RECONSIDER OUTSOURCING IF YOU'RE A SERVICE BUSINESS

Source: http://www.flickr.com/photos/44313045@N08/6290270129/

As a service business owner, especially a solo, micro, or small service business owner, you are busy. Swamped. You barely have enough time to perform your service, let alone do your own clerical tasks and marketing. So you hire someone to do it for you. Outsourcing work that drains you or is a weakness for you is a great idea in almost every aspect of your business, except for at least one: writing your social media posts.

There are so many different ways for small service businesses to get involved in social media, it can be overwhelming. You may find yourself thinking that there is no way on this Earth you could possibly have enough time to do all of this social media marketing adequately. And you'd be right. So don't. Don't try to be active on every social media platform. Instead, pick a few on which to focus. If you're totally new to social media for your business, pick one to start with, get really good at it, and then add another outlet.

You may be tempted to outsource your social media marketing; although it might be a good idea to get some help with your planning and strategizing for social media, I believe it is not a good idea to outsource the actual posting or writing. If you are a service business, your business is essentially all you. To attract, gain, and keep clients, you need to build a relationship with them through trust and mutual connections. To do this, you need to be genuine and authentic; i.e. you need to be yourself. If someone else is posting on your social media outlets for you, you are not being yourself, so any trust or connection you build will be false. Besides, how embarrassing would it be to have someone comment on something you posted when they see you in person, but you have no idea what they're talking about?

Outsource your taxes, your bookkeeping, your office cleaning, and even your website building, but try to avoid outsourcing writing your social media posts. It's better to be small and authentic in social media than to be prolific but fake.

Happy Socializing!
-The Wordsy Woman

USING A CREATIVE WRITING FRAMEWORK TO DRAFT WRITTEN MARKETING MATERIALS

When leading creative writing workshops, I usually show the participants this graphic toward the beginning of class. It depicts my personal view of the creative writing process. This process can be applied to any type of writing, not just poetry, novels, and creative non-fiction. Let's say you have a marketing piece to write but you don't know where to start.

First, do some free writing. Get out a notebook and pen (or computer if that better suits you) and write down everything that pops into your head about what you want to say. Describe the ideal person who will read the piece. Where are they when they read it? What do you want them to think as they read it? Feel? What do you want them to do after they read it? Brainstorm as many ways as you can think of to convey the idea or message. Don't worry about grammar, punctuation, or even if it's written well. Just get everything in your head down on the paper or up on the computer screen.

As you write and re-read what you've written, you will start to formulate ideas. Do some additional free writing focused on these ideas about what form the writing should take (blog post, ad, article, etc.) and more specifically how to say it. As you can see from the diagram, this is a cyclic process. Writing leads to ideas which leads to more writing which leads to more ideas, etc. until you're ready to catapult down the line into the revision phase.

Think of the revision phase as the overall crafting of your piece. Put it in the form on which you've decided. Move things around, fix sentences, add in graphics, etc. You can also picture a cyclic arrow within this phase as you keep revising until it is almost just right. If you're working with a team or have someone you can share it with, go ahead and do it at this phase. You don't want to have them read it at the very end only to hear some great over-arching ideas for change.

Next is the editing phase. This is where you look at the piece on a sentence-by-sentence and word-by-word level to make sure there are no typos or errors. During this phase, you will want to read the piece out loud, at a minimum, or, if you can, have one or several people read it over for you to point out any errors you've missed.

Finally, is sharing. Post the blog. Run the ad. Publish the article, etc. And, like with creative writing, get started free writing for your next piece.

Want to learn another creative writing technique to help you connect with your target market (especially a service-based market)? Then click here to subscribe to my enewsletter and get my free report.

-The Wordsy Woman

USING CREATIVE WRITING IN MARKETING

As I've studied marketing on my own and while getting my MBA, I've been kind of amazed at how much crossover there is between writing things designed to try to sell a product or service and writing novels and poetry. I've taken many lessons from creative writing and applied them to writing for marketing purposes. Some of them include:

• Using all 5 senses to tell a compelling story
• Saying things succinctly
• Using fewer words for greater impact
• Defining a character (or target reader)
• Creating things with a beginning, a middle, and an end
• Using a leading hook to grab attention
• Increasing pace with short sentences
• Considering your audience or reader

These are just the few I could brainstorm at the moment. I'm sure there are more I haven't remembered - and some I haven't realized yet.

If you want to learn more about one of them - Using Creative Writing Techniques to Connect with Your Target Market - I have a free report and mini workbook available in exchange for signing up for my e-newsletter. Just click here to go my Business Words Enewsletter page and enter your email to subscribe. After that you'll get an email from my newsletter distribution service asking you to confirm your subscription; you'll receive the link to the report within an hour of getting the subscription confirmation email.

If you want to look at past issues or learn more, that information is on the Business Words Enewsletter page, too.

Happy Writing!
-The Wordsy Woman

WE'RE FLATTERED BY YOUR FAITH IN US, BUT...

We copywriters don't always have 100% complete information to finish our copy assignments. To address this, we'll leave notes embedded in the copy where we need additional details. We will usually try to point out the existence of these notes so it's important to review the copy to make sure there are no blanks or additional information to fill in. We are glad and flattered that you have so much faith in our abilities that you just send our copy onto the web designer or printer, but checking your copy carefully before sending it to said web designer or printer can help in avoiding embarrassing and potentially costly mistakes.

For example, I recently drafted some web copy for a local start-up business and I didn't know what email address they were going to use so I included a note like this: [Email:_________]. I had offered and expected an editing round so I was delighted they were happy with the first draft. However, when I looked at the website, they still had the blank in the copy. Who knows how many people who wanted to email them couldn't because of the blank that existed between the time they published the copy until I informed them of the oversight, but hopefully there weren't many.

I recently came across another similar mistake while I was on vacation. The note in the picture was included in the caption below a photograph in an interpretive sign at Big Bay Town Park on Madeline Island, one of the Apostle Islands located in Lake Superior. The note below the photograph's caption, as you can see, says "Keith, if you want to use this image, you need to get permission from MIHPA." I can only speculate that Keith sent this interpretive sign to the printers without reading it closely. Thus, the image was used with or without MIHPA's permission, but, regardless, with this working note from the copywriter to Keith.

The moral of the story: When you hire a copywriter, look over the words carefully before you "carve them in stone."

-The Wordsy Woman

HOW I WRITE WEBSITE COPY

Being succinct is never more important than it is when writing website copy. Visitors may be visiting a website on their smart phone or tablet or if they are viewing it on a large computer screen, they will most certainly soon be distracted by their smart phone or their tablet. When someone lands on a website, the copy, along with the graphics, has to catch their attention in a snap.

Websites should be content rich and changing frequently. They should provide value to visitors; when they leave, they must feel like they got something for their valuable time. The important information should be spotted immediately. Articles and other information-rich pieces should be short enough and simple enough to be skimmed through quickly. If the grey bar in the scroll bar on the right side of the page is small, there is too much copy. Visitors should never get a cramp scrolling down to your footer.

In summary, my philosophy regarding writing website copy is like this blog post, short, simple, to-the-point, and easy to understand. And, unlike this post, web copy should only be a part of the piece, links and graphics are integral, working with the copy to make an intriguing and engaging website.

-The Wordsy Woman