• The Age of Fake: Why Seeing and Reading Isn’t Believing

      It would seem that nothing is as it appears today. Magazines are regularly being hauled over the coals for airbrushing photos of celebrities to the point where their mothers would struggle to recognise them. Photo enhancing apps mean regular people (like you and me) can now retouch photos before uploading to Facebook or Instagram, […]

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  • Copywriting Ramblings and the Power of Random

      Will you indulge me for a moment? For over ten years I have been writing about every aspect of copywriting, marketing and social media I can think of. I’ve helped countless people improve their writing and find the writer (i.e. me) best able to help them achieve their aims. The one thing I’ve never […]

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  • Why Ignorance and Copywriting Go Hand in Hand

      Why should you go to the trouble of finding a copywriter who can create your content for you when you have a team of people already working with you? They all have the necessary basic qualifications for work and can write pretty well (some better than others). Granted, they’re often tied up with their […]

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  • Why Politicians Make Crap Copywriters

      You can’t escape politics these days. Elections are never-ending (rather like the DFS sale), and every news bulletin seems to include a couple of politicians flinging muck at each other. They (the politicians) complain that the public doesn’t engage with them – well that’s because they’re sick and tired of all the backbiting. It […]

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  • Let’s Face it. You’re Not Unique

    How to stand out when you don’t have a USP Every marketer (including me) says you have to highlight your USP (unique selling point) to make your reader understand why he or she should choose you. But I’ve been thinking about this a lot recently and conclude that very few business can honestly say they […]

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  • Why Aren’t People Reading Your Content?

      The simple answer to that question is because it bores the pants off them. Harsh words, but very true. Yes, you may well have spent hours labouring over your article. I’m sure it is incredibly well researched and has been proofread within an inch of its life, but that still doesn’t mean it’s interesting. […]

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  • Why You Don’t Need to Use a Copywriter With Experience in Your Industry to Get Great Copy

      Not only do you not need to use a copywriter who has experience in your industry to get great copy, but it’s also better if you don’t. Let me explain. If you were launching a brand new product to market and wanted the best field sales team possible, what would you look for in […]

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  • Why Your Content Shouldn’t Be Like Your Competitors’

      Before I launch into this particular post, I would just like to say that what I am about to talk about doesn’t happen very often. However, the fact that it happens at all compels me to write about it. What am I talking about? Copywriting briefs, or rather the lack of. The vast majority […]

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  • The Definition of Quality Content

      In your business you use content everywhere: editorials, marketing, PR, SEO, social media, website copy, blog posts, brochures, email marketing, newsletters, white papers, video, blah, blah, blah. And yet many of you are still writing it in-house, using juniors with no marketing experience, or subject matter experts that know their onions but struggle to […]

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  • What Should You Be Writing About?

      Search engine optimisation is the way to get your website noticed. You know that. But how do you generate the constant stream of high-quality content you need to attract links? Notice what I did there? I said that it is the content that must generate links. If you go out and (God forbid) buy […]

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