Educational content helps you sell more

Benefits of educational content

I had lots of "educational" stuff on my website when I was designing and developing websites; in fact people had started suggesting that I should publish an e-book teaching how to become a web designer and start selling it. The downside of it was, most of my visitors wanted to learn web designing and very few wanted me to work for them. This shouldn’t happen when you are publishing lots of educational content on your website. They should definitely learn and get more informed, but they should also be interested in buying from you. Once you’ve figured out how to achieve that, here are a few benefits of publishing lots of educational content on your website/blog:

Educational content gets you more search engine traffic. Search engines are more interested in finding the right information for their users and somehow the guys working at the major search engines think educational content should get priority over commercial content.
It helps you establish your authority. When people know that you know your stuff, they develop a respect for you, especially when you share your knowledge again and again and they find that knowledge useful. I’m not regretting that I published lots of educational content on my website, it’s just that my targeting was misplaced. Share your knowledge and experience consistently – if I’m consistently sharing my thoughts on copywriting and content writing on my blog or website people will prefer to hire me rather than the person who merely has 12 drab pages from where he or she urges his or her visitors to hire him or her.
It familiarizes your prospective customers with your product or service. Many people don’t do business with you because they don’t know enough about your product. When they read lots of material on your website or blog they get to know about the benefits of your offer and then they are in a better position to make up their minds. In fact after reading your educational content people who aren’t even thinking of buying your product or using your service may decide to do so.
It helps you in establishing a social networking and social media presence. Most of the content promoted on Twitter, Facebook and Digg is educational or newsworthy. Sales copy rarely makes it there because why would people promote your links where you simply urge people to hire you or buy from you, what is there in it for them? Educational content on the other hand deserves to be promoted because it helps others and increases the goodwill of people promoting it.
You open yourself for challenge and hence broaden your growth prospects. When you share your ideas, your knowledge, your wisdom openly and then invite people to share their thoughts, you expose yourself to criticism and counter arguments. This either earns you critics or admirers, and it’s definitely better than having none.

Can you come up with more benefits of publishing educational content on your website? Please do share them in the comments section.

The importance of microcopy

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The importance of microcopy

In the times when longform content is hailed as the gateway to top search engine rankings, there is a tendency to overlook the importance of microcopy – very small bits of content writing that you read but don’t pay much attention to.

Here’s an interesting blog post I was just reading. It talks about the importance of microcopy. Microcopy is something my clients never pay me to write and in more than 99% cases they skip the pages the require microcopy, for instance, the contact us page, or some other page requiring one or two sentences. But I remember a client, a long time ago, making me write small sentences on the contact us page to succinctly explain the purpose of individual email addresses. He paid for it like a normal page.

What exactly is microcopy?

Here is how Kinneret Yifrah, the author of Microcopy – The Complete Guide explains this form of writing:

The words or phrases in the user interface which are directly related to the actions a user takes:

The motivation before the action;
Instructions that accompany the action;
The feedback of the user has taken the action.

As a content writer, I believe microcopy doesn’t just play an important role in making the user experience meaningful and impactful, even on normal webpages, for example the contact us page, or even the descriptions page, microcopy can significantly impact your bottom line.

Microcopy is the small strings of text in the form of 3-4 words or even a couple of sentences on a web page or a mobile notification. They are straightforward sentences.

Suppose, you have a contact us page. Unless there is really something specific that you want to communicate before people fill up your contact form, you may simply have something like, “Please submit our contact page and make sure that you fill up as many fields as possible so that we can provide you exactly the information you need.”

I know, this is a big sentence, but you get the point. Microcopy consists of a single sentence, a single phrase, and sometimes a single paragraph.

Microcopy is also used in the UI of a mobile app or any other software application. All those small messages that keep popping up when you are interacting with the mobile app, are microcopy.

These days I have been closely working with a mobile app marketing company that helps start-ups and mobile app developers launch their mobile apps successfully.

One of the jobs is writing compelling listing descriptions. Whereas, for Google Play listings, you can have around 4,000 characters as description, Apple’s App Store doesn’t allow much text. For description, you use just about 170 characters. When the count of the characters is so low, it can be considered as microcopy.

Why is microcopy important?

This post on the concept of microcopy explains it well why it is important.

As a writer I take words very seriously and as a person who wants his or her website or mobile app to be able to interact with users without ambiguity, you must too.

I often tell my clients that if they don’t take the written text on their websites seriously, they don’t take their websites seriously and hence, they don’t take their online businesses seriously.

When a person interacts with your website or your mobile app or with your software application, he or she doesn’t just come across buttons, pop-up windows, text boxes and other elements. Without words, these elements mean nothing.

You may think, if a button says, “OK’, where does the question of the importance of microcopy arise? Everyone can write “OK”.

Obviously, when I’m talking about the importance of microcopy, I don’t mean to say how you should be careful about using the “OK” and “Cancel” buttons.

Take for example the PayPal example I have given below. There are many customers who will actually decide against doing business with you if they think they will need to create an additional account to pay you. Just an extra sentence can avert this disaster.

Good examples of microcopy are error messages, tips balloons, details and explanations on the contact form, product descriptions and E-Commerce hints.

Here is a good example of microcopy:

A good example of microcopy

Although, this page comes up when someone unsubscribes, even there the company gives the person who has unsubscribed a good reason to come back. First, in the green strip, it has a very reassuring message,

“Your membership has been canceled and a confirmation email has been sent. But don’t worry, we’ll leave a light on – just in case you ever change your mind.”

“Leave a light on” is an age-old phrase used for people who are going away but the people in the house want to tell them that whenever they want, they can come back.”

I’m pretty sure many people subscribe back after reading this message.

The post I have linked to above gives some examples of miscommunications that may occur due to a missing or a wrongly expressed sentence. A good example is, “To pay by PayPal you don’t need a PayPal account”. This is an important message and if you are accepting payment through paypal then you should inform (the ones not already informed) because many clients and customers may not do business with you if they think just for a single transaction they may have to register at a 3rd-party website.

Microcopy constitutes of tiny, seemingly innocuous expressions we assume our visitors are already aware of and that is why sometimes we skip them. For instance, while you are asking people to subscribe to your electronic newsletter, sometimes you forget to tell them that you are not going to spam them or their email addresses will never be sold. This is given, and you know that you are never going to spam your subscribers, but telling them makes them more eager to subscribe. Or if you want your customer to create an account before he or she can purchase from you, you forget to mention that after creating an account they can track the shipment or make the next purchase more easily.

As the blog post rightly says, microcopy alleviates small concern that might not look monumental but may become a deciding factor when they are thinking about doing business with you.

So should you pay your copywriter for taking care of your microcopy? It depends, but to be frank, whatever helps you do your business better, has commercial value.

Torture or fun, writing is just like any passion you follow, or is it?

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Is there a “tortured writer myth”? If there is I’m yet to come across, at least in a personal sense. I was just reading this blog post titled The Myth of the Tortured Writer where the writer has tried to bust the myth. Whereas I totally agree that writing doesn’t necessarily have to be a gut-wrenching experience it doesn’t always have to be “fun”. Writing is creativity. Creativity is like a harvest, a growth of plants. Sometimes the land is so fertile and watered that you don’t have to put in much effort, things grow there just like that. It can be fun growing fruits, vegetables, flowers etc. on such land.

But sometimes the land is barren, the sun is hot and there is no water source nearby, and if you want to grow things there, you have to till, you have to make the soil soft, you have to add manure and you have to bring water to your fields. It’s hard work, but if you’ve made a conscious decision to get a harvest from that land, you’re going to get it.

Being a writer I’m a bit biased. Writing is more akin to creating a world and then diving into it whether it is molten lava or pleasantly cold writer. It is a story, and a story has its agony and ecstasy, and this is the beauty of writing.

Having said that, I believe writing-related difficulties and blocks are overrated and needlessly blown out of proportion. Some people are constantly writing, and some are perpetually caught in the cobweb of their mental blocks. Whenever you feel trapped like that, do some reading, especially writers you enjoy reading, aspire to emulate. Write on a subject slightly different from the current topic you’re writing on. Write from a different perspective. You will soon emancipate yourself from the “torture” and start writing as if you’re seamlessly playing music and are enthralled by it.

How does incorporating keywords increase your search engine traffic

When you use keywords just for the sake of generating traffic, it hardly works, and even if by some fluke it works, it still doesn’t work because that traffic never converts. Sure, using keywords in your content does increase your traffic because this is how you tell the search engines what topic you are talking about, but they should appear naturally, as a part of your overall copy. In fact their occurrence should be so critical that without using them your copy makes no sense.

How does using keywords increase your traffic?

Once you have made a list of your important keywords, you start preparing your content. You use those keywords to convey your message, and if somehow you don’t seem to be able to use them in your copy, then they’re probably not important to you. If your keywords are important to you, then there should be no dearth of material for them.

For instance I provide online copywriting and content writing services. I have more than 60 pages (I know, it isn’t sufficient, and I must have more) discussing various aspects of online copywriting and content writing. I’m constantly writing for my blog on the topics of online copywriting, content writing and SEO, and so I get plenty of reason to use keywords and expressions relevant to my business, and this is gradually increasing my traffic for various combinations.

It’s not always possible to rank well for your keywords due to massive competition; what do you do then? Try for longtail search expressions. Longtail search expressions constitute of longer strings of 5-6 words. It’s often not easy to make a list of longtail search expressions; they gradually begin to surface as you regularly generate interesting and valuable content for your website, using your important keywords.

Sometimes you don’t get paid for your online copywriting job, big deal!

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Once in a while clients don’t pay the remaining amount once I’ve delivered all the content. While trying to find the folder of a repeat client on my PC I came across a few folders belonging to clients who simply vanished after getting their online copywriting job done. The only saving grace is that I rarely start work without taking an advance. As mentioned on this advance for copywriting work link, I charge 100% if the total estimate is less than or equal to $100, 50% if it is between $100 and $200, and 40% if it is more than $200.

So does it make me bitter when clients vanish without paying the remaining 50% or 60%? Of course I feel bad, but no, I don’t become bitter and consider other clients suspiciously. First of all, it rarely happens. Ever since 2004 (when I stopped designing and developing websites and started writing content for websites) I have served more than 300 clients (according to the number of folders I have on my laptop currently) and among these it must be just 15-20 clients who didn’t pay the money they owed. So it is hardly a worrying trend. I wasn’t worried even when I think my 3rd client used the content and never paid the remaining amount.

Second, it gives me a psychological level playing field. Some clients are suspicious: what if I take the advance and never deliver? Most of the clients are overseas and it will be very difficult to chase me (legally or physically) in case they pay the advance and then I vanish or stop responding. Very valid fear and I try to assuage it by encouraging them to go through my website, my various blogs, my social networking profiles and search for my name on Google. I couldn’t have survived by taking advances and not delivering content. About the level playing field thing – if they are still doubtful, I tell them that I too have the same fear. What if I deliver the content and they don’t pay? Just like them, even I cannot chase them, and like me, they don’t even have an extensive profile on the Internet. So I’m at a greater risk.

Why did I start writing this post? It’s because of the writers I work with. Almost all of them are so cautious about getting paid that it begins to sound cheap after a while. They don’t ask what sort of work I’m going to give them and what must be their level of writing skill. They ask, “When are you going to pay, how you are going to pay, are you actually going to pay?” Imagine if I start asking such questions from my clients. Will I get work from them? Fat chance.

The reason they give is that they have had a “bad” experience. Well, when you work on your own you do have bad experiences but it doesn’t mean you carry your frustration out on the person who is trying to give you work. I don’t work with such writers unless they are exceptionally good.