The blog
Customer insight: empathy or numbers?
22nd April 2016 | Posted in Content creation
I know data and analytics are all the rage. But I just don’t believe that numbers are everything. They may give us some insight but are they helpful in driving empathy? Are numbers a goal in their own right? For a while I worked for an extremely large, well-known company writing articles for their corporate […]
Why modesty makes it hard for smaller businesses to write their own words
15th March 2016 | Posted in Small business
You may say this is a sweeping claim – but most people who are selling their own services struggle to write their own promotional copy. Or, quite often, they can write it, but they can’t publish it. Why? I’ve been copywriting for businesses of all sizes for well over 20 years and I’ve seen patterns emerging. […]
Who is your ideal customer?
29th February 2016 | Posted in Branding
It’s an interesting journey taking the skills and experience that I have gained over many years of working in copywriting with corporates and large agencies and finding an effective way to share them with growing businesses. Now I’m working with people who have been running their businesses for anything from six months to six years […]
Copywriting packages for growing businesses
5th January 2016 | Posted in Small business
Making sure the words you use in your marketing are right for you and your target market is vital whatever the size of your business or budget. It’s important to be consistent across all your marketing, from web sites to brochures, direct mail to blogs, newsletters to social media. Every type of content is your […]
Juggling work and multi-generational care
19th August 2015 | Posted in Mature marketing
They call us the sandwich generation. We’ve no sooner stopped being 24/7 parents when we start playing a supporting role in our parents’ lives. That’s hugely simplistic of course. But with more people living longer, there is a very good chance that we will at some stage, possibly for some years, be trying to juggle […]
14 Tips for Creating your LinkedIn Profile successfully
10th July 2015 | Posted in Small business
When I was asked recently if I included LinkedIn profiles in my portfolio of copywriting skills I demurred. I wasn’t absolutely confident so I turned to Shân Hughes of Plug That Gap who, amongst many other helpful things, provides one-to-one help in getting started with LinkedIn. These are her thoughts. 1. Have a current photo […]
6 tips to get your contributed content accepted
25th June 2015 | Posted in Content creation
I’m the commissioning and content editor of a web site that’s all about information. We’re the place that a niche audience goes when they want advice, facts and support – often urgently. How we work with content providers We’ve clearly reached a tipping point in the past few months. There’s been a very noticeable rise […]
Why it’s good to ignore your own content rules – sometimes
3rd February 2015 | Posted in Content creation
As a content manager for web sites and blogs I get to both make decisions about what gets published and write some of that content myself. I’ve been in this writing business for a fair while now as a journalist and a copywriter. That means I have pretty strong views on how we should […]
Can you believe what you read about health stories?
28th January 2015 | Posted in Mature marketing
Through my work on When They Get Older I’ve become increasingly aware of the volume of stories around health that appear in most of the British newspapers and on that venerable institution, the BBC web site. And then there’s all the stuff that gets picked up and passed around social media as truth and […]
Do you have bragging rights?
19th January 2015 | Posted in Small business
I have a friend who has spent all our offsprings’ childhoods having to ask for lifts because her car is off the road again. Why’s was it always in such a parlous state? Because her husband was a mechanic who was permanently on the verge of servicing her vehicle, but paid work always came along […]
