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Do you know too much?

February 20, 2012 By Leave a Comment

There’s one subject that we can all be guaranteed to know about in great detail – ourselves!  If you’re a business owner then the extension to that is your business – you know everything there is to know about it, especially if you started it from scratch.

You’d think that knowing the details would make writing about a subject comparitively easy, but my experience is that simply isn’t true.  When you know everything it’s really difficult to choose what your target reader wants to know – and be ruthless about the rest.

Anyone with a business is usually bursting with passion about their subject and most of us are justifiably proud of our achievements in life.  The problem is that, as a reader of your material, I probably don’t want to know the detail.   Be honest, when you go to a website do you want to know exactly how the company carries out its operations?  No, I thought not!

When you’re proud of your business or your achievements and you enter awards – be careful what you write in response to their questions.  Every time you put a full stop go back and read the question – does the sentence you’ve just written answer the question?  If not, delete it.  It’s tough, but more people don’t achieve well-deserved awards simply because they haven’t answered the questions that were asked.

So, do you know too much – and does that mean your website and marketing material need some editing?

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3 answers that deliver effective marketing material

February 12, 2012 By Leave a Comment

As a commercial copywriter my role is to write to persuade people to take action.  In order to do that I need to have essential information to get the message on target so I ask questions.  Over the years I’ve realised that certain questions make a BIG difference to the effectiveness of the creation of the right message and I thought I’d share these so you can write better marketing material too.

The reason that this blog is called ’3 answers’ and not ’3 questions’ is because it’s the answers that are important!

Question number 1:  Can you deliver your core message in 12 words or less?

If you can’t then people probably find it hard to get their heads around what it is you do exactly.   If you have to start explaining things in detail, some people will lose interest and you’ll lose potential customers.  Spend some time working hard to clarify your message in words everyone can understand.

Question number 2:  Do you have a clear idea of who your target audience are?

No matter what business you’re in the answer is not ‘Anyone’!  In order to get your message right you must know what your target audience want, if you have only a very vague idea of who they are, you’ll never be able to target them effectively.  This doesn’t mean you must only have one target audience – you could have several, but they all have different needs and the message for each audience will need to be focused on their specific set of needs.  That might mean several different messages – different websites or pages, and different marketing campaigns.

Question number 3:  Do you know what your target audience really wants?

Don’t guess, ask them – it’s an ideal opportunity to talk to your existing clients (and former clients) about what they like (liked) about your products or services.  A good reminder for them of how good you are and a great source of information about what exactly people buy you for.

The answers to these three questions will ensure your marketing is bang on target.
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Gathering tools from Twitter

November 15, 2011 By Leave a Comment

The trouble with the internet is that there is so much information out there it can be difficult to decide where to start.  If you just type in a search word the deluge of information can send you running for cover!  So how do you find things out – and know that they’re good value and helpful?

I used to have a blog feed – but I simply couldn’t keep up with all the blogs that were generated and found that even blogs by people who I rate weren’t all the pearls of wisdom I needed to help me on my life journey.  Soon I stopped reading my blog feed – just too much to handle!

However, I have found that Twitter is a treasure trove.

Actually, I look at Twitter on Hootsuite as that allows me to get my Twitter feeds organised and I can see specific groups or keyword messages.  For the purposes of learning I tend to scan down the last 40-50 messages on the home feed and interact with those I find interesting.  This might be commenting, asking a question or reading a link.

Links to blogs, tools, videos and information sites can often be found in the tweets and, providing there is a short explanation of what the link is about, I often read 2-3 items during my Twitter scan.  I’ve learned some really useful stuff this way and bookmarked pages I want to revisit.

One word of caution – never click a link if there’s no indication of what it might be about – even if it’s from someone you know.  There’s a lot of account hijacking going on and this is a common way to do it.

Of course, this is not a one way street and I also use Twitter to share stuff I find useful.  We all have information sources that we rate and, today’s world works on the principle of sharing, so don’t be shy, get it out there for your followers to enjoy too.

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