A cautionary tale for the freelance web copywriter on taking your cue from peers’ and rivals’ web content

From the other side of the Atlantic this week, a lesson to any web copywriter out there on on ensuring your web content is 100% fresh and original. American politician Scott Brown is currently running for re-election as senator for Massachusetts. Naturally, this requires a whole bunch of campaign adverts, publicity, and an official website. Unfortunately for Senator Brown, some of his web copywriting backfired, giving him publicity across the US, of the kind that he’d probably prefer to do without.

A not so personal message - time to fire the copywriter?

On a page entitled, “A message from Scott”, you might expect a personal message full of deeply held values and beliefs, which, in a way, it was. Unfortunately those values and beliefs, in fact all the words, belonged to former North Carolina Senator Elizabeth Dole. 

Beginning with the phrase “I was raised to believe that there are no limits to individual achievement,” It seems that the entire ‘personal’ values statement was taken word for word from Dole’s website, from a speech she made almost ten years ago.

Cue major embarrassment for Senator Brown and his campaign team. According to a spokesperson for the red-faced senator, they used Dole’s site for inspiration and, “during construction of the site, the content on this particular page was inadvertently transferred without being rewritten... It was a staff level oversight.”

Don't blame the copywriter - the intern did it!

Inadvertently transferred. Not plagiarised then? Senator Brown himself valiantly blamed a “summer intern” for the copied text.

The fact is, whether you’re a politician, a copywriter for an eCommerce business or a freelance copywriter, copying your web content from elsewhere on the internet is a very bad idea. While it may be tempting to simply ‘lift’ a section of content from a rival’s site to save time and money on hiring a web copywriter, what happens when your customers notice the discrepancy (and they will)?

Secondly, ignoring all the clear ethical and legal issues with copying, sorry, "inadvertently transferring", web content, if your content has not been tailored towards your own business and its specific services, how is it going to sell them effectively to customers? 

Finally, if you plagiarise web copywriting from another site there’s a good chance it will negatively affect your position in the search engine rankings. Google and others omit any instances of duplicate content from their listings, making it essentially invisible.

If you need content for your site, it always pays to hire your own web copywriter to create content which is not only original, but tailor-made for your business.

Freelance Web Copywriter: Is your web copywriter being too casual on social ...

Freelance Web Copywriter: Is your web copywriter being too casual on social ...: In a recent article over at Bloomberg Business Week, entitled ‘Hypercasual: When the web gets a little too friendly’, Bobbie Johnson takes a...

Is your web copywriter being too casual on social media?

In a recent article over at Bloomberg Business Week, entitled ‘Hypercasual: When the web gets a little too friendly’, Bobbie Johnson takes a jab at “companies that are way too friendly on the web.”

“You click on their website and it’s stuffed with messages like ‘Yay!’ and ‘w00t!’ Johnson rants. “You look at their Twitter accounts and they’re asking what crazy capers everyone got up to this weekend. On Facebook, it’s all “why not look at this funny cat video? LOL!”

These are of course extreme examples of using the wrong tone of voice, but you don’t have to look far to find a company who, as Johnson puts it, are, “confusing being friendly with being flippant.” Often the worst cases are to be found on corporate social media accounts, where even the most dependably serious and sombre companies can be found not only with their ties loosened but their sensible shoes swapped for a pair of flip flops. It’s hard not to cringe as they encourage everyone to jump in the pool and ‘get their party on.’

If you can recognise your own company’s social media efforts in any of this then it may be time to have words with your freelance copywriter to discuss the image you’re projecting online.

Finding a balance

Clearly the web is a far more casual arena than ‘real world’ communications and people expect a little levity, but there are limits. Just because people are ‘friends’ with your company on Facebook, it’s important to remember that this is not the case - these people are not your friends, they are customers who are looking to you for a service. They don’t want to know what you did at the weekend, they don’t care that the office coffee machine isn’t working, and they certainly don’t want to hear how you ‘LOL’ed’ at a sneezing panda. 


A conversational tone is fine, but be sure your copywriter limits the topics of conversation to those that are appropriate between a business and its customers.

Is your web copywriter maintaining your company’s professional image online, or are they asking web users for help with their crops on Farmville?

Why UK businesses need a UK web copywriter

In many areas of business in the past decade or so there has been a growing trend towards outsourcing labour to overseas countries to save costs. This may or may not work fine for call centres and production, but it can be a really bad idea for your website content.
 

If your business is based in the UK and the bulk of your customers are British, you really should have a UK copywriter working on your website. And with the greatest respect to our international copywriters around the world, here’s why.
 

They speak English as a first language
 

This might seem obvious, but some businesses seem to believe it’s okay to use content aimed at a British audience that has been written by someone who doesn’t speak English as a first or even second language.
 

The trouble is that English is a notoriously complex language, and even those who have a decent grasp of it (or are even native speakers) are prone to making grammatical errors or clunky turns of phrase that might seem perfectly logical to them but are jarring to a British audience. If you’re using keywords in your web content (and you should be), it can get even messier.
 

If you’re a UK business using a UK web copywriter you can be sure that they’re speaking your customers’ language. Literally.
 

They understand your local audience
 

Understanding and communication aren’t just about language. It’s also about culture and attitudes. A UK freelance copywriter can help you to establish a good line of communication between your business and its customers by using common reference points and cultural idiosyncrasies that might seem, well, foreign, to an overseas writer. This can be as true for writers based in English-speaking countries such as the US and Australia as it is for someone from India or Thailand.
 

You get what you pay for
 

Saving money is the primary motivation for businesses who outsource their copywriting overseas. Writers from some overseas countries can often charge far less than their British counterparts, due to the differences in currency exchange rates and living costs.
 

While the prospect of 10 articles for £10 might seem appealing at first, these are often of a poor standard and full of fluff. Many of these writers are not professional copywriters, but instead students who will write for money. A glance at a £1 article will illuminate the difference quite quickly.
 

If you’re business is UK based and you want to create content that your British audience will love, and which will yield great results, it’s well worth investing in the services of a UK copywriter.

How your web copywriter can keep users on your site for longer

In a recent blog post, veteran web copywriter Nick Usborne talks about the perils of ‘dead end content’, which he describes as: “When you write a page of content for your site, or a post for your blog, and fail to provide links to further reading at the end of the article, review, guide or post.”
 

Including links to further internal pages such as product catalogues or follow-up articles is one vital habit to get into with all your web content, and will help to guide users to other areas of your site. But your web copywriter is also an important part of the equation. The content they create can make the difference between users clicking onto your site for a minute then clicking way, and building a more meaningful relationship with people who will, hopefully, become your customers.
 

As Nick says: “If you want to keep your readers on your site for longer – and you do – you need to maximize the number of readers who visit more than one page.”
 

Creating sticky content
 

Sticky content is not content that your copywriter spilt their coffee on. It’s content that keeps readers on your site for longer, encourages them to return and to check out other internal pages on your site. It could be a blog, an article or any other piece of web content, but ideally it will be all of the following:
 

• Useful - A lot of the time, Internet users are looking for specific information. Give them what they want and they’ll love you for it.
   
• Interesting - People are unlikely to stick around if your content bores them - keep it fresh and entertaining.
   
• Inspiring - As in, inspiring users to check out other parts of your site. Work in mentions of other parts of your site (with hyperlinks of course) that users will find genuinely useful and relevant to them.

By creating content that people actually enjoy reading you can actually make them enthusiastic to check out more of your site. So, make sure that your freelance copywriter is crafting sticky content, because when Internet users are stuck, they don’t bounce.

Rise of the planet of the freelance copywriters

Okay, excuse the cheap spin on a popular movie title, but you know the saying, monkey see monkey do. 
 

According to Econsultancy’s recent ‘Digital Agency Rate Card Survey’ though, copywriters and their ilk are on the rise. The survey of 350 digital agencies in the UK found that at present the proportion of agencies with more than 50 employees is 18%, compared with only 5% eight years ago.
 

Full service digital agencies may fulfil a variety of roles including web design, social media management and app development, but right at their beating heart you’ll often find a team of web copywriters diligently creating content for clients to feed the ever-hungry Internet masses.
 

Why are professional Internet and copywriting services in such high demand?  
 

So why the growth? As with in all other sectors and industries since the dawn of the WWW, the reason for the steady increase in scale of digital agencies has been to meet a demand - a constant demand for polished and professional web content.
 

In the early days of the Internet as a commercial arena during the 1990’s, many businesses were clamouring for an Internet presence. But the quality of the actual content was often regarded as a secondary consideration at most.
 

But all of that was to change when the world’s most popular search engine, Google, launched its ‘Florida’ update’ in 2003. This change to its algorithms would have far-reaching effects on many websites who previously thought they were sitting pretty at the top of the rankings. Many webmasters found that their once popular websites dropped out of the picture when the update took place. A common cause of this was poor quality content - that is, content that was stuffed with mindless keywords and which offered web users little of any value.
 

Web content in the balance
 

What Florida did was to shift the emphasis towards quality web content, and since then Google has launched many more updates to its algorithm (most notably the infamous Panda) aimed at bringing the best quality, most reliable content to the top of the SERPS. Unsurprisingly, other search engines have followed suit.
 

Aware of the need for useful, relevant and well-written content, many businesses turned to digital agencies and freelance copywriters, spurring on a growth that continues to this day.
 

Back to the Econsultancy survey - 94% of digital agencies said that they were either ‘quite’ or ‘very’ optimistic about their future prospects, reflecting the fact that at long as there is a thing called the Internet, there will always be a need for professional SEO and copywriting services.  

Does your web copywriter know your style?

On the web and in life, you’ve got to have ‘style’ if you want to make a memorable impression.
When it comes to creating a web page for your business, it may seem at first glance that all you need to do is get your products up there with all the relevant information and then wait for the sales to start rolling in. But wait, there’s more, much more.
 

You see, it’s quite likely that there are countless other competing businesses intent on offering your potential customers, if not the exact same thing as you, then something very similar. To make sure that your brand is the one that sticks in their mind, you need to inject a little style into your web content. And to do that, you need a copywriter that can write in a style that presents you in the best possible light.
 

Projecting an image
 

Whether you’re using a freelance copywriter or creating your content in-house, you need to determine what kind of image and personality you want your business to project with its online presence.
 

Not only should the style of your content characterise your business and what it has to offer, but it should also reflect the nature of your target audience and help them to identify the content as being ‘for them’. For example, if your business is trying to reach the younger generation with its product or services, your website might use a more energetic and youthful style. If however you want to appeal to the sentiments of middle-aged professionals, you would perhaps opt for a more toned down or sensible style.
 

How do web users perceive your site?
 

The style of your content will have a significant impact on the way your business and its products are perceived. If it is written with lots of ‘cutting-edge’ terminology and adjectives, your company will be perceived as cutting edge. If it frequently uses words like ‘reliable’, ‘trusted’ and ‘dependable’, you may be seen as a respected and well-balanced company. If it doesn’t have a style at all and just ambles along in all manner of stylistic tongues, it will lack a coherent identity and may confuse and even put off your potential customers.
 

But overdo it, and it can come across as false. Too much ‘street’ talk and you’ll be seen as desperately trying to ‘get down with the kids’. Use ‘trustworthy’ or ‘sincere’ too many times and it can come across as ‘untrustworthy’ and very ‘insincere’. Stylish content is about achieving a balance between effectively marketing your product or company, and making sure that your readers can relate to the content too.
 

Does your web copywriter understand what type of image you’re trying to project? If not then you should tell them, so they can adjust the style of your content accordingly.