Web designers love to show off, and they love to share inspiring design. There are many sites that help designers share the good stuff, and I’m jealous!

When I want inspiration as a copywriter, where can I look? When I find fantastic copy, where can I share it?

Nowhere. Or so it seems.

So how about I set up a simple site, give you (as a copywriter) your own login details, and then we can fill the site with great copy!

Let’s spend more time complimenting great copy and less time criticising the bad stuff.

What do you think?

ADDENDENDENDUM: Following such a positive reaction to the idea, I set to work and created drivvel.com – a place to share and discover inspiring copy and content

Do you write copy?

Kendall Copywriting, in partnership with The Copy House, is looking for talented and experienced freelance writers – especially those who ‘get’ the web.

You can see our job ad on WiredSussex, but here’s the summary:

As a copywriting and content agency based in the centre of Brighton, we devote ourselves to creating finely crafted copy and content for major brands all over the UK.

As well as being a team of writers, we work with brand language consultants, content strategists and user experience specialists to make sure each piece of writing we produce is strategically sound, creatively endearing and forms a healthy part of the bigger picture.

Some of our end clients include YMCA Training, Fitness First, NHS, The Film Council and Unison Trade Union, as well as several London and Brighton design agencies.
Job description:

To build up our portfolio of writers for several upcoming projects in association with Kendallcopywriting.co.uk, we’re on the lookout for a set of exceptional individuals who have:

Over 3 years experience

• tried and tested method for getting to the heart of the story
• A down-to-earth and rigorous approach to writing
• A strong track record
• Savoir-faire for giving clients strategically targeted copy
• Hawk-eyes for the tiniest details

Skills Range:
We’re looking for:

• a content writer
• a content editor
• a content strategist
• a brand language specialist
• a concept and ad copywriter
• a web copywriter with strong UX awareness
• an SEO writer

I saw this van in Hove recently. So, ‘Hove Paints’… what do they do?

They probably don’t do painting, although they could do painting.

They probably sell paint. But what kind of paint? Is it paint for artists? Or paint for children? Is it paint for your living room? Or paint for factories? Do they sell to ordinary people? Or are they just a trade supplier?

If you’re going to create a mobile advert by painting your van, why not be clear about what you do, and who you do it for?

Love this example of an error message in real life. It’s a 404 page in the real world.

We accidentally put some glass beer bottles (some rather excellent Belgians if you’re interested), in amongst all the paper and plastic, so the curbside recycling collectors put some message tape over our recycling box, making us aware of the problem.

The nice thing is that it’s light-hearted. My wife and I spend ages cleaning, sorting and saving recyclables, so I appreciate the council not berating us for getting something wrong. Instead of making us feel stupid, we get a gentle reminder on the correct system:

The words you write on the web don’t carry much weight. Corporate web copy is littered with platitudes, boasts, claims and statements of ‘facts’ – all with questionable levels of truthiness. Because any company can claim to be:

• experts
• experienced
• creative
• enterprising
• this list could go on forever

the words are weak.

Great web copy gets beyond empty words and offers something tangible.

Don’t claim to be an expert in your field. Demonstrate your experience with copy that reveals your knowledge. Get down to details – talk of things that only the initiated know about. You don’t have to bore people with your technical prowess, just give them a hint of the expert knickers under your corporate skirt.

Your web copy is not the only way to reassure visitors that you really are experienced/creative/enterprising/expert. Make liberal use of testimonials, case studies and portfolio pieces to give proof. The imagery and design of your website is crucial in this respect.

Ask yourself how you can stand out from every other business that claims to be the best – how can you show that you’re the best?

Good copywriters will talk to you. They’ll ask you questions that will draw out useful information. They’ll be bloodhounds on the trail of wounded meat. They know what they’re after: the pieces of information that matter most to your clients. Once they’ve found it, the good copywriter retreats to his lair to write.

Great copywriters want to talk to your people. They know that you don’t know everything, so they want to talk to Jane in the stockroom, Greg in customer services and your most loyal customers. Great copywriters know that the best way to reveal the heart of your business – the heart that must be captured, contained and displayed on the web page – is to delve deep.

I’ve been hearing more and more talk about ‘content strategy’ recently. Unsure what it was, I went looking for answers.
I found:

What is Content Strategy?

Content strategy plans for the creation, publication, and governance of useful, usable content.

Necessarily, the content strategist must work to define not only which content will be published, but why we’re publishing it in the first place.

Otherwise, content strategy isn’t strategy at all: it’s just a glorified production line for content nobody really needs or wants

From: The Discipline of Content Strategy by Kristina Halvorson

I was hoping to discover an interesting new discipline, but I feel like I’ve just discovered a new way to describe copywriting.

More time passed, and I began to warm to content strategy.

Why? Because ‘copy’ is the most important but least respected part of the web. Web copy is often thrashed out at the last minute, after a hundred interaction designers, user experience designers, information architects, designers, developers and colour consultants have spent months refining their corner of the website – and that’s just plain stupid. Copy is neglected, but maybe it’s neglected because nobody has pushed a serious alternative – nobody has pushed a grown-up approach to producing copy.

Copy needs to be more than copy for it to be taken seriously. A copywriter needs to be more than just a rent-a-pen. There needs to be a method, a strategy, a process for producing amazing copy, and if content strategy can be all of that, then wonderful.

I look forward to learning more about content strategy.

Copywriters! It’s time to fight back against jargon. Who’s with me?

A battle-cry

We all know that good copy is concise, open and easy for everyone to understand. Good copy relies on captivating stories, clear messages and compelling benefits. Jargon and management-speak are not part of the good copywriter’s toolbox. A large part of a copywriter’s work involves detecting BS, stripping it from copy and replacing it with something real.

How do we fight the tide of jargon?

We know the perils of jargon, but how do we handle clients who love it?

I have clients who cannot bear to call their spades “spades”, because “spade” doesn’t sound sophisticated enough, or because (allegedly) the garden managers they sell to do not respond to such lowly language – these captains of industry must read of “soil-shifting leverage devices” – anything but “spade”.

I argue, I persuade, I persist. But however hard I try, some clients remain locked to their ideas, convinced that pseudo-smart fancy-pants copy is the best thing for their business.

Please help!

I want to know your secrets, your tactics and your tips for dealing with clients who love jargon. Do you cite evidence – perhaps a book or a blog post. Do you have stats? Is there a pie-chart I can lob at recalcitrant clients?

Copify is a new company that connects copywriters with content-wanters. So if you need a 500-word article on cat litter you can go to Copify and get a poorly-briefed stranger to churn out some generic words to fill your content hole.

Some copywriters are mildly outraged because Copify pays writers £0.02 – 0.08 per word. So writing that 500-word article on cat litter will earn you £10 – £40. If you spend 2-3 hours working on the article (I’m hoping you’ll research cat litter before you write…) you’ll earn as little as £3.30 per hour. Not a lot!

Having said all that, I don’t object to Copify. But I would never ever seek work from Copify and I would never recommend them to anyone as a source of content.

Copify fills a need. Some people need words. And they don’t really care which words you give them, because they want generic SEO-friendly filler content. Or backlink fodder. Either way they really don’t care about the words, or which order you put them in (so long as you meet their word count!).

Copify already exists in other shapes and sizes. Some agencies get trainee web designers to churn out content, while others pay students £10 per article. Guru and other freelance ‘job’ websites offer thousands of junk jobs that people are free to take if they have the time and the inclination to work for peanuts. And theoretically a super-fast writer could cut and paste some rubbish together in a few minutes and do quite well out of Copify, so who are we to stand in the way?

Services like Copify will not affect the business of professional copywriters because lots of people need professional copywriters, as opposed to a copy vending machine that spits out low-grade copy for stupidly-low prices.

Great blog post discussing the perils of paying copywriters per word