It’s true. I haven’t always been the gifted copywriter I am today. Not always the UK copywriter of choice for the SEO great and the web marketing good of London Town, Manchester and the shires……. no less. In a roundabout way though I’ve always been a writer, songs, reviews, stuff, though the copywriter I’ve become has been more by accident than by design. A product of previous lives.

In one of them I lived in China for a couple of years where I taught English and Business English and went on to sell containers of miniature, remote control indoor helicopters and UFOs for Turkish Americans out of Shantou – ‘the ceiling’s the limit!’ I wrote for them, and we laughed and drank Gong Fu Cha and rode our bikes.

A world that many find more interesting than easy, China leaves you with more questions than answers. Without getting too philosophical, the further time takes me from China the more I want to understand. If you’ve spent any time there, you’ll likely know what I’m saying…… my relationship China feels like unfinished business…… there’s stuff I need to work out….. so with a fair wind I may well return in the not too distant future – for interest’s sake.

As well as living for a while in the wild east of beautiful old Shantou and in high-tech Zhuhai on the Macau border I also taught in a city called Wuxi, about an hour and half north west of Shanghai, one stop on from Suzhou. Nice enough, manageable size, sat on the shores of the giant lake Tai Hu. Very beautiful, scenic in places, in others, as many Chinese cities are, scarred with a rash of modernity – ill conceived, poorly executed – charmless fail. On a rainy day you could be mistaken for thinking you were in an Oriental Basingstoke. No thanks.

Teaching Business English

Gotta say though, Wuxi paigu……. If you ever get the chance and are into meat, in this case ribs…… fantastico. All the food in China was a treat, Chaoshan restaurants, food to die for. Xiou Mie, belt fish, the simplest bowl of noodles was heaven…… Anyway,…… One of the lovely classes of Chinese professionals I taught business English to, a group from Bosch studied a book called ‘New Business Matters – business English with a lexical approach‘ by Mark Powell and Ron Martinez. What a great piece of work. Modern, relevant, well written, a superb read. Certainly challenging for my students, but hey, it’s good to push it a bit.

The very first unit was titled Career Management with the text article titled ‘Me PLC’. It went on to talk about Steve Jobs, hired guns, employability, the corporate ladder, re-engineering, change management, empowerment. ‘The thing about the rat race is that even if you win, you’re still a rat,’ it said. Ouch.

Sure I’d come across Michael Porter and read a load of other business gurus and experts when I was at college, but I hadn’t come across the expression ‘me PLC’ before. The single cell corporation…………………. now web enabled.

A UK Copywriter

Well… times move on and doing what I do, now, back in the UK copywriting, a copywriter UK based commentating, observing, formulating and sharing ideas, it requires a lot of reading and researching, mooching about online and generally working to get a feel for the way things are hanging together. Innovative times and online copy, copywriting skills, sales, marketing, content marketing and all that jazz deserve close attention. Trying to get under the skin of what’s happening and what people are doing to be ‘effective’, the claims, the counter claims, the blah blah, the words for words sake, the quality.

Well it’s strange because virtually all I see now, all I’m surrounded by, all we’re surrounded by, immersed in………. is ‘Me PLC’.

Chris Brogan asking the question ‘Are We Addicted To Giving Our Own Opinions?‘ is a product of exactly this.

Sit back and reflect on a really well written piece… say a Seth Godin blog like Everyone is cluless or a Copyblogger article like Why Content Is No Longer King…. and they genuinely engage. You can easily relate to the sentiments and motivations, to experiences in your own life, thoughts and contemplations. Fertile ground for us would be code breakers, especially if you don’t swallow the baby with the bath water as many do.

Now don’t get me wrong…..there are many many sincere, well-intentioned, honourable people and sites on the interweb – I’d be inclined to include Mr Godin, Mr Brogan and Mr Clark amongst them – professionals.

The Seducers

There are also a whole stack of angular, tales from topographic oldwives, backslappers, ‘I grew up poor as a kid but I’m rich now’, tipsters, tricksters, web 2.0 nuuuuu media schticksters, pseudo academic, nudge nudge wink winkers, ‘I’m gonna let you in on a secret’ sonny jimers……..the seducers.

The question is who’s who? Who’s going to bore you into a catatonically hysterical hypnosis and a £5000 information product credit card bill, leave you neck high in vacuous verbiage and who’s going to share information of genuine worth of real benefit, interest, amusement and value?

Who’s going to waste your time and who going to wise you up?

You’re probably familiar with the John Wanamaker (father of modern advertising according to Wikipaedia) quote “Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is I don’t know which half.” Well if you substitute the words ‘half’ for ‘90%’, ‘money I spend on advertising’ for ‘stuff I read online’ and the word ‘wasted’ for ‘self aggrandising bullshit designed to make you sleep skip to the money shot where you can’t help but hand over the cash,’ then you will quickly be able to identify the problem we all face.

The difficult realisation I am unfortunately duty bound to share is that there really is no defined, demarked delineation between the two. To one extend or another they map across each other. There’s a reason for this……………………’Me PLC’ or put another way………… life’s a pitch.

But the pitch isn’t for a product or a service, a new this or a new that. It’s not for something that can make your life easier, happier, more productive or more profitable. The pitch is for trust. Trust is the only thing that matters. It’s the only currency of real value. Without trust you’re going nowhere and everyone of these smart marketers know very clearly that trust is the key that will unlock the door to profits. Win trust and you have won.

Me PLC MUST be for real…… or at least appear for real.

Content Marketing

And the thing is…….. we’re ALL at it. Everyone does it and we do it all the time. I’m doing it now. Here and now. So please can we just all admit it and stop treating people like they’re plain thick and can’t see what’s going on. There’s only one thing worse than someone trying to take you for a mug and that’s the sheer stupidity of those that do it and have the arrogance to genuinely think you aren’t aware of them trying to do it. The 24 page sales letter, the canny forum post, the ‘geeee Sonia what an AWESOME article, man you ROCK me.’

Even many people’s Twitter persona’s are crafted, chiselled from grins and wishful thinking. A bad thing? No not necessarily. We all adopt personas, espacially in business. ‘Your personal brand is a fictional character.  So make it a good one,’ says Nick Usbourne. He also talks about Why we are so susceptible to the idea of buying into get rich quick.

Come on, let’s cut to the chase. I’m telling you straight. I’m telling a tale, I’m shooting the breeze, I’m reeling you in. I’m going to make you trust me if it kills me. Admittedly you’ll have found enough of interest to get you to read this far. And if you’ve read this far you’ll also have noticed that I haven’t invited you to buy anything. I’m not trying to sell you anything…….. yet.

So what’s in it for me that I should be bothered to continue to write at all? After all, the sun’s shining, the birds are singing and there are 1001 better things to do than sit here banging out copy. Is it my ego? Nah…. not really. That I simply enjoy going off on one? Nah. Am I mad? No. Philanthropic? Well I’d like you to believe that.

Trust

The actual honest reason, the true hand on heart motivation – one that most web marketers, content marketers and commercial websites actually try to conceal is that I am simply trying to establish a relationship with you. It’s a simple matter of trust. It’s a simple matter content marketing.

Most people think that by admitting this they’re letting the cat out of the bag. That once you know that all they are doing trying to generate trust, that they crave your trust, that YOUR trust is the ONLY thing that gives their business any value, then the scales will fall from your eyes and all the inane, vacuous, patronising, condescending toss they emit will stand exposed. In many cases…. the king is in the altogether.

Honestly they really really don’t want you to see it. I’m going to be straight though.

All I want is your trust. There I said it – All I want is your trust (an email address would be cool but I’m not going to Madoff anybody for one).

I want you to have got something out of this little meeting of minds and feel you’d like to come back. I want you on board. An advocate. I want you to believe in my writing, to believe in me, that I’m capable, can do a job for you… all that sort of stuff. When I hit you with my pitch, which of course I will one day when I get my act together I want you to feel so inclined towards me that you’ll likely say, ‘yeah I’ll go with that, he’s clean, he’s cool. Yeah, Martin Williams is a man I can trust with my brand, with my copywriting, my advertising, with my message. Someone I can do business with.’

You need to know that my work will save you time, represent you creatively, effectively and make you a lot more money than you’ll spend hiring me.

We NEED to inspire trust.

Even more than that, we NEED to be trustworthy.

No trust – no ‘Me PLC’.

Life’s a pitch……..and then you buy.

Thanks to pixeljones for the image via Flickr

You know all that advice to SEO copywriters and bloggers? The SEO copywriter code that says effective copywriting should be brief, pay attention to keyword co-occurrence, keyword density, emboldened keywords and all the rest. All that stuff about anchor text, outbound links, meta tags? Well sorry, I just didn’t feel like it. This blog pretty much ignores the perceived wisdom, trying instead to offer a little of its own.

The outrageous price of Christmas Trees

I was talking with Connie the other day about love, life, Teenage Fanclub and the universe. You know…. one of those gentle, kind, explorations of shared perception and experience you have sometimes. A nice early Sunday evening, driving home, car conversation. Talking about the place in English hearts for the tone of Glen Tilbrook’s voice, that people don’t smell as well as they used too, that there’s far more to China than meets the eye, the outrageous price of Christmas Trees about Simon Armitage, Benedetti…… loads of stuff.

Cuckoo

We got onto the subject of trust, how you can tell whether someone is trustworthy, what the signs are, what you should look out for. We talked about people we know, people we’d known. The kind and the crazy, the calm and the cuckoo. Actually most people, we concluded, have a bit of everything. Just because someone’s kind doesn’t mean you can trust them, just because someone is nuts doesn’t mean they won’t stand by your side when you need help most. Nowt as queer as folk (us included), we agreed.

Connie’s Colombian, and Colombians have a pretty sophisticated take on things like this. A well developed radar when it comes to trouble. A well functioning dangar (ouch).

Intuition

Hardly surprising really, most people are aware that for one reason or another Colombia has had a rough old time of it over the years. Fortunately though, things seem to be on the up. The country’s stunningly beautiful, the culture rich and deep, whilst the people are amongst the kindest, most intelligent and hospitable you could ever wish to meet. There’s a passion in Colombia, borne of her pain, the working of the land, tales of ancient wisdom, a Latin brotherhood, a rhythmic and lyrical consciousness and a shared bitter, sweet narrative.

Colombia’s a developing country and life is a struggle for most people. At best most are prone to exploitation, at worst plain and simple abuse. Abuse of goodwill, trust, ownership, peace of mind. Threat exists only a very short distance below the surface. That‘s life though. Lives lived with great dignity and courage, not just by Colombians but by much of the world. Time and/or inclination willing have a look at Living To Tell The Tale Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s autobiography. They call it magical realism. Colombia is steeped in both.

A Sixth Sense

An important part of living with the struggle, part of surviving, is the necessity to quickly identify those who mean well and those who might do you harm. To spot trouble. It’s an ability that’s taught from a very early age, grandmothers tutor grandchildren to read the signs, mothers teach daughters, father’s teach sons and the skill evolves almost into a sixth sense the older you get. The stakes are high. In countries like Colombia gauging a situation, reading danger might save you from being ripped off. It can save you your life.

My partner told me of the time when walking along the street with her aunt and niece, her niece asked whether it was ok for them to cross over and walk on the other pavement. Her and her aunt gave each other knowing looks, they were pleased. Both had spotted a man ahead they didn’t like the look of, a man they thought threatening. It seems the niece had somehow, intuitively, also felt the threat and wanted to avoid him. She was learning and to my partner and her aunt this was a good thing.

The secret?

‘So what are the signs?’ I asked. ‘What are the signs that tell me danger lies ahead?’

‘The eyes and the smiles she replied, it’s in the eyes and the smiles.’ Eyes open too wide, too narrow, too lingering, flitting, avoiding yours, shallow, unconfident eyes that deep down don’t believe in themselves, over-expressive eyes that try to will you their way. The smile that’s too wide, mean, curled, too fixed, too quick to drop, too friendly, the smile of accelerated intimacy that tries to pin you to the wall.’

‘Hang on,’ I said, ‘you’re completely contradicting yourself.’ You’re just systematically listing any possible way that someone can look at you. You’re covering all possibilities. I need some rules please. What are the indicators that can tell you the difference between shifty and straight?’

‘You asked me for the signs,’ she said, ‘I’m giving you the signs.’

I rephrased the question. ‘OK then little Miss Pedantic. How can I tell whether I can believe in someone, whether they are trustworthy or are a threat?’

‘Ahhhh…. that’s easy,’ she said.

‘Go on.’

‘Everyone has an intuition to one degree or another. Most of the time if you follow your natural instincts you’ll do ok. It’s when you try to rationalise them away that you run into trouble.

Don’t think about it. Feel it,’ she shared.

Inspired

Of course she’s right. I felt she was right. I didn’t know quite why so I sat down to work it out.

I don’t know about you but most of my best and most successful friendships, projects, plans, business ideas or whatever have been based on gut reactions. Something inside that without persuasion or cajoling says yes. So easy, so simple, a quietly comfortable path of least resistance that lets your closest friends, the happiest relationships, the most enjoyable projects and the most profitable business ideas into your life. Like when you’re looking for a house or an apartment. You just KNOW straight away when you’ve found the right place. It takes seconds. When you hear a piece of music somewhere, on the radio, at a friends, wherever – what’s that song? No build up, no story, no courtship, no sell, just a natural positive reaction to something you’ve heard and love instantly.

When I look back at things that have inflicted the most pain, the most disappointment and the biggest upsets they have always centred around over-thinking, trying too hard. You just KNOW when an apartment ISN’T right, again it takes seconds and no amount of pitch or persuasion will ever make it truly right. Trying to make do and mend, giving the benefit of the doubt, dragging horses to water is exhausting, time consuming, frustrating, physically and mentally unhealthy, expensive and virtually always a waste of time. The funny thing is that in almost every such instance, I kind of knew I was onto a hiding to nothing from day one but I was too ignorant of my concerns to act upon them. We become blinded. Our egos, loyalty, fear of making a fuss, greed, ambition, wishful thinking, desires, anger, stubbornness or stupidity driving us down dead ends.

From snake oil sales man plying their wares off the back of a wagon, to the cold caller, the carpetbagger, foot in the door merchant, the plausible small adder, the friend of a friend of a friend, all completely self justified and astutely aware of the buttons and levers that function gain and how best they are pushed and pulled to land a fresh dollar.

Sharking the Internet, you don’t have to go far to find yourself the potential victim of a scammer or a, ‘I can make you rich for only $39.99’ promise. The web is groaning under the weight of disingenuousness. Yes it’s a nice tummy tickle of a feeling to be ‘followed’ and of course often out of courtesy and intrigue you will return the compliment. But ‘followed’ by who? A long sales letter touting, direct online marketing monster of a Twitter spammer? Quite possibly.

It’s not just Twitter, once you scratch the surface of the Internet and start to look at it as a potential source of revenue, once you start to read and research ways in which people monetise their web presence through affiliation, information products and the rest, you’re opening a whole world of sales messages from which you need to decipher the sense and the nonsense. The insipid and inspired – here’s a formula that may help. Insipid = 99.999% Inspired = the rest. Don’t take my word though – feel it yourself.

Cliché Corner

This is such old school advice it’s hurting me. Honestly….I’m in physical pain. What’s worse is that I’m having one of those horrendous moments when you catch yourself sounding like your dad.

Ok, here goes. Deep breath………..

‘If it seems to good to be true, it probably is.’

Uuuurrggghh there, I said it. Take me out and shoot me. Better still make me listen to the Naomi Dunford, Clay Collins interview again, where he starts talking about how much energy your brain uses when you’re thinking (potassium consumption or something), so it’s ok stuffing 57000 calories worth of burger and pizza down your neck every day, sat in front of your computer noodling money out of people. (To be fair, iyttbiz.com is well worth a look. Lots of useful info, a healthy amount of bad language and minimal fluff). Take a wander over.

Where was I? Oh yeah……..‘If it seems to good to be true, it probably is.’

There I said it again. ‘If it seems to good to be true, it probably is.’ AND again. I don’t care now.

Please don’t think it through, don’t rationalise, don’t reason, don’t but this and but that. Please….. if a Nigerian lawyer tells you you’ve been left a fortune, or a stock market expert has some hot share tips for you, or you have the chance of earning an unfeasibly high second income, or if someone tells you it’s ‘easy to make money,’ If people insist on telling you how successful they are and that you can have a piece of the action at a price, if people say things like ‘get out of debt and build an income for life’ or ‘Sign up with me and I will be your personal sponser (sic) guiding you to success.’ Please…….don’t think about it.

Feel it.

Save yourself the time, trouble, expense, compromised eyesight and opportunity costs by feeling it quickly and most probably correctly. Don’t let people waste your effort and energy with non-starters.

Trust me I’m a Doctor

Even well intentioned but misguided or ill-informed friends, family and professionals can unwittingly lead you into trouble. Again if you feel things aren’t right, act to get back on course. Feel first, apply the logic later.

Feel it.

Does it feel right? Really right?

Or should you cross the road keep on walking and keep out of harms way?

What do you think? What do you feel?

Takes a little time to load but stick with it – it’s a winner.

Thanks @phil_daniels

What do you think? Good? Bad? Like the beard? Suit me?

Want to make your own?

Have you seen anything that compares or competes?

Seen anything you feel is as innovative?

Do share……….

A copywriting post? By a copywriter about copywriting, for copywriters?

Hmmmmm. Tenuous.

Sometimes though………… you just have to laugh.

A few Christmases back I was round @jason and @phil_daniels place doing the Trivial Pursuit too much booze thing. Cheese and whine. Little Luke and his girlfriend Anna were there too, fairy lit and out if it.

Lots of laughs, happy times.

So we’d been playing for a while, wise-cracking, head in handing. Competitive insouciance. It was Little Luke and Anna’s go…..

Roll of the dice. Green – Science and Nature. Question time………….

‘OK, chaps. Listen in…… Are you ready?

Yes?’

Here we go.

‘What is…….. 500 times sweeter than cane sugar?’

Whispering, giggling…….sniggering, tutting, lip biting (not each others), slow intakes of tight breathe between clenched teeth. ‘Can we have a pencil and paper?’

Scribbling, scartching. Tick tock tick tock

‘Come on you two (they were taking forever) – get on with it.’

A long eventually later, the answer arrived……….

It nearly killed us.  Deep down I’m still laughing.

What was it? What was the sum of their inspiration? Their genius answer?

Cliffhanger alert…….. I’ll post it next week.

In the meantime, what do you think? NO CHEATING!

‘Sweeter than cane sugar. What’s 500 times sweeter…. than cane sugar?’

In pre festive season fit of generosity there’s photo copy of a Low set list for anybody who even comes close to Luke and Anna’s answer.

Thanks to Leo Reynolds for the image via Flickr

Are you a copywriter or blogger looking for some fresh and creative design inspiration, some new marketing textures for your site?

Are you as turned off by all those dull, done, stock images as I am? You know the score.

In his Copywriting Tips Nick Usbourne writes about the perils of using cliched images on blogs and websites. As ‘integrated business solutions,’ ‘passion’ for this that or the other, ‘leverage’ and ‘thinking outside the box’ now reflect errrrmmm……. thinking inside the box, so do images.

I’ll offer a brief description – you do the mental image stuff. Honk when you’ve had enough.

• Someone shouting into a megaphone.
• Thick wristed business chaps shaking hands.
• Any group of tanned, toned, terribly smart business people grinning.
• A globe, a mouse and a graph.
• Unnaturally white teeth.
• Designer eyewear, lab coats and clipboards.

It’s like some sort of business porn.

If you’re a copywriter, blogger, SEOist or just want to say something a bit different with your images, then why not follow the Flickr Creative Commons route. There are millions of images to choose from and many are available to use under Creative Commons.

Here’s how – I don’t know about you but I need these things spelt out step by step.

1. Go to flickr.com
2. Enter a search term in the Search box and press enter
3. Now click on Advanced Search – it’s below ‘Full text and tags only’ to the right of the ‘Search’ box.
4. This will take you through to the Advanced Search page. You’ll notice your term in the search box still.
5. Scroll down and check the options you want.
6. Be sure to check the Creative Commons box.
7. Now click the blue search button at the bottom of the page in the middle.
8. This will return some images. Click on one you like and open its page.
9. Scroll down to see the Creative Commons info in Additional Information – on the right hand side, just below the list of tags. Above the little green box.
10. Click on where it says ‘Some rights reserved.’ This will spell out the particular Creative Commons license that applies to that image.
11. Save it to your computer if you like it.
12. Stick it in a blog– but remember to comply with the Creative Commons, for example the ‘right to make derivative works’ and attribute the source.

There’s no shortage of great imagary there. I LOVE D Sharon Pruitt’s work as Pink Sherbert and Mikee Showbiz’s amazing coloured micro smoking pigs (that’s curly tailed SEO for those of you in the know

For a longer more detailed explanations of the processs and information on the types of Creative Commons licences check out articles at  Skellieweg and Sethsimonds. Sonia Simone (always good) has her own take on things with her – Lazy Bloggers Guide to Finding Great Post Images

To add a little more flavour I take my images, including my own photos to Rollip.com and marmalise polarise them. I like the retro, lo-fi feel.  The romance of polaroid images, inspired by pages such as Audrey Hepburn Complex and Sabino at Tumblr. Inappropriate probably, but here’s the most wonderful image I’ve stumbled across over there. There’s something Staple Hill, circa 1973 about it …………………anyway…………

My advice?

Get creative, get lateral, get original. Give your post/site/whatever some character, a little personality. Make it different. Differentialise it (see…. you can do it with words too).

Have a play. Try bending and breaking some of your own digital photos as well. It’s amazing how things can turn out.

Art innit!

Do you know of any other good sources of images or ways to treat images that are interesting?

Please…. do let me know.

Thanks to dullhunk for the Blog Image