Website Copywriting – I Always Do It Backwards!

It may surprise you, but when I accept a new website copywriting project, I never start with the Home page.  In case you’re thinking this is eccentric – that the Home page is the most important on most websites, and certainly the most linked-to - just ponder for a second.

A website’s Home page usually sums up the whole business and provides links off to the other main aspects of the business.  And yet, how can a copywriter describe the true essence of a company without first knowing about the other corporate elements, the products and services?

The client will obviously know what these elements are.  Potential customers – and copywriters – on the other hand, definitely will not.  It therefore makes sense when writing websites to start with the main product pages and/or services – and maybe colour this with information from what will become the About Us page.  Only when these pages are complete does it make sense to embark on that all-important Home page!

This has to be one of the main benefits of hiring a website copywriter.  Bringing together the various strands of a business and organising the facts in a coherent and objective way will stand up to scrutiny by even the most critical potential customer.  Approaching the website copywriting in a way that at first seems illogical does in fact deliver a superior end result.

 

 

Recruitment Copywriters: Who Needs Them?

With all the recruitment specialists around nowadays, who needs a recruitment copywriter? 

There are advertising agencies that specialise in recruitment; PR agencies that do the same.  And then of course there’s the ‘in-house’ option preferred by so many recruitment consultancies.

Ad agencies and PR consultancies will very likely have recruitment copywriting expertise in-house or, at the very least, a freelance copywriting option.  Recruitment consultancies, on the other hand, have both recruitment industry knowledge and an in-depth knowledge of their own business.

The problem is: so much rests on getting the copy right.  Recruitment ads need the right tone of voice, whilst websites, brochures and other forms of marketing collateral have a major responsibility to present clients in the most accurate way and attract candidates with the most appropriate qualifications, skills and experience.

A freelance recruitment copywriter is a specialist and will very likely produce far superior work to any of the other options mentioned.  Moreover, he or she will be more flexible and cost-effective than an agency.  There will of course be no contractual tie-ins and a recruitment consultancy will be free to bolt-on other services as and when required, thus making measurable longer-term savings.

Being a ‘people business’, there’s no doubt that representatives from various quarters across the recruitment industry will have their view.  When it comes to producing high quality, cost-effective  copy, however, taking the freelance recruitment copywriter route is really a no-brainer.