Copy writing - allowing for the cut
Archive - Originally posted on "The Horse's Mouth" - 2009-05-21 07:38:36 - Graham EllisAct 1 is boring, and sets the scene. Act 2 fills in the plot. In act 3, all the pieces come together and the show was a rising climactic conclusion. And the audience leaves the theatre in a buzz, thrilled and remembering a great evening.
The model works well for training courses and presentations where the audience is largely captive too, but it doesn't work for written pieces where there's no commitment to stay.
Consider theses requests - fairly typical of what I might get from Lisa, from the press, and from others:
• Write me an article on .... to fill [[this space]].
• Can you give me something - about 100 to 200 words.
• We want our web page to tell people about ...
With an audience uncommitted to stay around, the climax / point should be reached early, not late, so that the point has been made ... and it's not a huge loss if the reader doesn't go any further or the rest doesn't get printed.
Illustrative example. You can stop reading now if you wish - all I'm going to do hereafter is to fill in the detail!
Here's an example of this - a piece of text that I have written to include in a Chamber of Commerce advertorial for a presentation I'll be doing on 23rd June.
| If your business relies on passing trade, then you have a dependency on other nearby businesses for your own success. But if you are a destination business, with customers who will make a special journey or diversion to reach you, then you can cut that dependency and succeed irrespective of how others about you are getting along. Well House Consultants opened a training centre for specialised IT courses in Melksham in 2000 - a "destination business". In 2006, they added a hotel for their delegates - and also for other Melksham business visitors, and for leisure guests too. Graham Ellis, Director of Well House Consultants, will talk about how his company makes the hotel business a 'destination' one too, and how the company makes both of its businesses online destinations for remote selling. You may stop reading here OR .... "As President of the Melksham Chamber of Commerce, I have visited most of the shops in the Town Centre" says Graham "and I am struck by the difference between the businesses who are bright and bubbly, and those who are bemoaning the loss of trade since Woolworth left a hole in the High Street". You have had the story better filled in by here |
You can stop reading here too!
Editorial staff on newspapers don't have a huge amount of time, and it's very helpful to them to have articles provided in such a way that they can easily trim at any one of the possible cut-off points and still have a valid article ... providing your material in such as way gives you a better chance of getting it published, and published close to the format you would like. The use of a quote as a did above is, I am told, another excellent way of getting them to leave segments unaltered as the can't change what someone said.
From a web presence viewpoint, the 'top load' techniques works well too. Have you ever heard the term "above the fold", which means that your story should be visible, including its key point, before the user has to scroll.
You can stop reading here too!
Search engines / blog consolidators also precise the text by displaying on the first paragraph or two to give people a taster, so the point really needs to be made within that taster!
Here's some text - from my own recent blog entries - and I'll let you see just how much you get from the start of each article.
I have a requirement on my plate at present to write a piece of code for a customer that recognises cross reference codes within a document and turns them into links. And what makes the task quite difficult is that the referer .... Cynics will say that you "get nowt for nowt in this life" ... and indeed that see .... Let's say we're writing an accounts system, for example ... we have a base class tha .... |
For readers STILL here, lets give some onward links and references, should we? If we're looking to generate maximum response, the onward contacts should go at the top. If we're looking to filter out to just the 'very interested indeed' good prospects, put 'em down here.
If you want to look at more thought provoking, effective marketing of this sort, why not come along to the Chamber of Commerce lunch on 23rd June 2009 where I will be talking on a related subject (£10.00 for Chamber of Commerce members, £15.00 for guests - 12 midday at The Refa Balti House, Melksham. Price includes lunch). Book or let me know via our ask the tutor page (email for other opportunities - graham@wellho.net. And if you want to learn more in general on copy writing, I have found some very interesting sources including this blog.