Better English Writing - Geddes Grosset Webster’s Word Power 2014
Marketing and promotional writing
Writing for work or business
If you are involved in writing marketing or promotional materials, then you need to know about copywriting.
You write copy (or text) to advertise or market/sell a product, business, opinion or idea. Copy is written for marketing and promotional materials such as:
✵ adverts (including TV, radio, newspaper, magazine and billboard)
✵ brochures/leaflets
✵ websites
✵ press releases
✵ social media
You will probably only ever need to write copy for a brochure/leaflet or website, because adverts and press releases are fairly specialised, and are usually handled by a press or advertising agency.
Let’s look at the general approach to copywriting, then concentrate on how to write copy for brochures/leaflets and websites.
General approach
The main thing to remember is that your copy is selling a product, business, opinion or idea to somebody.
Audience
It is therefore vital to know who your audience is, how much they know about your product, business, opinion or idea, and what you want to persuade them to do (or not do!). For example, you might want to persuade somebody to buy a yacht, or to stop eating junk food and start eating healthily.
Style and tone
So how do you make your copy persuasive? You will have to vary your approach, depending on your audience. The person buying the yacht will probably need a different approach to the person you want to eat healthily.
A good rule of thumb is to make your copy memorable or unusual in some way, so that it holds people’s attention. This is a good opportunity to express yourself. You are not describing the process involved in filling out a tax return. Be creative. Think of a hook you can use to draw people in. Look at other marketing and promotional materials to see the tone and style they use to engage the reader.
Call to action
And whatever it is you are persuading your audience to do, you need to ask (or tell) them to do it at the end of your copy. This is what is known as a ’call to action’, and it should be concise, punchy and clear. Let’s use the yacht and healthy eating examples again:
So if you want to sail off happily into the sunset, phone 0121 222333.
Junk food out. Healthy food in. Visit our website (www.eatinghealthily.com) and send for our free healthy eating pack. Today!
Writing brochures/leaflets
You might have to write copy for a pr o duct or service that your company is selling. This could take the form of a brochure or leaflet that the company mails or gives out to visitors. Or it could be an e-leaflet.
Whatever the format, it’s important to use powerful and compelling headlines to get the reader interested enough to find out more. Think of an unusual metaphor or ploy to attract your audience. The main body of the copy should then expand and build on this headline, and finish with a call to action - for example, an invitation to phone or visit the website.
Example of a leaflet
Here’s an example of a leaflet. Its purpose is to sell a software training package called TrainIT.
A brain teaser and a no-brainer
Grab a cup of coffee and take two minutes to unscramble these two sentences. (Here’s a clue - they’re about saving your business money.)
training your Is profits? draining
the answer e-leaflet is yes, If read this solution. for the
Worked it out yet? If not, go back and have a second cup of coffee. Got it?
Good. We’re going to tell you how you can stop training draining your hard-earned profits.
The solution lies in an award winning software package called TrainIT.
It’s been created and produced by a company called SmartIT - a technology leader and trendsetter. TrainIT has four key cost- and time-saving features:
1. It enables you to develop your own library of training materials inhouse at a pace that suits you and your staff.
2. As a result, staff won’t have to travel to expensive training seminars, with consequent loss of time at work - they can use the training materials on-site and at a time that suits them.
3. The software can create training materials that suit the unique needs of your business and your staff - unlike external training, which is often too general to be relevant.
4. You can go back and edit and update the training materials as often as you want - so staff don’t have to go on endless training updates every time a new version of software comes out.
The reason you can do all this is because the techie types at SmartIT have come up with a nifty thing called ’capture technology’. Here’s how it works.
Imagine that you are in charge of IT training and that you want to explain to a new employee how to create a PowerPoint presentation.
You go through the process of creating a PowerPoint yourself on screen, and as you do this, each step of the process is captured and written down. You can then add your own specific instructions using an audio narrative function. You can also create speech bubbles and ’post-it’ notes that will appear on the file and give the user extra support.
Once you’ve finished working through the process, you save it and create a ’smartlearn’ file that you can add to your training library. Staff can then use this file to view and listen to the process, interact with the process or test their knowledge of the process. There is (of course) an initial cost but the long term advantage is that you’ll have a reduction of up to 80 per cent in training time and costs.
If it all sounds too good to be true, it’s not. We know because we use the software ourselves. And what we’ve described are only the basic functions.
But please don’t take our word for it - phone us on 0777 888999 and we’ll arrange a demonstration so that you can understand the power and implications of TrainIT for yourself.
*you think When it about, no-brainer. it’s of a bit a
SmartIT
High Street
Aberford AD11 1QZ
0777 888999
Writing for websites
You only have a few seconds to grab someone’s attention when they visit a website. If you don’t, they will move onto another, more interesting one. Here are some tips to help your copy stand out.
Presenting information
People don’t read web pages the same way they read printed material - they tend to scan and jump about the page rather than read from left to right, and from top to bottom. You therefore need to think about the following:
✵ Make your sentences and paragraphs short and concise to help scanning and skimming.
✵ Use different levels and fonts in your subheadings to signpost specific pieces of information.
✵ Use bulleted lists to break up the text.
✵ Make sure there is plenty of blank space around your text - this helps text to stand out and makes it easier to read.
✵ Limit the amount of text per page.
Here’s an example of the type of concise text that tells you immediately about the business:
Front Door Apartments
Welcome to Front Door Apartments. We offer boutique, serviced apartments in charming Stockbridge, ten minutes’ walk from Edinburgh’s West End. We specialise in luxury accommodation at non-luxury prices for anything from one night to three months - whatever your reason for visiting Edinburgh.
Our apartments are special. They combine the boutique chic of a city hotel with the freedom and flexibility to allow you to explore this beautiful city at your leisure.
Browse our website to find out what’s on offer.
Our philosophy at Front Door Apartments is to provide the highest levels of service, with little extras like local insider information that will make your stay more special.
Writing content
Again, readers won’t approach a web page in the way they do a printed page. So you need to approach website copywriting in a different way. Think about the following:
✵ Users want to know immediately where they are, so use big, clear page headings.
✵ Write bite-size chunks of copy, not big portions.
✵ There should only be one topic per page. If you need to include more information, then create a downloadable file (such as a pdf) and put it on your page.
✵ Put the most important piece of information at the top of the page. Have a look at a newspaper - this is what they do.
Plain English
Writing plain English is even more important in this context. Your copy can be seen by anybody anywhere in the world and reading too much text on a screen gives you sore eyes. Keep it short, sharp and concise.
Go back to the section on plain English in Chapter 2 to remind yourself of the principles.
Here are links to some websites that illustrate some of the features we have discussed:
BBC
The website for BBC news, sport, TV, radio and education materials.
www.bbc.co.uk
The Guardian
The website for The Guardian newspaper featuring news, sport, comment, analysis and reviews.
www.guardian.co.uk
WWF’s Earth Hour
The website for information about WWF’s Earth Hour is an example of a website with clear headings and concise text.
http://earthhour.wwf.org.uk
Social media
Many organisations now use social media to market and promote themselves. They encourage readers to share and pass on their information within social networks such as Facebook and Twitter. It’s basically marketing by word of mouth, it’s fast, very effective and it costs very little. It’s also becoming more popular: recent statistics show that 57 per cent of small businesses use social media. These companies give various reasons, among them promoting awareness of their company, boosting sales, improving customer service and search engine optimization. Its use as a marketing tool is unsurprising when you look at the increasing use of social media. In 2011, social media and blogs accounted for nearly a quarter of the time people spent on the internet, with 4 out of 5 visiting these types of websites. Surveys also show that 53 per cent of adult social media users follow at least one brand account.
However, if you are asked to do this kind of copywriting, be careful. Remember that you are still representing your organisation. Don’t be lured into thinking that you can write in an inappropriate style and tone or make inflammatory comments just because you are writing for a social network. Stick to the standards expected by your company, and apply the same principles that you would to writing copy for any other medium.
Besides this, there are a few key things to bear in mind when writing for social media on behalf of a company:
✵ Research. Just like with any other form of writing for business, planning is key to writing for social media - don’t just leap right into your first post. Research the different sites out there before you do anything else - should you use Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Google+, a blog, or a combination? They all have different audiences and formats. Find the one which is most suitable for your purposes and then speak directly to that audience.
✵ Plan and proof. Once you’ve chosen, you need to devise a strategy for using that particular format. How often will you post? What will you post? Social media needs to be updated regularly to be of any use, and this needs to be factored in from the beginning. Having plans for future posts, or constructing a library of posts, can be useful.
Social media clients such as HootSuite (http://ho o tsuite.co m/) and TweetDeck (http://tweetdeck.com/) also allow you to post and monitor activity on major social media sites, as well as to schedule updates. Once you start writing posts,
planning is still crucial. A sense of spontaneity is good in social media, but it is also a danger. Consider what you’re writing: posting without thinking is not a good idea from business accounts. As said before, professionalism still needs to be maintained in this medium.
Writing too quickly can also look unprofessional if you aren’t taking the time to proof what you’ve written. Sloppy spelling and punctuation will look just as bad in this format as any other, and using text speak (for example to accommodate Twitter word limits) will still make your writing unprofessional and hard to understand.
Follow plain English rules, and bear in mind that it’s very easy to post, but very hard to take back when you have.
✵ Contribute. It is important, not just to post regularly, but to post high quality content. If you use social media just to post links to your website, or to say how well the company is doing, readers are simply not going to be engaged. Think outside the box: what will allow readers to get to know your business while still being interesting?
Remember, not all things that are of interest to those inside the company will be of interest to readers on social media. Consider company news, links to blog posts, videos, tips, posts by different staff members. Whatever you choose to write, always bear your audience in mind when writing content. You can’t rely on the idea that this audience will read and respond to anything you post: they will only read and share what interests and engages them.
Remember that social media is not just about communicating to the widest audience possible, but about providing something valuable to those who follow you.
✵ Be social. It seems obvious to say, but social media is, above all, social. It doesn’t work merely to set up a profile and create posts, and expect a loyal following to appear. You need to commit time and energy to providing interesting content, building up relationships, and engaging directly with subscribers. Always talk ’with’ on social media, don’t just talk ’at’.
✵ Communicate. When people follow or subscribe to companies on social media, they expect a direct line to these companies. Especially on more informal sites like Twitter and Facebook, this is an opportunity to show a business’s human face.
Allowing customers to talk to a human voice, with a personality, is what makes social media so different from the more distanced voice of other forms of communication. This voice should also be a natural one - don’t try to manufacture a voice for the company, just be yourself.
This aspect of social media makes it all the more important, however, to keep appropriateness and professionalism in mind during all communication with followers. Don’t be tempted to over-share.
✵ Respond. Inviting people to communicate with you, which is what you are doing when you join social media, means that you have to listen and respond to what they say. Respond to feedback. Acknowledge and deal with complaints, as you would if you received them via any other medium, in a polite, efficient way. Communicating with customers in the public eye in this way makes this professionalism just as, if not more, important than if they were contacting you in any other way.
✵ Adapt. Social media is changing all the time, so it is especially important to monitor what you are doing, and to adapt strategies accordingly. Sites like Klout (klout.com), an online influence indicator, can help in this.
It is also important to adapt style depending on which type of social media you are using. LinkedIn, for example, would require a more formal style than Twitter or Facebook, where informality is preferable.
✵ Commit. Above all, successfully writing for social media takes commitment. Invest time and effort, be interested in and communicative with others and give it time, and eventually you will build up a loyal following.