The Art of Business Copywriting

Good copy is an essential part of presenting a brand, especially a quality, upmarket one. I've seen so many lovely-looking products pulled down by amateurish copy, and it's a terrible shame. Many people put loads of effort into creating an excellent product, then it's spoilt by copy that is bland, repetitive, ungrammatical or aimed at the wrong audience.

Good copy begins with a clear understanding of three things

Who you are talking to

What you want them to know

What you want them to do

When you have established this, then time needs to be taken to craft that message.

Blogs and web copy also involves working keywords into the text, in a way that is unobtrusive, so that people will find the text with Google, then enjoy reading it.

There's a big debate about blog length. From an SEO point of view, longer seems better (and under 300 words gets ignored). But longer means less frequent and harder to write - the one undeniable truth is that visitors get bored by dull writing. It does little good to attract people to a blog that then they then dislike.

I regard blogs as falling into two categories. Wrens are short pieces, around 350+ words, that you publish regularly, to keep both Google and your regular readers reminded of your existence. Owls are longer pieces of more serious content, which will sit on your site and (ideally) become the standard go-to online source of information on that topic. I've heard it said that 2,400 words is the optimum length for these.

I do more blogging for other people than for myself, as I don't particularly feel the need to 'drive' people to my site.