How is your copy holding up?
Did you give your written web content a lot of deep thought, or did you quickly put something in writing, just so it had a description on the site? What story are you telling to your site visitors? How are you trying to connect to them?
You see, written content is more important than you think. For many artists and creatives it’s all about the visuals, and that is normal, as that is how you work. And a picture does say more than a thousand words, in many cases. But only if it is a picture that tells your story. Your photos may show off your products very well, that doesn’t mean that the viewer will click ‘buy’. On your website, pictures and writing should go hand in hand.
Go and see what your competitors are writing…
Go and do a little research right now, before reading any further. Keep this tab open, but visit some of your competitor’s websites. What do you like about their written content? What message are they giving out? What problem are they solving? What are they telling you on their About page?
How hot is their copy?
Did you see a lot of difference between the websites of competitors you just visited? Whatever they do, make or sell, the ingredients and method of writing web content for a business should always be the same. Where many entrepreneurs go wrong, is the focus. They think:”Well, it’s not called an About page for nothing, this is obviously where I write about myself”.
But ask yourself why you would click on an About page on a website. Is it because you want to see a list of names of staff members? Or read a complete autobiography? Or is it because you want to find out if this business is trustworthy, knowledgeable and enthusiastic about what they do? Would you rather buy from a company that shows warmth and personality, or from a faceless, cold, formal looking online shopfront?
Add some warmth to your content
How hot is your copy? Or, rather, how much warmth do you express in your copy? Just because it is written information on a business site doesn’t mean you suddenly have to go all corporate. There is no reason why you couldn’t write in the first person, if it’s just you running the show. You are absolutely allowed to let your personality shine through. In fact, even better! Let people know who is behind this lovely business of yours, and why you care about what you do.
Especially if you want to start attracting more of your ideal clients, writing in that way will pull those people closer, while keeping clients you don’t want to work with, away. And at the end of the day, that should be your goal: creating your niche, in order to target the audience you love to attract most. Writing in a style that feels natural to you is one of the tools to help you do that.
Use a grammar and spelling check app
‘Writing like you talk‘ can be a great way of connecting to people and lowering that threshold for clients to make that call. Writing informally, or in the first person, however, does not mean you can do away with spelling check. You cannot skip the punctuation! Whatever style you write in, make sure you throw it through an app like Grammarly. Not just because your SEO will suffer if the text is full of errors, but because it looks unprofessional if the content is hard to read and riddled with mistakes. If you are really not a writer, you could outsource it (a good copywriter will be able to capture your tone of voice in the text). But it’s much better to work on those skills yourself before giving up. So try the app, it will already improve your copy a lot.
Need more help in improving your website copy?
I offer Done-for-you services, such as writing and editing your website copy, and making sure keywords and key phrases are included for SEO-purposes. Have a look at my services page.