Being a copywriter, one gets some interesting jobs. One of my more recent tasks for an ongoing articles project for Clever Starfish, made me think ‘wow maybe I should consider that’. It was an article about whether or not you need a Frequently Asked Questions page on your website.

Clever Starfish do great things for their own clients and, being busy as hell, have for a while neglected their own materials. As is often the case, it’s your own business that comes last. Lately though, the Starfishies have been building up some momentum on their own informative articles.

Working with this material is exciting stuff, not least because it provides another layer of depth and interest to their own website. Like with many writing projects, once you break the ice on one, you find a wealth of others underneath.

Working with the Starfishies on their articles projects is always simple, good fun. Not to mention educational! I love it when I learn something new when I work with a client.

The way I work with Clever Starfish is I get a rough draft by email, a bit of an overview of what the whys and whos (why it’s being written and who is going to read it), and some information about the business’s goals: like, what they are hoping to achieve.

Because the text is already drafted, it’s often just a matter of cleaning it up, making some suggestions about what could work better (or, sometimes, be left out completely), and sending it back. If my changes create new sparks of inspiration — as they are sometimes wont to do — we might go another round of collaboration. Sometimes we get two articles out of one original draft.

As they say, nothing good is ever created in a vacuum.

So now, after working on that FAQ page article for the Starfishies, I’m thinking that maybe I ought to do one myself…

When you are start a new website, it’s a good idea to familiarise yourself with how to structure web copy. Even if you have a copywriter like me doing the bulk of the work for you, it’s often the case that you will want to post your own blogs or news items. All you have to do is remember how people read online, make sure that the most important material is at the top of the post, and make key words and sections are easy to find. Above all, keep it simple, personal, and friendly.

Reading online is different to reading print

It’s a truism that reading material online is different to reading material in print. If you spend much time online, think about how you read material yourself. I’ll wager that 90% of the time (or more) you scan pages looking for key words, key phrases, and headings to help you determine whether what you have found is what you want.

With this in mind, then, what you want to do is write an introductory paragraph, which is kind of like a conclusion. Odd, I know. But if you can summarise what you want to say in the first two or three sentences, then it helps your readers work out whether what you have to say is relevant to their needs. If you are using your blog for marketing purposes — as most businesses do — you have to make sure that you are going to draw people in.

Put the most important material at the top

This style of writing is often known as the ‘inverted pyramid’ style — and you will see it most frequently in news writing. Wikipedia has more information about this type of structure.

Essentially, what you have to do is put all of the most important material at the beginning of the post, and write the remainder in order of diminishing importance. It doesn’t mean that the structure has to be too simple, or that it will fail to make sense. It just means that your reader will get the best of what you have to say in the first thirty seconds. That time-frame is crucial because that’s when your readers will decide whether your site is valuable to them.

Make the key words and sections easy to find

Once you have your ‘teaser’ or ‘summary’ at the top, go nuts on what you have to say. You can always shuffle the text around! But make sure that the sections of your post are easy to find, so that people who scan the page can get the sense of what you have to say without having to read the whole thing. Let’s be honest, most people won’t read the entire post the first time.

Like I’ve done here, the key sections are in headings. It’s easy to navigate, it gives you an immediate sense of structure, and if you want detail about those parts then you can take the time to read it.

Keep it simple and friendly!

There is nothing worse than reading a long sentence on-screen. Shorter sentences work best. Avoiding jargon is vital. And if you can build rapport with your reader through warm and friendly copy, so much the better. Nobody wants to read anything that is too clinical, or stand-offish.

Personalising your online copy is the best way of making it friendly. If you want your copy to bring you business, you have to express your personality through your text. It sounds difficult, but once you get the hang of it, it’s just like writing a letter to someone that you like. And, like everything else, the more you do it, the better at it you get.

It’s not the biggest deal in the world, that my marketing is slowly going three-dimensional. But I am enormously excited about it.

Introducing the Brutal Pixie figurine:

How awesome is she?

This beautiful little thing is constructed out of Sculpy, a plasticine-like substance that goes hard when you bake it, resembling ceramic. A good friend of mine, Gav, made it as a prototype for me.

Gav is looking to start making custom figurines as his regular business. As he needed ideas and projects, I asked him if he could make a pixie for me.

Even though she’s not exactly like my logo pixie, her manga style is so much more of a talking piece. People can’t help picking her up and having a look.

And so, she’s joined my Marketing Team. I’m not 100% sure yet in what capacity, but it is likely that she will be popping up in all sort of places. You’ll have to keep your eyes peeled!

I love my pixie figure. Getting Gav to make me one was one of the best things I’ve ever done. If you want to buy one, I can arrange it.

But if you want a figurine of your own, do let me know. I’m more than happy to put you in touch with Gav and spread the figurine love.

Nobody likes to talk about spelling. We’ve all been made to feel like crap by school teachers because of our poor spelling. It sucks, but spelling really is important, because it reflects on you.

Facebook spelling fail.

You only have to think to all of the advertising, websites, CD sleeves, DVD covers — or anything else — you’ve seen that’s had a spelling error. Think about how you reacted to it. Chances are, even if you aren’t great at spelling, errors tend to stand out.

For example, here’s one CD cover with a major error:

Can you see it? If you can’t, carefully re-read the the subtitle Operation Metal Storm.

In anything like business websites or products, let alone marketing materials, spelling errors reflect poorly on your business. It makes you look like you didn’t care enough to go carefully over the materials. Often, errors creep through because you’ve seen the text too many times. Those of us who work with words know that, eventually, you read what you expect to read. Cold readers are the ones who will pick up your errors.

A good way of picking up your errors is to read your material out loud. Yes, you’ll feel like an idiot reading it to your computer, or your dog. Yes, it sounds weird. But it is vital.

Reading aloud forces you to slow down, to read what is actually there. It also has the benefit of helping you pick up grammatical problems that affect reading flow.

If you are really not keen to read aloud, there is one other thing you can do. That is, to read your material backwards, word by word. Use your finger on each word as you go backwards, and any errors will leap out at you.

Should you try any of these and they work for you, let me know!

Ok. This is not strictly a blog, given that it is a plug for a former client’s book. It’s titled Cry for Health: Health — the casualty of modern times, and it has been 17 years in the making.

I was the primary editor for this work, until for various reasons I had to bail on the project at the last minute. It’s unfortunate that I couldn’t avoid this, but these things happen — and I’m stoked that the book has finally been released.

This work is one of the most tightly researched and argued titles on the topic of how our modern lifestyles are dramatically affecting our health. As Jesse (the author) wrote to me in the cover of my work:

To Leticia, an outstanding editor, who challenged me to hone my writing. Thanks and enjoy the read, and may good health and good cheer be with you always.

In talking to Jesse recently, he pointed out that being challenged on points that he personally believed and hadn’t thought other people might reject, was one of the best things about us working together. It has been a great journey with this title, and to see it finally in print is so very satisfying for all parties concerned.

If you’re interested in looking further into this book, or obtaining a copy, head to the Cry for Health website. We’re talking e-books at the moment, so hopefully I’ll have more information about this soon!

You know, I didn’t even look at this website for most of 2011. When I did, it struck me as being patently absurd that anybody would contact me for rates or quotes or any other bollocks.

So I did away with it.

And I put in a shop.

And I love the shop.

If it were me, I would use the shop.

After gradually migrating towards an online-shopper-only, I have to say that just letting people buy things — and talking to them later — is easier. And better. And SIMPLE OMG.

Remember simple things? Nice, weren’t they.

I’m going back to simple. Better blogs, better experience.

And at some stage I’ll do something about the typography on this damn site, too. It’s all a little bit too.….. black.

Let me know what you think about my store!! I want feedback please!

One theme that will recur here from time to time is that of collaboration. Because most of my clients are interstate, I work nearly exclusively online — and therefore collaborate mostly by email and by phone. But there is a simple tool that tons of people forget about: Google Docs.

I’m a big fan of good collaborative relationships, whether I’m in a copywriting role or an editing role. I find that, even if I am given a brief by a client that is very good, the end result is so much better if my clients are involved in the creation of their copy.

This is why I never just take a brief and run. I will take the driver’s seat, sure, but I always want the client beside me, providing useful navigation. The reason is because, whatever the project, it’s never my project: it’s theirs.

Standard tools: pros and cons

The standard tools for collaborating at a distance, I find, are email and phone. Occasionally I’ll have a Skype chat, or use MSN or Google chat, but mostly I use email.

Emails are great for documentation trails and searchability, and it’s something that nearly everybody is familiar with. It enables you to write notes, to send queries, to attach files and swap files with changes — and everybody has his or her own copy of the file in case something dramatic happens to it and backup systems fail.

But while it’s a standard way of working for me, email can have its downfalls:

• emails can get lost
• subject headers can become irrelevant
• attachments aren’t always attached, or the wrong ones are
• attachments don’t always work on multiple platforms (like, from Mac OS to Windows or vice versa)

Skype chats and instant messengers like MSN and Google are great for throwing ideas around, and sharing files and links. While some active collaboration can happen using these tools, they aren’t really designed for document-based collaboration. It’s more of a brainstorm space, and a super-quick way of resolving queries.

I, for one, would hesitate to send changes using a ‘send file’ facility on Skype, MSN, or Google Chat to a client. It’s good at the time, but it’s not as easy to maintain records and traceability as it is on email.

Google Docs was built for collaboration

It might sound like I’m pushing someone else’s product, but let’s be honest: Google Docs was built with online collaboration in mind. You can create a document, share it, track revisions on it, and download it if you want to or need to.

Perhaps, though, the best thing about Google Docs is that it enables both parties to see and work on exactly the same thing.

Google Docs pretty well eliminates the need for really detailed paper trails, because it has a revision trail built into it. You can always print out each version if you feel the need to maintain a copy that isn’t just a ‘virtual’ one. And because it’s in a ‘cloud’, then if you have a local IT failure, work can continue as normal.

But you need a Gmail account to use Google Docs, right?

No, you don’t. Many people don’t realise that you can set up an account with Google Docs using your regular email address. Once that’s done, you’re all set to create and share your documents, and to take part in others’.

If you had shied away from collaborating with a copywriter from a distance, you needn’t worry. Often, it’s just like working in another room.

Contact me to find out how I can work with closely with you (regardless of distance) to make your project work seamlessly from the word go.

Don’t make your reader drop his bundle

Writing text about yourself or your business is difficult because nobody likes talking about themselves. The good news is that your text shouldn’t be all about you or your business: it should be about your reader.

Confused?  These five reasons why good text focuses on your reader will help.

1. You are an expert but your reader is not

If you are the best person or business in your field (we all are, right?), then you are an expert. The thing is, 90% of your customers are not. They rely on you to give them the best service, products, and information.

With this in mind, then, your text should cater to the majority of your clients. It doesn’t matter where your text appears — in marketing materials, information sheets, or on your website — you have to target the lowest common denominator.

2. Jargon frightens people

As an expert who is seeking the custom of Mr & Mrs Average, you want to make them feel welcome. This family is likely to be clueless about the niceties of your field. What you don’t want to do is make them feel stupid.

For example, let’s say you run an internet service provider. You can bang on in technical language about servers, pings, and technologies, and it all sounds very impressive. But does anybody outside the field really understand it?

More to the point, does your average family understand it? Probably not. What they want to know is whether you will give them great service and value for their hard-earned.

Baffling people with jargon will make them run. Fast. It’s very unlikely they’ll come back. You want them to understand you, not run away from you.

3. Simple language makes scanning easy

Nobody really reads anything any more. Online, people scan for key words. With marketing materials, people do the same thing. Your readers are doing this all the time, and you want to catch their attention.

If you are able to create simple, inviting text, that gives your readers what they are after, you are onto a good thing! Helping your readers find information quickly is like holding up navigation signs for them.

4. You want people to be interested in what you do

This is especially the case if you have a news page on your website. Or an e-newsletter. What do your readers want to read? Information? Helpful tips?

You could always just write about yourself or your business, but it gets boring very quickly. Just like it does on Twitter, or on Facebook.

What you really want to do is give your readers a reason to keep coming back, and to keep opening your emails.

5. Writing for your readers is good customer service, and good PR

It might sound really stupid, but if what you write gets through to your reader the first time, you are providing good customer service.

Do yourself a favour and read your marketing materials, or your website content, out loud. Does it sound like something you would have to explain?

If it does, consider revising it. You wouldn’t stand in a shop and answer a person who comes in with a basic question with a long-winded, hard-to-understand reply. You don’t want to do that in writing either.

Good public relations is built on good relationships with people. Targeting your reader every time you write something, instead of thinking about yourself, is one of the best things you can do. A measurement of this is how often people come to you through word of mouth.

Of course, the obvious thing is that having a copywriter like me in your life means you don’t have to deal with all of this mind-numbing pain. Click here now to get things rolling.

… is always about yourself.

It’s no secret that many people hate talking about themselves, much less writing about themselves. This is why writing About pages on websites is such hard work.

Writing pages about what your business offers is not that hard, if you have a clear idea about what you provide. It’s when you get to that detail that talks simply about the business that it gets difficult.

This is especially the case for service-based businesses. People often wonder:

• How much of the history do I need to tell?
• Do I have to talk about changes in the business?
• Should I present a history of my clients?
• Why would people even read about me?
• and so on.

If you can do it (and if you can afford it), it helps to bring in an objective eye. Give them as much detail as you want, and let them create the page for you.

This has a few benefits. Such as:

• an independent perspective, such as your website visitors
• the possibility of suggestions you may not have thought about
• a clearer sense of how it ties into your overall site.

But if you do it yourself, stick to the topic. If you run a service-based business, by all means talk about yourself and make it personal. Friendly people, friendly copy. It’s more engaging.

Things I suggest avoiding are:

• talking about things you used to do, as though you still do them
• talking about your business as though it has a large staff, if in fact it’s just yourself
• cluttering your about page with too much about your clients — keep it separate if you can
• using your about page as a selling page; that isn’t the point of it!

About pages take forever to write. But it’s worthwhile taking the time to agonise over it. Or, if you are paying someone else to do it, let them do the agonising for you!

The key is to be yourself.

Blogs on business websites can be one of the best ways of engaging with your audience. But because it is such a different way of writing, many people struggle with it. The key to success is being yourself.

I hesitate to write ‘market’ when I talk those to whom you aim your blog. You need to see your market as your audience. Once you do, you’ll find yourself trying to find ways to engage them. It’s no good being in front of a crowd of bored people.

It sounds daunting, but there is no need to struggle with business blog content. All you have to remember is to be yourself, and to write for one person only.

Surely, you might be thinking, I’m writing for tens, or maybe hundreds, of people? Yes you are, but you want to write to your ideal reader. That reader is just one person.

Think of it as writing a letter to someone. The best writing comes from forgetting about perfection, and from the warmth of writing to somebody you know and like.

And you know and like your business blog’s audience — otherwise you wouldn’t be in business to deal with them!

Being yourself will lead you to success because it is authentic. If your audience discovers your front is a sham, they aren’t likely to come back.

But you want your visitors to keep coming back, because it is good business sense!

Getting repeat visitors is a good thing: the more conversations you have with your visitors, the more likely they are to trust you. If your visitors trust you, they are more likely to buy whatever you are offering.

Which is why authenticity is essential. Being yourself is about as authentic as it gets.