In a world cynical of advertising and sales spiel, copywriting has to not only persuade but to build trust. An effective way of doing this is to be able to offer value in exchange for your reader’s time – where value is not giving away coupons, but being entertaining or informative. People like to do […]
How to Cope with Criticism of Your Copywriting
There can be few things as infuriating for a copywriter, or for any creative type for that matter, as having the creation of your sweat and tears criticised by a client. Whilst the temptation is to throw your laptop out of the window or question whether they’ve fully appreciated the intricacy of your words, learning […]
Want to attract higher paying clients? Offer them some luxuries.
(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 […]
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 […]