Copywriting

How to build a brand through subtraction.

Published on May 9, 2013 by Nick Usborne

As a small company or a freelancer it can be tough to build a brand from the ground up.

Yes, you can create a logo and a tagline within just a few days. But a brand is a lot more than simply a cool logo and a snappy tagline.

And, no, you can’t build a brand within just a few days, a few weeks or a few months even.

Your brand will grow and develop through a combination of your own efforts, and the ways in which your customers see and respond to you. You brand is as much a function of customer reaction as it is a creation of your own making.

For example, if you sell a great product, but your customer service is horrible, that horrible customer service will become part of your brand.

You take the first step in creating your brand through design and writing. After that, once it’s out there in the wild, your brand will evolve. It will get some support from some customers, and take some hits from others. Your job is to both develop your brand, and to protect it.

An easy way to improve every page of copy your write.

Published on May 2, 2013 by Nick Usborne

Wouldn’t it be nice if there was just one easy way to improve every single page of copy you wrote, regardless of the product or service you were trying to sell?

It turns out there is.

It works for homepages and sales pages. It also works for emails and newsletters. Product pages. Shopping carts. White Papers. Radio. TV. Direct mail. Whatever.

It works whether you are selling weight-loss products or industrial fasteners. It works whether you are selling vacations or dental services.

Best of all, it’s incredibly easy to include this “secret” in everything you write.

I’m not saying this little trick is all you need to know about copywriting. Nor am I saying its use will cure bad copy.

But it will help.

Here it is...

Monday Spark: Share your gift and prosper.

Published on April 22, 2013 by Nick Usborne

A while back I wrote a post about how copywriters are the rock stars of online business.

Put simply, ecommerce is driven by words. Without good copywriting, there are no sales.

If you have talent as an online copywriter or content writer, you are fortunate. These skills are a true gift.

Now let’s look at two very different ways in which you can use that gift.

First, you can focus on making as much money as possible. You know you have a skill companies need, and you can look for ways to maximize your fees and revenues. When you have something of great value, you can sell it at a premium price.

You trade your gift for cash.

But there is another way of looking at this, taking the meaning of the word “gift” a little more literally.

Look at your gift as something to be shared and passed on.

Published in Coaching, Copywriting, Monday Sparks
4 comments

Integrated social media: The next opportunity for online writers and copywriters.

Published on April 11, 2013 by Nick Usborne

Social media marketing is, thankfully, coming out of its trendy phase and moving into its business phase.

For those of us who have been online for a while, the trendiness of social media has been somewhat irritating. The web was social before the web even existed. In other words, the Internet was social before the first web browsers appeared. Back then we connected with one another through Listservs and the like. It was 100% social.

Services like MySpace, LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook didn’t invent social media. They simply made it more popular and improved its functionality.

Published in Copywriting, Freelancing, Social Media, Web Content, Writing for the Web
2 comments

Why copywriters are the rock stars of online business.

Published on March 28, 2013 by Nick Usborne

If you go back 15 years, when I started writing online, the rock stars of pretty much every website were the coders and the designers.

Writers? Not so much. Copywriters? Not at all.

Back then it was all about the technology and the look. I went to startup meetings where the coders and designers had been working on the site for weeks, or maybe months, and then came to me, almost as an afterthought, and asked me to add some words.

Sounds crazy, but it’s true.

And as you may recall, the internet crash of 2001 was caused in large part by hugely inflated values being attached to online businesses that really weren’t businesses at all. In other words, they didn’t make money. They just worked reasonable well, and looked good.

Published in Copywriting, Writing for the Web
2 comments