Sitting on the fence

I’m astonished that the Torch incorporates a sliding QWERTY keyboard as well as a touchscreen alternative. This just doesn’t make sense to me. I can fully understand a preference for a physical keyboard, particularly for the Blackberry ‘hardcore’ who justifiably see it as an essential feature, but surely the decision should have been made for one or the other. I can’t imagine a user swapping between the two in practice, once they’ve become used to their preference. One of the joys of owning a well-designed mobile handset is developing the muscle memory to use it almost automatically, as the functions become second nature over time. With its sitting-on-the-fence dual keyboards the Torch just couldn’t offer this.

Besides the botched functionality aspect, the double keyboard impacts on the Torch’s form factor considerably. Blackberry handsets, while never winning any design awards, have always have a pleasant enough appearance, but the slider element makes the Torch chunky and compromised. Also, RIM has traditionally steered clear of flash-in-the-pan phone designs by sticking to its core principle of usability, so the move to a slider – something that was very briefly impressive back in, say, 2005 – is very strange indeed.

Fails to impress

In addition to the dog’s breakfast of the two keyboards, the Torch’s screen fails to impress. Compared to the iPhone 4’s Retina Display and the Super AMOLED presentation found in the Samsung Galaxy S, the Torch’s dull screen is decidedly old school. The opportunity to use the Torch’s large screen as a great photo and video viewer has been well and truly missed.

And there you have it. Two major problems that essentially mean that the Blackberry Torch has lost the race before it has even started running. Whether the Torch proves to be a costly failure for RIM on a company-wide level remains to be seen, but it’s not altogether out of the question.

Choices

Blackberry has long relied on enterprise users as a captive market who would snap up their products for business purposes. Their competition was essentially non-existent in that area, and RIM quickly became the dominant force in that particular segment. No longer. Smartphones are by definition capable of a multitude of applications, and every single major player now accommodates the complex needs of the business user. There are choices now, and Blackberry doesn’t have the same hold over the market. While RIM has been developing the below-par 9800, Apple and Google have been busy creating the functionality and features needed to tempt Blackberry users over to their platforms. Microsoft, the past-master in the enterprise segment meanwhile has been ploughing R&D cash into its Windows Phone 7 OS, which is due to arrive before 2010 is out and provide yet another viable option for the business user.

Already surpassed technology

I’ve personally had a Blackberry Pearl for the last eighteen months, largely because of cost-preclusive iPhone tariffs and a nagging curiosity to try out a different operating system after years of Symbian drudgery on a succession of Nokias. While the Pearl provides a trouble-free phone and text platform, it falls laughably short of the web browsing and email experience of my iPod Touch. I like the almost retro charms of the Pearl, but that’s about it. It’s not a mobile to get excited about, or even feel anything particularly strongly for, positive or negative. I hear a lot about the benefits of Blackberry Messenger (BBM), but as every single one of my friends and colleagues has either an iPhone or an Android phone I’ve never actually had the opportunity to try it out.

Now the time has come to choose a new mobile, Blackberry simply isn’t on my radar. It’s a straight choice between the iPhone 4 and whatever new Android-based models spring up in the next month or so. Currently the Motorola Droid X and the Samsung Galaxy S seem to be the pick of the platform. With such fantastic hardware and operating systems available, Blackberry’s Torch just doesn’t come into the equation. Choosing the 9800 over the aforementioned handsets would be wilfully signing up to another eighteen months of already surpassed technology, and that’s not something I’m willing to do.

Right now, especially with the Google Caffeine update, we’re seeing the status of copy on websites come back to the fore. It’s about the context and relevancy of the copy, and how it provides quality to the user. It’s how it should be – copy being judged on merit, not sheer volume or how many keywords were meticulously seeded onto a page.

So, if you’ve got a website that you want people to find and look at for any reasonable amount of time you really need a dedicated copywriter to keep things on message and on track.

I’ve recently been looking at some copy and content provider services online, and found a truly dreadful level of quality. Some of the content didn’t even look like it was written by a human, let alone a non-native speaker.

Here are some of the gems that I found on a few of the best ranking websites for this service;

“We nurture a specialized team of website content writers, who’ll give a thought and action to your website, through their creative skulls.” (I know this is more than likely just a typo of “skills”, but I really hope it isn’t.)

“LG Prada gives lordly music playing features for all those who love to stay in tune.” (…Ok.)

“If you are in Massachusetts, you are in a good condition.” (How very general!)

“I am sure they will fit to your attire and make you the cynosure of million of eyes in the party.” (Inappropriate thesaurus-alert)

…and my personal favourite;

“Though humans have outwit animal species they have to lark most of clandestine facts till date lie unfathomed in so called intellectual ‘Scientific Community’.” (This is so wrong it almost comes round full circle to actually become right. But not quite)

These linguistic mutants are just a random selection I plucked from thousands of equally incomprehensible examples. It’s dizzyingly bad.

I was having a good laugh reading through these websites until it dawned on me that people must actually be using the services, and paying for the privilege. Then the idea of these horrific little services being successful began to grow in my mind, and it became rapidly less amusing.

If these sorts of services are allowed to take off and start providing lots of wholesale content across the web – whether on spammy blogs developed purely for backlinks, or actual credible websites – it could feasibly devastate the web experience. It is degrading written content to an absolutely unacceptable level and the sooner its phased out the better.

The Wikipedia community calls these types of phrases “weasel words”, neatly highlighting the sneaky intentions behind their usage.

Sale advertisements are the most common culprits for this type of copy, with discounts routinely over-exaggerated with a deliberate and calculated lack of clarity.

Movie advertising copy is another classic example of openly suggestive claims. Almost every billboard or bus-stop movie ad will have a one-liner “review” on it somewhere, such as; “Sensational… the best <whatever genre> movie of the year!”, attributed to a little-known commentator in the most miniscule small-print.

The “blurb” on a book cover is yet another prime location for completely ambiguous and out of context superlatives.

The reason these terms are still so common in advertising copy is that for every savvy reader they turn off there’ll be another reader who they hook. Despite their bluntly successful approach, there really shouldn’t be any need to use these terms at all.

Being specific in your copy translates to being honest, open and accountable for the claims that you’re making. If a price is “43% off” then it should be advertised as exactly that, not “Nearly 50% off” or something similarly vague. When copy is particularly specific in this way it becomes instantly credible, and therefore more effective.

So, next time you’re tasked with producing ad copy for a sale or promotion, try and stick to the specifics and be as open as possible, no matter how pedantic and unusual it appears. You’ll end up with more informed customers and by definition, better results.

While it’s not really the job of the copywriter to cover any technical features of a website, there are certain elements that should definitely be incorporated into your writing if it’s going to have any realistic search impact.

In this article we’re looking at a couple of these simple on-page SEO considerations – page titles and H1 tags – which when tied in closely with your copy can produce a potent response on search engines.

Page titles

Page titles, as the name suggests, are the titles that appear in the header bar of the browser. In their most basic form they should identify the content on the webpage they represent, but they offer an opportunity to do much more than that. Carefully using keywords in the page title helps search engines clearly identify the topic, and when you repeat those keywords in your copy the clarity is strengthened even further.

The right way to write page titles;

• Use short, succinct titles that contain one or two relevant keywords
• Make them specific and individual to the page they represent
• Use the keywords early in the title, in the first or second words – these are given priority when the page is indexed

The wrong way to write page titles;

• Using long, keyword-stuffed titles
• Using the same page title for multiple pages
• Using generic, unhelpful words such as “Home”, “Contact Us”

H1 tags

H1 tags, or headline tags, are the text-based headings that appear above the body copy on a webpage. These seemingly innocuous lines are judged by search engine robots to represent a definitive indicator to the content and theme of a webpage, therefore they should demand your attention when writing copy.

The best practice for writing H1s is largely the same as page titles, in that they should be kept highly on-topic, use one or two pertinent keywords and offer a seamless lead-in to the content on that particular page. Again, taking the keyword inclusion approach too far will likely have a negative effect.

So, next time you’re on an SEO copywriting job make sure you take the time to consider page titles and H1 tags – they might just make sure that people will actually end up reading all that great copy you’ve written.

PS;

The red herrings – meta keywords and meta descriptions

Two of the most misunderstood technical elements for on-page SEO are meta keywords and meta descriptions. These are the terms that are usually spouted by people who first heard about SEO earlier that day and want to come across as informed.

First off, meta keywords are simply a legacy from the early days and don’t play any part whatsoever in the search ranking of a website. Imagine the state of search results if you could rank by simply loading a stack of terms into the meta keyword tag? It would kill the search experience.

Secondly, meta descriptions are also irrelevant to the technical ranking of a website. They do however play a subtle and important role in the overall process of attracting visitors to a website. Meta descriptions are the snippets of text that usually appear underneath a link result on a search engine. So, if you’ve got some particularly snappy and persuasive copy in there you might just encourage a click. That’s why meta descriptions should always be considered to some degree. Just don’t expect them to affect your ranking positions – because they won’t.

Sorry, but it’s true… and I’ll prove it.

Say you’re speculatively looking online for a new car, and you arrive on the website of your local approved dealership. Would you be more interested in reading about the benefits of the car, the price and how easy the payment plan is, or would you prefer to read about the year the dealership was formed, how many cars they’ve got in stock and what the dealer principle has to say for himself? I’m betting you’d be far more interested in the former, as that is the kind of information you’d need to make a buying decision. The vanity copy doesn’t serve any purpose other than to inflate the ego of whoever it’s about, and it can often prove to be completely counterproductive. The example here is cars, but it applies to almost every single product and service out there.

There’s a place for this sort of copy – usually an “About” or “Company History” page that suitably forewarns the reader that they’re entering an area where you’re going to talk about yourself. It can be quite important in the right place, but if it appears anywhere else in any notable volume you’re wasting a valuable opportunity and risking the reader being turned off.

Vanity copy comes in different forms. Here are a couple of the most common;

• Overdoing the self-promotion: When copy gushes vanity it looks like it’s masking some shortcomings. Think about it… if the product is any good why aren’t they talking about it? In certain examples this can come across as a case of “doth protest too much”, setting alarm bells ringing with some readers.

• Irrelevant and self-indulgent blog entries: I’ve seen articles written by MDs about the following; how they made a loaf of bread last night; a funny-looking cloud they saw; their new car; and any number of pointless topics that have no place whatsoever on a company website. Are these topics of any interest to the average customer? No. Will they result in a potential customer looking elsewhere? Yes.

Avoiding vanity copy is an incredibly basic process. Just think about the fundamentals of sales copy – crafting a persuasive hook, pushing the USPs, closing down with a succinct call-to-action – at no stage does it require you to start blowing your own trumpet and going off-topic talking about yourself.

Ceefax

Ceefax and Teletext used to be part of an almost religious daily routine for me. Every morning I’d check the pages for national football, North East football then video games, in that order. If I had a spare ten minutes or so I’d play “Bamboozle”, Teletext’s maddeningly random trivia game – only playable if you had a TV equipped with “fast-text” coloured buttons – which would give my Coco Pops-addled brain an early workout.

The service was cripplingly slow. Pages were classified by a three-digit number, and once they loaded up (which could take an age) you’d be informed how many individual, automatically timed pages were available – if you saw “1/10” you’d know you were in for a long wait. The frustration of not finishing a page before it flicked to the next one perhaps inadvertently created a generation of speed-readers.

I once watched a whole football match on Ceefax. Ninety minutes of staring at a static screen, waiting for the score to update. I’d like to say it was a zen-like meditative experience in concentration, but it wasn’t… it was just a massive waste of time.

From a copywriting perspective Ceefax and Teletext weren’t particularly noteworthy. Besides the occassional laugh-out-loud headline, usually based on a pun of some sort, the copy was unspectacular and functional – no doubt hampered by the restrictive page sizes. It wasn’t about being wowed by the language, it was about getting information as quickly as possible – and it was certainly very good at that.

Then all of a sudden (when I bought a modem for my computer), Ceefax and Teletext became instantly irrelevant to me. The internet had arrived and there was no going back.

This isn’t a misty-eyed nostalgia piece. It’s the opposite in many ways. Although I really loved Ceefax and Teletext at the time, once they were suddenly and brutally replaced by the internet I didn’t miss them at all. I didn’t miss them because there wasn’t a hole where they’d once been. If anything, the modestly controlled and ordered information that the text service offered was swamped with the limitless offerings online. There was no cold turkey phase – I’d found something bigger, better and ultimately more satisfying.

Looking back, the concept of an information portal so basic as Ceefax and Teletext is pretty astonishing these days, now that we’re so used to the boundless volume of the internet. The variety and freedom of choice is incomparable. It’s hard to see that as anything other than a positive progression.

However, in the same way that the rapidly-rotating pages on Ceefax demanded that you read quickly, the masses of alternative choice online can often mean that many readers don’t devote much attention to web copy – as they can flick onto another website in the blink of an eye. Therefore the reader is still largely dictated by the medium, and it’s the job of the copywriter to work around this. So maybe the basic process of publishing and processing information hasn’t changed as much as it might appear.

Perhaps all the years of skim-reading those black and white text pages gave readers (and writers) an education in what was just around the corner.

PS;

Teletext – the ITV/Channel 4 variant of the technology – has gamely tried to move with the times by reinventing itself as a graphically-savvy and superfast version of the old format, but it just doesn’t feel ‘right’ somehow. Ceefax – BBC’s version – is gamely trudging on, unchanged from the decrepit ‘90’s visual, towards the finish line of 2012 when the digital switchover will finally kill it off.

• they’re compensating for their overall lack of knowledge on a given subject;
• they’re trying to establish an unspoken superiority over someone by bamboozling them with mysterious and complex-sounding terms;
• they’re just full of hot air.

Whichever one of these it turns out to be (it could be all three), there’s always a negative outcome as it’s essentially going against what communication should be about – it’s completely repressive of information and understanding.

Poorly judged jargon in everyday communication is bad enough, but in marketing copywriting it’s unacceptable 90% of the time.

If you’re writing some genuinely technical product specification then yes, of course you’re going to reference some genuinely technical terms, that’s fine as it’s necessary. Also, if you’re sure that your target audience is familiar with the terms you’re using, then again, go for it. However if you’re writing sales copy for a product or service that doesn’t have just one type of target reader or any technical aspects then there’s absolutely no reason to employ jargon terms – in fact, it’s likely to kill your copy.

Here’s why…

It’s the job of the copywriter to engage the reader, introduce an offering and explain the relevant aspects in order to encourage a positive reaction. This is the key target in every single copy job, with no exceptions. This goal is achieved by maintaining clarity throughout, and making the reader feel that they’re being informed. Overuse of jargon goes completely against these aims, and can result in confusion, negativity and doubt – three things that will never produce the results you’re after.

Microsoft Word thesaurus (I know, I know, hardly the bastion of language – but it backs my point up here, ok?) suggests “gobbledygook” as an alternative word for “jargon”, which neatly underlines how jargon should be treated by a copywriter – with extreme caution.

So, keep your copy clean and clear to get the results you need. If you find yourself reaching for jargon to express yourself then you may well be falling into one of the three categories mentioned at the start of this blog entry… and I know you’re not guilty of any of those.

So, what can a copywriter do to make an impression, and better yet, a sale?

An effective way of writing marketing copy is to assume that the reader doesn’t want to buy what you’re selling them. This way you’re forced to tackle their doubts head-on with your copy and, in the process, answer their concerns one by one until they’ve got no excuses left not to make the purchase. If your copy is engaging enough then it’s simply a case of reassuring the reader into making a buying decision, or at least to seriously consider your offering.

It’s really quite a simple writing process to work through – think carefully about what you’re selling and come up with a list of every imaginable excuse that someone would make to avoid buying it.  Then craft a succinct counter-argument for each point. It’s that easy.

It does require a little bit of subtlety – you don’t want to draw a reader’s attention to an objection they didn’t know they had – but writing your copy in this way really does have an intelligent advantage over the brash, shouty, hard-sell copy that everyone’s just a bit tired of these days.

Ok, it’s not exactly a Jedi mind trick and it’s obviously not going to have a 100% success rate, but it’s certainly a copy technique to bear in mind that could just be the difference between a sale and a bounce.

I don’t know when it was used first, but that must have been the last time it had any impact whatsoever. It was quite possibly pretty good to begin with, before it started appearing on every other advertisement. I imagine the poor copywriter who originally coined the term will be turning in his grave, otherwise he’ll be really, really old and quite angry about how many people have stolen his idea.

There’s some deep irony going on in this whole sorry affair, and it doesn’t show any signs of abating. Adverts are still coming thick and fast with it proudly included, as if it’s the most original and inspirational little quip in the world. I honestly heard it earlier today, on some TV ad that I otherwise immediately blocked out of my mind.

What isn’t “individual” here is the thought process of the copywriter, as the term has been well and truly flogged to death. I actually have a physical reaction whenever I see it now (a slight grimace, followed by a shudder… which incidentally is also my automatic reaction to a terrible smell)

Here are some examples of products that are currently using this dreadful little slogan in their marketing copy;

• Financial services
• Guitars
• Cars (Lots and lots of cars)
• Houses
• Bushfire survival plans (I’m not making this up)
• Jewellery
• Showers
• Furniture
• Helicopters (that’s right… Helicopters)

Google returns 2,180,000,000 results for the search term. That’s 2.1 billion references. I think it might be time to stop using it.

I’m not a surfer, mountain biker or a cool recreational adventure bloke. Apart from walking the dog or a twice-annual (at best) attempt at “running” I genuinely don’t take part in any active pursuits whatsoever. So I’m not exactly the howies target prospect if I’m honest. However, the way they present themselves and their products – primarily through their copy – makes me take notice of them and get into what they’re talking about.

When I read the howies website or catalogue I buy into what they’re doing down there. I get it. The copy is heartfelt, and the fact that they believe in what they’re saying leaps off the page. It’s evocative. It’s informal. It feels like they’re just talking to you and you alone.

If it was bad copy or lacked anything special I wouldn’t look twice at a company like howies, being the slouch that I am. As it’s such good copy, I actually look quite regularly now and consider myself one of their fans.

See for yourself at the howies website.

* Yes it’s supposed to be a lower case ‘h’, that’s the brand