Category Archives: Copywriting tips

Go Beyond Features and Benefits – Look for the Compelling Story

Features and benefits are the staples of any basic sales training course. The ability to differentiate between what something is and the benefits that its features deliver to the user is an essential foundation of all sales and marketing. But really effective online marketing does more than this. Effective online marketing uses the power of storytelling to evoke emotion and create a strong desire.

How does your online marketing make people feel?

Here’s an example.

Neverfade ™ is a paint for external woodwork that is guaranteed to last 15 years without becoming dull, losing its colour or flaking off. It can be painted over bare wood, existing paintwork or woodstain. It costs £100 for a 1 litre tin. How would somebody sell that to me?

I might be sceptical about the claims. Some technical details about the formulation, how it uses the latest polymer science developed by NASA scientists and so on will help deal with those concerns. But it’s still £100 a tin!

OK then – some benefits.

You will only have to repaint my window frames after 15-20 years. In the long run this is going to save money as you might otherwise have to buy 3 or 4 loads of primer, undercoat and topcoat in that time. The product will be saving you time and money over that period.

OK I see the point. But this is all a long way off. And you want £100 per tin today. And actually I might need 2 tins!

Now tell me a story that invites me to think of how I prefer to spend my time; up a wobbly ladder sanding down window frames, covered with dust, cleaning paintbrushes and the mind-numbing boredom of painting. Or playing golf, watching Exeter Chiefs or having a day out with family and friends. Take my mind to a happier place and I’m likely to be hitting Google to see where I can buy this stuff.

This is a simple example to make the point. I’m sure you can think of plenty of ways that you can apply this logic to your marketing. Don’t just tell people about the benefits – help them to feel the benefits.

Website content

Now think about your website content. Many smaller business websites I look at focus on features. Some of the better ones are clear about benefits. But hardly any use content that is focused on how people will feel as a result of using the product or service. I’m sure it’s no coincidence that I rarely meet small businesses who are totally satisfied with the contribution that their online marketing makes to their business results.

Content marketing

The evolution of content marketing takes story telling in marketing to a new level – you have so many stories to tell and so many opportunities to tell them. Your content strategy should be based around the challenges, concerns and interests of your target customers and these should always be the starting point for blog posts and other content.

Resist the temptation to make a direct sales pitch with a systematic explanation of how your offer addresses the customer’s issues. Take one of those issues and build a story that shows somebody that things can be different. Offer helpful advice and valuable insights that deepen understanding and encourage people to look at their issues in a different way. Above all, put a bit of your heart and soul into the content. Show that you care about your customers’ issues and that you are caring and thoughtful about what you do.

People and businesses now spend significant amounts of time online researching potential purchases before they part with their cash. So the quality of your online marketing content is becoming more critical to the success of your business. If you want to make the most of this opportunity then you need to invest in content that moves beyond ‘features and benefits’ and engages your audience by evoking feelings and emotions.

Note: Neverfade is not available in the shops or on line, because I made it up.

Image: danorbit. via Compfight

Richard Hussey, RSH Copywriting

Find out how to use written content to build trust and build sales. Call me on 01823 674167.

So What Exactly Is Persuasive Website Content?

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Website content needs to be persuasive. I know that sounds obvious – but is it really? How often do you read a website that really does a great job of persuading you to do something? And how many small business websites make a truly compelling case for their owners? So what is persuasive content and how can you go about creating it?

Is this your view of being persuasive?

mystuart via Compfight

Does your website content have a purpose?

Let’s start with the fundamentals. Do you know what it is you want people to do? This point applies to web pages, blog posts or any other piece of content you publish. If you’re not clear what you want people to do as a result of reading it, you can’t really be surprised when nothing happens. When you created your website, did you think through what action you wanted people to take after reading each page? Or did you just fill them all with information? The most basic part of being persuasive is being clear in your own mind about what you expect to happen.

Are YOU talking to ME?

To be persuaded people need to recognize that your content is targeted at them. Is your content built around their issues, challenges and aspirations? Are you painting verbal pictures that are familiar and using terminology they recognise? Will your target readers see immediately that the content of your web page is aimed at them? Start from the perspective of what people want and THEN explain how what you provide will help them get it. However clear the link appears to you, it may not be so obvious to a potential customer unless you explain it to them.

Take me to a better place

Persuasive website content takes people on a journey. Show them how they can get from where they are to where they want to be. Here’s a simple formula:

The vision: show me something I want and you’ve got my attention.
Understanding and empathy: remind me where I am so I can see you understand my needs, and remind me of all the reasons I need to have what you are offering. But don’t do this in a negative way (see below)
The journey: how your offer gets me from where I am to where I want to be.

Facts and stats

So, you are innovative and highly customer focused. Guess what – so is everyone else. Examples, facts and statistical evidence are convincing and persuasive, just saying you’re ‘the best’ doesn’t tell me anything. If you can quantify how much time or money you save your customers this is much more meaningful (and persuasive) than: ‘We help you drive down your costs’.

Never say never

People respond positively to positive words and positive mental images. If your content has a lot of sentences with words like ‘don’t’ and ‘never’ in them, see if you can rewrite them so that you talk about always doing the opposite. Focus on how good things could be rather than how rubbish they currently are.

‘Don’t show the wrinkles you propose to remove, but the face as it will appear. Your customers know all about the wrinkles.’ Claude Hopkins.

Get to the point

There are so many things you’d like to tell people; so many reasons why they should be doing business with you; and so many terrific things going on in your business. Find the things that matter most to your customers and focus on those. Once you’ve mapped out where your customers are (in a psychological sense) and identified ‘the better place’, take the shortest possible route to get them there. Be ruthless with your content – if it doesn’t help persuade somebody to do what you want then it shouldn’t be there. There’s nothing wrong with longer content, so long as it’s relevant and has a purpose. But be as concise and focused as possible.

elBidule via Compfight

Stop showing off

If you have a good story to tell and a genuinely persuasive argument, you don’t have to dress it up in fancy language. Are you shifting paradigms and being a game-changer? What are you really trying to say, and what impression do you really think you are creating? Straightforward language is easier to understand and just sounds more ‘honest’. If you have written a sentence for your website content that you couldn’t imagine yourself actually saying to somebody, you might want to reconsider.

What’s in it for me?

Here’s the question that visitors to your website will be asking. What benefit is there to me in reading this content and then following your call to action? If you have structured your content well and written it from the right perspective, with all the relevant facts and arguments, they shouldn’t need to spend too long working out the benefits and being persuaded to do what you intended.

Richard Hussey

I am a freelance B2B copywriter and content marketing specialist based in the South West. Call me on 01823 674167 to find out how I can help your business be more successful.

Words! They Really Do Matter – a Bit of Copywriting Advice

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Does your language connect with your audience?

I was writing some website content recently for a business that specializes in presentation skills training and wrote the following sentence:

‘Presentations that focus on what you want to say, rather than what the client wants to hear are doomed to failure.’

Having looked at it I rewrote it:

‘Success comes from focusing on what your client needs to hear rather than on what you want to say.’

Both express the same thought and you might not think there’s a big difference between them. But there are several reasons why I prefer the second version, and why I think it would be much more persuasive than the original. I’ll attempt to explain.

First, it’s shorter. This is always a good thing. People don’t like waffle so the fewer words you can use to get your point across the better.

Copywriting – accentuate the positive

The main difference, however, is focusing on the word ‘success’ rather than ‘failure’. Using positive language and positive mental images is so important. People make a connection between the language in your marketing, your brand, and ultimately about how you do business. Often this at a sub-conscious level, which is why words need to be chosen so carefully. One negatively expressed idea won’t kill your website – but a site that is consistently written from a positive viewpoint will be much more persuasive.

Another reason I prefer version 2 is that it puts the client at the beginning of the sentence rather than the end. Encouraging somebody to focus on the needs of their clients should be a good motivator for anyone who wants to grow their business

Note too, the subtle change from ‘what the client wants to hear’ to ‘what your client needs to hear’. In the context of the rest of the page, this is important. Part of the service being marketed is helping businesses to interpret their clients’ needs and to construct persuasive presentations that focus on answering those needs. ‘Needs’ implies a much more fundamental part of the decision making process than ‘wants’; and ‘your client’ is more engaging than ‘the client’.

Copywriting adds impact and value

This is just a small example of how a change in wording can alter the impact of a sentence and how a copywriter will make your content more engaging and more effective. To be honest, I didn’t analyse it to this extent at the time. I made the change because I wasn’t happy with the original and then moved on. Any good copywriter will be making this sort adjustment countless times as they create the content that will promote your business most effectively. That’s why big brands spend serious money on copywriting, rather than getting one of the team to knock out content when they’ve got a few spare minutes.

If any of this makes sense to you, then something you could usefully do now would be to take a look at your website content and other marketing material. Is the language positive and upbeat? Are you selling a vision of how things could be, or are you dwelling on the negatives? To use an example from Claude Hopkins, one of advertising’s pioneers, are you trying to sell face-cream with a picture of a wrinkled face?

If you do nothing else, at least look at your calls to action. If they start: ‘Why not’, or ‘Don’t hesitate’, please rewrite them.

image: Brett Sayer via Compfight

Richard Hussey

I’m the founder of RSH Copywriting based in Devon. I help smaller businesses use written content to win more business.

Website Content – 5 Questions You Should Ask About Your Home Page

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Your website home page is likely to be the first thing somebody sees when they reach your site – your shop window, if you like. You need to create a good first impression, give people a reason to ‘come in’ and help them get to where they need to go. That’s a lot to ask for one page. That’s why as a website content writer I often find that home pages take the longest to produce.

Poorly executed home pages are really setting your site up to fail at the first challenge so, if you’ve never given that much thought to yours, try these questions:

1. Does your home page make it clear what you do?

Sorry if this sounds a bit obvious but it’s amazing how often you have to wade through loads of website content about awards, history and other things that don’t matter that much to get to a simple, straightforward statement of what a company actually does. Take an honest look at yours – if you were an outsider reading the page for the first time, would you be able to grasp what you do immediately you land on the page?

2. Is it welcoming?

Department stores spend a lot of time and money on window displays – because they know this makes a difference to the number of people who decide to enter the shop. I’m the world’s worst ‘head down get it over with’ shopper, but even I get distracted by a creatively dressed shop window. If your home page is your shop window, would I stop or would I keep charging past? If your page is no more than a header image, some navigation buttons and a slab of text, is that really going to engage anyone? But don’t be tempted to be too clever or gimmicky. Rotating header images and Flash animations popping off all over the place may look clever, but are fundamentally just a distraction and, in my view, have no place in good website content.

3. Does it ‘explain the difference’?

Unless you’re very lucky there are other people who do what you do. But they won’t do it exactly the same way and there will be unique and compelling features of how you do business. Again, is the difference immediately apparent in your home page content – or do you just sound like all of your competitors?

4. Do people know where to find what they want?

Are you expecting people to work out for themselves which of the navigation buttons they need to click? Or do you make it blindingly obvious where people need to go to find the information that interests them? This is also an issue for the overall structure of your site and for planning your website content. If you have a diverse offering and work in different sectors, people need to be directed to their specific content without having to think too much about where it is. Plan your industry or service-specific pages carefully and provide easy to find links from the home page. Industry-specific images with the link can help people find their way around and give an instant visual clue that they are on a site that is relevant to them.

5. When they’ve finished reading the page, what next?

In planning your website content you should be clear about the actions you want people to take. Just make it clear what you expect. Keep your calls to action simple and super-easy to find. Bold buttons that say: ‘Click here for your on-line demo’; ‘Get a quote’; etc are hard to miss and impossible to misunderstand.

A lot of website content still seems to see the home page as ‘something that has to be there’ rather than a critical stage in the process of engaging customers. All the effort seems to go into the pages describing products and services. Not much point if nobody ever gets that far.

Richard Hussey, Owner, RSH Copywriting

Based in the South West I help smaller businesses achieve more from on-line marketing through engaging content and intelligent use of on-line publishing. See more: copywriter South West

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Blogging for Business Part 4 – Putting the HASSLE into Blogging

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If you’ve followed the first 3 parts of this series you will have set up your blogging site with all the tools for sharing, SEO and analysing your traffic. You’ll also have a list of great ideas for blog topics. Now you need to start writing. But what are the secrets to creating something that people will look forward to reading?

So, you’ve set up your blog – what now?

Martin Gommel via Compfight

If you think blogging is a hassle, let’s work with that thought. All copywriters love acronyms so here goes with HASSLE.

H – Headlines

It is impossible to overstate the importance of a headline in any piece of marketing copy. When you post your article to social media sites or email it to your customers and prospects, the headline will determine whether they click on the rest of the article. Aim for something that makes it clear that they should be interested, but also something slightly intriguing. Posing questions can work well, as long as it’s not something that people can answer with a simple yes or no.

‘List’ headings are a common ploy: ’5 reasons why you should be blogging’, ’10 mistakes that new bloggers make’, and so on. These work, but try not to overdo it as they are becoming very commonplace.

Often, I write headlines last. Sometimes they come in flash of inspiration and sometimes I sweat over them. Give them the effort and attention they deserve or your content may never get noticed.

You should also use your analytics data to see whether there are particular styles of headline that your readers prefer.

A – Angle or Approach

Every time you write a blog you will have a point that you want to get across. However, just stating that point does nothing to engage an audience or get them to think about how it might apply to them. You need an ‘angle’.

An example: I was writing a blog post recently on how to deliver better PowerPoint presentations. I could have just listed a whole load of do’s and don’ts and made the whole thing very preachy. Instead I started it by talking about using PowerPoint as a cure for insomnia. What I wanted was for people to be intrigued and to start thinking more about their own presentation style, wondering whether they are sending people to sleep rather than getting them to hang on every word.

Try to come at subjects from a slightly different angle. One that draws people in and makes them think about things in a different way.

S – Style

Something strange happens to people when you put a pen in their hand or sit them in front of a keyboard. They seem to be transported back to the classroom and start writing in a formal school essay style. A ‘natural’ writing style, perversely, doesn’t come naturally.

Here are my tips for sounding more natural:

Forget about grammar. People want blogs that are informal and easy to read. If anyone is sitting there marking your work out of 10 for grammar, they are probably people you don’t want to be around anyway.
When you’ve written something, ask yourself whether you would phrase it that way if you were speaking the words. If not, change them to what you would actually say.
Try dictating rather than writing.
If all that fails hire a copywriter to edit your words.

S – Story

Stories are important and are closely related to the point about angles and approaches above. For example, find topical issues as a way of introducing and illustrating the points you want to make. Stories about customers you have helped will naturally give similar customers something they can relate to. People like to read a story rather than a sermon.

L-Links

It’s always a good idea to plan the links that you want to put in a blog article. You might want to direct attention to other things you have written to achieve deeper engagement, or you might want to direct people to specific pages on your website. Links give you the opportunity to direct people to other places once you’ve grabbed their attention with your article. Links also mean that you can use carefully chosen anchor text to help your SEO.

L could also have been for length. Think about your poor readers and don’t expect them to read a 2000 word blog, unless it truly is fascinating and indispensable. Once I get past 700 words I start to wonder whether I should be splitting the content into two posts.

E – Engagement

This is the point of it all. Blogging is all about engaging an audience so always ask yourself the question: Would this engage me and make me want to find out more?

I hope you’ve enjoyed this series of articles and they’ve inspired you to give blogging a try. It might seem daunting at first but it really does get easier and more natural over time. I publish regular articles on blogging and content writing so sign up to my newsletter on my home page to stay in touch.

Richard Hussey

I am the founder of RSH Copywriting and support businesses in the South West to use written content to win new business.

Blogging for Business Part 1

Blogging for Business Part 2

Blogging for Business Part 3

How to Save Money on Website Development

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Planning a new website for your business? Here’s a way that you can save serious money on the development. If you already have a site you can also follow these tips to save you the time and cost of maintaining multiple pages of website content (you do maintain your content, don’t you?).

Website Content – are you wasting money with ineffective words?

William Warby via Compfight

A typical content plan for many of the websites I see would go something like this:

Home Page

Tell people what our business does and where we are.

About

Tell people when we were founded, how many staff we have, some of the clients we work for and how many awards we’ve won.

Services

Tell people what we do in a bit more detail. Perhaps some sub pages to go into even more detail about what we do in specific areas of our business or for specific clients.

Contact Details

A standard contact form for enquiries, phone, email and location details

AND HERE’S HOW YOU SAVE THE MONEY!

Cut out all the content that is of little interest and which your potential customers would already know. So your new website content plan looks like this:

Home page text: We are …… (insert, Accountants, Plumbers, Bottle Washers etc as appropriate).
Contact page: As above

Only two pages for your developer to create and hardly any content to maintain – simple!

‘That would never work’, I hear you say. And you’d probably be right. But then neither would the original content plan above. And my shorter version is significantly cheaper and might, at least, be memorable.

OK, and now the serious point.

‘How’ and ‘Why’, matter more than ‘What’. Unless you are offering something truly unique the scope of what you do will probably be quite familiar to your audience. Spell it out with a bullet list of services if you need to clarify it. What’s more interesting is why you do it and how you do it in a way that makes you stand out from your competition.

Say you are in the green energy business. If the sub-conscious message you are giving is: ’We saw a business opportunity from feed-in tarrifs so we set up a business’, how attractive is that to your customers? Compare this to: ‘We are passionate about the environment and delivering the benefits of sustainable green energy technologies to our customers.’

Or, if you’re an accountancy firm. Instead of telling people you can compile their company accounts, do their tax returns and so on, how about: ‘Your business is our passion, we use our expertise to help you maximise profits and achieve sustainable growth.’

Search for the Passion

I make no apology for using passion in both examples. Showing that you’re passionate about what you do, and how this passion brings real value to your customers is what will take a dull functional website into something that connects and persuades.

So, have a look at your existing site and see how much of it is just describing what you do, and how how much is showing why you are different and how much you care.

Richard Hussey is the founder of RSH Copywriting based in South West England. Find out more

What’s the Link Between the Hibu Share Price and Your Website Content?

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In case you don’t know, Hibu used to be called Yell. Back in 2007 its shares were selling for over £6 each. Today they are virtually worthless and the company is in urgent discussions with creditors about rescheduling debts. What’s this got to do with your website content? In a word: Google!

Don’t be fooled by the ducks. Google’s friendly off-beat image has helped it conquer the on-line search market

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Put simply, people increasingly go to Google when they are looking for products and services, rather than on-line directories. So if you want to be found on-line you’d better be playing by Google’s rules. And Google’s rules are increasingly about content: Is it original? Is it current? Is it being read? And do people value it?

Optimised website content

It’s easy to glaze over when people start talking about Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) – I know, I’ve seen it happen. Sometimes smaller businesses assume that it’s all highly technical and they’ll never understand it. Consequently, optimising website content for search engines becomes a task that gets put off for another day.

While SEO can get very technical, some aspects of it are more straightforward. As straightforward as understanding your customers, for example. Understanding what words somebody looking for your services is going to type into the Google search box is fundamental to getting your content noticed.

The more specific you can make your keywords, the more likely you are to rank highly in a search performed by somebody who is likely to buy from you.

Website Content – things to consider

If you are targeting specific market niches or locations – this is where you need to focus. Often there’s no point trying to optimise your content for the whole of the marketplace. You’ll probably just find many sites using similar combinations of keywords competing for the same ranking. An extreme example to illustrate: If you only want to sell small red chairs to people in Devon and Somerset, there is no point trying to optimise your content around ‘furniture’ or even just ‘chairs’.

If you have a broader range of products or target markets, you might need to split your content across several pages. That way each one can be targeted at specific types of customer and the searches they will be making. But never copy blocks of text between pages (to target different locations for example). Google does not like duplicated text. This also applies to content that is the same or similar to other people’s sites.

Optimising is not stuffing

Your content needs to be natural and readable. A keyword density of more than about 4% will count against you, so use keywords wisely. Also, if you have a combination of targeted keywords try to use them as a single phrase as close as possible to what you expect somebody to type into a search box. If you need some guidance, have a look at the Google Adwords tool which provides data based on the terms people are actually using for similar or related searches.

On-line content – keep it current

Playing by Google’s rules also means not letting your content stagnate. Google has programmes that crawl over your site trying to understand what it’s about and looking for when it was last updated. It makes an assumption that old content will be less interesting to users and relegates sites accordingly.

Google also wants to know whether people are reading and sharing your content. A blogging strategy based on things which interest your target audience is becoming essential for many businesses.

If achieving page 1 ranking is absolutely essential for your business it might well be worth considering hiring a reputable SEO consultant. But even without this expense there are many straightforward things you can do with your website content to improve the number of relevant visits it gets.

Google’s fundamental rule is that it wants to serve its users by returning search results that are relevant, useful and interesting. This could be a good place to start.

Website Content and Content Marketing Tips

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At the end of August I made a presentation to care providers in Plymouth aimed at helping them market themselves more effectively on-line. The presentation focused in website content and on-line marketing. Thanks to the excellent folks at Venus Training for arranging the seminar.

Website content: get found, engage, convert

The internet is a large and expanding entity. How will you get found?

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Following the presentation I put together 10 tips for more effective website content and a few reasons why ‘just having a website’ is not enough. Here they are:

10 Tips for Better Website Content

Write about the things that interest your customers, not about the things that interest you.
Make sure each page on your website has a clear purpose. Who is it aimed at? What do you need to tell them? What do you want them to do next?
Always find the most positive way of expressing your ideas – people respond to positive language.
Break up your website content, use sub-headings and bullet points to make it easy for people to find what they want.
Treat your home page like your shop window – give people some good reasons to come in!
Update your content regularly. This makes sure it evolves with your business and keeps Google happy.
Understand what motivates your customers and build your content around that.
Use simple, straightforward language and keep your sentences short.
Think about the tone and writing style that are most appropriate for your business and which will engage your target customers.
‘You’ is one of the most engaging words in the English language. Make sure your content talks more about ‘you’ (your customers) and not ‘we’.

Why Just Having a Website is not enough

Having a great looking website and filling it with mediocre or unfocused content represents a wasted investment and a missed opportunity.
The internet is a huge and expanding universe. How will you get found?
Google search rankings are increasingly determined by the quality of your content: how often it is accessed, bookmarked and shared.
A content strategy based on publishing regular, useful and well produced content, together with effective use of social media will have more impact than relying on traditional ways of optimising websites for search engines.
‘Content’ can be blog articles, videos, photos, infographics, or anything that your audience will find interesting.
A robust content strategy will help you reach new customers, engage them in your conversation, build trust, and win their business.

Get Found, Engage, Convert!

If you’d like help to get more from your internet presence give me a call on 01823 674167 or use the contact tab on the left.

We Need to Talk About You

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‘We’ and ‘you’, two very small words that make a massive difference to how well your website content connects with your customers.

Does your website content lock your customers out?

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Have you ever considered how welcoming your website is to visitors? The number of times you use the word ‘you’, as opposed to ‘we’ could be a good indication. Here’s the sort of website content you often see:

‘On-time deliveries, high performance standards and the approach of dealing with every project and every client uniquely puts us above the rest. We have a highly qualified team with hands on experience in all major web technologies and frameworks and offer solutions for all business requirements. Our custom web application development can automate procedures and improve business efficiency.’

While not terrible, this approach does miss a few opportunities. Here’s how it might appear when written from a customer’s perspective:

‘Your business needs and challenges are unique. We work closely with you to ensure your project meets those needs, is delivered on time, and delivers real value and meaningful results to your business. Our experts match your needs to the most appropriate web technologies and frameworks to deliver customised web applications dedicated to improving your business efficiency and results.’

This version says much the same thing but with a completely different focus.

Website content should be written for customers, not you

The main difference when you decide to use more ‘you’ and less ‘we’ is that you have to consider everything you write from the reader’s perspective. It naturally makes you more empathetic with your customers, ensuring that you consider their issues and challenges and find ways to match your services to those needs.

The alternative is that you write all about yourself and leave your potential customers to make the connection to their needs. Do you take the trouble to do this when reading other companies’ websites?

Does the focus of your website content reflect the focus of your business?

Too much ‘we’ might also give people the impression that you are internally focused. Too wrapped up in your own technology, processes and issues to have much time to focus on what your customers are looking for.

The thing to remember is that website content should be written to engage a specific readership – people or businesses likely to buy from you. If you are proud of what you do, naturally you want to tell people about it. Unfortunately, that’s not what people on the outside want to know about. They want to know how you are going to help them.

So, have a look at your website or blog and see how often you talk about ‘you’, and decide whether you need to talk a little less about ‘we’. If you’re not sure how to change it around there are plenty of professional copywriters who can help. You’ll be amazed at the difference it can make, not just to how your content comes across, but also to the business you get from your website.

Rocket Fuel or 2 Star – What’s Powering Your Website Content?

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JD Hancock via Compfight

All too often I find myself talking to business owners whose website has failed to live up to expectations. After a bit of discussion it usually becomes clear that the seeds of failure are in the website content and were sown early on. Typically there are two common ways that website content undermines the impact of small business websites.

Factor 1. DIY Content Creation

I fully understand why people decide to write their own content:

‘It’s an expense I can avoid when money is tight’

‘By the time I’ve explained it all to somebody, I might as well just write it myself’

‘This is a specialist business and I’m the best person to explain how it works.’

All I’ll say is that I have yet to meet somebody who hired a professional copywriter and didn’t think it was a great investment.

Factor 2. Where’s the Website Content Plan?

Often, the original envelope that the website content plan was written on is lost forever – if it ever existed. When you think that your website is your face to the world, something that potential customers will use to make a judgement about whether it’s worth doing business with you, it’s remarkable how little thought often goes in to what businesses want to say. If you’re thinking of creating a website, either for a new business or to replace your existing site, think about the following points.

‘Under Construction’ Pages are pointless.

If you want to establish a web presence quickly, at least put a bit of content up. A single page that says something about what you do and how people can contact you will buy you a little time while you do a proper job on the real website content.

What your Customers Want to Know

Do you understand my needs? Can you meet my needs? Can I trust you to deliver? What do you want me to do? That’s what potential customers are looking for and any content you plan to include needs to be focused on answering these questions. Your content may help customers develop their understanding of what their needs are, and certainly needs to show how you will add value to their life or business, but fundamentally people are interested in the four questions above. The final question often gets overlooked; don’t expect people to guess what you want them to do. If you want them to fill out a contact form, phone you or complete an on-line quotation form, make it clear.

Every Page has a Purpose

Take a sheet of paper. For each page you are proposing to have on your site, write statements for the following:

The purpose of this page is…
The page is aimed at the following segments of my target market…
My customers will be most interested in, and need to know…
As a result of reading this I want people to understand…
I now want people to…

How Many Pages?

On the one hand you don’t want a dozen pages with hardly any content, this can make navigation tiresome. On the other hand, people won’t scroll through loads of irrelevant stuff to get to the information they want. It’s a balance that needs careful planning. You also want to think about how people will search for your information and how you will optimise your content for search engines. The more diverse your offering and the more market niches you serve, the more pages you are likely to need. You can then optimise the content, page title and tags appropriately, based on the terms that your target customers will use for searches.

After the Site Is Launched – what then?

The final part of your plan needs to focus on how you will keep the site updated as your business evolves. How are you going to keep adding fresh, original content? Search Engine Optimisation is increasingly an ongoing process and not a one-off task. Keeping your site at the top of Google search rankings means you need a plan to keep your website content updated.

I recently heard content described as the fuel for your on-line marketing. Make sure your site is ready for lift-off with some careful planning and plenty of relevant content in the tank.

Website content

Content marketing

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Does your website content have a purpose?

Are YOU talking to ME?

Take me to a better place

Facts and stats

Never say never

Get to the point

Stop showing off

What’s in it for me?

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Copywriting – accentuate the positive

Copywriting adds impact and value

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1. Does your home page make it clear what you do?

2. Is it welcoming?

3. Does it ‘explain the difference’?

4. Do people know where to find what they want?

5. When they’ve finished reading the page, what next?

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H – Headlines

A – Angle or Approach

S – Style

S – Story

L-Links

E – Engagement

Home Page

About

Services

Contact Details

AND HERE’S HOW YOU SAVE THE MONEY!

OK, and now the serious point.

Search for the Passion

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Optimised website content

Website Content – things to consider

Optimising is not stuffing

On-line content – keep it current

10 Tips for Better Website Content

Why Just Having a Website is not enough

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Website content should be written for customers, not you

Does the focus of your website content reflect the focus of your business?

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Factor 1. DIY Content Creation

Factor 2. Where’s the Website Content Plan?

‘Under Construction’ Pages are pointless.

What your Customers Want to Know

Every Page has a Purpose

How Many Pages?

After the Site Is Launched – what then?