Freelance Copywriting Offline – Buzzwords’ Skills

Offline copywriting skills are alive and well at Buzzwords!  There are two ways of looking at your needs for this type of copywriting: by specific skill or by business sector.  In this blog posting, we’ll look at ’skills’:

SPECIFIC SKILLS

I’m sometimes surprised just how many offline skill-sets I have floating around in my head.  Maybe I should call them ’skull-sets’?  And when it’s said that ’yesterday is another country’, I’m beginning to think that ‘copywriting yesterdays’ are more like another planet.

Brochures – These are still going strong, and probably always will be.  Most popular right now: ‘corporate’ brochures with a wallet at the back for half-a-dozen leaflets or data sheets.

Advertising – Used to be a mainstay – but no longer so.  The marketing dollars have moved on.  Most of them online – or into PR.

PR – News release writing  is a specific strength of Buzzwords.  Crafting a good release is quite an art.  Try me and see! (Mike Beeson MCIPR – Member of the Chartered Institute of Public Relations.)

Newsletters – Harking back to my five years as a freelance writer with the Manchester Evening News, newsletters are an interesting exercise in news gathering, organisation and journalistic licence.

Sales Letters – I love writing sales letters.  Not the American ‘killer copy’ types.  Nor even the four-page Readers Digest model. I CAN actually write long sales letters, but my approach tends to be to make the letter as long (or short) as it needs to be – and cut the crap and convention that strangles a letter with underlinings, red ink, capitals and PSs (pee-esses!).

Catalogues – Having worked for all the UK’s largest catalogue companies (Grattan, Empire, GUS etc), I know about volume writing, at speed and with a certain economy of words.  If you need a hired hand (or three) for mega catalogue projects, call me, Mike Beeson, on 01565 654023.

Buzzwords Freelance Copywriting Manchester – Serving the New ‘Integrated Marketing’ Mindset

Having started Buzzwords in Manchester a million years ago, it’s reassuring that many of the copywriting skills in demand then are equally in favour today. 

Companies who pile all their eggs into the online basket are probably missing a trick.  Integrated marketing never went away, and it could be argued that because fewer companies are now involved in traditional offline marketing activities, the field is wide open to steal a march on the competition! 

From the enquiries for copywriting services I’ve received recently, website copywriting is top of the tree.  A close second, somewhat surprisingly, are company and product brochures.  Everyone I speak to about the continued popularity of printed matter reckons it’s all to do with people wanting something they can hold!

It may also be something to do with the fact that we’ve over-estimated the extent to which ‘online’ will wipe everything else off the map – pretty much like the much-vaunted ‘paperless office’ of the 1980s which never transpired.  What is happening is a fusion of both offline and online marketing methods in a marketing flurry which places the primary emphasis on cost-effectiveness – or ’ROI’ to use the current jargon.   

To find out more, call Mike Beeson on 01565 654023.