business writing: write today

Copywriting – not merely advertising, but all writing to persuade – needs to get a response. The only way to do that is to connect with your audience: you need to know how they think, and what they want.

Ask yourself questions:

1. What are your customers’ fears? What keeps them awake at night, and nags at them throughout the day?

2. What enrages and frustrates your customers? Step into your customers’ shoes, and try to feel what they’re feeling.

3. What dreams do your customers have? What are their goals? Do they have hot-buttons – trigger words which are used in their industry?

4. Competition: who competes with your customers? How can you help them to surpass their competition?

5. What will motivate your customers to act?

6. Have your customers ever been disappointed in the product or service you’re offering? How?

Thinking about these questions, and writing down some answers, will inspire your copy, and you’ll get the response you want because you’ve made a connection.

[tags]business writing, copywriting, response, persuasion, connection[/tags]

When you work for a small company, as the company’s designated business writer, sooner or later you’ll be asked to create online/ offline publicity push for a Web site revamp, or a product launch.

Not a problem. You can handle it, right? Of course you can. And you can handle it in a way which will ensure that your company keeps on getting media attention.

Start by creating a Media section on your company’s Web site

Like the proverbial diamonds, the Web is forever. I created a Web site in 1998 that I stopped hosting in 2001 but that site lingers on, like the ghost of Christmas Past, following me around online.

This is why you need to create an online media room – a place for your press releases, company backgrounders, and puff pieces about your management team. Few companies use their Media section to its full potential, but YOU can. If you develop a news release schedule of posting a couple of releases a month to your site – no need to post them anywhere else if you don’t want to – your company’s presence in the search engines will grow.

Add other material too: news about staff happenings, company coups, stock prices…

Soon journalists will pop by to see what all the noise is about. Hey presto – instant publicity. I know of one company hitting the New York Times, just on the strength of their site’s Media section. An Australian politician called his press conferences “feeding the chickens” – his insight was the the media need to be fed, regularly. Start feeding them today, you’ll be surprised at the difference it makes.

Add images – hire a pro photographer for a day

The media love images, and since Google bought YouTube, more companies are exploring video as a way of getting customers and attention.

Hire a professional photographer, and let him loose. This will beef up your site’s media section.

There are bound to be one or two shots which are exceptional: use these shots as the centerpieces of a couple of news releases you send out far and wide.

As time passes, your online media room will get more and more attention. Free publicity, just because you took the time to scatter some feed for the chickens.

BTW – ensure that you get the credit for all the free publicity. It should be worth a bonus or two.

[tags]publicity, online, media, NYT, site, media section, news releases, backgrounders[/tags]

I’m a great believer in researching after you write a preliminary draft of a document, and not before.

This saves time. If you research before you write, you’ll procrastinate. Perhaps the document won’t get written at all, because there’s always something more to research.

Research after you write your preliminary “talking to yourself” draft

Writing is a process: the idea, preliminary draft, research, first draft, re-vision (thinking again), next draft, and final draft.

In a preliminary draft, anything goes. Just get something onto the computer screen. Think of it as talking to yourself: “In this report, I want to show that we’ve increased sales at two of our stores because __________ etc.”

Once you’ve written the preliminary draft, you’ll know exactly what you need to research. If the thought of writing FIRST makes you shudder, that’s just a lack of confidence. Try it, just once, and you’ll always research later, not first. You know much more than you think you do.

[tags]business writing, research, drafts, thinking[/tags]