The Copywriter’s Challenge

I love to write and have ever since I was a little girl. Writing for pleasure is a whole different ballgame from writing for a living. When you write for yourself, you get to be yourself and express yourself in ways in which you are very comfortable. But writing for a client is a whole different ballgame. In  order to be effective you have to capture your client’s voice and, in essence, speak another language.

So what’s a copywriter to do to make their task a bit easier? I really appreciate when people give me a sample of their writing. It doesn’t have to be a short story or anything particularly long. Samples of emails, blog posts or other short pieces allows the writer (or me at least) to get an idea of the client’s speaking style — what words they like to use, how they use punctuation, any catchphrases that they are known by, things like that.

Another way to capture another person’s style is to listen to the way that they speak. Setup a telephone appointment to speak with your client. During your conversation jot down notes on anything that you might be able to incorporate in the copy that you will create. In my ideal world, the client will spend at least fifteen minutes speaking with me. During that time I get to ask questions about phrases that I might want to use in their copy. I’m able to include colloquialisms, regional slang (if the person likes to portray themselves as a Regular Joe) and other tidbits to help create an authentic work that reflects the values and style of the client.

As a copywriter/ghostwriter our job is to be invisible to the reader and as accurate as possible to the client’s voice.  The time spent between a copywriter and a client will enhance the work that will be written. And all of this knowledge will make it possible for the writer to get the job done more quickly, with fewer revisions and a lot more productive for everyone too!

What exactly IS SEO (Search Engine Optimization)?

Search Engine Optimization or SEO as it is more commonly known, is the process of improving the volume and quality of your website traffic through “natural” or “organic” searches.  This means FREE traffic for you!

Now, obviously, the better your ranking in the search engines, the more likely you will get traffic.  Everyone’s goal is to get on the first page of Google.  But how is that possible? 

The key to achieving SEO is keyword research.  

Think of keyword research like determining your target audience.  You need to be specific – VERY specific.   This means that you need to determine a long-tail keyword.   A long-tail keyword is made up of at least 3 words, to help narrow the search. 

For example, if you Google the term, “virtual assistant”, there are 13.4 million entries.  However, if you Google the term, “virtual assistant, marketing”, the search narrows to only 1.3 million.  And, to go one step further, if you Google the term, “virtual assistant, real estate marketing, the search is now only 581,000.

So, as you can see, the benefit of the long-tail keyword is that you get highly targeted traffic, with less competition.  This means that the person who Googled for that term is looking for that specific service, and he/she is more likely to find what they need. 

Now that you have determined the long-tail keyword you want to focus on, you need to do three things in a blog post:

1. Include it in the title
2. Use the long-tail keyword in the body of your blog post
3. Add a link with that keyword phrase  (within your blog post)

Why is this important?

Each night, the search engine “spiders” go crawling around the web for new content.  The spiders look to blogs as one of the first places for new content since it can be updated regularly.  When you have your long-tail keyword phrase in the title and body of your post it is given a higher authority (more points).  Then, when you include a link with that phrase, it is given more points for a high quality link.  All these “points” add up and help you achieve a higher ranking in the search engines.

Now, you are one step closer to first spot in Google!

Your Vote Counts – VA of the month- February 2010

VA of the Month February 2010

The one book that may change your life

How many books do you think you’ve read in your life?  How many books do you think you’ve read  that have actually changed your life?  I’ve read quite a few in my life and I can honestly say that I’ve never read a book that has change my total outlook on life like the one I just finished reading. It was recommended to me by my coach and within the first chapter I had this gut feeling that this was the book I’ve been looking for my entire life. I’m completely aware of how ridiculous this sounds because if I was reading this right now I would be thinking, “Ok sure, are you going to sell me Avon now?”

All I have to say is this, have you ever read a self help book, been motivated to make a change in your life, and it didn’t last long term?  Me too.  I used to feel like a failure. I would read a book, commit to myself to make a change, and then later reflect back about a goal I never met.  I consider myself some one of the above the average intelligence, but making a change was really hard, and I never understood why.  Especially if it was something I wanted to do and it wasn’t something that someone else was pushing on to me.  Take weight loss for example.  This has been something that I’ve struggled with for a very long time.  I quit smoking three years ago put on 70 pounds, and have yet to take it off.  Do I want to take it off?  You bet!  So why don’t I?  I did know, and without knowing you were only left to draw your own conclusions.  I will tell you my own conclusions were not very nice, they weren’t inspiring, they weren’t uplifting, and I once had a friend tell me to please be nicer to her friend Diane.  It wasn’t just with weight loss it  was with anything I was trying to make a change of in my life, maybe I wanted to become more organized, get to work earlier, remember to send cards out to people, spend more time with my girlfriends, take my child to the park more, it didn’t matter what was I was trying to do – sometimes it would work and the changes would take effect and sometimes it wouldn’t.  There was no rhyme or reason, I couldn’t figure it out.

There are those people in everyone’s life whom just see more lucky.  It seems everything they touch turns to gold.  I wondered what was different about those people than me.  Why did I have to work so much harder for things?  Why did some things I try turned the junk instead of gold?  Why did these people seem to just have it so much easier?

If you’ve ever felt like this or wondered any of these things I urge you to read the book What to say when you talk to yourself by Shad Helmstetter.  This book answered all those questions for me and so much more.  It took away my guilt and it made me feel like this year is the year that I make the lasting change in my life that I want.  This is the year that I will be able to create the life that I want.  I’ve heard of the law of attraction, I’ve studied it, I even have clients the teach it. This isn’t that. This was the first thing for me that really make complete 100% sense.  It doesn’t seem like magical thinking more wishful thinking or even just positive thoughts – although it does talk about positive thoughts and he talks about why if you don’t do it correctly it won’t work.  So if you want a good read, and you want to start off the year really making a promise to yourself and making sure comes true, then I suggest you start with this book.  You’ll thank me later.