web copy writing

Ginny Reddish, author of Letting Go Of The Words: Writing Web Content That Works, spoke at the Minnesota Interactive Marketing Association (MIMA) event this morning on website content. While I’m a copywriter specializing in writing copy and content for websites, I picked up some great pointers from her. She also reinforced a lot of my “beliefs” about copy and content on websites.

Ginny Redish is definitely a content ”evangelist.” which works for me because so am I. But enough blah, blah. Let’s take a look at her major points:

Writing copy for any marketing materials requires one thing over all others - if you want people to read, you have to lead.

There are two types of copywriting out there. There’s the typical “laundry list” style of copy writing where you tell people what you have and what is special about it. Great way to guarantee no one ever contacts you about your product or service.

Then there’s the other style of copywriting. This style of copywriting is written the way all great sales people speak to potential customers. Great sales people never start out telling people what they are selling. They start out by trying to identify what the customer is buying.

Headlines are the key to everything. Try an experiment. The next time you’re in the checkout line at your grocery store, notice if you scan the magazines conveniently placed right there by the checkout line.

You probably scan all of them. In fact, you probably read the headlines and mini-headlines before you bother to look at the name of the magazine.

Some of the headlines make you laugh, some get you curious, and some might even make you pick up the magazine and thumb through it or toss it onto the moving belt along with the veges and ice cream.

Getting more content on your web site is a great way to get more traffic to your web site. The search engines love it and it gives people a reason to visit again and again. You can also use the content or articles to steer people to some of your products or services.

The tough question is always, how do you get content if you aren’t a writer?

Well, I just got an interesting “request for quote” from my web site yesterday. an attorney contacted me wanting to know if I would be willing to swap writing articles for his web site in exchange for him creating a will for me.

 The problem with success is that you no longer have time to work on your own “stuff”. if you’re working on marketing and sales, you aren’t getting client work done. And when things are hopping, you’re too busy working on client projects to bother with marketing.

To put it bluntly, you know the old saying, “do as I say, not as I do”? I am as guilty of that as anyone. I have a whole slew of articles on my website on every subject imaginable when it comes to writing copy or search engine optimization. But are they properly optimized for the search engines? No.

When you decide to create new copy for your website, the best resource to start with is your best sales people. Websites should never have marketing copy or hype. Instead, you should be communicating with your website visitor like you would if you went on a scheduled sales call.

People never visit a business website because they’re just browsing. They are searching for something and should be treated like a prospect who’s already interested. They just want to know if you understand their need and can solve it. Period.