Do You Know What Makes a Press Release Stand Out?

Many individuals are simply afraid to write a press release. What if it’s not written correctly? What if it’s ignored? What if it’s printed? No matter what the question, people avoid writing their own releases, thinking that there’s a deep dark mystery surround this type of communication.

You must learn to view a press release as a news item. It is NOT a sales letter. The intention is to provide the readers with information that will be of benefit to them. Do not confuse a news release with a sales promotion article. If you have something that is of benefit to members of the public, use a press release to let them know what you have available.

Save the sales copy for circulars and ads. The objective of those is to sell your product. A press release, on the other hand, lets your customers and potential customers know that your product is available and it has benefit to them.

If you treat your press release copy as an important source of information about what you have to offer, if you avoid a sales approach, your press release will stand out as important and of interest.

Let Freelance Writing Desk write a press release that will help you stand out.

Six Reasons Why Freelance Writers and Case Studies Are a Perfect Match

It is perfectly natural to be a little nervous when a client offers a case study writing assignment. After all, is that really freelance writing? In fact, a lot of freelance writers might ask what a case study is in the first place. There are many questions to answer for someone who isn’t entirely certain just what is involved in case study writing.

Like all forms of writing, it takes some practice to master the form. But once the writer gets a handle on it, it can not only be an interesting assignment to fulfill, but a lucrative one, as well. There’s no reason to be afraid when the opportunity arrives. Take it, learn from it and grow as a writer. It may be one of the best decisions a writer could make.

Case studies are really a simple concept. It is the success story of a business seen through the eyes of a customer well pleased with a certain product or service. It is the story of a happy experience. More and more companies need case studies, but they have difficulty finding writers willing to write them.

Top 10 Tips Know to Achieve the Perfect Copy Writing for your Website

1. Become An Expert On Your Product

This is the step that determines if your copywriting sells out or bombs. Learn everything there is to learn about your product. Get excited about it; believe that it can do everything that you need it to do and then some. If you really do not feel this way, then you have no right to sell it.

If you believe that you have a product that people just cannot live without, it will be easier for you to sell it. You will be in the mindset that you are not selling the product but instead offering the people the chance to improve their lives.

If you can get into this mind set then the perfect copy writing should just come to you.

2. Understand Your Audience

Before you put anything on paper or computer screen, define your audience.

• Are you selling to a college student or a business owner?
• How much money does your potential client make?
• What age group are you trying to reach?
• Male or female?
• How much time does this person have to read your copy?

Design your website specifically for the people that you answered the questions about. Make sure that you take the time to have others review the site.

3. Point Out The Benefits

People are busy, they want to know one of four things, and they want to know them fast.

• Will it make me a millionaire?
• Will it save some of my valuable time?
• Will it amuse me?
• Will it give me better self esteem?

Writing for the Internet

Learning to write for the internet can be a little confusing at first because it is not quite the same as most other types of writing. It requires you to change the way that you think. Let’s start with the fact that your online audience is there to read.  When your readers are online they are scanning your words at best.  Scanning is done because it is a proven fact that when you actually try to read word for word on the screen you are 25 percent slower than reading printed material. If you are wondering what this means to you as the writer, it simply means you have to learn to get people’s attention so that you can connect with them.

Make Your Writing Style Dramatic

The reader is not reading but scanning your words. The more eye-catching a form you use, the more likely they are to stay on the site long enough to read it. Try to break your writing up into segments. Keep each segment in parts of 25 or fewer words. Make sure that the main points of each segment are clearly expressed and even bulleted so that the scanners can pick out the parts that you want them to see quickly and efficiently. Bellow is an example of what your ideas and words should look like in a bulletined format.

The Keys to SEO Copywriting Success

SEO, or search engine optimization, copywriting is a field of interest for writers that can help create revenue for many websites.  However, there are many basic things that every SEO copywriter should understand to make their articles more readable as well as accessible to the engines. After all, if no one is reading your article, then no one is visiting the host site and the site is not making any revenue.  Here are some tips to make your SEO articles more natural and readable, while still getting search results.

What You Should Know About Editing..

One of the important principles of writing is to know when to edit.  If you put editing before your writing, it’s your writing that will suffer.  Here are some ways to edit your work without losing time, effort and inspiration.

Don’t edit while writing your draft

Don’t edit as your writing.  Don’t back up while writing because you think you may have made a grammar mistake several paragraphs earlier.  Editing is not writing.  If you start the editing process before you finish the writing process, you’ll never finish the writing process.  In addition, you can get caught in the search for perfection.  Perfection is good, but not when it becomes a barrier between you and what you’re trying to write.

Low Search Rankings: Time for a Change?

Some people panic when their copy is no longer in the top ten, even if it merely dropped to 11. They are just nervous about being on the second page. This is losing sight of the big picture. If the copy is still converting in the numbers it should, isn’t that the real thing? No matter how old or how low on the rankings the web site might be, the important factor remains the amount of conversions. Change for the sake of change itself can ultimately hurt that goal.

Remember that any business based on the web thrives on conversions. In light of this, search engine position is practically irrelevant. At best, search engine optimization is a good tool, but it is not the only, or even the most important, tool in the toolbox. There are a great many other things to think about to improve a website, and poor results should not automatically mean it’s time to change the copy.

Sending & Writing the Right Message to Customers

Most people often miss the fine distinction between telling readers what the writer wants them to know and telling readers what they want to hear. The latter is always the best course when trying to sell something. Unfortunately, the former is a big trend that probably loses certain websites a great deal of money in sales. Just like in conversation, words should be tailored to a specific purpose.

What all this means is that a writer should know who the customers are and what they will want when they come to the site. The copy should motivate them to do something, whether that something is to buy something or to register.

Tailor-Made Copy

There is no hard and fast rule when it comes to writing copy. The rules that apply to one project will not necessarily apply other jobs. Writing is not a formulaic thing like physics or chemistry. Instead it requires an ability to write for a specific audience and to tailor a message that says just the right thing to just the right people.

Many factors go into making a website successful, and the copy is a big one. Other factors include the familiarity of the product or service to the market, the product or service itself and dozens of other considerations. The method of communication to the target customer is a big part of the copywriter’s job and informs the decision as to what sort of copy should be used.

Structure your Copywriting

When you are working for a client, you must develop the discipline to structure your writing toward their preferences while, at the same time, remaining focused on copywriting procedures that have been successful in the past. Developing an effective sales letter for your client is probably one way to create the greatest impact, especially if that client is considering having you develop SEO (Search Engine Optimization) copy.

There is a time-tested method of structuring a sales letter. The format is workable, whether you are writing for an offline or an online business, and can be adapted to developing a website. When writing a sales letter, there is no need to spin your wheels trying to develop something new. Stick to what has worked in the past and continues to work today in terms of sales letters.

When writing a sales letter, there are three basic components that will determine your success at selling a specific good or service. These components come back to the structure we have referred to as H-O-P. H is for headline. If you do not pull your prospect in at the beginning, there is no use wasting your time on the rest of the copy. O is for offer. This is the portion of the sales letter where you offer something the customer either wants or needs. The offer must be clear about what you want the customer to do, and clear about what the customer will get. The last section is P for postscript. In this section you have an opportunity to “sweeten the deal” and ask the customer one more time for the order, letting them know what they have to do. Keep in mind that many customers read the headline first and then skip straight to the postscript.

When you write the sales letter, focus on one section at a time. Do them in order so that the language flows smoothly from one section to the next. If you happen to have an idea for a section other than the one you are working on, write it down on an index card or post-it note and set it aside for later. If you follow this method – one section at a time and in order – you will progress farther in setting yourself (and your client) up for success. Keeping the basic structure intact and maintaining your focus will help you to succeed.

If you are still gaining experience in copywriting, turn to some of the experts in the field – Dan Kennedy for example. He has been a resource over the past years, writing books that provide samples of effective copywriting techniques.

The more you write, the better you will become at writing. The secret, though, is to not reinvent the wheel and to use formats that have a successful track record, while at the same time, putting your own feel or spin on the content. You really do not want to waste time and energy doing something that simply has not worked in the past while ignoring something that has. If you follow the formula of H-O-P, you will be that much closer to optimizing the sales potential of your letter.