Kate Waddon Copywriting

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The researching copywriter

I got to do a lovely thing today. I picked up some real, live, three-dimensional books. With each book, I turned to the index, put some post-its in the pages that I needed, and added them to the pile on the desk. I was Doing Research.

Research can be a major part of  copywriting work. Clients that ask you to quote for “writing time” don’t realise that often, the actual writing bit is pretty quick. Finding out what to write is a slower process, however it can be one of the most rewarding parts of the job (just please bear in mind that I really want to be a QI Elf, so I don’t necessarily speak for my less geeky peers). It’s also great if you get to surprise the client with a nice little snippet of information that can really add an extra something to the writing.

Most of my projects require some sort of online research, even if it’s just to double-check a spelling. I’m not sure if I should admit just how much time I spend on Wikipedia… Yes, I know it’s not always reliable, but it’s a great springboard to other sources that are.

But today was different. Easter customs in Cornwall is one of those subjects that’s so pleasingly esoteric that there’s not a lot out there. However, it’s the sort of field that lots of fabulous and dedicated individuals have written books about, and it was a pleasure pootling through their pages. It took me back to the good old days of the university library, when the only time we saw a screen was to help us find the right shelf.

I have a few more historical things to research over the next few weeks, and I may actually take myself down to Penzance library. OK, I can’t have my usual writing rider of coffee and Six Music; however I can enjoy that eureka moment when you find just the right subject in the index – far more satisfying then using a search engine…

But, I’m not about to amble too far down the (grassy) luddite path; and I’m not about to enter the whole “print-is-dead”, “screens-are-soulless” debate. It’s personal, and largely situational. I can’t imagine doing my job without the internet. It was just rather nice flicking through some books.

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Why you can’t just copy and paste your copy – website writing versus printed material text

“Can’t you just copy it from our existing website?” Sorry folks, no cutting corners (or cutting and pasting) here. Web copy does not translate well to print (or vice versa), even when you’re talking about the same product to pretty much the same audience.

Just these last few days, I’ve been writing brochure copy. I’ve written for this client before, and up until now, it’s all been web copy. Switching from updating the website to starting on the brochure, with only a quick coffee break in between, was not a good plan. After I’d been writing for a while, I realised that I’d been automatically writing SEO-type headers. New habits die hard.  Oh and don’t type in a hyperlink (red face…).

So, the obvious aside, why do we need to write differently for web and printed copy?

It’s largely because people read differently depending on whether they are looking at a screen or at printed text.* Faced with something on paper, we are more likely to read it “properly”, from beginning to end, like we were taught at school. Looking at a web page, we go more anarchic, our eyes wandering all over the page, looking for headers and snippets that allow us to get to the point quickly. I don’t know if it’s reverence for the written-down word or simply a time issue, but I bet most of us read more carefully when we’re holding a piece of paper. Web copy deals with scan reading by keeping sections short and well-signposted.

Printed stuff is, well, posher. There is an expectation that printed material is a bit more formal. There’s less reliance on nice, lazy punctuation, like hyphens. The convention tends to be more “it is”  than “it’s”. This doesn’t mean that the language has to be less contemporary or more straight-laced, and it still needs to be clear (don’t suddenly morph into a Victorian author just because you’ll see your work in print).

Proofreading has to be even more careful. It’s one thing emailing your designer to say “Argh, just noticed a typo!”  –  it’s quite another to take delivery of 2,000 leaflets and spot you’ve got your name wrong on the front cover… I’m about to start on a brochure proofreading project – wise people.

With any printed copy, please make sure you like it. Websites can be changed easily, whereas a flyer is a commitment. Make sure that the writing and design (or the writer and designer) work closely together to make the best use of the space. Future-proof a brochure by not putting this year’s prices or dates on it – a link to the website with its nice updateable format is a good plan here.

So you see, this is not what we wily writers do to drum up a few extra quid. The same principles of readability, clarity, accuracy and tone apply – but those few tweaks between media can make all the difference.

 

 

*OK, for the purposes of this post, let’s forget about Kindles etc and reading the newspapers on your tablet. It’s going to confuse my point. And me.

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Content calendars – blogging for the organised

I’m still blogging about blogging. Here’s another way of beating blogger’s block – the content calendar. This is simply a diarised list (written on the spreadsheet or table of your choice depending on how much you like playing with formats) that lays out what you are going to blog about and when.

I’ve just compiled a 12-month blog calendar for a client. 52 blog topics, sorted. OK, they all need writing now, but at least that awful, blank, constipated feeling of “eek, nothing to write about” is no longer a problem. This is a rather extreme example: a year’s worth of blogs is a pretty long list. However, a blog plan a few weeks long is definitely doable; and here are a few tips on putting together a simple schedule.

Some businesses have a natural advantage when it comes to forward planning. If you are writing about a hotel or restaurant, the year has a lovely, easy rhythm that you can follow. OK, it’s a bit tight for Valentine’s Day now; but there’s Mother’s Day and Easter coming up, and probably lots of lovely days out coming up in your local area as spring (allegedly) creeps closer. Christmas and New Year have all sorts of splendid potential topics you can hang a blog post from. Food producers also operate seasonally, making a calendar nice and predictable (in a good way).

Even if your business doesn’t initially seem to lend itself to easy planning, have another think. Building and related trades for example can always relate to the Good Old British weather – good time of year to check for leaks etc – and really use their blogs to encourage trade in quieter periods. My manifestation dots (glass) clients can blog about solar glare in the summer months and keeping the heat in during the colder periods. Or vice versa, if you need your customers to book well in advance.

Check out what’s going on locally. Various “What’s On in Cornwall” websites gave me some nice ideas for content which can be planned in for the next few months. Festivals, shows, markets, launches can all be related back to local businesses in all sorts of ways.

If your business is multi-faceted, you can share your blog posts between all the different areas by planning ahead. A bar can diarise its blog posts to be food; wine; parties; coffees; cocktails; beers; any other offers, and then start again. Retailers can take a different product to focus on each time, and perhaps rotate them by department.

And importantly, stray off the path a bit with your blog. If you’re writing for a wedding venue, your posts may become a bit repetitive if you write about receptions every week. Do a piece on unusual musical offers for parties, on alternative wedding cakes, on the best bubble-blowing entertainers for younger guests. Refer back to your business, but enjoy running with a fun, lively topic. Breaking down your offer into smaller topics gives you a blog calendar that stretches easily into months’ worth of posts.

But of course, leave yourself a bit of flexibility. You don’t have to stick to your calendar too vigorously – it’s a plan, not a school timetable. Nobody’s going to give you detention for a last-minute change of topic. Sometimes, something in the news is irresistible to your subject, and you have to go with it. I’m a bit sick of Fifty Shades of Tenuous Articles this week, but hey, let’s keep things zeitgeisty. If you can tie in (ho ho ho) your cauliflower-growing business with the latest bonkbuster, then good luck to you. If there’s an item in the news to do with anything wordy, I will happily deviate (careful now) from my planned blog post for that week, choosing to write about what’s current.

It’s definitely worth a try – and if it proves awkward to stick to a calendar, at the very least you have a list of future topics. And hey, you can even colour-code them. Ooooooooh!

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Writer’s block and writing blogs

Last week, I blogged about the need to have a blog and to keep blogging away at it. Insensitive of me. What about those times when you simply can’t? Writer’s block is that awful, grinding-down feeling when you have to write, but can’t. Something goes wrong between mind and hand, and you just can’t write a thing. It’s like having to write in a colleague’s communal birthday or leaving card, but worse.

Do I get writer’s block? For copywriting work, rarely. The work is pretty prescribed, so I don’t get that “eek, where do I start??” feeling very often. Blogging is a different matter. It’s like logging on to Spotify and realising that you have the whole world of music to choose from and going into a state of panicked stasis where you can’t remember a single piece of music or musician, apart from something really random like The One Show theme. If you have the kind of blog that covers a wide area, an almost agoraphobic anxiety hits you with full force, and that’s when writer’s block strikes. Even if your theme is narrower, there will probably be occasions when inspiration just isn’t happening.

Searching for my own inspiration, I Googled writer’s block. Unsurprisingly, there were lots of suggestions out there. Some were obvious and pretty sensible (Exercise! Walk around the garden! Brainstorm with a friend or colleague!). Some were so wacky that they were either apocryphal or the domain of the already rich and successful (Apparently Dan Brown wears gravity boots and hangs upside down like some crazy writing bat until he gets focus. Victor Hugo used to get his valet to hide his clothes so he couldn’t go out, which could backfire unpleasantly if he ran out of coffee…). Some just came under the header “Don’t even go there” (“Have sex”. What??).

My own suggestions are somewhat tamer (but cheaper, and don’t require a second person). Here are a few ideas to get things moving again. The prune juice of words, if you like.

Write anyway – write anything

The mere act of sitting down and banging out a few sentences can work wonders. Poor writing can be rewritten later – at least there is writing. Write any bit of a blog post that takes your fancy. I often find that a post starts with a thought or a sentence that catches my imagination, and this is rarely the opening paragraph. I write most blog posts from the middle downwards, then skip back up to the top. The first line of this post was “It’s like logging on to Spotify…” which got me going on the rest.

You don’t even have to write a blog post. Compose an email to a friend, a shopping list, a Facebook status update. At least you’re writing.

Jump around

If the sitting down approach doesn’t work, try the moving around approach. Swimming does it for me. OK, I am in the privileged position of being a freelancer and I appreciate that pounding the pool isn’t possible during the day for many. Walk, run, scamper a bit. If you’re at home, pull up a few weeds so at least you’re getting a useful by-product. Thoughts can flow freely during exercise.

There’s always coffee

Or tea. Or juice. Let’s not go down the stereotypical creative-off-their-faces-on-caffeine thing. It can be part of a comforting ritual (Stephen King always starts with a nice cuppa. I like the juxtaposition of the cosiest of drinks and the scariest of creative imaginations), or a break from the screen. I think what I’m trying to say here is don’t neglect your bodily needs. Don’t stare at your paper so hard that your eyes bulge and you break into a sweat.

Go with distraction

Read the news. Scroll through Facebook. See what’s trending. It could be a total waste of time – or an item could catch your imagination, and whoosh, off you go. As I said last week in my blog blog, try Google News for your specific subject and see what’s out there today that you can bounce off. Even Homes Under the Hammer may prove fruitful (Next week’s blog – literal songs for background music).

Come back again later

Do the mental equivalent of switching it off and on again. Give your thoughts time. Unless you have a deadline – and we’re talking about blogging here, not copy for tomorrow’s broadsheets – accept that it’s just not happening, and shelve it for another time. There may be a good reason why you have writer’s block (tiredness for example), so be nice to yourself and stop trying to force it.

Write a blog about writer’s block.

Damn. Gave myself away there…

 

 

Here are a few of the (many) articles on writer’s block that inspired this piece. The short BBC film is worth a look.

http://boostblogtraffic.com/writers-block/

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/booknews/11147203/How-to-cure-writers-block.html

http://www.bbc.co.uk/writersroom/be-inspired/dealing-with-writers-block

http://www.theguardian.com/books/shortcuts/2013/may/13/dan-brown-authors-writers-block

 

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Look after your blog (and it will look after you)

A blog is a commitment. It’s not just an extra page on your website that you get ready for launch date; it’s like a houseplant (I was going to say “puppy” but that metaphor rapidly gets a bit grim) that needs regular attention or it will dry up and fade away. Like a houseplant, it’s not a major commitment (“puppy” really would have been pretty bad…), and not terribly difficult to look after; however neglect can have a detrimental effect on your whole living room. Who wants to look at a dead plant?

OK, this metaphor is definitely dead now too, but you get my point. A neglected blog can drag a whole website down. Not only will returning visitors wonder whether you’re still out there (“The hotel website is still blogging about Easter offers – do you think it’s closed down?”) but essentially, the search engines won’t be picking up on lovely fresh content, which is no good for your site at all.

So, how do you keep your blog lively, especially when you already have a whole conservatory’s worth of plants to take care of (sorry, sorry)? Here are some very simple suggestions…

Get your copywriter to do it

Well, what did you expect me to say?!  But seriously, a professional writer will commit to getting a post out there for you on pre-agreed topics at regular intervals. Or, I will happily blog-sit for you if you are having a busy period/holiday/baby. This approach also gives you a lovely, polished post…

Use Google Alerts for inspiration

This also works for Facebook and Twitter posts. You can ask Google to let you know if anything newsworthy shows up about your subject. Alternatively, searching on Google News gets you a similar result. An easy way to find inspiration and keep your blog posts current.

Use it like a diary

Just write about what you’re up to. A new dish in your café, a refurbished hotel room, an exciting new product launch… It’s all stuff of interest to your users. Involve “real life” if it’s a family business.  Quick and easy, and posts do not have to be long – they can just be based around a photograph if that suits you.

Get those posts stacked up…

If you have a free day, and know you’re about to be busy, write a bunch of posts and publish them one-by-one over the next few weeks. I try to do this before school holidays (well, Christmas epic fail, but it is so worth doing if you can). How often you write a new blog post seems to be a vexed question. A quick search revealed several squillion opinions on this. Just be realistic. I aim for once a week, as I know I can fit this in.

Nurture your blog. Keep it well nourished and it will serve you well. Writing posts doesn’t have to be an onerous task – and remember (smiles charmingly and hopefully), you can always outsource it… (But I’m rubbish at looking after plants.)

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Breaking news – I don’t proofread Facebook posts

“I even worry about messaging you on Facebook”, said a friend. “I imagine you going through it and checking my grammar.” Eh? When did I become a scary, proofreading fascist? Is this how everybody feels? Will I end up a Billy-no-Facebook-friends? “Well, you have set yourself up as some sort of grammar expert”, said my mum, helpfully.

Yes OK, I can be picky – and as a copywriter, I should be. However, we all need to kick back sometimes, and well, use phrases like “kick back”. Of course, I am merciless if I encounter mistakes in anything formal. Typos or dodgy apostrophes on anything to do with education are definitely worth an indignant howl. I have been known to whisper “The menu is really badly written! Can we find somewhere else to eat?” which is probably taking it too far, but it does suggest a certain lack of professionalism and attention to detail (and always makes me worry that they may also be slack in their food hygiene…). I have told insurance companies, NHS departments and on one really stupid occasion HMRC that their standard letters are awful, which believe me, never, ever helps.

But – in everyday, informal life, does it really matter? If your friend understands your text or email, surely that’s enough? (But, older relatives, please learn how to use the punctuation bits for texting. It’s like reading code sometimes.) Writing is just a way of communicating, like speech – and we all use very different language depending on who we’re talking to. Stick me in a GP’s surgery or a school parents’ evening and I mysteriously start talking like Lady Mary. At work, I probably speak a bit more formally than I would to my friends. The rest of the time, I just talk like me.

Is writing the same?

The style I get asked to write in the most by clients is “friendly yet professional” (rarely the other way round, curiously). There remains a need for accuracy and (sorry) good grammar, but in these less formal days, businesses don’t necessarily want to write the Queen’s English. Blogging for work is always an interesting exercise in style, as it walks the line between appearing professional and general chattiness. It is possible to be both appealingly informal and relaxed and write clearly and correctly.

But unless you’re posting for Grammarly, don’t stress about your Facebook posts. They’re just the writing equivalent of putting on your sweatpants and eating crisps in front of the telly.

“You put “lol” in a text”, said A Relative accusingly. “How could you?”

“Easily. It’s my day off.”

 

 

 

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New year, new words…

I have just become aware of how I’ve naughtily neglected this blog over the last month. I have been letting down my readers, all three of them. Facebook keeps sending me messages about how my followers haven’t heard from me for a while. I’m sure they’ll cope; however, I still feel rather guilty.

I now have to explain this hiatus without sounding passive aggressive. Simply, I’ve had lots of work on, and what with Christmas and all that, something had to give.

All is calmer now. Work is still happily busy; but the pressure of being Father Christmas for two expectant littlies with near-impossible riders has gone, and I don’t have as much as a Christmas cake to inject anymore. Life is simpler. However four weeks ago, I was sitting at this very laptop, as yet another email requesting “completion before Christmas” pinged over, thinking “Why on earth do people need copy for Christmas???”

If I sold crackers for a living, it would make sense. Indeed, if I sold anything more tangible than words it would not be surprising. But why do people urgently need copy for Christmas?

Then, of course, I realised. It’s called New Year. New year, new business plan, new direction, new website, new copy. And as the site has to be populated with lots of lovely words prior to its January launch, the text is written in December. It all seemed very sensible when I thought about it.

It may be – gasp – the first week of 2015 already, but it’s hardly too late to get a nice, New(ish) Year launch for that fresh website or brochure. If you work in any form of tourism-related industry in particular, you’ll know that this is the time of year when people start browsing in search of cheering holiday plans. In other fields such as catering and retail, you may be having a quick post-festive breather – the perfect time to step back and look at your promotional material.

So, if you make any business-focussed New Year’s resolutions, cast your eyes over your website, leaflets, posters etc. Looked at in the cold, clear, mildly hung-over light of January, it’s easier to see what needs refreshing.

And a very happy 2015 to you all.

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Cyber Monday? Oh for goodness’ sake.

Well, following on from Black Friday, here’s a lovely cop-out of a blog post. We are heading towards the close of Cyber Monday, another retail marketing term that seems to be passing me by, but has caused a whole load of media excitement and spending frenzies.

“Cyber Monday” has no ambiguous or remotely interesting origin. It’s simply a marketing invention, and is a relatively young term, still being under ten. Unlike Black Friday, Cyber Monday encourages us to spend our hard-earned from the comfort of our homes, rather than going out and trampling fellow shoppers underfoot.

I realised how insane and insidious the whole naming shopping days has become when a friend said to me, “Sorry, I can’t come on the girls’ night out as it’s Crazy Tuesday”. Naturally in the current climate I genuinely assumed that Crazy Tuesday was a thing. A thing involving Christmas and spending, probably. Of course, it’s not a thing at all; she’s just having a really busy day.

Tomorrow I gather it will actually be Giving Tuesday (yes, really), which is meant to kick-start the generous spirit of Christmas by encouraging charitable donations. Having kicked our neighbours out of the way to grab the last cut-price HDTV, we shall now in a moment of guilty clarity donate said TV to our local homeless shelter. Or not.

I’m just looking forward to Back-to-Normal Wednesday.

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What is this “Black Friday” thing anyway?

A few days ago, I started to receive some rather apocalyptic-sounding emails. Usually friendly types like Amazon and Argos were warning me that “Black Friday” was approaching. How menacing. Or maybe it’s something more benign, like dress-down-Friday for Goths?

“Black Friday” was until (surprisingly very) recently an American Thing. Full of turkey and goodwill following Thanksgiving, the US population make the most of their second day off, and flock en masse to the mall. The shops respond by offering seemingly incredible discounts. But by now, we all know this.

What naturally interested me (apart from any reduced Lego or Frozen dresses) is the term. “Black Friday” – doesn’t sound very jolly or make me think of merry shopping sprees. Wikipedia offers a few different origins. The day after Thanksgiving marked the start of the festive shopping season – we’re all familiar with the concept of “One festival is over, let’s start pushing the next one!” One explanation of the term is that it was coined by the Philadelphia police in 1969 – a description of the chaos caused by an entire city all trying to shop at once.  The term spread across the States and more recently, worldwide.

In the 1980s (when else?) the term was given a more positive commercial derivation – the day when retailers go “into the black”, i.e., make a profit. Can’t argue with that.

But a new derivation caused controversy yesterday when basketball player J R Smith stated “’Black Friday’ stemmed from slavery. It was the day after Thanksgiving when slave traders would sell slaves for a discount to assist plantation owners with chores for the upcoming winter (cutting and stacking fire wood, winter-proofing).” He was met with howls of derision and indignation for historical inaccuracy. He removed the post.

I’m now off to prune the many emails I’ve received offering “Black Friday Deals”. The term that originally referred to the congestion caused by vast volumes of consumers hitting the shops is now clogging up my inbox, not the streets. As Christmas shopping becomes an increasingly remote activity, “Black Friday” will become an even more esoteric – and completely inappropriate – phrase.

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Friday_(shopping)

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-25110953

http://www.nydailynews.com/sports/basketball/knicks/smith-links-black-friday-slavery-instagram-article-1.2024498

 

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The distracted copywriter

It has been a week of distractions. Distraction is part of life for the freelancer. It can be one of the pleasures of working from home – but also one of the pitfalls. If I said I was never distracted while writing, I’d be lying, and everyone would know that I’m lying.

But – I have a job to do, deadlines to meet and clients to work for, so faffing about is not an option. I am lucky to have a job I enjoy, so I am genuinely motivated, but sometimes I need a few simple tricks to help me avoid distractions. They won’t work for every writer, but they do for me. Here’s how I get from A to B without visiting the rest of the alphabet on the way.

I switch off WiFi

Otherwise, that evil time-sink, Facebook, will take over. Few people have the iron will and capability to ignore the wonders of the internet. Do what you need to do, then switch it off.

I get my ducks in a row

I gather everything I need together at the start of my working session, so I’m not sending myself off on unnecessary errands every few minutes. Charged laptop, mobile, scrap paper and pen, bucket of coffee, diary… All here ready for me. (I may have written this post simply so I can use this phrase…)

I have breaks

It’s the “little of what you fancy” theory. If I have one biscuit, I will stick to one biscuit. If I deny myself biscuits, I will fantasise about them until my craving reaches a critical level. I will hunt them out and eat every man jack of them. It’s the same with time out from work. Ten minutes of sanctioned cat-wrangling, Amazon shopping, pootling in the garden – clears the head marvellously for the next procrastination-free work session.

I try not to do any housework

Harder than it sounds. When you work from home, it is very easy to go “Ooh, a cobweb!” and head off down a path of merry domesticity. I diarise cleaning the same way as I do work projects, and try not to hop too much between paid work and housework – with the end goal that if I work very hard, I may be able to buy a vacuum cleaner that actually sucks. Or a team of Downton-style footmen.

I will move into the attic

This is true, not just a creative’s hissy fit. In January, my desk is moving into the roof. Away from the phone, Homes Under the Hammer, hungry cats, the tyranny of family and the background squealing of My Little Pony, I shall be free to type away happily, free from all diversions. It will also be a long climb down to the fridge, which will help in other ways. If my style becomes a little Byronic as I embrace my new role as Mad Writer in the Attic, I’m sure it’ll calm down after a while.

The serious point here is, if you can, remove yourself to a space away from the distractions.

If I really have to, I embrace distraction

It doesn’t necessarily get the job done, but an interesting distraction provides plenty of writing material to store up. This week’s distractions have included a runaway cow being corralled by the police in my (ordinary, domestic) garden for ten long hours. That was pretty distracting – but one day I’ll probably get some mileage from it. I guess distractions come in different categories: useless (daytime telly) and potentially useful (bovine escapees).

Blogging of course, does not count…

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