VOLUME 15, ISSUE 5 – MAY 2016
THIS MONTH’S MENU:
I. APPETIZER: THE EASY SHORTCUT TO A TRUE COMPETITIVE EDGE
Yes, (Minor) Unreliability Costs You, But Less Than What Reliability Earns You!
II. “FIELD” GREENS: SEO WRITING ISN’T DEAD (DESPITE THE PUNDITS)
SEO Copywriter: It’s Not Enough To Write “Naturally”; You Still Need SEO!
III. MAIN “MEAT” COURSE: “GROWING” INTO YOUR NICHE!
MI FLCW Takes Long Road from Prison Instructor to Happy “Green Writer!
IV. DESSERT: SWEET SUCCESS STORIES & TIPS
CA FLCW: “The Surprisingly Easy Strategy That Kick-started My Career”
TIP: Free Site Quickly Converts Any of Four File Formats into Any Other One!
I. APPETIZER: THE EASY SHORTCUT TO A TRUE COMPETITIVE EDGE
Yes, (Minor) Unreliability Costs You, But Less Than What Reliability Earns You!
(I’ve talked about reliability before, but it’s a subject that warrants periodic repeat visits, because few things are more powerful in building your copywriting business…)
Was working with a client recently, and we had two phone appointments at two different stages of the process. On both occasions, I was to call him at an agreed-upon time, and in both cases, I was at the other end of his phone line when I was supposed to be. In both cases, he said, with a touch of impressed wonder, “Hmmmm, right on time.”
In case you think I’m tooting my horn here, about how gosh-darn reliable I am, let me put those thoughts to rest. In my mind, there was nothing particularly impressive about doing what I said I was going to do.
And given wonderful tools like e-calendars that send you email reminders whenever you ask them to, there’s no excuse for not being where you said you were going to be, and when you said you were going to be there.
Yet, despite the rather prosaic—in my mind—accomplishment, to him, it was mighty impressive. And that’s the point: In this day and age, so few people follow through on their declarations, that when you do, you can’t help but stand out.
This stuff makes a difference. If you’re a few minutes late on a call, the client probably won’t kick you to the curb. Heck, turn in copy a day late—assuming you give them a heads-up—and they probably wouldn’t find another writer (though, miss your deadline without letting them know, and you should be judged harshly).
The point? It’s not necessarily the bad that’ll accrue to you if you’re not totally buttoned up all the time. It’s the good that’ll come to you automatically when you are. And that good gives you a huge edge.
When you’re reliable, people are more likely to trust you, think you’re smarter, more talented and someone whose opinion matters.
Of course, you can’t just be reliable while having few skills at what you do. But, assuming those skills are present, you’ll just be taken more seriously and as a peer, an equal. Reliability sends the message: “I value your professionalism; you value mine.”
While this lesson is important for commercial freelancers at any stage of their business, it’s especially so if you’re starting out: When you have little experience, and a small portfolio, you should grab any edge you can. And reliability—requiring zero experience to pull off—is the best edge going. On that “leave-the-herd-behind” note, let’s eat!
II. “FIELD” GREENS: SEO WRITING ISN’T DEAD (DESPITE THE PUNDITS)
SEO Copywriter: It’s Not Enough To Write “Naturally”; You Still Need SEO!
Another quick and useful “Easy Web Tip” from Web Optimization pro/copywriter Katherine Andes, whose stuff I love!
The one below is a great reminder that SEO still matters, and some simple steps you can take with your client’s copy (or that on your own site) to cover some basic SEO bases, with the caveat, that to do a truly solid SEO job on your copy, consider bringing in someone like Katherine.
Many online pundits say that writing for search engine optimization (SEO) purposes is dead. All you need to do, they opine, is write your web content “naturally” and the Google gods will give you great rankings.
If the above were true—and it isn’t—my livelihood could be in jeopardy. It doesn’t scare me because, 1) my core skill is copywriting and there will always be plenty of need for that; and, 2) the basics of traditional SEO copywriting still hold true.
For a web page to rank well in search results…
- Keyword phrases must still be researched and selected
- Keyword phrases must still be embedded in content on numerous pages (naturally, of course!), and must still be in title tags
- Keyword phrases should still be in headlines (if possible)
- Plus more wonky tasks you really don’t want to know about
The only difference I see from when I first started eight years ago is that you might not need to embed the keywords as many times on a page as you used to. Three times might be sufficient, when, in the past, it used to take seven.
You also don’t necessarily have to use the exact keyword phrase multiple times, but variations of the phrase.
These improvements in the algorithms do make it easier to write text that’s both optimized for search and that reads naturally.
Typically, clients come to me with decent websites, but with the above SEO tasks missing. Usually, once I plug the holes, their rankings significantly improve.
So from the point of view of wanting to rank well in a web search, SEO copywriting is certainly not dead.
III. MAIN “MEAT” COURSE: “GROWING” INTO YOUR NICHE!
MI FLCW Takes Long Road from Prison Instructor to Happy “Green Writer!
Got this great ‘building-my-niche” success story AND cautionary tale—full of good “how-to” detail—from Sault St. Marie, MI FLCW Neil Moran. Neil’s the owner of Haylake Business Communications, specializing in writing for the gardening and horticulture niche, but as this instructive story shows, he took a circuitous route getting there!
For 25 years I worked in a correctional facility, a.k.a The Joint. For the last 12 years, I was a horticulture instructor in a vocational trade center where I learned a great deal about all aspects of horticulture and gardening.
Towards the end of my tenure behind the “tall fences,” I began thinking of writing full time when I got out. For years, I’d been writing mostly features for different magazines and had done press releases and a newsletter for the prison (I prepared a press release and spoke to the media the day after a disturbance at the facility—exciting stuff!)
Figuring there’d be more opportunities in copywriting than freelance magazine writing, I prepared for my new venture by reading The Well-Fed Writer. I came across the issue of “generalist vs. specialist,” and felt, at the time, that I’d be limiting myself if I focused solely on my niche (i.e., gardening and horticulture).
So I set up my website as a generalist, made cold calls and posted to some job boards, picking up a low-paying gig writing blog posts for an SAT tutor and a longer piece for a marketing firm. Good experiences, but they just didn’t last, perhaps because it just wasn’t a good fit.
One person contacted me about writing about personal finance; I can hardly balance my checkbook! I wasted several more months marketing outside my niche, turning up little more than a few low-paying gigs outside my comfort zone.
Gradually, almost by instinct, I started marketing more to my niche, and when I did, doors started to open. I discovered a media company that publishes four horticulture trade magazines (I “discovered it” because I was now looking in the right places).
About two years after I had left the prison, I sent a query to one of them on a subject I was pretty comfortable writing about. I picked up that assignment and began querying some of their publications. Soon, they were asking me for ideas, paying me pretty well, and keeping my plate full (and, in fact, they’re still keeping me pretty busy).
I noticed in one of these “hort” trade pubs I was writing for, that they compile annual “Top 100” lists of green industry companies (i.e., nurseries, greenhouse operations, and landscape companies). I also stumbled upon a list of all the major horticulture and garden suppliers known to man.
As a result, I’ve picked up additional gigs in my niche including newsletters for a fertilizer company, some ads for a garden tool company, a press release for an irrigation company, sales letters and other marketing materials. I’m a bit ashamed to admit that I used to think there weren’t enough companies in my niche to keep me busy, when in fact, there are more than I could ever tap into in this lifetime.
I decided to market myself strictly as a “copywriter for the green industry,” on my website, LinkedIn, and with my marketing materials. I think this way I can really home in on my target market. It’s pretty much an exhaustive list of people I can contact for possible work.
I still face the challenges typical to all copywriters (i.e., best ways to contact clients, what to charge, etc.), but at least I’m barking up the right tree (no pun intended). I feel far more comfortable approaching people to write about, say, garden tools, than personal finance (yuck!).
Here’s a nice “niche perk”: People often send me free plants and gardening tools!
As owner of Haylake Business Communications, Neil Moran pretty much sticks to cultivating his gardening/horticulture niche these days.
IV. DESSERT: SWEET SUCCESS STORIES & TIPS
CA FLCW: “The Surprisingly Easy Strategy That Kick-started My Career”
TIP: Free Site Quickly Converts Any of Four File Formats into Any Other One!
Got this great story of serendipity from Vista, CA FLCW Kristen Guy. As Kristen says, it all starts with putting yourself out there. You never know where something can lead. And do it enough, and it can’t HELP but happen. Great stuff, Kristen – thanks for sharing it! After that, a cool resource for quick, easy and free file conversion.
It all started at a children’s book writing conference. I was there pursuing my childhood dream of becoming a published picture-book author. On that day, my commercial copywriting business was the last thing on my mind.
As I waited for the conference to start, a middle-aged woman with brown hair and a friendly smile sat down next to me. We said hello and chatted about the conference. When she asked if I was a published author, I chuckled.
“Not yet,” I said. “I’m actually a commercial copywriter.” (I didn’t have any clients at the time, but I was following the “fake-it-until-you-make-it” strategy.)
“Do you have a business card?” she asked. I did. The conference began and we spent the rest of the day discussing children’s books. The subject of my copywriting business never came up again.
Until a Friday morning a month later, when she phoned me.
“Hi, we met at the conference, and you said you were a copywriter. I’ve got a friend who’s president of a company, and in desperate need of a writer. Interested?”
That afternoon, I was in the president’s office showing him my printed portfolio. I walked out with my first commercial writing project—a product brochure.
A second project soon followed, and I ended up working with that client 20 hours a week for almost five years. And it all started with a simple conversation—one that kickstarted my copywriting career. It proved to me that networking is an extremely powerful—and surprisingly easy—growth strategy.
So put yourself out there. Attend events. Talk to people. After all, you never know when a simple conversation will lead to a long and lucrative career.
As commercial writers, we often run into situations where we get a file in one format, but it’d really be easier to work with (or for any number of other reasons) in another. Recently got a submission from a reader as a PDF, and headed over to Nitro to quickly and easily convert it to a Word file.
No email lists to join, just good conversion. AND, the site offers more than just PDF to Word conversion (and vice versa): it’ll convert any Word, Excel, PowerPoint or PDF file to any of the other three. Enjoy!