Selling Words and Kings
•Download as PPT, PDF•
1 like•728 views
How can online content be declared ‘king’, yet digital copywriting still be under-valued as a discipline? An internal presentation focusing on the continued importance of content in digital and marketing in general. We describe copywriting disciplines, provide possible routes to market and present a view on how content production is becoming the 'elephant in the room' in an online context. We hope you enjoy. Please refer to the notes tab below for an explanation of each slide. For digital copywriting consultancy or services, visit freestyleinteractive.co.uk
Recommended
Recommended
More Related Content
What's hot
What's hot (16)
Similar to Selling Words and Kings
Similar to Selling Words and Kings (20)
Recently uploaded
Recently uploaded (20)
Selling Words and Kings
- 1. Selling words (and Kings) Copywriting Service Offering 22/01/2013
- 2. Presentation structure • How we work • What are copywriting and content services? • Routes to market • Working processes • Integration with the business • Industry context • Conclusion
- 4. What are copywriting and content services?
- 5. Disciplines and definitions • Editing - IT IS NOT PROOFREADING • Proofreading / Sub editing – IT IS NOT JUST READING • Writing – IT IS NOT JUST FILLING WHITE SPACE
- 6. Writing
- 7. Editing
- 8. Proofreading http://youtu.be/Wdqbi66oNuI
- 9. Proofreading – How to look stupid Dan Quayle
- 10. Brand voice More examples
- 11. Industry developments •Social voice and the rise of brand characters •Internal communication opportunities – we now have an award-winning IC champion • Intranets are NOT going away •Mobile – writing for mobile devices is another new discipline •The rise of the blog
- 12. Channels • More opportunities to publish content than ever before • More demand on copywriters than ever before • Channel challenges – from meta tags to meaty articles • Breadth of channels broadcast from here at Freestyle • In two years working here I have written my way from spy-themed video scripts to student-aimed Spotify ads • More opportunities to SELL content than ever before
- 13. Routes to market – how to sell us
- 14. Wordy products / salary justifiers • Retained writing services • Editorial consultation • Web copy (site launch and ongoing • Training news and feature articles) • Blog production • Content planning • Social engagement • Auditing • E-newsletters • Video • Proofreading and editing • White papers • Publications/iBooks • Internal communication • Campaigns • Digital PR • Employee intranets • Print collateral • Employee publications • Employee comms campaigns • Brand identity • T.O.V. guides • Conference scripting • Social voice • HR resources • Style sheets • Branding • Online collaboration tools
- 15. Obstacles
- 16. Obstacles • “My grandad/sister/girlfriend’s ex’s nephew’s step-dad’s brother has an ‘A’ in English lit.” • “Copy is an afterthought” / “We’ve already got copy on our old website/in brochures” • Lack of client exposure for content creators • Cost of outsourcing
- 17. Sales techniques We write and sell benefit-led copy. You should sell the benefits of copywriting to your clients: •No more off-role, late night writing sessions for executives and directors •No more fear of the blank page •We have expert knowledge of our clients’ brands •Clarity, cohesion and consistency •SEO benefits
- 18. Sales tools • Benchmarking • Identifying industry shortfalls • Content audits • Copy makeovers
- 19. Working with CS & PM - processes • Client-facing copywriters • Benefit to client from lack of Chinese Whispers in briefs and demonstration of expertise • Involved from square-one of the creative process • Close collaboration with design, search and social • Combat ‘copy goes here’ syndrome – strategy matters • No more ‘200 words of fluff on my desk by EOP’
- 20. Final thoughts The rise and rise of content marketing All our clients are now publishers
- 21. Conclusion - content IS (not currently) king, it is...
- 22. ...the elephant in the room...
- 23. ..and why do people visit websites?
- 24. The driverless sports car
- 25. Freestyle Interactive Ltd Freestyle Interactive Ltd Harwoods House 120 Avenue Charles de Gaulle Banbury Road Neuilly sur Seine Ashorne 75017 Warwickshire Paris CV35 0AA T: +441926 652832 T: +33 644271747 info@freestyleinteractive.co.uk alan.cooper@freestyleinteractive.fr www.freestyleinteractive.co.uk www.freestyleinteractive.fr
Editor's Notes
- 1: SWOT analysis - Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats 2: We want you to come away with a clear idea of what we do and how you can use us and sell our services to new and existing clients.
- 1: Department structure - We’re a team and part of the creative and CSS offerings. But we’ll try to work with as many areas of the business as possible. 2: Complementary skillsets – (A) knowledge of clients, expert on the brands. (B) brings formal copywriting experience and expertise in selling-in copywriting services.
- 1: History of copywriting 2: Nutritional survival book 3: Straplines 4: Salmand Rushdie story
- 1: Successful copywriting is dictated by the audience – there’s no room for showing off, unless your audience understands 2: 50 Shades of Grey is terrible writing but great copywriting, it started as Twilight fan-fiction, written for sexually repressed mums and titillated teenagers. 3:The Sun is much the same – written for a reading age of 11 (officially) it regularly brings the country to its knees with its grasp of audience appeal. 4: We are specialists in becoming specialists - When writing, we need to consider our audience, or write for the broadest appeal. 5: We are technical creatives – we learn the rules so we know when to break them
- 1: The most difficult, time-consuming and important aspect of content creation, especially when they’re someone else‘s words. Unsurprisingly, I spend most of my time editing. This is due to resourcing and the afterthought syndrome we’ll talk about later. 2: Editing often becomes a rewrite...so why not write from scratch? 3: Edited copy is often sub-standard – polishing a turd
- 1: the difference between proofreading, reading and editing. 2: The importance of proofreading – not everyone can do it (exams, training, expertise)
- Two failed presidential campaigns since, the defining moment of his career was a typo - "It was a defining moment of the worst kind imaginable,’’
- 0: Become a very important discipline 1:The Innocent revolution – the rise of the ‘friendly, matey’ brand. Barclays cashpoint – “feel my buttons” 2:The most memorable brands have the most clearly defined brand voices and characters. 3: Noah and the Whale sound like Innocent smoothies. 4: Not just for consumer-facing brands, equally applies to serious businesses and B2B organisations. 5: This is a big opportunity for us to sell-in services as it’s a concern to marketing managers. Everyone wants to have that uniqueness of the Innocent voice. It’s much more than crafting words. It’s about branding, about creating personalities from words.
- Internal Comms. - rise of, opportunities – Last 20 years gaining greater emphasis as a strategic function – offers a competitive advantage for businesses – people are a company’s biggest asset and a better informed, engaged workforce is a more efficient one. Tailoring content for mobile – just under 40% of users access brand sites through mobile devices Blogs – “81% of U.S. online consumers trust information and advice from blogs” - retained work, regular income. Richard Hughes will love you.
- 1: No longer channel specific campaigns – integrated content is the new approach for maximum effect. 2: thanks to digital, everyone can now publish content. This means more “copywriters”, claiming to be experts in all these new channels. Think of all the gurus and ninjas in the social world. 3: on the up side, there are now more opportunities to sell content, because there are so many more outlets for it. 4: There is a pressure on brands to be active in all these channels, which we can capitalise on (sugar puffs example – Twitter). 5: With all these channels, copywriters have had to develop lots more skills and voices to reach audiences.
- 1: More products than you might expect. 2: As sales teams you need to start thinking about where we could fit in with existing clients and how you could sell these services to them. 3: A real rise in the importance of internal communication, and with our clients...
- 1: Live example 2: Approach starting with content production credentials. Newsletter/blog introduction to the new, expanded service offering 3: Stress importance of digital copywriting, or the channel specific disciplines 4: Coming from a small agency. Used to client exposure. Working WITH clients in a collaborative way to produce better results. The false economy of untrained, in-house production The “directors writing copy – cost/time equation” - £108,000 / 365 – 104 – (public holidays) – holiday per year = 217 = £474
- 1: I’ve seen marketing managers, admins, directors, interns all writing copy – they largely hate doing it. 2: example - we all have MS Word, that doesn’t make us all writers 3: Relationships count – sell the benefits of using retained copywriters instead of freelancers 4: Too many cooks spoil the broth, too many writers dilute the message 5: SEO benefits - Search engines love fresh, well-written content with no spelling mistakes - 100 unknown aspects of Google’s algorithm
- 1: Proactive competitor research – look what your clients’ competitors are doing. 2: “You can set yourself above your competitors with great content” – competitor research again 3: Content audits - backed up by LIVE audit examples – working alongside UX to identify gaps in content 4: Used (sensitively) side-by-side examples – don’t criticise per se, but show them how much better it could be. This could be in the form of GA trials.
- 1: being from a small agency, client meetings (B knowledge) 2: As soon as the design team are involved, the copy team should be involved (word maps, brand identities – same principles) 3: Not working in silos, recent collaboration (how much better the output has been), designers should think in terms of text and copywriters should think in terms of visuals (demand for infographics)
- 1: Death of brand propaganda, rise of value adding content 2: Need to learn lessons from literature and films, the power of storytelling... Because...we all know
- ...The expression ‘content is king’ is now so widespread it has become a cliché. Everyone is saying it, but no one is actually producing content. We know the cliché. Some of our clients know the cliché. We talk about it in presentations on SEO and strategy and social media best practice, but we don’t sell it. It’s still seen as a nuisance or afterthought.
- Content has become the elephant in the room. Who is actually going to put pen to paper?
- Why do people go to websites? Is it to look at good design? Is it to admire UX or taxonomy? They go for information. Information is words.
- We’ve designed the car, we built the roads for it to travel on, we’ve promoted it in every car magazine and even bought the sat nav, but no one is behind the wheel. We’re still stationary. Our clients need content to drive everything from traffic, to search ranking to campaign engagement.