Kate Waddon Copywriting

We all need words. Let me help you find the right ones.

Christmas words

I’ve been very busy with Christmas. Not sorting out my own Christmas – dear me, no, it’s still November and I haven’t even got going there – but telling other people how to organise theirs. What presents to buy, what to eat, where to get the food from, where to go, and even how to feel good again in January when it’s all over… I’m Christmas Copy Girl, even if it seems strange giving advice about something I am quite clearly rubbish at myself.

You may also be writing about Christmas. It’s hard not to. Whatever your business, if there’s some way you can segue a festive theme into your blog, you’re probably doing it.

I don’t know about you, but I’m struggling with Christmas adjectives. I am trying to avoid describing everything as “festive”; the linguistic equivalent of just sticking a sprig of holly on top of something and saying “job done”.

However, for such a rich language, we’re a bit short of Christmas-related adjectives – a problem if you’re writing product copy. “Christmassy”, “festive”, er, “Yule-ish”… “Seasonal” pops up a lot, but only at Christmas. Try more associated adjectives rather than direct ones. Generous, lavish, merry, jolly, wintry, happy, magical, cosy. Scatter clichés around like a kids throws wrapping paper – for once, you can probably get away with it.

But – and here’s an absolute number one festive writing rule – don’t spoil the magic. Father Christmas is real. Bottom line. Don’t risk spoiling the magic with any witty asides if you’re writing about anything that might be read by the under tens.

Sorry that was a bit brief. I just wanted to check in before I go back to the Christmas listicles. Or “Christicles”, as I like to call them. Have fun with any festive writing you may be doing. If you have any new festive adjectives for me (SFW only), please wing them over. I think I’m going to need them over the next few days…

Just enjoy language!

I don’t use this blog to make points about politics. I will happily share my beliefs down the pub or on my personal Facebook page, but this is not the place. However…I’ve just read the sample Key Stage 2 English examination paper. It sucks the joy out of language faster than a Dementor could. Its focus on grammatical rules is a depressingly dry way to look at English.

Children seem to naturally enjoy language. I’ve mentioned before how watching them learn new words is a delight. My four-year-old has just worked out that if you sound these letter things together, you can read an actual word! She’s very excited.

I don’t normally write about my kids in this blog either; however this concerns them more than me. My eight-year-old writes stories. To be fair, he has a reasonable grasp of grammar, and his spelling is getting less eccentric every week. I read his stuff. It’s wonderful. Unfettered by any nods to realism, I envy his untrained ability to run with ideas.  “It was a sunny, pancakey sort of day in Cornwall”, he wrote a couple of years ago to describe a happy day, a description so naively perfect it makes me smile every time I think of it. He’s encouraged, both at home and at school, to be creative; to write what he enjoys, and to develop his own idiom. Where is that fine line between “correct” writing and stifling natural ability?

Stepping away from the literary canon always helps. I love listening to people who enjoy language. Stephen Fry, Russell Brand, Charlie Brooker – no, not a particularly harsh round of Snog, Marry, Avoid, but three wordsmiths who clearly have such a joy in playing around with words. Listen to song lyrics. Remember the howl from Middle England when an Amy Winehouse lyric appeared in an exam paper? But it was a beautiful, pared-down lyric that connected with millions. Think Arctic Monkeys, Neil Hannon, Jarvis Cocker for songwriters who revel in words. The frenetic wordplay of some rap shows an ability to play with language that “serious writers” should envy. Do these talents play by the rules of grammar? Unlikely.

I admit I’m conflicted here. I have a real word nerd’s OCD when it comes to things like the grocer’s apostrophe. I ruthlessly proofread menus, posters, food packaging, newsletters, and instruction manuals. But does tying our lovely language down to a series of rules help to improve our collective communication skills? I don’t think so.  I may have a reputation as the Grammar Police among my friends; however in the end, does knowing your adverb from your elbow really matter? Engaging, readable writing that people actually want to read is surely the idea? After all, we’re talking about communication here. Does being able to identify the past progressive make children better writers?

I’d like to draw this to some sort of conclusion, but I don’t think I can. Walk the line. Find a balance. Yes, teach our children the rules of language, but emphasise that that’s not all there is to it. Knowing what a verb is isn’t much good if you can’t come up with some good ones in a story. Just keep enjoying words.

And if you want to test your own grammar, here’s the paper.

And here’s Michael Rosen’s wonderful open letter.

 

Getting the right tone of voice for your writing

We’re very sophisticated at using different tones of voice from an early age. From our first playground moments, most of us are aware that we use certain words for specific people. We’re brilliantly adaptable at this, so there is no reason why we can’t get it right with our writing, too.

Using the most appropriate tone of voice for your website, blog or printed material makes sure that you are addressing the people you want to reach in the way that works best and appeals most to them. Are you talking to the teacher or your classmates?

 

What is tone of voice?

Simply, it’s how we speak, or in this case, write.

The easiest way to think of tone of voice is to imagine your brand is a person (easy enough if you’re a self-employed tattooist; harder if you’re a hotel). If you ran into them, how would they greet you? Are they chatty or quite formal? Are they relaxed or lively? Do they handshake or hug? If your hotel is a five star establishment catering for high-end business people, the brand-person will greet you warmly but politely, using fairly formal but cordial language. If it’s a seaside B&B, they might offer you a scone (linguistically speaking).

 

Why do we need one?

How a business communicates is a crucial part of its brand. A marketing expert could tell you that the voice builds confidence, helps identify the unique qualities of a brand, and creates consistency to support the brand values.

From the writer’s point of view, it makes sure we’re saying the right things to our audience. Some pieces of writing have to be general as they have a broad audience (the BBC news website for example), and then general principles of clear writing apply. At the other end of the scale, there are many businesses that speak to very defined customers – think of really esoteric products and services (erm…reptile food?), or very specific tribes (anything that’s opened in Shoreditch recently). If you’re writing B2B (business to business) text, you may be more formal than if you’re selling cupcakes to general customers.

You may be explaining a complicated service to a lay audience, and that’s one of the occasions when thinking about your voice is crucial – you can’t address your non-expert customers in the same way you’d speak to one of your colleagues. It often takes real conscious effort to step back and talk about your specialist subject using a different vocabulary.

 

How do we find our voice?

There are many good marketing businesses that can help you with this – it’s a great topic for a brainstorming workshop. This isn’t always possible or affordable, so here are a few suggestions, from the writing point of view.

Choose a handful of words that best describe your business. Quality, welcoming, good value, friendly, professional, expert, innovative, quirky, classic, business-like, relaxed, fun, creative… Go with three or four. If you’re a high-end retailer, you may have chosen quality, expert, classic, for example. Then, every time you write a section of text, look over it again. Think – do my words reflect these qualities? Use your chosen words, but don’t overdo it. Think of synonyms, and then you start to build your own vocabulary.

I create a lexicon for the business. For most of my clients, I have a list of words and phrases that suit their brand and (I hope) appeal to their audience(s). To return to the posh shop example, I may have added trusted, service, professional, indulgent, elegant, and no doubt a whole host of superlatives.

Next, how do you want to talk to them? Are you Big Sister dispensing hair care advice, or Vidal Sassoon doing the same thing? Do you want to seem friend or expert? Simple things like how often you use the word “you” establishes the level of warmth you want to get though, as it builds a direct rapport. Think about the real physical customers you come into contact with – how do they speak?

I’d also add, be as authentic as possible. Look how much we all cringe when politicians attempt to be more “street”. As a writer I’m used to being adaptable and borrowing other people’s voices – but I still know my limitations, and didn’t take on the job that required the writing to have “a Jamaican lilt”… If you have a colleague or friend who is closer to the target market than you are, use them!

 

Now speak!

 The best thing about this exercise is that you really think about the way you write. It’s good to pause and think about how you speak, how your actual business would speak if it could, and how your customers themselves speak.

Keep your three or four main words in mind, and go back to them constantly. If you read a page or paragraph and it doesn’t feel “extreme, funky, young” and you think it should, revisit that writing. I keep the lexicon, the word-list, in front of me when I’m writing for a specific client – it’s a handy crib if I’m feeling short of suitable words.

And as ever, I’m always happy to help, and can work with you to create a tone of voice document as a handy reference for your business writing (shameless, self-publicist, brazen…).

The Apprentice – talking the talk

After learning how to talk like bakers last week, this week – how (not) to talk like an entrepreneur. Welcome back, The Apprentice.

It would be too easy to critique the language of The Apprentice. Business-speak has amused us all for years. Just Google it, and there are so many articles listing choice hyperbolic expressions. Characterised by insane analogies (“It was a case of low-hanging fruit”) and borrowings from more conventionally macho jobs (“We need to look under the bonnet”), it is endlessly entertaining to those who never have to speak it.

I confess to having been fairly fluent in this language. For the first few weeks after leaving the “robust” language of the shop floor and joining the strategic team in the offices, I struggled with this new way of communicating. Then I realised that if you just stuck a “going forwards” on the end of most sentences, you got away with it. It was that simple. I was in their radar. It is the lexical equivalent of putting on a suit, and just as shallow.

So, what I loved about The Apprentice last night was that it’s become very conscious of its own language. Lord Sugar, an admirably jargon-free talker (when will the candidates learn from that??), said to one chap, “I read that you ‘dislike corporate speak’.” He then proceeded to read out a statement from another candidate’s CV. I tried to jot it down, but I can’t write that fast. It was stunning; a real master-class in corporate jargon. Lord Sugar concluded with: “What a load of [insert noun here]”. Lord Sugar also introduced new aide Claude: “He tells it as it is.” Take note, candidates – Lord S is dropping some very strong hints here about communication.

My favourite part, words-wise, is the little introductory clips where the candidates talk about themselves to camera. I am sure there is some researcher screeching “Sound ridiculous! Come on, you don’t sound self-absorbed enough! More bonkers analogies please!”  However they manage to speak with such straight faces that I’m convinced they mean it. My favourite this year is “I am the Swiss-army knife of business skills”. Excellent. Please open this beer for me.

But – and this is what really captured my attention – is the second that they started running around trying to buy, cook, and sell fish (I loved this task), the posturing language all went. They started to talk like real people. Put someone in a pair of work wellies, and any talk of “blue-sky thinking” vanishes faster than squid in a taverna. In fact maybe they went a bit too colloquial – buy the fish because “it’s bloody nice” probably won’t win any sales awards. I quite liked the use of “Power Hour” to describe the last panicky bit where they feverishly flog everything – borrowed from the drinking game, or is that an actual Apprentice-created term?

So, aside from overusing “specification” (much more masculine than “recipe”, don’t you think?), some nice, normal speech. Then – back to the boardroom and it all goes horribly wrong again… In her self-introduction, one candidate stated: “I’m suited, I’m booted – come on!” And that sums it up. On with the suit, out with the business speak. Stick a person who has shown all signs of being a perfectly good communicator next to a jug of corporate water and a large table, and he or she starts talking like David Brent again. The losing team had a “massive complication”. No you didn’t – you made a mistake. You can’t hide errors behind overblown language. You bought the wrong fish.

However, much to my delight, this year they have a self-proclaimed “wordsmith”. I shall be listening to him with great interest, and maybe he can keep the corporate speak in check.  But don’t laugh at these guys too much for their language. Like the jackets, jargon is something you put on to portray an image. As they grow in confidence, they’ll all calm down and start speaking in their usual idioms again. Going forwards.

The Great British Bake Off and the language of cake

I worry about myself sometimes. Even when faced with lavish piles of cake, I still home in on the words. The Great British Bake Off has given our national lexicon far more than a soggy bottom. Here is my take on the scrumptious language of cake.

 

It’s jolly rude…

The innuendo! Goodness me. The splendid Mel and Sue (with some help from naughty Mary) have brought back the language of the Carry On films, and what could possibly be more British than seaside postcard humour? Of course, “soggy bottom” has already entered the British consciousness, and in this series, we’ve had a jolly romp through plums, buns, nuts, tarts and er, cracks. It’s back to the old “naughty but nice” cream cakes campaign of the early eighties.

 

We can all sound like experts

I love this about this sort of show. It allows us to pretend we’re experts by giving us the language. I can talk about “even bakes” just like Mary and Paul can, and shake my head knowingly when the dough simply wasn’t given long enough to prove. And to sound like proper bakers, we all casually drop in a reference to “crem pat”.

(See also: talking about non-standard construction with Martin and Lucy; shaking your head with Kevin McCloud; savaging a CV with Claude.)

 

It’s very definite

 Suddenly, things that don’t usually use one have the definite article. It’s like being French. “The bake wasn’t good”, frowns Paul. The bake. The rise. The prove. It makes them sound rather menacing, as if these things have taken on a life of their own.

 

There are random new cake words

The Bakes themselves can be splendidly esoteric. I have small kids: I bake cupcakes and not much else. Now – wow! I have a whole new vocab of cakes I’ve never heard of. Mokatines, entremets, and the impressively bonkers tennis cake. I still can’t pronounce millefeuille, but was pleased to hear that no one else can either.

 

It can be beautiful

 Nadiya’s speech at the end of the 2015 GBBO final had the nation welling up. She may have become famous for her wonderfully communicative face, but her words are equally expressive.

“I’m never gonna put boundaries on myself ever again. I’m never gonna say I can do it. I’m never gonna say ‘maybe’. I’m never gonna say ‘I don’t think I can’. I can and I will.”

As lovely and reassuring as a freshly-baked sponge.

Walking to find words

In a very British way, I’m boringly passionate about the benefits of fresh air and exercise, much to the irritation of my children. I’ve blogged previously about ways to get around writer’s block; however my personal all-time favourite way is just to go for a  walk.

Even when I worked for A Large DIY Chain on the outskirts of town, near absolutely nothing of any interest, I’d still get out during my lunch break and have a quick stank (Cornish for “brisk walk”) along the main road, Alan Partridge style.  The other option was to poke around one of the local suburban estates, admiring the clipped lawns – not exactly exciting, but I’d still return to my monitor rosy of cheek and fresh of mind.

Because just getting away from it is a wonderful way to collect your thoughts – just step away from the desk and into another environment, however brief, however mundane the surroundings. As I walk, words come to me. I especially love it at this time of year, as there’s the added bonus of crunching through leaves (and let’s be honest, who ever really grows out of doing that?).

There’s plenty of stuff out there on the health benefits of walking every day, and as a desk-hogger with a biscuit habit, it’s just as well that I like to move about a bit. (Although earlier in the week, my work involved writing about James Bond, and nothing could have dragged me away from Google images and Daniel Craig…) But as well as the leg-stretching, it’s the opportunity to clear my mind that I really appreciate.

So, at a loss for words for this blog, off I ambled down the lane to the post box. It was one of those beautiful Cornish autumn days. The sun was out. There were lots of leaves to crunch through. I even saw a squirrel. And I came up with a blog post – about walking.

Writing online catalogue copy

 

As more and more retailers expand into the ecommerce market, they suddenly find themselves having to write online catalogue copy for their products.

Your website is your new shop display. You have a hundred words or so to sell the customer an item they can’t actually see. I really, really love catalogue copywriting jobs (hint hint); and here are a few tips for writing online catalogue copy.

Who’s the shopper?

You know your products, and you know who buys them. That’s the hardest part sorted.  Keep asking yourself: how would I speak with my customers if they actually came into my shop?

If the products are gifts, gently nudge the customer – “a perfect present for mums everywhere.”  Is humour appropriate? You don’t have to do the full I Want One of Those; however if you’re selling novelty socks or amusing mugs you need to add a splash of fun, otherwise the copy will appear dreadfully po-faced. After all, the customer is actively seeking out something funny. Just keep an eye on any word play, before it puns away with you… (sorry).

For more technical and practical products, give a straightforward and clear description – this customer needs the confidence that they are buying the right item, and that it will do exactly what they need it to.

Top-line info

To fit in with a catalogue template I once worked with, I had to write an introductory sentence for each product, of no more than 25 words.

As well as fitting the template, this is a helpful way to start populating your product text space. Get the top-line information into the first 25 words, and then hit return.  You’ve already got the product’s name or title – so use these first words to say more about what the product is, and highlight its main benefit or feature. Here’s one I wrote for a book:

“An absorbing account of the historic city of Winchester, former capital of England, told through lively words and lovely photographs.”

What are the benefits?

Be careful to describe the product, not the picture. What does it do? Anyone can see from the photograph that it has a red lid – but they can’t tell that it can hold ten litres…

Description is very important; however when someone is buying online, emphasising what it’s for, and how you can’t possibly live without it, is essential. Think with all your senses (or is it just me that goes around shops sniffing things?).

Tell a tiny story

If appropriate, going beyond the basic description and functions can really help to sell a product. Giving a background story to a product can help to capture interest, and gives you an edge over other retailers selling an identical product. Just a simple sentence can really lift a description.

Of course, this applies only to certain products. A back-story about the discovery of rubber is not very helpful if you’re selling tyres. If you’re selling traditionally-made candles in the other hand, a sentence or two about the production method helps to enhance the heritage-themed brand.

Don’t forget the SEO

What are people searching for? To use the above example, make sure that you get the phrase “traditional candles” in a couple of times. The top-line sentence is a good place to seamlessly slip in a key phrase: “This beautifully-made traditional candle” etc etc.

Be accurate

An online product description has to be accurate. Please please please triple-check any dimensions, materials, packaging information, prices, origins, and warnings. Don’t promise it can make chips and walk the dog if all it does is display a house plant.

Product misinformation is covered by the Consumer Protection from Unfair Trading Regulations. If you are writing more than just the product description (such as delivery information), check out the online and distance selling regulations.

Watch your adjectives

Back to the less heavy stuff. If you’re writing for a large catalogue, this will eventually have you banging your head against a large thesaurus. Be aware of any words you’re overusing (I’m dreadful with “delicate” for jewellery; and after twelve pages of coffee copy, I completely ran out of words for “aromatic”). Always think whether the adjective enhances the product or helps describe it – if it doesn’t, don’t bother with it.

Calls to action

It naturally helps that you have a great big red “Add to cart” or “Buy Now” button next to the product description. I like to add in other calls to action: “Inspire your children”, “Delight a loved one”, “Sort out your tyres”. It keeps your catalogue copy dynamic and speaks directly to the reader.

Relate to other products

Hey, there are matching gloves! We also sell it in pink! You’re buying gin? Then you’ll need tonic!

You get the idea…

Be consistent

It’s easy to hand out snippets of copy to individuals across a business – but at least have them edited for consistency. When you get into a rhythm of writing catalogue copy – and let’s face it, there’s often a lot of repetition – a style will start to flow.

 

In a competitive market, having well-written online catalogue copy can really give you an advantage. Don’t put it off, or be tempted to let the picture do all the talking – it won’t.

It’s the difference between an engaging sales assistant and a surly one.

Communicating with old words

Thinking about my anachronistic job title in my last blog naturally led me off on a tangent. What other archaic words do we casually use every day? I could have gone out and researched all sorts of exciting engineering, medical, and manufacturing jobs and looked at their terminology. But of course I didn’t. I stared at my desk until inspiration hit.

“I’ve cced/CCed/cc’d you in.”

We all know what that means (you’re not as important or influential as the name in the top line, basically), but where does the “cc” bit come from? “Carbon copy” comes from carbon paper, an inky mess of a page that is inserted in between two leaves of paper to create an impression of the top sheet on the bottom one. I am saying this in case my blog is read by anyone under forty who doesn’t frequent antiquarian bookshops or market stalls that use manual receipt books, so will never have encountered this. Many say it’s “courtesy copy”, but that’s a backronym (love that word). So, as we type the “you-need-to-know-this-but-don’t-need-to-do-anything” recipient’s name into the cc box, we’re referencing that messy old method of duplicating documents.

Interestingly, that essential of office politics, the bcc function, could also be carried out on a typewriter. You could set the ribbon not to strike the paper, which leaves names off the top copy but leaves an impression… I like to imagine the original Miss Moneypenny doing this.

“I think I dialled the right number…”

No you didn’t. You technically pressed the right number. But we persist with this one, and even grow it as technology advances: speed-dial, direct-dial, er, dial-a-pizza.

IMG_1836

To illustrate how old this makes me feel, here is a picture of my four-year-old learning how to dial a phone, properly, using an actual dial. In a museum. Gah. (Thanks to Porthcurno Telegraph Museum for this excellent display, btw. Brilliant museum.)

140-character limit

I am too verbose for Twitter, even when I take out on the ellipses and desperate hashtags. 140 characters often seems a bit ungenerous. Back in the day, Twitter was an SMS-based system, and those clunky early mobiles couldn’t deal with more than 160 characters. They’d do that annoying splitting up the text thing. On the whole, I quite like the fact that tweets are limited (see most Facebook posts).

Nobody wants a stylus

Of course, being terribly topical, I should add stylus. Used by the ancient Minoans and Egyptians and reviled by Steve Jobs, these “poking sticks” as they’re called in our house, hit the news last night when Apple announced that its new iPad Pro would come with a stylus.

That’s definitely a very old word for a very new thing.

 

 

For more info about carbon copies, there’s a nice clear explanation at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_copy.

 

 

“You’re a what?” The trouble with “copywriter”.

“Sorry, what are you again?” asked the Nice Bank Lady.

“Copywriter. Freelance copywriter.”

“Oh” (scrolls). “There isn’t a box for that… What exactly do you do?”

Moot point. Polite answers only please.

“I, er, write stuff. Websites, blogs, signs, brochures, that sort of thing.” (Not dialogue, clearly.)

“OK, I’ll put you down as “Marketing.”

Copywriter is not a helpful term. “Copy” isn’t really a term those outside the industry know. Years ago, when most publishing was confined to a rarefied world that smelled of ink and rattled to the sound of printing presses, this wasn’t an issue. These days, copywriters (freelance ones like me anyway) work for a different market – one where the traditional language of editing is irrelevant.

Plus of course, the homophone “copyright” doesn’t help. I’ve met a few people who’ve assumed that I do some sort of legal thing involving stopping people using words. Fair point.

So, what’s a copywriter to call herself? Occasionally I’ve dropped the “copy” bit. Then I’ve put it back, unable to face the disappointment of those in the school car park, when they figure out that they’ve never leafed through me in Waterstones. It also feels a bit grandiose to give myself the same job title as Dickens.

I looked into this. As ever, my shallow start was with Wikipedia. I read: “If the purpose is not ultimately promotional, its author might prefer to be called a content writer.” Ooh, I quite like that. But is it too specific? And sometimes it is promotional (I hope). Occasionally I am a “technical writer”, but I’ll just wear that (protective and reinforced) hat when I need to.

As copywriter is an archaic term, why not really embrace the really old and use “Scribe”, or “Scrivener”? Or, as a copywriter in Cornwall, maybe I should adopt the Cornish term “Skrifyades”, translated as “female professional writer”. If only English had a similar succinct word for professional writer… It’s a great word, but hardly supports my mission to have a transparent job title.

Maybe the dilemma has been solved by a charming client of mine. “Wordsmith”, he said. “That’s what you are.”

Do you think the bank has that on its database?

 

 

Useful tips for web copywriting

There are a lot of articles out there giving copywriting tips.  I don’t claim to be a guru. I don’t train or mentor rookie writers – but after a few years in the field, here are the rules I use for my own copywriting.

Short really is sweet. Snippets of copy, interspersed with images, work far better than huge chunks of text. Subheadings help to divide the information up, and bullet points can also be useful. Likewise, keep your sentences snappy. When I was writing interpretation text, I was advised never to go over 21 words per sentence. I try to keep to this. (Please don’t go through this post, counting the words…)

Read it out loud. Do you sound like yourself? Can you imagine yourself using those words in everyday life? If you can’t, it’s probably too formal. Think about sentence length and vocabulary to get back on track. Your subject may be a formal one – but remember, even serious professionals don’t speak like dictionary entries.

Thinking about formal, there are a few grammar and punctuation conventions it’s OK to break if you’re writing for the web. Forget colons and semi-colons – the en-dash is the web writer’s friend. It’s fine to end a sentence with a preposition – “which shop is it in?” sounds more contemporary than “It is in which shop?” “Who” is more modern than “whom” – and “whilst” rarely reads well in web copy, the latter being rather old-fashioned. Again, try to imagine you’re speaking with your customers.

Which leads neatly onto – who are your customers?  What sort of writing will they respond to? If you’re writing for a surf shop, “awesome” works. If you’re selling legal services, reconsider your adjective. Does the tone work for your brand or subject? Naturally, tone of voice guidelines are available from katewaddon.co.uk. Just saying… (A phrase I promise not to use for insurance or medical copy…)

The vexed question of SEO. Yes, Google loves content. So do readers. If you’re optimising your copy for search engines, never lose track of readability (see my earlier blog post on SEO copy).

Please please please proofread your copy. It always amazes me the amount of good websites that have glaring typos. Ask a friend or colleague to read it for you – it’s hard to spot errors in your own work, even if you’re a tip top speller. Using a spell checker can be good, but they’re not infallible – “its hard to pots errors in you’re won works”, for example.

To hire a copywriter or not? OK, I declare an interest here… However – there isn’t always a need to use a professional copywriter, and I would be showing an appalling lack of integrity if I said otherwise. Even if you do engage a copywriter for your web copy, it’s worth bearing the above points in mind. However clever and creative your copywriter wants to be, the basics need to be in place.

Bearing in mind my mantra of “short and sweet”, that’ll do. Keep it simple. Try to enjoy it. You know where I am if you need me.