(Image courtesy Betsssssy) Last month a group of US investors announced their plans to blow $200 million on a chain of 50 luxury movie theatres. Whilst this might sound mad to anybody in the business world, people always want to be entertained, and when things are grim it’s indulging in the small pleasures in life […]
Blogger in chief at The Copywriter's Crucible. A blog focused on helping other copywriters to enhance their skillset and be of more value to clients, and thus push up their pay grade. Also dabbles in internet marketing, cycling and jaunts abroad, in no particular order.
Why writing copy is like a round of golf
(Photo by mslikk) Tomorrow I’m driving down to Cornwall for a long weekend and a few rounds of golf, so I thought why not see what parallels can be drawn between crafting copy and knocking a few zingers down the fairway: Nobody should think they can step out and start competing to an acceptable standard […]
Are Your Customers Happy? Then Tell People Why!
I had scribbled down half a page of notes about the foolishness of forcing every website to be written in English until I realised what day it was yesterday and swiftly cancelled my order for a Chinese dictionary. Instead I’m going to focus on why it has never been more important to harness customer service […]
An Apology to My Subscribers
Unfortunately my feed appears to have gone haywire since moving domains with error messages, partial feeds, blocks of ten or no feed at all being delivered in the last month. I think most of the gremlins have been rooted out and exterminated now so hopefully normal service should be resumed soon.
Time to charge for access to your content?
Regular Crucible readers, and anyone who has read my eBook, will be familiar with my sermons on the need to provide informative, useful content in order to build trust and credibility with website visitors. Whilst giving away free content is a great way of making friends, it’s not going to pay any bills and it […]
Why a Recession is Great News for Conversational Marketing
Whilst the storm clouds of an economic downturn are covering most in the business world with gloom, for some marketers it could be a storm with a bright silver lining. With no amount of hastily assembled ROI stats likely to save many marketing budgets from the finance manager’s guillotine, there might not be any glossy […]
The Problem With Free
Nearly every freelance copywriter will at some stage be asked to write for free, or for such a derisory amount that it might as well be free. This isn’t a new problem, but since the internet shepherded writers together in one big pen many will have opened emails informing them they ‘work in a competitive […]
Ten Steps for Changing Your WordPress Domain
They often say that moving house is one of the most stressful things you can do, and I think moving domains isn’t a lot better and I hope I haven’t lost you all along the way. Ever since Google started indexing my blog as my home page, I’ve been steadily heading towards re-branding my copywriting […]
Should you use the fear of recession in your copywriting this year?
People are becoming afraid of spending money. The threat of a recession on both sides of the pond and the global credit crunch means it’s getting harder to coax credit cards out of people’s wallets. Shoppers are staying at home and businesses are revising their spending plans. Does this mean copywriters need to rethink which […]
How to Cultivate Buzz with Journalists
Last week I published my top ten tips for marketing your website, although admittedly many of them have already been covered to death elsewhere. But one tactic that has always posed a puzzle for every marketing and PR agency is how to generate buzz in the traditional media. It’s all well and good being able […]