Photo By Ecastro

Twitter has been all aflutter this weekend, with a brand new “copywriting agency” following all and sundry. They’ve been promising the untold riches of £0.02 per word and have met with responses ranging from the amusing to the incredulous.

@SarahCopywriter £0.04 per word! Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, (breath) ha, ha, ha, ha, ha! F**k me, the last of the big spenders!

But does the problem lie with the sum being offered, or the way that it’s being offered? When you’re hiring a copywriter, should you be paying them by the word?

I say no.

Why You Shouldn’t Pay Copywriters by the Word

If you want my services, or those of any good copywriter, then you’re best off forgetting the notion of paying per word. Why?

Because it’s not the best way to source good copy.

What Exactly Are You Paying For?

The main misconception you have when you’re hiring a copywriter is that all they do is write words. You’re wrong. If all we did was sit at a keyboard and start typing, there’s no way we’d produce coherent and convincing copy. We need to research your industry. Think about your target audience. Before our pens get within a mile of our paper, we need a clear idea in our heads about how we’re going to approach your copy.

You want us to skip that bit? You want us to dive in headlong without stopping to think?

Or do you want well thought out, well planned and well put together copy that will bring you business?

Do You Want Verbosity or Clarity?

“When I stop and think about it, the conclusion is reached in my mind that perhaps it is not always the longest and most wordy (if wordy is indeed a word) copy which is the most convincing to clients and prospective customers. In fact, I’m inclined to believe that it is the copy of a shorter and concise nature that really draws, holds and keeps the attention of the reader. This, I’d imagine, makes the notion of paying per word counterintuitive.”

“Concise copy keeps clients focused. Long copy can bore them. You want convincing copy, so don’t reward rambling.”

Do you honestly think that the first piece is worth more to your company? Do you think it’s going to attract more business?

Or do you want to reward compelling copy, regardless of how many words it took to construct it?

Do You Want to Come Across as a Cheapskate?

Numbers are funny things. As soon as a pound sign gets involved, we want to see the highest possible number.

But here’s the thing. I won’t sit there and do the maths to work out whether an offer is good or not. If you turn round and tell me that my time is worth a fraction of a penny, I won’t read to the end of the proposal.

It’s that simple. If you’re not showing someone the highest possible figure they could be earning, you’re not going to convince them. You wouldn’t advertise a permanent contract as paying “0.0027p per second”, would you?

No, you’d advertise it as £20,000 per year and watch the applicants roll in.

So How Should You Pay a Copywriter?

By now you should’ve realised that paying by the word isn’t the best way to attract a talented and committed copywriter. So you’ll be wondering what to offer. Well the easiest way is to ask your copywriter what they’re expecting. Do they charge by the hour? By the piece? You wouldn’t walk into a garage and tell a mechanic you’d pay him by the number of bolts he tightens – you’d ask him for a quote to do the work you want.

Keep your original figure in mind, compare it to the copywriter’s charges and see if you can reach an agreement. Then sit back, wait for your first draft, and congratulate yourself on money well spent.

And if you visit the chippy on the way home, take a look at their prices. I bet they won’t be charging you per chip.

Related posts:

1. Is Your Professional Voice Boring?
2. History – The Copywriter’s Degree?
3. The Writing Secrets Conspiracy Theorists Don’t Want You To Know

Photo by Jon_Marshall

Listen here lad, I’ve been making websites since the year dot and I know that all your Digs and Tweeterings are good for only one thing – spam email.     Trust me, all you need for them search engines is Meta Keywords.

I wish that quote was a work of fiction, but it’s not. It’s the befuddled claims of a web developer who I had the pleasure of arguing with over the phone last week. The methods he was promoting were sound and proven – but they’re now wildly out of date.

Don’t make the same mistake. Get up to speed with what you need to know if you’re planning on doing any SEO in 2010. These five steps won’t teach you everything you’ll need to know, but they’ll help you get started. 

1) Meta Tags are Old Hat

If you had your ear to the ground in 2009, you’d know that Google and Yahoo both disowned the former powerhouse of SEO, the meta keywords tag. They’re always likely to change their minds, but you shouldn’t think meta tags will magically cure poor listings. Put twenty words in the keywords tag, make sure your description carries your main phrase and move on.

2) Content is for Customers

The days of keyword stuffing are also at an end. That’s not to say that content isn’t vitally important. It is. But it’s important for your customers. If you’re worried that you’ll be promoting a website filled to bursting with repetitive keywords and dull copy, contact an SEO copywriter and ask for help. Otherwise, make sure your key words are where your clients want them – page titles, headers and scattered liberally across the copy to help skim readers glean context.

3) Links are your SEO Lifeblood

Links and anchor text. If you’ve not thought about where to get the former and how to write the latter, then you’re not going to rank well in 2010. If you’re serious about SEO, you need to get serious about links. Write linkbait, track down dofollow blogs and start networking. Hell, if you need a link for an SEO or copywriting blog, you could even ask me.

4) Social Media isn’t the Future. It’s the Present.

Ignore all those people out there saying “Twitter will” or “Facebook could”. Twitter has. Facebook is. Major search engines are incorporating information from social media sites. Canny SEOs are building up a good rep on Sphinn and Digg. Anyone with half an idea is promoting it on Twitter. These aren’t spam email generators. They’re link generators. Enquiry generators. Used properly, they will get you rankings and make you money.

5) This List will be Useless in 2011

Ok, it might not, but don’t take that chance. SEO is moving faster than ever before. With more and more of the world’s population going on line, the Internet will be flooded with new ideas. If Twitter changed SEO in 2009 and led to real time search, what could change the game in 2010? Keep your finger on the pulse and make sure you’re using the most up to date information. Subscribing to my RSS feed might be a start.

Related posts:

1. Five Wildly Inaccurate Social Media Predictions for 2010
2. New Years Resolutions for 2010
3. “Breaking” News From Google HQ

Photo by MrMatze77

The end of a year can’t just be a time for retrospection and reflection. It should also be a time for wild speculation and crystal-ball gazing. Luckily, like Cassandra before me, I have been cursed with the gift of being able to see into the future with 100% accuracy.

So fire up your stock portfolio, get down to the bookies, or just prepare to tell all your friends that “I told you so!” It’s time for five completely accurate Social Media predictions for 2010!

Five Wildly Inaccurate Social Media Predictions for 2010

1) Twitter will replace verbal communications

Twitter has already completely revolutionised the way that homo sapiens communicates. If the papers are to be believed, Steven Fry doesn’t even open his mouth anymore. On the set of QI, he tweets his lines to a producer who then has to stitch his dialogue together from archive audio clips. And as anyone who’s read the Guardian Tech section knows, by signing up to Twitter you enter into a contract that states Mr. Fry will make all of your decisions.

By mid-2010, the streets will be silent and the Fail Whale will become the most recognisable image in human history.

Or in reality: Twitter is barely new and excititing as it is. It’s going to become just another communication tool. Like email.

2) Google will buy everything

On January 1st, Google will announce that their company motto will be changed from “Don’t be Evil” to “Total Global Domination”. By January 2nd, they’ll own everything – Facebook, Yahoo, your house. Matt Cutts will go from head of Web Spam to “Commissar for Thought Spam”, using a powerful new search tool to root out and destroy anyone who even thinks the word “Bing”.

By December 31st, Google will have patented actual robot spiders, which they will use to index the population and “cache*” dissenters.

*or maim. Maim’s probably the more likely of the two.

Or in reality: 2008 and 2009 saw Google investigated by the monopolies commission. Branching out is still a probability, but they might have to play it safe in 2010.

3) Confused and scared Silver Surfers will turn the power of their SimplicITy computers against the masses

For years now, anyone over the age of sixty has decided that they can’t work that Interweb thing and that they’d rather be knitting. Unfortunately, the modern world has different ideas and the tendrils of online interaction are snaking around the nursing homes of Britain. Soon the online sphere will be crammed full of unwilling elderly folk, all repeatedly hammering “Werther’s Original” into Google. Flickr will crash under the load of so many mis-labelled photographs of grandchildren, and Twitter’s new trending topics will be variations on “During the war…”

Or in reality: My Nan is already on Facebook. My Gran sends me email birthday cards every year. Silver Surfers are here, and they don’t need condescending to.

4) Social Media will become less about people and more about business

In 2009, chances are that you’ve read dozens of articles on why businesses should embrace social media. Unfortunately, evil capitalists have read them too. In 2010, going online will be like jumping into an ad break. Sneaky salesmen will pose as your friends in order to tell you about great offers, Richard Branson will personally reply to each one of your Tweets to tell you about Virgin Rail, and Alan Sugar will replace Tom as everyone’s first MySpace friend.

Or in reality: Social media has the power to revolutionise the way businesses interact with customers – but the power still lies with the average user. Business will bend over backwards to stop you sharing bad experiences.

5) Sites like Facebook, Bebo and MySpace will turn the next generation into asocial potato people

Don’t just take my word for it. Listen to the not-reactionary-scaremongers-at-all over at the Daily Mail. An actual SCIENTIST has said that FACEBOOK IS DAMAGING YOUR CHILD’S BRAIN!

That’s right, exposure to the INTERNET will turn any CHILDREN that aren’t MURDERED by gangs of PAEDOPHILES into DROOLING IDIOTS. This isn’t idle conjecture, or rabble-rousing in an attempt to get traffic. This is an UNDENIABLE FACT. FACT!

Or in reality: They won’t. 

So there you have it. Lock your doors and windows before Google’s Thought Police arrest your children. Be quiet though – don’t forget to mute the notification sounds on your Twitter App.

Share your predictions in the comments section below, or get in touch with Andrew through his Twitter account.

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The “Naughties”. The “Noughties”. Whatever you choose to call the first decade of the new millennium, you’ll have to agree on one thing.

We’ve seen some absolutely stunning marketing. And some complete dross.

My marketing masterpiece of the 2000s seems to have been lifted from Withnail and I, whereas the marketing misfire probably wouldn’t even make it into Horne & Corden.

The Marketing Masterpiece

Magners Irish Cider – Bulmers (2004-2006)

(Disclaimer: I can’t stand cider. I’ve not touched it since about 1999, aged 14, in the park)

“Two large gins. Two pints of cider. Ice in the cider”
Withnail – Withnail & I

Remember cider back in the 90s? The drink of choice for the poor, the underage and the derelict.

Chances are that you’d pay for cider using change, most of it copper. You’d then swig your scuzzy scrumpy from the bottle in the glamorous surrounds of a shop doorway.

Fast forward a decade, and people with jobs are paying ridiculous prices for that same product and drinking it inside.

From glasses.

Over ice.

You wouldn't touch this when it was Woodpecker

That’s all it took for cider to make the transition from tramp juice to the drink of choice for hip young things across the country. Ice. Ice and a few adverts with a homely Oirish voiceover. Between 2004 and 2006, Bulmers reported a 40% increase in sales thanks to Magners Irish Cider, and all because watering down cider with ice became cool.

For turning a drink barely superior to meths into the next best thing to champers, Bulmers showed us all how powerful good marketing can be.

The Marketing Misfire

Sea Kittens – PETA (2009)

(Disclaimer: I’m not in favour of cruelty to fish, I just think PETA are idiots)

I really don’t think the twenty-something vegetarians are going to get that stoned that they want to come home and read the unintentionally funny Struwwelpeter-meets-Lemony-Snicket “Sea Kitten Stories” before their comedown.
Katy Evans-Bush – Textpixels

Fish have a bad lot, say PETA. We’re really awful to them. Not because they’re tasty and healthy, but because they’re slimy and slithery. So what better way to save the fish than to rebrand them?

Well, any way really. Drawing a cartoon fish in a cat costume and calling it a “Sea Kitten” isn’t going to stop fish being tasty, or make it any less appetising to pescavores.

The most tragic thing about the Sea Kittens campaign is that Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall showed campaigners how to make people think about where their food comes from with his anti-battery chicken crusade. Wouldn’t farmed salmon swimming in their own shit have made a more effective image than this?

Not pictured - 10,000 cellmates and litres of fish urine

Katy Evans-Bush summed it up perfectly in her post on the matter: “How to use PR to make people do the opposite of what you want.” Nearly everyone that saw this either laughed so much they missed the point about overfishing and trawling, or decided they’d like haddock for tea that evening.

It’s better to be instantly forgettable than memorably foolish, as any PETA campaigner who’s suffered ridicule following this campaign will tell you.

Maybe PETA should get in touch with Bulmers’ advertising company?

With ten years of adverts to choose from, there must be other marketing misfires and masterpieces to add to the list. Let me know your thoughts by contacting me – I’ll publish the best (and worst) marketing ploys in a post later this month, with a big fat backlink to your site or blog.

Of course, if you’d just like to pick holes in my choices, you can leave a comment below.

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