When the Client is Tone-Deaf

I recently had a client who ran a luxury linens company. Her product evoked luxuriousness, indulgence, and expense. Her target audience had more than enough extra income to spare. She needed a new website--and she loved the writing I did for a previous client. She wanted exactly the same thing on her site. The problem? That previous client was a rock band photographer. His writing was edgy and cool and pushed the envelope. Her business was totally different in nature and appealed to a totally different audience.

I wrote up something I felt was in keeping with her audience and product. She wrote back saying it wasn't edgy enough. Okay, but that's totally the wrong tone for the audience. What do you do in this situation? I'm a bit torn. I want the client to be happy. I want the project finished on time without endless revisions chasing an edgy tone that just doesn't match the subject matter. But I also want it to be appropriate.

So what do you do when the client is tone deaf? My first option is to rewrite everything (and it's a large project) with a crazy edginess that's totally inappropriate to the audience, but that makes her happy. Option two is to explain why I feel that's not a great idea (and that's presumably why she hired me, right? For my marketing expertise? Or maybe it was just for my ability to write edgy funny copy?) I'm hoping there's an option three, a middle ground where I can add a touch of edge here and there while keeping the tone consistent with the product and audience. But I'm not sure if there is a middle ground for this one.

Have you ever come across a situation like this before? What would you do?

Writing for College Credit? Do Your Homework First.

This one's for the college students.

Cruising the blogs yesterday, I found a post on Words on the Page detailing a sham job advertisement looking for students (it's always a bad sign when they're looking for students, isn't it?). The job post was from a start-up "online fashion community" and was looking for bloggers, forum moderators, article writers, e-blast writers, and such to "Develop strategies to motivate and engage our members to become an integral part of our online community"; "Support the expansion of our community with new features and member interaction"; "Write and moderate persuasive, effective and appropriate content for blogs with compelling topics and discussions" and perform other important-sounding tasks. The job wanted students who could commit to a six-month, UNPAID internship. The payoff? College credit.

You see a lot of these job ads for college credit lately. Often they're offering credit instead of payment. And so many students are willing to take these deals because the resume booster is more important to them than the money. But what many students don't realize (I didn't, back when I was a student) is that an employer can't just declare willy-nilly that it can grant you college credit instead of pay. That's up to your school. Here are a few things to keep in mind when looking into internships that offer credit.

Your college may not accept that experience as credit. Some colleges don't offer academic credit for internships at all. Others offer specific internship programs that pair students with approved employers. Generally, you don't get college credit for working with an employer outside that network. In other schools, the policy varies by department. Still others will award you credit, but they'll charge you for it. Overall, the knowledge you gain at the internship has to be of academic value to the school, and may need to be directly relevant to a certain course to justify credit. Be sure to talk to your department head before signing on to any internship program that claims to "offer" college credit. It can't, unless your college goes along with it.

Federal Law has a few things to say about the credit situation. According to Federal law, an intern can't do the same work as a regular employee, and the employer isn't allowed to get an immediate advantage from the work of the student. In other words, it's an arrangement that's supposed to have academic value for the student, not monetary value for the employer. Go to Lori's blog and read that job offer again. Does it sound like this one's breaking any Federal rules? Granted, a lot of legitimate credit internships do break those rules, but interns usually don't know to report them--and wouldn't if they did. This article from Slate has more info on Federal laws regarding college credit.

Be wary of start-ups offering credit. If I were looking for an internship now, I would not look for one with a start-up advertising on Craigslist. First of all, these people are not looking to offer an academically valuable experience to students. They are looking for full-time employees who will work for free. Your work will indeed be monetarily valuable to that company. If you want to be involved with the start-up experience, start your own business this summer instead of carrying someone else's--you won't get college credit for that either, but you might make some money. Second, that start-up looking for a six-month commitment may not even be around in six months. Third, nobody has heard of these companies--and it's doubtful they'll make it big later, especially if they don't even care enough to invest in real employees. They're not likely to give your resume much of a boost. If you want to work in online media, get an internship with an established site instead.

Don't fall for the "college credit" scam being peddled in so many online job offers. If you want an unpaid internship, go with a company that can actually offer you a prestigious-looking line on your resume--and make sure your university will grant you credit for it. If you don't, you may find yourself getting nothing at the end of your internship--no pay, no resume booster, and no credit.

What's Wrong With This Website?

Every so often, I get a prospective client asking for me to take a look at their site and let them know what I think can be done to improve the copy. To be honest, much of the time I have to know more about the business and the audience before I can give a thorough critique. However, there are a few common problems I see often with client-written website content, as well as brochures, newsletters, and pretty much anything else written by businesses for customers to read. Here are a few of the common signs you need a copy rewrite:

Lax spelling and grammar. This is hands-down the most common problem. I know I harp on this a lot, and a lot of copywriters will probably say it doesn't matter as much as other things. But I just can't let it go. I will repeat this until the day I die: bad writing makes you look bad. Period. End of sentence. If you screw up your punctuation, people will notice. If you don't put the apostrophe in the right place in your title, people will notice. If you think "you're" and "your" are interchangeable, people will notice. If you have a comma splice in the middle of your tagline (Subaru, take note), people will throw things at the television. You may think this is just me talking and I'm a grammar Nazi, but believe me--there are more of us out there than you realize.

Absolutely no awareness of the audience and their problems. Every website should have its visitors in mind--and every word should be about how the company solves their problems. So many companies don't mention their prospective clients' problems at all. You don't leave with any impression of how the product or company can benefit you. There is plenty of copy explaining who they are and what they do, but no "here's what's in it for you" moment. No mention of why this matters, of how this will make people's lives easier. Knowing your audience and their problems takes some market research--you can't guess on this--but it's worth it.

The assumption that people care about you. Nobody cares that you've won a slew of industry awards. People do care that your product will work better for them than the other guy's and will cost them less, too. Much of the time, website copy is all "we" and "us" and not much "you" at all.

Attempts to "sound like we know what we're talking about." Jargon should be avoided for most audiences. I've seen a lot of websites--particularly in more technical industries--where the writing is all about how smart the company is and how many big words they can cram into a single page. Much of the time, their audience isn't people with advanced degrees in the subject who can understand that jargon--it's middle managers with little technical skill who have to make the case to their bosses to buy this technical equipment--and who need to understand why the company needs it first.

Writers bring clarity to website copy. They tease out what's special about your product--why people should want it--and they explain it in the easiest, most compelling way possible. Good graphics are important in a good site, but without good writing, your snazzy website won't sell like it could.

Blog Plagiarism: A Close Call

I got an email last night from Melissa Donovan, who writes at Writing Forward. She alerted me to the fact that a blog called ProCopywriters had been posting articles from other blogs on its site, and that it may have done this with some of mine. I checked it out and didn't see any of my content on their site--but I was listed as a "contributor" among other blogs such as Copyblogger, Web Writing Info, and Freelance Switch.

There's a lively discussion about this going on at the Writers' Resource Center, where a lot of other bloggers complain that their content has appeared on the site without their permission. The owner of ProCopywriters, Jon Castleman, made an appearance and tried to explain himself. I wasn't crazy about his tone; he made a lot of condescending comments along the lines of "...not everyone here understands RSS" and "I thought that if you were a little more educated about what we were doing, you'd see it's to the benefit of both of us." But anyway, his reasoning was that:

a). Since all the blogs he uses as "contributors" had syndicated their content through RSS feeds, that means it is free for him to take.

b). Since he's lifting the content through an RSS feed and not through the actual website, it's not stealing.

c). Since he provided links back to the "contributor" sites, his use of others' content benefits the other sites as well.

I sent an email through the site asking that my name be removed as a contributor. I got an email back from Jon stating that they had begun the blog yesterday with the assumption that writers would appreciate their content being "syndicated" on his site. He seemed a bit surprised that he'd received so many emails from other writers asking that they be removed. Just to clear up any confusion over at ProCopywriter, I'm going to go through a list of reasons why other bloggers might object to their behavior.

They didn't ask permission. Okay, I admit--I've written guest posts for free and as a paid service, I've allowed my content to be syndicated, and once in a while I've allowed another site to use one of my posts or articles on their own site. But here's the thing, Jon: I was in control of where my content went. I gave permission. There are reasons why allowing others to publish my posts might conceivably help me; if Copyblogger, for example, loved one of my posts and just had to reprint it on their site, I might consider saying yes--despite the fact that the duplicate content issue might hurt me a little--just for the traffic and credibility that would bring. But I'd rather write an original post for them as a guest blogger. And if there isn't a compelling reason for me to let others publish my blog content, I won't do it. It's a pretty nasty surprise to find your hard work on someone else's site when you didn't agree to it.

They don't link to our sites--they link to our feeds. Jon claimed that linking back to our sites ought to show that he's in it to benefit the original writers as well as himself. But if you click on the link to my site under "contributors," you don't get my website--you get my RSS feed. This doesn't help my Technorati ranking, and Google doesn't count it as a link to my site either.

They use others' content to earn themselves advertising revenue. The Google Adwords on the left-hand column isn't paying into the accounts of the original writers, I'm sure. Jon, if you want to work out a revenue-sharing scheme with me whereby you publish my content and I get a healthy cut of the ad revenue, I might be up for it. But I'm not thrilled about my content earning someone else money without seeing a dime for myself. I didn't write all this just to earn ProCopywriter a buck.

It's not set up as a "syndicating news source"--it's set up as a blog. Go to the ProCopywriters website, and you won't see a big, obvious notice stating that all the content was written by other writers. The site refers to itself as a blog, not a syndicating news source that uses other people's blogs. Beneath the heading of each post, there's some very tiny, practically microscopic typing in grayed-out font that lists the name of the contributing website--but without a link. It looks like ProCopywriters wouldn't mind if visitors chose not to look at the fine print and assumed the content is their own.

They don't just post exerpts--they use entire posts. I have absolutely no problem with other bloggers quoting my work in their blogs and adding their own commentary. It stimulates discussion and generates traffic, and if I decide to continue the discussion on my own blog, I can link back and generate traffic for the other site in turn. But that's not what's happening here. ProCopywriters isn't using my blog posts to comment about some issue and continue an exchange that proves valuable for both blogs and readers. He's just posting other people's work in its entirety, with no commentary. He's not adding anything of value to the discussion.

RSS wasn't intended as a splogging tool. ProCopywriters seems to feel that because the content is syndicated, it's out there for anyone to post on their site--that's what RSS is for. But as far as I understand, RSS was created for people to subscribe privately to their favorite blogs--not to scrape content for their own websites. Feel free to correct me if I'm wrong, but it put me off that Castleman said others didn't understand the concept of RSS when he responded to criticism at the Writers' Resource forum. It seemed to me like he was the one who didn't understand.

Duplicate content can hurt the original writers. Google penalizes duplicate content sites by listing only one as the "source" site. The thing is, the "source" isn't determined by who posted the content first--I think it may actually be determined by whose site has a higher PageRank or something like that (SEO people, correct me if I'm wrong!). But there's a chance ProCopywriter's copy of my post might come up in search rankings--and mine won't show up at all. Not cool.

The whole thing reminds me of those bogus ads where the employer says he can't pay his writers, but they'll get lots and lots of "exposure." There seems to be a belief out there that writers really don't care about being paid; they just want to be famous. The ProCopywriters site doesn't exactly offer exposure I can't turn down--they don't even link directly to sites--and they don't seem to be familiar with the concept of royalties. If all the content we write is just available for anyone to use, how do these people--who are supposed to be professional writers themselves--suppose we make a living?

To his credit, Jon did remove my link from the site and told me in his email that he would not use my content. He also said that due to the responses from writers, they were going to consider rethinking their blogging strategy. That seems like a fine idea to me.

Making a Living Writing Online: Can it Be Done?

Over at Writing for the Web, I saw a question about whether or not it's actually possible to make a living writing online. I've seen this question in several freelance writing forums as well.

To answer: Yes, it can be done.

I make a living purely by writing for web-based clients. I do content articles, but that's only a small facet of my business. I also do print-quality articles for online journals, online landing pages and catalog copy, reports and ebooks, proofreading and editing, and even the odd resume-writing gig or radio script. I do this full-time. I rarely work over eight hours a day. I don't have any special advantages such as a trust fund or a supporting spouse. I'm not a millionaire, but I definitely make enough to cover the bills and have some fun. And I hardly ever pick up the phone.

Be willing to go low to get samples. Most clients have choices. When you're a beginner without samples or a track record, you're unlikely to earn lucrative work right away. Many established writers will tell you never, ever to work for free, use job bidding sites, or accept low rates. I advocate doing what works for you when you're starting out. Many beginning writers do free work for nonprofits, groups and religious organizations they belong to, or their present employers to get their start. I used Elance as a training ground, picking up diverse client projects and learning the ropes while getting paid--even if it wasn't always market rates. You shouldn't have to do this for long, but when you're a beginner, the samples are sometimes more important than the paycheck. Once you have a portfolio--and it doesn't have to be a huge one; three or four pieces is fine--you stand a much better chance of landing high-paying work.

Build a website. When you're planning to work primarily for online clients, it's absolutely essential to have a website. It doesn't have to be perfect, but it should look reasonably professional and show off your best samples. I customized a template to build my site. At some point I may hire a pro designer for an overhaul.

Don't let all those low bidders freak you out. On one writers' forum, I saw a post from someone who dismissed the field of web writing entirely because of all those content writers out there who offer dirt-cheap prices. But brick-and-mortar companies have Internet connections, too. Those dirt-cheap writers could be working for your local design shop just as easily as for affiliate marketers and SEO's.

So why don't offline writers go out of business entirely? Because the freelance writing market isn't driven by low prices alone, even though it sometimes looks that way. There are plenty of potential clients out there who know that you get one type of writing for dirt cheap, and you get an entirely different type for professional rates. Do good work and avoid markets that are geared toward the lowest bidder, and you'll definitely be able to compete.

Don't quit your day job. It can take a while to build up a thriving online business, and in the meantime you'll need to have at least enough savings to pay your bills for a year. I was covering my bills with writing income just a few months after quitting my day job, but I had already moonlighted for several years by that time. It's definitely smart to test the waters while holding on to your steady paycheck, at least for a year or two.

It's not a myth: you really can make a living writing online. Like any startup business, however, it takes time to build a solid base. You'll also be on your own for health insurance, retirement, and all those other extras you usually get through your job. The great thing about web writing is its flexibility--you don't have to be home to answer the office phone, and it's completely compatible with a full-time job. Test the waters first after hours, and make the leap when you have the savings and experience to improve your chances.

Promotional Language Must Die

I've been meaning to write about this for a while, ever since I saw this article over at the Copywriter's Crucible about how people ignore advertising when they read--but they do read the news. Apparently, people reading online have even less tolerance and attention for ads than readers of print magazines and newspapers.

I guess I just have one question: why is this a surprise?

Maybe I think more like a "consumer" than an advertiser, but when I think about my own behavior online, I have to admit: I never look at ads. I never click on sponsored links. Somebody must be, because there are plenty of people making money from PPC and text link ads. But I don't. And when I surf online I don't look at graphics much, either. If something is flashing at me, jumping up and down, or dancing the Cha-Cha in one corner of the screen, I know it's probably an ad--and I deliberately avoid looking at it.

Can Internet readers spot an ad a mile away? You betcha--if I'm not just a weird and completely unique example of my species, that is. But somehow I don't think I am. And I wonder what is it that makes marketers, graphic designers, and advertisers think that people will automatically stop and look at something they know is an ad? Do they do this themselves when they're surfing, for any reason other than professional curiosity? And why does it take an eyetracker study to figure this out? Why isn't it just common sense? It seems to me that if businesses stopped and asked themselves "would I watch/read/click on this ad by choice, if I was just a regular human being surfing the net?" before they sent a campaign off into the wide world, they'd make a lot more money.

So how does this apply to writers?

I found a fascinating article on a Nielsen study that looked at what type of writing gets the most attention online. They used several samples of writing that discussed the same topic in different ways. One was objective; it simply stated the facts. Another was promotional; it contained "exaggeration, subjective claims, and boasting." The samples were presented in long versions, short versions, scannable versions, and versions that mixed plain objectivity with subjective, promotional language.

The study found that objective language was 27% more effective at getting the message across than promotional language. Effectiveness went up when the language was concise and easy to scan. The study's conclusion states that readers take longer to process promotional language because of resistance: the copy makes a bold claim, and the reader thinks "yeah, right. You're just trying to sell me something." With objective language, readers simply accept what's said at face value.

The lesson: online readers can spot advertising embedded in text just as easily as if it were a big sparkly giraffe in the corner, dancing the tango.

This seems like common sense to me as well. I remember a few years ago I looked into AWAI, a company that sells correspondence courses on how to write sales letters. I asked about the company in a writers' forum, and some writers said the class was worth the money. There were many, however, who thought the classes were a scam. Not because they didn't like the product--most of them hadn't tried it--but because they didn't trust the sales copy on the website.

AWAI teaches how to write direct response. And their web copy is written in the same style. Click around their site, and you'll see a lot of claims that their classes will lead to working only two or three hours a month, making money hand over fist, and living in a mansion by the beach somewhere. I know that these sales letters are intended to hit the "emotional hot buttons" of people who visit the site--and hey, piles of cash, houses by the beach, and a two-hour work month sound great to me--but they were also causing a lot of distrust in people who may well have bought their product otherwise. People were thinking the claims were just too good to be true.

Meanwhile, I wrote an educational landing page for a client who sells water filters. The page discussed the health risks of chlorine vapor and the benefits of shower filters in a purely objective, informational tone. It doubled the conversion rate of his control. Why? I'd say it's because it increased readers' trust in him as a vendor.

I think that marketers, advertisers, and yes, even copywriters sometimes forget what an unpleasant feeling it is to be approached with a sales pitch. Walking out of my supermarket just a few hours ago, I saw a booth set up for a nonprofit looking for donations. I made the mistake of glancing over at the table as I walked past. Immediately the woman staffing it ran up to me and started talking very fast: "Hihowareyouwhydon'tyoucomeoverrealquickandcheckoutourwork!" I wasn't in a hurry, and I'm often willing to contribute to causes I believe in. But her approach turned me off so much that I couldn't get out of there fast enough.

It's like that in print and online, too. It can be easy to forget that the people we're trying to reach are just like us. They want real information that will help them make decisions and educate them about topics they're interested in. They don't think of themselves as "consumers" and they don't want their web-based info-seeking to be interrupted by intrusive, attention-grabbing ads or sales letters making far-fetched claims.

The bottom line: promotional language doesn't work on the web. But information sells.

How to Spot Web Clutter

The web is—let’s face it—a mess lately.

SEO’s and web marketers have been going around saying “content is king” ever since Google started giving more weight to inbound links. Good content is supposed to be the magic bullet: it brings in web traffic, it generates buzz, and it encourages people to link to you. Google is trying to select based on good content, but it’s giving rise to something else: web clutter.

Web clutter is badly written content that offers nothing of any real value to readers. It’s there to benefit the business alone. And most of the time, it doesn’t even do that. It just clutters up the web, jams up search results, and generally makes a mess.

So how do you know whether your content is valuable or clutter? I was looking around for mortgage information the other day and found a prime example of web clutter. It was written by an article-writing service that typically sells its articles for around $8 or so apiece. Great deal, right? Well, yeah…until you read the piece.

There were several clues that made this article look like web clutter:

Typos. Oh, where to start, where to start…how about “hme” instead of “home” on the first line? Or “dind” instead of “find” in the fifth? It looks like somebody forgot to run the spell-checker before taking this one live.

One of the first signs of web clutter is bad spelling and grammar. If the author couldn’t be bothered to catch basic typos, he definitely didn’t fact check. It’s unlikely any trustworthy information is to be found here.

Obvious keywords. The title was something like “California Home Mortgage Refinance Loan Tips.” It looks like the writer’s client simply gave him a certain keyword phrase and told him not to separate it, under any circumstances. Not only is this bad SEO practice; it also makes this article very obvious clutter.

This title is ungainly and a little nonsensical. Why are California home mortgages different than mortgages in, say, Arkansas? Is there a reason the California mortgage industry needs its own general article?

And is “home mortgage refinance loan” really the best way to state this idea? A better title would be something like “Refinancing Your Mortgage in Five Easy Steps: Tips From a California Mortgage Broker.” But then you wouldn’t be able to get the entire search phrase in there, unbroken.

That phrase, “California home mortgage refinance loan,” pops up a couple more times in the copy, each time sounding more awkward. My favorite part is when the article states that the featured broker could help you “with your California home mortgage refinance loan needs.”

Wouldn’t it be more clear and understandable if the writer had said “help you refinance your mortgage”? The author chose not to state it this way because he wanted to use the whole key phrase. If keywords and phrases make your title and copy more complicated than it needs to be, you’re clearly not writing with people in mind. Ergo: web clutter.

Shallow coverage. The last two problems are definitely symptoms of web clutter—they indicate nobody took much time in writing the article, and don’t care about the reader’s experience. But if you offer valuable information, most readers will forgive you. Shallow coverage is the worst part about this article in particular and web clutter in general.

This article is supposed to offer mortgage refinancing tips from a professional broker. You’d think that such a person would have in-depth knowledge to share, right? Well, maybe…but he wasn’t sharing it. His tips included: 1. Talk to a mortgage professional before picking a loan; 2. Research loans on the Internet; and 3. Get quotes from several different banks. No expert insight here.

Most people looking for info on mortgages probably knows this basic stuff already. They’re looking for more helpful advice. If the author clearly didn’t take time to think about what his readers might want to know before writing the article, it’s web clutter.

An obvious shill. It’s okay to put in a plug for your business when you write an article. But you have to earn the right to do that by offering something people need first: valuable information.

The article wasn’t very long, and nearly half was taken up by an appeal to go to a certain mortgage broker’s website and fill out a questionnaire. The piece is obviously not about helping people navigate the treacherous waters of home finance. It’s about getting a particular broker some search engine traffic off that one awkward key phrase. Valuable copy? No. Web clutter.

So why is this article web clutter and not good content? Because it isn’t helpful. Imagine a person in California doing a search online for tips on how to refinance a mortgage loan. They’re not looking for an opportunity to fill out a thirty-second survey. They’re looking for information. They want to know how they can negotiate the best interest rates, how to tell when to refinance, or who the best mortgage brokers are.

People who advocate this kind of article marketing will say that even though the article is bad, it generates traffic and gets the broker’s name out there. But will people want to hire him after the search engines direct them to this article? Probably not. He doesn’t come across as knowledgeable. His coverage of the topic is shallow, and even worse, his article is full of spelling mistakes. He doesn’t look competent, and it's doing him more harm than good.

The bottom line? Your article is web clutter if:

• It’s got careless grammar and spelling mistakes.
• The reader experience is sacrificed to accommodate awkward keywords or phrases.
• It doesn’t offer much useful information beyond the common-sense.
• It’s more concerned with promoting a business than with helping a reader.

How People Read Online

Common wisdom on web copywriting holds that people tend to skim web articles. Good web writing keeps things concise, breaks up paragraphs into small, easily-digestible bites, makes good use of lists and bullet points, and relies on bold-text headings to help readers skip to the most relevant info as quickly as possible.

There are plenty of studies backing this up. Jakob Nielson's 2006 eyetracking study states that in-depth reading of online text is rare. They've been finding the same results since 1997.

Here's where it gets interesting: a new Poynter eyetrack study has found that people actually read more online than they do in print. Overall, 63% of online news stories viewed during the study were actually read to the end. That's significantly higher than the number of stories read to completion in print: 40% for broadsheet and 36% for tabloid.

These results make intuitive sense to me when I think about how I read on the web. If I'm looking for specific information, I'll skip and scan. I'm definitely more likely to pay attention when paragraphs are small, and bold subheadings help. But when I'm interested in something, I read the whole thing--and it doesn't matter what the paragraphs look like.

I think these results are significant, too, because they might mean that people are getting more accustomed to reading online. So far online news sites and books haven't replaced print publications, mainly because most people still prefer reading in print. But it looks like that's changing. Will this mean the extinction of the print newspaper? The death of the book? World domination by Reuters Online?

Maybe it just means we have a little more freedom in our web writing than we realize. Maybe long articles with big blocks of text are okay, as long as the writing is compelling, the topic is interesting, and things are well organized. But I've been following common wisdom since my first stint as a web copywriter, and I'll probably continue to for the time being--the study results are still preliminary.

What do you think?