | Email to a Friend | Of course, you should follow me on twitter here
Facebook has been releasing a ton of changes lately and, I don’t know about you, but we’re finding it difficult to keep up with them all. Most of the changes were introduced at the Facebook F8 developer conference back in April where Facebook released its new social platform that allows websites and applications to share information about users and create “personalized” web experiences using their Facebook profile information.
Here’s a breakdown of Facebook’s new social platform, its other new features, and what it all means to you.
Social Plugins
Part of Facebook’s new social platform includes its social plugins. These are plugins or code that developers can integrate in to their sites. So far, the most popular plugin (which you may have already noticed on some websites) is the “Like” button.
Users can be browsing a site or reading an article and, if they come across something they like, can click on the “Like” button—which will also show you if any of your friends have liked it, too. This posts a note to your Facebook news feed notifying your friends that you like that particular site, article, brand or product. If you are logged in, the note will automatically be posted to your news feed and if you’re not, you will first be asked to login.
So far, the social plugins have been a hit. According to Mashable, in the first week more than 50,000 websites integrated the new plugins—equal to nearly 300 websites adding Facebook social plugins per hour. As of May 11th, over 100,000 websites had integrated the plugins.
You can explore all of the social plugins available here.
Open Graph
Along with Social Plugins, Facebook has introduced Open Graph. Open Graph, or :Instant Personalization” replaces Facebook Connect and allows partner websites and Facebook applications to share your public Facebook information (and your friends’ public information) with each other. This includes your profile information, your connections, and the services, products and pages that you “like.”
These websites can then take this information and personalize your web experience. They can do this without you even having to login to your Facebook account, because Facebook has also created a new auto-authentication feature.
So far, partners include Yelp, Pandora and Microsoft. As Mashable explains
When you connect to sites like Yelp via your Facebook profile, Yelp will have access to any information you’ve made publicly available
about your favorite foods or favorite bands, and will be able to take that into account when giving you information about restaurants or music venues.
For example, Yelp could pull information about your favorite music from data that Pandora added to the graph when you favorited a song on its site.
The problem with this is that Facebook users have to manually opt out of this feature and then block the applications if users don’t want their information shared by their friends. If you’re worried about your privacy here’s How to Opt Out of Facebook’s New Instant Personalization.
Graph API
All of this is made possible with Facebook’s new Graph API, which is how developers can easily integrate their applications with Open Graph’s user data and how they can add the social plugins to their site with a simple line of HTML code.
The Graph API allows developers to search for information on users, organizations and products at Graph.Facebook.com
Sometime this month, Facebook is reportedly launching location features which will give users the ability to check in to different locations.
Facebook will be allowing marketers to get in on the game and, according to Advertising Age, McDonald’s will be the first company to test the location features and is building an app that will allow users to check in at a McDonald’s restuartant and a featured item, like a Big Mac, will appear in their post.
This is generating buzz in the online marketing world because it will give marketers the ability to go hyperlocal with their campaigns.
What Does This All Mean For You?
All of these changes represent a potential for Facebook to become even more important in the online space and also more important for a brand’s marketing activities.
This also means that integrating Facebook into your marketing strategy is now easier than ever. Users and fans can easily help promote what they “like” about your brand to their friends, without having to leave your site.
As for Open Graph, it’s unclear how it will effect businesses that do not become “partner” websites with Facebook, but it will definitely change the user experience on the web.
All in all, Facebook’s social changes bring us even more closer to the semantic web. If you’re unclear about what the semantic web is (and why it matters)
this is an excellent documentary:
We hate it really. We wish them luck and will follow what’s happening but the site is hell to use, slow and continues to change. Plus we are not thrilled about the privacy infringements.
Posted by Crissy | Email to a Friend | Of course, you should follow me on twitter here
Leadership doesn’t always come from the top. You can show leadership no matter what chair you sit in for the organization. Below are some tips.
If you’re the lone evangelist in your organization, the person who wants to experiment with social media, or wishes for a website redesign to increase usability, or needs tips for talking to the boss about why online marketing is important, you are not alone.
There are lots of lone evangelists out there who can clearly see what needs to be done and should be done to positively affect the organization. Your job is not the description you have for your performance review, your job is to work as if you have the title you want and the position you want. You can lead from anywhere.
Here are my tips.
Know what the top cares about.
Regardless of what’s painfully obvious to you, regardless of what you think the C-suite should care about, you need to show how your idea meets their business needs.
Don’t be defensive.
Take all criticism as passionate interest in what you have to offer. Use that criticism to refine your arguments. Try again.
Build momentum.
Make sure you’re talking to the right people, in the right order. You have an idea, have you talked to the people who would directly benefit? For example, if you have an idea that would make the website better for visitors, have you talked to those visitors? Do a survey. Call them on the phone. Talk to your customers, pitch them the idea, get feedback, learn and improve.
Once you’ve got user buy-in, build your requirements list. What technically needs to happen for this to succeed? Who in the organization would need to be involved? Pitch the idea to IT, finance, purchasing, whoever would be involved from a technical, or logistics, stand-point. Pitch them the idea, get feedback, learn and improve.
Now you have the business case (user buy-in), you have the technical requirements (tech/logistical buy-in), you’re ready to pitch the idea to management. These are the big picture folks in the organization, and the folks who hold the purse strings.
Getting economic buy-in is always easier when you have buy in, contribution, and commitment from other links along the chain.
Tell stories.
Facts and figures are great, but don’t lead with those. The townsfolk followed the Pied Piper because he was playing music, not waving a laser pointer at a flip chart. (Don’t go any further with that metaphor! You’re not luring people off to meet their demise, but you do want their attention. You do want your story passed on through the organization.)
Stories help us understand the world. What’s the story behind your great idea? How did you come to this understanding?
Know what you need.
Once you have their attention, know what you need and how to ask for it in the most simple, direct manner.
I believe that (business case)
should be able to (objectives that have a positive impact for customers/for the organization)
by (measurement, key performance indicators)
through the ability to (actions required)
as a result of (differentiations that will be created)
for ($).
Example: We believe that we can improve the user experience on our site by adding clearer calls to action, which should increase our sales and optimize the user experience, which we can measure by monitoring cart abandonment, time on site (and common paths) and sales. The ability to design and add these buttons requires some design and development time from Marketing, IT and our outside vendors that’s beyond the scope of what they do today. Based on industry standards and our internal testing, we anticipate a 50% drop in cart abandonment, time on site to decrease since users are no longer lost in the process, and sales to increase by 20%. The cost is $3,000, which we anticipate recovering in the first month after implementation. What questions can I help answer?
Be brief. Be brilliant. Be gone.
State your general position. Identify the specific segment or target market that will be affected. Propose the value proposition. Provide proof. Start a dialogue.
Don’t have specifics?
If your business case lacks the logical justification that comes from facts and figures, then you need to appeal to emotion.
Go for forfeiture vs. aspiration (what are they missing out on, giving up or losing vs. what could be gained):
saving time
immediacy, convenience
making easy money
comfort
scarcity
belonging
reputation
fun
Be ready to fail.
Set many small goals early. Break big tasks into smaller pieces. Start with small experiments, filter out failure, expand upon success. Report often. Keep people in the loop.
Have a sense of humour.
“Your most unhappy customers are your greatest source of learning.” Bill Gates
Seeing the humour in any situation allows you to also see the lesson.
Posted by Monique Trottier | Email to a Friend | Of course, you should follow me on twitter here
Setting up your Google Analytics account to deliver your reports to your Inbox is a handy way to remember to monitor your web stats.
Go to your Dashboard page. Right above the visitor graph, there’s an Email icon. Click on it.
You’ll see 2 tabs, Send Now and Schedule. Click on the Schedule tab.
If you want the report to go to other email addresses, add them (the report is sent to you by default). Put a subject line, and a description if you want. Select the format for the report (we like PDF), and choose a timeframe—Daily (sent each morning), Weekly (sent each Monday); Monthly (sent first day of each month) or Quarterly (sent first quarter of each month). If you want, check “Include date comparison”. Click Schedule.
If you ever need to edit your settings, there is another Email icon in the left navigation under My Customizations. Click on that to manage/modify the scheduled emails.
Posted by Crissy | Email to a Friend | Of course, you should follow me on twitter here
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