September 2011
1 post
Report Writing
Report writing I’ve just finished writing a report for the wonderful Jonas Vebner who runs the London office for Music Export Norway. Love it. Meetings, telephone interviews, focus groups, surveys, research and plenty of long, hard thinking. Extracting the sentiments, the evidence, the threads and pulling it all together is a clear, digestible format. A document to shine a light, help inform...
April 2011
2 posts
January 2011
1 post
Brilliant Sales Copywriting – The Groupon way
Great sales copywriting has driven worldwide success for Groupon You’re by now probably aware of Groupon. No? It’s a group-buying website out of Chicago since 2008. Now running in nearly 40 UK towns and cities the company advertises limited deals on behalf on various businesses. Different offers each day covering things such as meal deals, visit to local attractions such as zoos or...
December 2010
1 post
Copywriting Rules
The only copywriting rule here is that there aren’t any copywriting rules. Nonsense. Rules give us context, they are glue, the common ground, the ways and the means that values… have value. They offer relationship and relativity. An axis, a framework. Whether we know them in detail or only share a vague familiarity, they join the dots, paint the backdrop. A ruleless world would be terrible. No...
November 2010
3 posts
Death Defying Copywriting Genius
Above is Don Draper’s open letter to the New York Times… Death defying copywriting. Classic “He didn’t dump me; I dumped him,” getting your retaliation in first copywriting. Agency copywriting at its most audacious, it’s boldest and brilliant best. Don……. we have ignition. Steffan Postaer and his contributors sum up the episode insightfully on his Gods of Advertising blog. Check out Jon...
The NOMEX Project
From copywriting slogans to Google Adwords to SEO services, freelance copywriting takes on all shapes and sizes and locations. Based in Manchester, copywriting services tend to be focused either in the North West, Cheltenham (where I’m originally from) or London (copywriting often offering a ‘remote option). It’s not just UK copywriting projects that I get involved in though. Here’s a link to...
Link baiting lessons from Lyndon
Copywriting for copywriting’s sake? Rarely. There’s usually some sort of motivation behind it. To inform perhaps, to entertain, the share, to kick up a stink and bait the audience into firing a few links in your direction perhaps. What better way than by a ritual sacrifice? Last week SEO was dispatched in favour of SMO (social media optimisation) by Ben Elowitz whose SEO Is Dead, And The New...
July 2010
2 posts
Google's Insightful SEO copywriting tool
Selecting the right kinds of SEO keywords and keyword phrases is important. Get them wrong and you’re Vicky Pollard chatting with the Queen – you’re Lester Burnham on the pull, you’re Paul and Yoko. It’s not going to work out. You need to talk in a language that your audience understands. More importantly you need to use the language they us - to share their...
How to create remarkable Digital Content
Top drawer copywriting, content strategy and content marketing presentation from Adam Singer<div style=”width:425px” id=”__ss_4732255”><strong style=”display:block;margin:12px 0 4px”><a href=” ” title=”How (And Why) To Create Remarkable Digital Content”>How (And Why) To Create Remarkable Digital...
June 2010
5 posts
Essential Freelance Copywriter Tools
The life of a freelance copywriter can be a mixed bag. One day you’re getting down and dirty SEO copywriting, the next a ghost blog, a newsletter, a sales letter or web copywriting project – all in the name of helping people make happy decisions. It’s the way I like it, and if you asked any freelance copywriter they’d probably tell you that it’s the variety, the range of...
listening to "Fela Kuti - Sorrow, Tears →
Ahhh here’s a better version. Go Fela !
listening to "Fela Anikulapo-Kuti - Sorrow, Tears →
Perfect sunshine music :-)
When copywriting becomes content strategy
In my recent ‘Call yourself a copywriter post?’ I questioned whether the pure and simple title ‘copywriter’ was being devalued by the copy mills and the SEO drive to force feed the interweb with fodder copy. Could it be possible to sidestep the low-rent pay per word perception and reclaim the business high ground for real value adding copywriters? Copywriters who as well...
X marks the spot
Seth Godin talks about the difference between hourly work and linchpin work and refers to the story of his college professor Henry who solved a damp problem in a high rise building and saved tens of thousands of pounds in the process. It reminded me of the old Henry Ford tale where Ford explains a problem he’s having to the famous engineer Nikola Tesla. Tesla hears him out, has a good...
May 2010
3 posts
Good wine needs no bush
And neither should good copywriting. There’s a shoe shop in the south eastern Chinese city of Shantou called ‘Good Wine Needs No Bush’. Ha! Those crazy Chinese and their crazy Chinglish. ‘How sweet’ we condescended. ‘What ARE they like!’ Well guess what? It’s not Chinglish at all it’s an old English expression that means (according to Wiki...
listening to "Mi and l →
@gemmamehera - Calmer* days :-)
Call yourself a copywriter?
There’s more to being a copywriter than being a copywriter these days and to be honest I’m not even sure that the term copywriter even does me any favours on occasions. A case in point being the inaugural SAScon Manchester SEO and social search convention held the other week. With a hard and fast focus on SEO, the event attracted some of the big UK SEO hitters as well a some big wig...
April 2010
2 posts
listening to "Rainbow - Kill the king" →
for my little Nicky xxxxxxx
listening to "M - Pop Musik (TOTP 1979)" →
I’m in pop pop pop music mood mode
March 2010
3 posts
Most of the time I spend copywriting isn't spent...
Funny thing for a freelance copywriter to say isn’t it? Maybe, but it’s true. Most of the time I spend copywriting isn’t spent copywriting. I stare out of the window, I browse online, I gaze into the middle distance. I Blip or Spotify, I talk to Scandinavians. Sometimes I look at the TV or sleep or drive or wash up or walk, hum and strum. I’m always reading. And yes, I...
listening to "Fennesz - Black Sea" →
beautiful late night ambisound
listening to "Danger Mouse →
Now this is special…
February 2010
2 posts
Why did the copywriter cross the road?
Humour works in many ways and on many levels. Here’s a Telegraph extract from ‘The Naked Jape’, by Jimmy Carr and Lucy Greeves that shares some of them. They talk about setting up the punchline, comic timing and economy of language – check it out it you have time, there’s a wonderful Emo Phillips routine that’s worth the admission fee alone. Much humour relies on a...
The copywriting technique so powerful they banned...
And there are moments when I can almost believe it myself. So there I was, a new UK copywriter’s head on the blog with an idea for site by a copywriter for copywriters (oops there I go again). A splash of info for SEO copywriters, a dash of insight for web marketing copywriters. Manchester bound and looking to get the new websitup and running , wondering where to start. So I wrote this… Words...
January 2010
2 posts
Web copywriting tips, tricks and Melanie
Top chap as well as top SEO Copywriter Tom Mason recently wrote a great blog on his SEO Manchester site talking about how best an SEO copywriter can integrate keywords or keyword terms in their copy without making it too clunky or having to shoe Web Copywriter Manchester horn Manchester web copywriter keywords into the text (joke!). (While I’m on the subject of creative SEO Copywriters in...
Life's a pitch...... and then you buy
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...
December 2009
3 posts
Don't Think About It............ Feel It
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...
Amazing Viral Marketing Campaign
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Are you just putting it on?
So here goes…. the answer you’ve all been waiting for, that’s been keeping you awake at night. Bugging you like the Stazi. Remember the Trivial Pursuit Question? ‘What is 500 hundred times sweeter than cane sugar?’ Hold on tight …… The answer is….. according to Little Luke and Anna. You ready for this? Their answer was……. 0 That’s right. Zero. The result of the almost endless deliberation,...
November 2009
4 posts
The funniest thing in the world ever.....ever.
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...
How to source great images for your blog
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’...
UK Copywriting » Copywriting That Saves Lives
Copywriting That Saves Lives If you’ve recently had the the misfortune of using the British motorway network you will know what a grim experience it can be at best of times. A wet Friday afternoon haul from Bristol to Manchester, enough to reduce a grown man to Britney. Recently though, I’ve taken interest in and inspiration from an extraordinarily powerful piece of copywriting...
Web Tech Developers are Clueless about Online SEO...
There’s an American SEO copywriting company called andesandassociates run by Katherine Andes. She’s a web copywriter and specialises in web content development, she does SEO and web writing for advertising agencies, online PR companies, SEO companies and internet marketing agencies. Somehow I’ve somehow found myself on her mailing list, possibly through the equally informative...
October 2009
11 posts
The scariest song ever
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U2's Twitter Song
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UK Copywriting » There’s no triumph where there’s...
There’s no triumph where there’s no threat Facing Defeat There’s a lot of ‘dare to be different’ talk in copywriting and social media circles. Stand out they say, differentiate yourself and your product. I couldn’t agree more. It’s something I’ve felt for a long time and in a partially previous life was/is something I’ve been keen to share through the medium of popular music and...
The Ignorance of Crowds?
So did you contribute to the public humiliation of Carter Ruck? The shaming of United Airlines, the ignominy of The Horizon Realty Group. Have you joined the campaign against……wait for it…….. no giggling at the back……….the Belgian Jeweller? Are you gonna get Jan Moir trending and give her a good old 140 character kicking? Transport for London?...
Social Media Revolution or end of Objective...
Just because you don’t agree doesn’t mean it’s wrong.
The above video, called Social Media Revolution is spreading like wildfire through social media circles and is being used by social media advocates as futher proof that social media is be all and end all of news, marketing and the internet in general. And there is truth, at least statistically, in the message the video brings: Social...
Untitled
So then…. a post from Ping.fm to LinkedIn, a Facebook Fan Page, to Posterous on to Tumblr, Twitter then to Friendfeed… here goes. via Ping.fm Posted via web from Martin’s posterous | Comment »
Tumblr
via tumblr.com Thanks http://samsantos.tumblr.com/post/209529596 Posted via web from Martin’s posterous | Comment »
David Bowie & The Arcade Fire - Wake Up
via youtube.com Yeah. Posted via web from Martin’s posterous | Comment »
The Social Media Guru
via youtube.com Ha Ha! The Social Media version of http://bit.ly/11fS1L Thanks @Phil_Daniels Posted via web from Martin’s posterous | Comment »
The Julie Andrews Complex
via audreyhepburncomplex.tumblr.com Fox Posted via web from Martin’s posterous | Comment »
September 2009
1 post
Polaroidisation - looking forward going back
There’s something magical about polaroids. Check out www.rollip.com. See and download the full gallery on posterous Posted via email from Martin’s posterous | Comment »
August 2009
12 posts
The Hype Cycle and the Twitter backlash / we are...
via wearesocial.net Yes indeed. Things taking shape, starting to reveal their value through mass adoption, application and benefits. Posted via web from Martin’s posterous | Comment »
Watch(via closetsandwich)