Can a copywriter really help you with business card creation?

You bet they can.

The humble business card is often seen just as a way of leaving your contact details with someone and therefore they rarely fulfil their potential. In reality the business card should be seen as a mini marketing tool.

Just as you’d carefully consider the contents of a brochure or website, the layout, contents, strapline and use of space on your business card is important if you are to create something that’s eye-catching and memorable.

All too often business cards are anonymous rectangles of card with a few words printed in them – instantly forgettable.

There are two sides to every story

Many people forget there are two sides to every business card. The space on the back can be utilised to show the services you offer, product images…

….or, as I have done, as a space to insert a photo of yourself. When networking you’re going to collect a lot of business cards so by adding your picture to yours it will help people remember you.

Plus, by listing the services I offer I avoid the conversation that goes along the lines of …

“Oh, I didn’t realise you did that as well. If I’d known I would have called you.”

The reverse side of your card can be used for many purposes:

• List of services (as above)
• Images of your products
• Your USP
• An offer
• Your picture
• Testimonials

I’m sure you can probably think of a few more.

Make an impact

Although many business cards are white that doesn’t mean that’s the only colour they can be. Utilising colour is another way of generating interest and getting your card (and you) remembered. Whether you go for something soothing and pastel or bold and vibrant, the colours you use can say a lot about your business.

The market you are aiming for will be reflected in your colour pallet – heritage colours (burgundy, dark green etc.) for the more serious professions (e.g. Solicitors, Accountants etc.), bright and vibrant colours for ‘cool’ businesses (e.g. Design agencies, IT etc.).  Of course that doesn’t mean to say you have to abide by that, I dare say there are many trendy accountants out there who would benefit from a bright, eye-catching business card design too.

Don’t be square

Just as you can play with the colour of your business card, why not play with the shape as well.

Just because most cards are rectangular that doesn’t mean that’s the way they have to be. Stand out from the crowd by using different dimensions or shapes:

Interactive cards

Be really quirky and have a business card you can fold into a card that stands up or even into a box shape. Maybe it has a slit in it to hold something – the pizza restaurant Zi Zi is very good at that. Your bill arrives slotted into a business card.

There are lots of ways you can use colour, shape and clever functions to get your card and you noticed.

Where does the freelance copywriter come into all of  this?

Well, we may not be designers, but we are very  good at coming up with straplines and succinct ways of putting your marketing message across.

This post was inspired by an entry I found on dailyblogggr.com. Here are the 36 brilliant examples of business card designs they identified. It’s amazing the impact such a small piece of card can have – they really can be a very powerful tool in  your marketing armoury.

As an SEO copywriter I hate word count. It’s counterproductive and here’s why.

Over the years I have worked on many SEO copywriting projects – some direct with businesses others for SEO web designers and companies.

Most clients realise I know quite a lot about SEO copywriting and in particular how it works. Many of the sites I write for rank on the front page of Google for their chosen keywords – not least my own website which is on the front page of Google for ‘copywriter’ (out of about 6 million results). So as SEO copywriters go, I’m pretty good – even if I do say so myself.

I’m not saying that my client’s success is solely down to me – that would be untrue – it plays a big part but other factors such as link building are also a major contributing factor.

Anyway, back to SEO copywriting.

Most clients give me a brief a list of keywords and then leave me to it because they know I’ll create copy that will not only help them rank well, but will also convert visitors into sales.

But some SEO companies and web designers I work for are fixated on word count. As far as I’m concerned…

Copy should be as long as it needs to be

Word Count Won’t Affect Your Rankings

There is no evidence whatsoever to support the thinking that more words will result in greater ranking success.

Despite this, I am still asked to produce a specific number of words per web page (usually in the realms of 500 to 600 words). It may well be that the project actually calls for that number of words but, if it doesn’t, imposing a limit on words plays havoc with my creativity.

Basically the copy has to be led by the product or service it is to sell. I’ve seen web pages with as few as 70 words that rank just as well as pages with 600+ words. 

If I have to write 700 words but the product or page subject matter only calls for 300, the remaining 400 words are just going to be padding. And that’s bad.

Every word on the web page has to be there for a reason - to sell. Plus you must think about your reader. Are they really going to be prepared to sit down and read your 600+ words? Probably not. For most people, if you haven’t convinced them within 200 words you’ve lost them.

So when you commission your copywriter, ask them to write fantastic SEO website copy that is interesting to the reader, sells the product and converts web traffic into sales and not a certain number of words. Because….

It’s the quality that counts

The effectiveness of the copy must be measured by its conversion rate.

It has to attract traffic (through SEO) and then convert those visitors into sales (through compelling and persuasive copy). Your web copy is there to target a specific audience. If it does it’s job, the traffic it brings will convert. After all, what’s the point of having 1000s of visitors a day to your website if your copy doesn’t convert them?

Why you need to know this

If you impose a strict word count you will either force your copywriter to pad with unnecessary words or they’ll have to ruthlessly cut their text which could seriously damage its impact. 

A good SEO copywriter will understand:

• Conversion
• Keyword usage
• The importance of tags
• The optimum places for keywords

Trust their judgement and leave them free to produce the copy for your website. They will naturally arrive at a word count that suits your product or service.

Whether you’ve fallen in love with social media or you’re still being a wall-flower not quite confident enough to dive in and give it a go, it really is a great way to market your business.

As more companies begin to get their head round it they are starting to embrace Twitter, Facebook, Google Wave and all the other weird and wonderful platforms out there.

Through trial and error they are beginning to work out which applications work best for them and their marketplace.

As they begin to engage with people they gather follower and fans but for some, converting those into customers is still a big issue.

Can you really get new customers through social media?

Yes you can – I’ve had several new clients enquire about my copywriting services and hire me to work with them through contact initially made through social media.

The key thing to remember is that just because you are using social media doesn’t mean customers will automatically come flooding to your door.

It doesn’t work like that.

As a business you have to follow customers across the social web engage with them and build a relationship with them.

I came across a blog post the other day that will help you achieve this. Convince and Convert’s “4 Detective tricks to find your customer in social media” will help you understand how to use social media as part of your business.

So don’t be that wall-flower. Dive in and enjoy the social media experience.

If you are a business owner looking to get into online marketing and, in particular, search engine optimisation, don’t forget to think local.

More and more people are searching for local companies through the search engines so it’s never been more important to ensure you have a strong local SEO presence on the web.

Many companies concentrate their SEO efforts on fairly generic terms that relate to their products and services but forget about their geographical details.

With the advent of increased and improved mobile search, it is vital you stand out in your local area. And the best way to do that is by utilising the power of local search.

Location, location, location

If your company covers a specific geographical location, make sure those details are added to your HTML through page titles. You should also try and use these details within your copy and headings but be sensible.

Remember you are first and foremost writing for your reader – if you over do it, the page will look clumsy. Other areas for location information are within the footer along with your address and also within your internal hypertext linking structure. Instead of linking freelance copywriter, use a geographical reference such as Suffolk freelance copywriter.

YouTube

You can also boost your online presence through marketing. Upload your video to YouTube and then use very localised tags – without being spammy. The chances are (depending on the competitiveness of your keywords) you’ll be able to get these ranked and the more entries you can get on a front page local search results, the fewer your competitors can have.

Wider areas

If your business covers several geographical areas you could consider creating specific landing pages for each area. They should have unique content (you don’t want to fall foul of the duplicate content trap) and optimised for each specific area. Hypertext links within these pages can then drive your visitors to your main website.

Boost your profile

Social networking sites make it easy to spread your business name to a wide audience. Set up social media profiles which relate to your geographical region. But, as with the landing page content, make sure each description is different. You should also utilise Google Places, Yahoo local, and Bing Local to boost your local profile.

Remember to always think local by adding location modifiers to your keywords.

Remember Wimbledon last year and that epic match between Mahut and Isner? It lasted an incredible 11 hours and 5 minutes in total with Isner eventually winning 6-4 3-6 6-7 7-6 70-68!

You’re probably wondering what Wimbledon, and that match in particular, has to do with SEO copywriting. Well hang in there and I’ll tell you.

Just like Isner, if you want to win with your SEO strategy you have to be in it for the long haul.

Many people still view their ‘SEO strategy’ as:

• Find a few keywords
• Get someone to build a website
• Stick some text on it which includes the keywords
• Bob’s your uncle, you’ll be on the front page of Google

That’s not how it works. If it was that easy we’d all be laughing.

To put a more scientific slant on this, here’s a simple equation to help you discover what it takes to success with your website’s SEO:

SEO friendly website + great SEO copy + back links + determination = great rankings

If you want to achieve great organic rankings you must:

• do great keyword research
• get a professional SEO copywriter to write your copy for you
• constantly build back links to your website (via blogs,articles etc.)
• review your analytics regularly to see your site’s performance
• regularly review your keywords

Basically it is a continual process. Is it hard work? Yes, it can be but when you consider how much money you’ll save (in relation to pay per click advertising etc.) it won’t seem so bad.

Great search engine results will reduce the need for other paid advertising. So what would you rather do? Spend a bit of time getting clients for nothing, or spend a shed load of cash on ineffective advertising?

The decision is yours. But I know which I would prefer.

As a freelance copywriter, I have used blogging as a way of promoting my business, my knowledge and to help other people out there who need a bit of help when it comes to copywriting, marketing and general social media issues.

But if you are coming to blogging without any experience the whole concept can seem quite daunting.

Blogging is great if you do it effectively – so what steps can you take to make sure you’re doing it right?

How to be an effective blogger

If you want to blog well, blog regularly.

It’s a bit like social media – the more you do it the more exposure you’ll get. How frequently you should blog will depend on your audience and your own time constraints. Some people blog daily (some even several times a day), but to be a success you have to find a frequency that suits you as it is vital you stick to it.

I run 2 blogs (this one and www.freelancecopywritersblog.com) so I post 5 times a week across the 2 of them. This fits in with the time I have available and provides regular content for my readers. But whatever you decide is right for you, stick to it. As you gather regular readers they will grow to expect your next ‘instalment’ so don’t disappoint them.

To help me stay on course, I tend to blog ahead and schedule the posts so if I have a ‘quiet’ day I can write several posts, upload them and schedule them for publication – this can save a lot of time.

Ideas factory

One of the most daunting aspects of blogging is coming up with a constant stream of new material. Here are a few tips to make sure those ideas keep flowing:

• keep a pad on your desk so when an idea comes to you, you can jot it down
• read other industry blogs and magazines to generate ideas
• comment on current affairs especially if you can tie them into your industry
• invite your readers to comment – you may get some spin off ideas from these
• write ‘how to articles’ and ‘top tips’ relating to what you do

Before you know it, you’ll have a stack of article ideas ready and waiting.

Why?

When you create a post make sure you know why you are writing it, it should have a purpose. Whether it’s to promote something through your writing, to start a discussion, or a way of attracting more business or trying to attract links.

Whatever it is, keep this in the forefront of your mind as you write.

Giving back

If you want people to read your posts you have to give them something in return.

The information has to be of value to them and try and keep your posts ‘on topic’. By that I mean make sure your blog deals with the same type of issues. For example this blog is all about copywriting tips, marketing tips, how to use social media marketing and SEO related issues. So when a post is published you, my readers, know roughly what genre it will be about.

Make your blog an encyclopaedia for your area of expertise.

Write simply and with love

The layout of your blog post is very important.

Begin with a catchy heading. It should be interesting enough to draw in your reader so arouse their curiosity. To help your SEO, get your keyword in there – so if you are writing about copywriting, try and get that into the heading if you can.

Next comes an image. You may not see that as important, but a good image will draw readers in. Use something playful, something that will pique their curiosity.

Then comes the hard part – writing an interesting and entertaining post. Make sure the body of your post is packed with useful information. You know the audience you are targeting and therefore you’ll know what they are looking for – so give to them in spades.

Break up the copy with sub headings to make it easier to read. And finally don’t let it go out with a fizzle; invite comments or add in a call to action (depending on what the aim of your post is).

So that’s how I go about blogging. What do you do? Do you have any other ideas to help out the new bloggers on the block? All contributions are welcome so why not share your thoughts with us?

Online marketers are obsessed about search engine optimisation.

There’s nothing wrong with that, after all they wouldn’t get anywhere without keywords, backlinks and a decent website structure. But by spending every waking hour worrying about them you could be missing the bigger picture.

Google analytics is vital if you want to know what’s going on on your website – where your traffic comes from and the behaviour of your visitors.

One of its key stats – even more important than where your visitors come from – is how effective your website is, i.e. its bounce rate.

What is bounce rate?

The bounce rate shows the percentage of visitors to your website that leave within the first 10 seconds. And that’s not good.

If visitors are leaving that soon it means they aren’t finding what they’re looking for. A site with a low bounce rate (say below 30%) will be a website that is converting its visitors into customers. A site with a bounce rate of 50% and higher is one that isn’t converting – it’s failing.

Factors affecting bounce rate

Traffic to your website comes from a number of different sources:

• organic search results
• backlinks from referral sites
• repeat visitors
• social bookmarking traffic

As a freelance copywriter it won’t come as any surprise that that is one of my keywords. So if people Google freelance copywriter they’ll find me.

But consider what would happen if I’d targeted a phrase like ‘marketing agency’. Many of the people who found my website that way would be looking for a company to deal with all their design and branding needs?

After landing on my home page they’d find great information about my freelance copywriting services but no mention of design or branding. The result would be that they would click away from my site which would lead to a high bounce rate.

But a high bounce rate might not caused by just your keywords. There are other factors that may be causing people to click away from you site:

• too much advertising
• videos and music – especially if they are on auto play
• navigation choices – too many and your visitors will get confused
• slow loading speed
• excessive jargon in your copy will be a huge turn off
• bad design

Check our your Google Analytics page now. If you see your bounce rate is high take a look at your site and compare it with the list above. Take another look at your keywords – are they really reflecting what your site is about?

Every business that uses the internet wants to get found.

So how do you do it?

Search engine optimisation is obviously a big part of online visibility one aspect of which is building back links.

What’s a back link?

The best way to get people to find your website is to have loads of arrows point to it – back links are arrows.

Look at the third sentence in this blog post. You can see there’s a link – search engine optimisation – which points you to a blog post on my other blog (www.freelancecopywritersblog.com) . If I were to write about being a copywriter who would be able to boost your businesses visibility and sales by producing eye-catching sales writing that inspires customers to buy, that is a link to my main website.

How do you get back links?

Encouraging people to link to your website takes work and requires the generation of a lot of high quality content. By providing great information regularly, people will want to link to you. Creating hints and tips in your chosen field will also help elevate you to expert status, and with that comes more links. 

But there are ways you can also generate links yourself.

Blogging and article marketing are two very effective ways of building back links, especially the most sought after type – the keyword hypertext link.  When you post an article and insert a keyword hypertext link into your text, you are effectively funnelling a bit of link juice to your website. That might sound a bit strange, but this is how it works:

Using an article site with a high Google Page Rank (e.g. ezinearticles) and you add a hypertext keyword links (a follow link as opposed to a no follow link), a little bit of page rank is also passed along the link. Therefore the more links like that, the higher your chances of increasing your own website’s page rank.

You can also generate back links by guest blogging, using social media and social networking sites. There are some sites out there that will let you create your own micro-site which gives you even more exposure. 

Although back links are very important to your SEO strategy, you mustn’t forget about the other elements of SEO – you must also consider your website’s structure and content.

As the diagram above illustrates all three elements are essential if you want your website to be found online.

But you must remember that SEO is an on-going process. Your strategy must be constantly reviews and tweaked to generate the most traffic and conversions possible.

Your competitors will be doing all of this, so if you stop you’ll gradually become invisible to online customers.