Recently, I read a Twitter thread that made me sit up and pay attention. The author used a series of short sentences punctuated by gifs to tell a great story.
Y’all. I have a wild story for you about the events I just witnessed at a yard sale but right now I have to cook this dinner so. Get ready. pic.twitter.com/Vbqie8f7UE
She hooked us in, built anticipation, illustrated every stage with cultural references and reactions until POW the gifs became the dialogue in the story.
https://giphy.com/embed/6wM4Zhs4h4PGovia GIPHY
Bob: “She said… she just had our baby. Baby girl.”
Anyone who has started a business or become self-employed will know the worry of generating income. Whatever field you’re in, growing your client base is your route to success and one of the main focuses when you open for business is finding new ones.
It’s who you know
Ask everyone you know for referrals.
There is a lot to be said for finding business through your existing contacts. The recommendation of a trusted intermediary is still one of the most important ways to build your client list. Whether you work your way through your phone list, send out a well-crafted email or set up coffees with everyone you know, make sure everyone knows what you do and that you’re open for business.
Get to know people
Networking events are a great way to find new business
Don’t scoff at signing up for a traditional networking event. Sites like eventbrite have calendars full of free or low-cost breakfasts, lunches and dinners where you can pitch yourself to local business owners. Many small businesses need to outsource services like copywriting, photography, social media management and website development. Perfect your elevator pitch, find your courage and get stuck in. Don’t forget your business cards and remember to smile – it really does make a difference.
Go global
Copywriting is ideal for a remote freelance worker. So far, I have found clients in Dubai, London, Turkey and Russia among others.
Freelancing sites like peopleperhour and upwork put businesses together with verified professionals for their one-off jobs and contract work. The jobs can come in from anywhere in the world. By opening yourself up to a global market, you may find your bottom line starts looking far healthier.
Getting your audience to click on your post is the first step to a new customer. They have engaged with your post. Then, ideally, the content makes them stay, shows them what you have to offer and encourages them to take a specific action. But that first step is key.
What made you click this time? Research by Nous showed that, for their audience, a cute cat picture often produces a higher click rate than something directly product-related. Think about what articles and posts you choose to click on when you’re on social media. Often we engage with something that’s funny, light-hearted, offering discounts, or giving free advice and tips.
The campaign goals, audience, brand tone of voice, and post topic determine the image. For a young international leisure market you may want something entirely different from a post targeted at senior business management or one pitched at a local community. Copywriters and designers have a range of options to choose from ranging from staged or real life photography, gifs and memes to infographics, diagrams and illustrations. Each has something different to offer.
Infographics
Infographics can bring a dry subject to life. Here is an infographic we designed to help an accountant engage their business audience with a key tax event.
Memes
You can see the difference when compared to the choice made for a currency trading app’s blog. This was reposted to Twitter, Facebook and Reddit where the eye-catching meme was used as a featured image to draw in the audience.
Poking fun at serious news engages audiences.
An appropriate featured image can encourage an audience to engage with a post and click through to your site. Where possible, we source ours from copyright-free sites so there are no cost or permission issues.
Once they’re on your site, well-written content then entertains them, reminds them about what services you offer, and directs them towards your campaign goal. If you would like to talk to one of our team about how Words by Page could provide regular, engaging content like this that could bring more people to your company and achieve your campaign goals, please complete the contact form below.
Facebook, Google, Twitter and others may like to call themselves tech companies and platforms, but the reality is they are the publishers and broadcasters of the twenty-first century. Corporate digital copywriters are writing and publishing articles online, mixing commentary on relevant topics with subtle marketing for our clients. While our work used to focus on adverts in magazines, newspapers and leaflets, now we reach audiences directly through blogs, tweets and articles. These catch the readers’ attention and keeps them coming back by using White Hat SEO focused on great content and well-targeted audiences.
Social media and search engines are now publishers and broadcasters.
An article in the Guardian echoes something I have thought for a long time about search engines and social media. They are publishers 2.0. and publishers have power. In the seventeenth century, the advent of the age of the printing press heralded a revolution in England. They swayed mass opinion and led to the establishment of the modern day Parliamentary democracy. This effect on public opinion has never been more clear than in the political events of 2016. Historians are likely to say that neither Brexit nor Trump would have happened without the fake news disseminated on Facebook, Twitter and other social media platforms. What is certainly true is that the votes were mostly won online.
Good SEO and target audiences are more effective than a wide net.
But what has been used for political gain can also be used to reach new audiences for products and services. In the past, writers, journalist and publishers were limited by geography and finding customers involved a fairly scatter-gun approach; be seen everywhere, drop through every letter box and hope you hit a receptive audience. This has changed. White Hat SEO, Facebook targeted audiences and other digital marketing techniques mean an article or blog post can be put in front of those people who are likely to be most interested in it for relatively little outlay.
The key is to make use of experienced copywriters and building up marketing campaigns to find each company’s ideal target audience. Some of our clients now have databases of thousands of people who have responded to their Facebook, website blog, Twitter and Reddit campaigns with interaction rates of more than 75% and emails captured. This audience engagement, if used well, is what leads to new customers.
As a writer for corporate clients, many of the companies I work with have strict regulations regarding what they can or can’t say in their marketing material. This applies as much online as in print. But by connecting their products and services to topics, events and news their customers are interested in, companies are able to reach potentially interested audiences in a way that hasn’t been possible before.
We are living through a revolution in publishing on a global scale that changes company marketing strategy as much as political campaigns. It can be very powerful when done well and those who are willing to embrace it and go on a learning journey with their digital presence have the opportunity to beat their competition to the punch.
Words by Page offers a free face-to-face* consultation analysing your existing digital presence and suggesting things you can do yourself to improve it.
* This offer is for companies based within three hours travel of our location on the south coast, including London. We also offer an online consultation for companies based across the country. The majority of our on-going clients are based in London and liaise with us using VOIP technology.
Our latest project is taking up a fair amount of company time and it won’t pay us a penny, but it’s worth every minute.
At Words by Page we believe in local, we believe in community, and we believe in putting our money where our mouths are. Words by Page supports the local Beaufort Community Centre donating time each month to the Committee, and now creating its updated digital presence.
Community projects like this are in dire need of professional skills, but the resources it would take to fund them could be better spent on benefitting underprivileged sections of the local population instead. When companies contribute skills and time, we can make a visible difference in our community. Luckily, more and more businesses and recently-retired feel the same and the Centre is beginning to receive the overhaul it so desperately needs.
Content marketing is a controversial, new and expanding field of marketing, which more and more businesses are becoming interested in. Companies like HomeServe have created entire online community sites, which don’t directly sell anything. These sites, operating like online magazines, have articles and posts about topics that may not be obviously related to the products the company sells. So what is the benefit?
Traditional advertising channels and ways of finding new customers are losing their value. Magazine and newspaper sales have dropped, directories like Yellow Pages and Thompson have become slimmer and slimmer, and TV habits have changed beyond recognition in many households. Potential customers may simply not see your product or service any more.
Companies are looking for new ways to create relationships with customers that will encourage them to associate their name with a wide range of positive attributes. The concept of thought leadership is becoming more central to marketing strategies as a link to brand awareness. Depending on the nature of your business, create a landing page or site which draws potential customers in and brings them back, may be the new way to generate leads.
But there is wide disagreement about the measurable value of content marketing like this with some traditional marketeers writing it off entirely as nothing more than online direct mail. And they may be right; it might not need its own name. But it seems like it could provide a conduit for companies to start reaching new customers on the net.
Clients want to be able to directly link the value of content to an increase in profits by tracking consumer interaction. Specialist companies are available who can measure a range of data: page views, click-through, likes, site visibility, SEO, and conversion rates amongst others. But none of this can tell you how much value that particular blog article has added or how much profit it generated.
To see the variety of possibilities, think of Paddy Power’s irreverent Tweets, Joe Wicks 30-second meal videos that took Facebook by storm early last year, and articles on sites like Mental Floss. They connect company names to content consumers want. You can call it Content Marketing or advertising. It doesn’t matter. What is clear is that when you directly connect your brand to entertaining engaging content, you increase the chances of that customer thinking of you when they need that service.
It’s the UK Budget this week, and businesses everywhere are watching and waiting.
Here is my latest blog post about the Budget written for my client Tiql – a trading app. Their audience appreciates their chosen smart, tongue-in-cheek style and images are key to catch attention, so I designed a meme to fit the topic.
Congratulations to our client TIQL on the enormous growth they’ve seen in their recent Facebook like campaign!
Chief Marketing Officer Mick Horgan has clearly got a talent for what he does as the targeted campaign has seen like figures jump a jaw-dropping 2,500% in one month. We were pleased to hear him putting part of the success of the campaign down to the engaging content they use in their boosted posts, along with the quality and quantity of eye-catching content on their site’s blog. Not that we had anything to do with that, of course. Oh, wait – that’s exactly what we did.
There’s nothing better for a content production company than hearing our work is helping clients achieve their goals and such fantastic results. Happy Friday everyone.
What a fantastic year! It truly exemplifies the idea that fortune favours the brave. Twelve months ago, Words by Page was born when Emma Page realised that the freelance work she had been doing since 2011 had reached a tipping point; either start turning down work or set the wheels in motion to create a business doing what she loved.
Since then, the company has developed from a thriving, burn-the-candle-at-both-ends, kitchen table enterprise to an incorporated business with a smart, purpose-built studio converted garden shed and expanding client base.
A great writing spot
Last month, we won new business with a fantastic social media agency providing blog posts, articles and Facebook advertisements for some of the agency’s financial and healthcare clients, and we’re looking forward to creating new relationships with other agencies and businesses in the New Year.
