30 Years In Copywriting – And FREE PR Too!

Buzzwords has been in the copywriting business for 30 years!  More accurately, that should read: ‘Mike Beeson has been a copywriter for 30 years’, although that doesn’t take into account the myriad other skills I’ve developed along the way.

Young Nicholas Beeson is also on the scene after graduating in marketing this year.  He’s quite an expert on social media and all things online, so he’s useful to have around – and good news for client services.  You may want to take a look at the Social Media Marketing page on Buzzwords’ main website.  Unlike so many other copywriting and PR agencies, we can actually walk-the-walk too!

There are so many strings to Buzzwords’ bow, I often surprise myself.  Having said that, 30 years is a long time in this business.  To celebrate Buzzwords’ achievement, we’re offering a FREE PRESS RELEASE to every new client.  We’ll write the release for you and distribute it to the relevant UK media.

To find out more, why not take a look at our latest press release:

‘Buzzwords celebrates 30 years in business with free PR for every new client’

Copywriting Training Courses @ Buzzwords – Watch This Space!

There are plenty of good reasons why Buzzwords’ Copywriting Training Courses are just what you need!  I’ve listed three below – but there are plenty more…

• Signing up for Buzzwords’ Copywriting Courses is a great way to get started as a freelance copywriter
• Intensive Copywriting Training Courses can help SMEs save big money by enabling you to write professional-standard copy in-house
• If you work in a big organisation, you’ll have more confidence when it comes to dealing with your advertising, PR or design agency.

Specially tailored copywriting courses will be available in three broad areas from this autumn: Copy for PR; Online Copy; and more ‘traditional’ forms of  copywriting.

To register your interest, contact Mike Beeson on 01565 654023 or e-mail open@buzzwords.ltd.uk

A NEW BOOK!!! If you’re thinking seriously about becoming a freelance copywriter some time soon – my copywriting colleague Len Smith has written a great new book packed with practical business tips on How To Be A Copywriter – Yours for only £7.77!

 

Freelance Copywriting – How to Get Ahead (Part 2)

When I said ‘business insights’ (in the previous post – Part 1), I was talking about a certain type of experience. Having a formal business training helps of course. As does a degree in subjects like economics or marketing.

‘Experience’, however, is all about real-life exposure to opinions and thought processes, to the tides of history, micro-economics, news stories, hard-luck and success stories… the list is endless.

In many ways, I’ve lived my life as an ‘accidental’ copywriter. Writing in its various forms was something in which I was always interested. Way back in the day, I fancied my chances as a novelist, but it soon became clear that I was much more interested in the world ‘out there’, as opposed to the worlds I could create inside my head.

Yes, I would’ve loved to be a features writer on a national newspaper or journal, but what editor in his or her right mind would entrust that enormous responsibility to an untried rookie! Maybe if I’d been a high-flying intellectual with lots of family contacts I could have broken into this highly competitive field.

As it happened, I knew a few people who’d made a very good living as marketing professionals in big companies as well as top advertising agencies. It seemed my life was mapped out already. No-one else in my family had gone into marketing. I doubt if any of them knew what marketing was. (In those days, I didn’t know much myself!) But marketing it was – although I still held a candle for the lifestyle of a struggling novelist, starving in my Paris garret!

(To be continued… )

Free Articles on Copywriting, SEO and PR

Are you looking for free articles you can reprint on your website, in your newsletters, or just about anywhere else where your online readers will appreciate a quality article or two?

Buzzwords currently has 16 articles available, the latest of which focuses on the perennial issue of Copywriting Rates. You’ll find plenty about PR Packages, SEO Copywriting and Article Marketing too. As a freelance copywriter, I’m always looking for a new angle on hot potatoes! (Watch out for my latest article on Social Media which is due to appear any day now!!!)

All I ask in exchange for free access to these articles is that you include a link back to Buzzwords’ website, plus the other biographical details at the bottom of each article.

(Finding the page is easy. Just click on Buzzwords’ logo on the right, then click the ‘Articles’ tab.)

Personalised copywriting training courses – Cheshire, Manchester, Lancashire, Liverpool

Buzzwords is now offering one-to-one copywriting training at its Cheshire (south Manchester) base.  (More details are on Buzzwords’ website at:  buzzwords.ltd.uk/copywriting_training_courses.htm – add the  ’www’ prefix)

Half-day modules focus on specific aspects of copywriting (such as website copywriting, SEO copywriting or copywriting for PR) and use a personalised coaching model.  The training is particularly useful for:

• Ambitious would-be copywriters who want to start a new copywriting career (as well as those with some copywriting experience – in a marketing department, for instance – who want to improve their skills and move on to more challenging copywriting roles)
• Those who run small or medium-size businesses (SMEs) who want to save money by taking the copywriting function in-house
• Individuals in larger organisations looking to boost their effectiveness at work by increasing their knowledge and confidence in dealing with external suppliers of copywriting services

An initial two-hour Assessment is provided at Buzzwords’ Knutsford premises to find out exactly what is expected of the training.  This is a departure from the standard training approach where one-day courses deliver a ‘one-size-fits-all’ solution – which, in many cases, is no solution at all!

Mike Beeson will take into account an individual’s aims, timescales and natural aptitude before setting out recommendations in a written Report.  This approach will ensure that those who move on to the actual training modules have exactly the training they need, thus saving precious time and money.

An initial Assessment costs £POA + VAT. 

Half-day training modules cost £POA + VAT.

To find out more, call Mike Beeson on 01565 654023

- or visit Buzzwords’ main website:

buzzwords.ltd.uk/copywriting_training_courses.htm (adding the ‘www’ prefix)

Annual Report Copywriting – It pays to watch your tone!

Copywriting for Annual Reports will always be challenging. That’s where I’m at right now – writing away on behalf of a major UK organisation!

Annual Reports must rank as one of the most important documents any business will ever produce. Writing Annual Reports is all about balance – talking in an authoritative way about strategy, Key Performance Indicators, performance itself, people and plans for the future… but all the while making sure that key stakeholders will be able to identify with what the organisation does, where it’s going in the future, and how its achievements are measured and presented.

With all this corporate ‘background noise’ going on, writing effective Annual Reports is as much about acquiring and organising the right information as it is about a consistent copywriting approach. It’s vital to establish a structure from the outset, rather like a website sitemap. This should of course be established in close partnership with the Report’s designer. Decisions on page layouts, photography and graphics are dictated by content and how the information flows.

Achieving balance in the copywritten content is about combining readability with authority.  It’s all too easy to slip into inappropriate informality when writing copy that must always be ‘accessible’ to readers of all persuasions.  This blog, for instance, is written in a fairly informal style.  Taking a similar approach to the copywriting for an Annual Report might cut it with certain journalists or shareholders – but it’s not going to work with bankers and financiers who are looking for a serious and professional analysis of the organisation. 

They may go home and morph into ‘normal’ creatures like you or I – but for the purposes of Annual Report copywriting, it pays to watch your tone!

Copywriting is king… inbound links are courtiers

On the web, inbound links affect a website’s position in the search engine rankings.  Generating quality links that win search engine brownie points is best achieved through article PR and online PR. 

A huge amount of copywriting work is involved, especially when it comes to writing worthwhile, informative articles  – suitably optimised with appropriate keywords of course.  Online news releases are more straightforward to write, and bring better returns on time invested – providing you have something to say on a regular basis.  Again, SEO and keywords play a part, but frequency of output is vital to achieving meaningful success.

If you can post articles and releases on your website a couple of weeks before launching them into the outside world this allows time for the content to be indexed by search engines and helps in the linking process (although it may be wise to write an edited version of your content to be doubly sure of avoiding ‘duplicate content’ penalties.) 

Apart from anything else, continually adding to your website is viewed favourably by the likes of Google – hence the power of blogs to surge through the search rankings, and stay there, providing content is updated on a regular basis (daily is the ultimate, but weekly keeps the pot simmering). 

The links associated with blogs are of course generated through tags.  Social media links to Technorati, StumbleUpon, Squidoo and so on also help.  Main websites which incorporate a blog therefore have a head start over their ‘unblogged’ counterparts.

Creating links is hard work – hard copywriting work that is also very time consuming.  The dividends are impressive, however,  especially if search engine rankings equate to new business enquiries for your company.

Finding the time to do all this – the writing, distributing to online directories and media etc – is usually a problem for most companies.  Employing a specialist freelance copywriter to handle it all makes lots of sense. 

Not only do you get quality writing and the regularity of output that comes with commercial commitment.  You’re also buying-in specialist knowledge of the market and, crucially, how the market works.

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.