Improving your online copywriting skills will boost SEO and lead generation opportunities. Director of copywriting agency Fides Media, Tim Richardson, provides top tips to writing for the web
Former president of the Society of Editors, Neil Fowler, got it bang on when he wrote the foreword to Essential English for Journalists, Editors and Writers by Harold Evans. Writing in 2000, he said, “Information is of no use at all if it is obscured by poor, jargon-ridden and dense English. Clear English should be the priority for all those who use the language in this new millennium. And news English at its best is the clearest English of all.” By ‘news English’ Fowler was referring to the way news is written – whether print or online.
More than a decade later and Fowler’s words have lost none of their meaning. Some people think news English is a straightjacket that imposes limits on the writer. However, it provides a framework for creativity in the same way that a rose climbs through a trellis. And crucially, it acknowledges the existence of the reader. Plus, news English automatically ticks the box for search engine optimisation (SEO).
1. News English
Say it up front in 20 words or less and use all your best words. That’s what news English is all about – being able to summarise your ‘story’ in one short sentence. At least you know that if your reader only reads that one line and nothing else, then you’ve got your message across. The use of who, what, where, when, why, how (WWWWWH) allows you to extract the right information. Technically speaking, you should be able to get all the WWWWWH in your opening line. In practice, it’s not always possible so don’t worry if you’re not able to manage it.
2. Your intro
This is one of the most important elements of any piece of writing. Readers decide whether to continue reading based on your intro. Get this wrong and you’ve lost the reader – and potentially a customer. Not only has the intro got to sum up the story, it also has to grab the reader. It’s not just about telling the reader something – you have to engage or entertain them. You can do this by using your best words and phrases. But you don’t have to swallow a dictionary. Your angle, the juxtaposition of ideas, being provocative – there are lots of ways to do this. Just experiment.
3. Think about what to say
Writing is easy – as long as you know what you want to say. Often, the reason people struggle to write something is because they haven’t thought about it enough. So think. If it takes you five minutes to explain something verbally, how can you expect to condense it into a couple of lines?
4. Tell a story
It doesn’t matter what you write – an email, tweet or a piece of marketing collateral – think of it in terms of a story. We’re brought up on stories and we naturally tell them when we’re with friends and colleagues. Whenever you start a piece of writing ask yourself, “What’s the story? What am I trying to say here?”
5. The headline
For writing online, headlines or any heading are extremely important.
Since people tend to search for information, headlines let the reader know they’ve found what they’re looking for. Whereas traditional media is able to use puns, these tend to be wasted online because they’re not always comprised of relevant search terms. So headlines need to be written to the point. They’re an even more condensed version of your intro. So, if your audience only reads your headline – at least they’ve got the gist of your message.
6. Keep it short
The general rule of thumb for writing online is keep it short. A rough guide is to make it a third as long as it would be on paper. So that 600-word case study should be subbed to 200 words online.
If you can say it in 100 words, even better. Brevity is a friend of the web. Just look at Twitter. While we’re on the subject of wordcounts, ‘20 is plenty’. By that I mean sentences should average around 20 words long – give or take. If you regularly write sentences that are in the high twenties – or you’re a user of semicolons – then they are probably too long. Long sentences, however, do have their place in writing and have the effect of slowing down the pace and, as such, are generally more useful for making your point in a calm and reasoned manner.
Conversely, if all of your sentence wordcounts average in the low teens, you would do well to increase them a bit. That said, short sentences can work to break up longer phrases. They provide emphasis. The shorter they are, the harder they hit. That makes them punchy. There’s more action. Short sentences provide impact. Okay? But too many short sentences can sound abrupt like a small dog yapping.
Effective copy writing is all down to practice. The more you write, the better you’ll get. Your writing will improve and so will your productivity. And it’s a skill that will stay with you your entire career.
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