Bring in a professional writer to help your business thriveSo, it’s time to launch your company website. You want to put your best foot forward in the online world, so you’ve found a web designer to make sure it zings and you’ve chosen the platinum hosting service for all the additional bells and whistles that make the customer experience so satisfying. A brilliant graphic designer has brought your organisation’s logo to life and you’ve had a professional photographer show your products in their very best light. Now all you need to do is add a bit of text and you’re ready to go. And who knows more about who you are and what you do than the person who’s lived and breathed it for the past eighteen months? Do you really need to pay someone to write about the business you’ve built with your own two hands?
The simple answer is yes. While it might look like an unnecessary extra expense, bypassing the professionals at this crucial stage can very quickly negate the serious money you’ve already spent – and the same goes for newsletters, blog content, email marketing, online advertising, and just about any written content you put out into the world. Here’s why.
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Why your word choice might be costing you salesOne thing you will never find me doing is making blanket statements about the passive voice. In addition to copywriting, I’m a published novelist, and I know perfectly well that the passive voice is a respectable, functional and necessary element of the English language. There are some sentences that simply don’t work as intended in the active voice (“She was elected by over 50% of voters,” for example, transposes inelegantly from the passive), and I have little time for the kind of advice that suggests this particular construction should be avoided (see what I did there?) at all costs.
However. Copywriting is not like novel writing. There are crossover points, for sure – both involve telling a story, both strive to activate the reader’s imagination, and both involve evoking the reader’s senses in the service of an overall goal. But the key difference is that the goal of copywriting is to sell: an item, a service, a company, an idea. That’s where the passive voice makes things more complicated. Here’s why. Four things every website needsWebsite not converting? Try these four tipsIf you’ve ever stared in resignation at a woeful month’s website stats, you might be wondering if an online presence is actually worth the time and money. The short answer is yes – you definitely do, as several studies have shown. Websites build brand credibility, they increase your visibility and – unlike a Facebook page (which is very definitely an “as well as” and not an “instead of” when it comes to your online footprint) – you have control over metrics, algorithms and display format on your own site.
So, what can you do if your website doesn’t seem to be earning its keep? The answer is very likely that one or more of the key pages aren’t doing what you need them to do. And that’s not always as obvious as you might think… |
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