Writing for the Web

Your digital audience is internet-savvy and time poor. So don't waste their precious time (and yours) with long-winded explanations of why they should buy from you.

• Make it short and sweet.
• Make it visual.
• Give them something, and then
• Go home.

Here's a present for you

If you like our infographic, then download the PDF here

If you like our infographic, then see more work by this talented Chicago-based graphic artist 

What will the results of the Federal election bring you, regardless of who wins government this weekend? The Copy Collective's Pauline Lockie and Jim Butcher consider what opportunities may come your way.

In the world of politics, there is no second place. There’s either winning Government or a long period in limbo. For the rest of us it is pretty much the same: success or oblivion.

With the finish line of the 47^th Australian federal election in sight, there’s an opportunity, which organisations such as yours may use to your advantage. It’s time to ask yourself if your organisation is ready to make the most of post-election opportunities for campaigning, mobilising supporters and establishing yourself with new audiences.

In the days and weeks after the election, it’s essential for your organisation to communicate its action plan for the future. You need to align yourself with political agendas or position yourself to be the one that acts on issues that peoplecare about regardless of the government’s or shadow cabinet’s advocacy.

Either way, it’s crucial that you communicate your stance, and fast.

It’s not an easy task. Key to your campaign will be how specific you are with your ask. Saying you just want to approach - for example - environmental issues isn’t enough. Which issue? What needs to happen? Why? How? Who’s involved? And most importantly: What do you want your supporters, clients or customers to do about it?

The Asia Pacific arm of Greenpeace runs targeted campaigns that are very successful. Pic: Courtesy Greenpeace AP.

Greenpeace always does this really well and a recent example is their Great Barrier Reef campaigns. They target a specific politician about a specific issue threatening the Reef. They clarify the solutions the MP needs to implement. And they make it 100% clear how their supporters can take action to achieve these goals.

Here are some of the other possible policies (or changes to policy) that could affect you post-election:

·         National Disability Insurance Scheme

·         Education funding (Gonski)

·         Refugees

·         Marriage equality

·         Conservation and the environment

·         Welfare, and

·         Funding for the arts

But it’s all about how you ask for these things. It’s an art form. And if you’re not completely committed to producing perfect, persuasive copy, then your mission may not only fall on deaf ears, it is likely it will fall into silence too.

 It's all about quick response, and you need an expert at writing and designing online projects in short time frames. You need a campaign that is easy for people to respond to, and which may cover eDMs, social media, targeted ads, website copy, fully-integrated digital campaigns, and more.

So the question is not who will win this election, it’s will you be off the blocks and running when it’s through?

The Great Gatsby or just the not-so-great gabby

Thanks to Warner: The Great Gatsby poster

Our Paris-based fashionista Tina Antarakis, manages to get some time off from working for her own business, The Style Bar, and as a talented contributor for The Copy Collective.

I went to see the fabulously over-the-top The Great Gatsby recently.

Loved every elaborate minute of it. Totally fantastical, yet true to F. Scott Fitzgerald’s novel - at least in its portrayal of a complicated era (extravagant living in the midst of Prohibition). And don’t get me started on the stunning sets and costumes.

The film also left me with an interesting insight into the use of words and language. It struck me each time Leonardo de Caprio, in his wonderfully intense portrayal of Jay Gatsby, utters the words “old sport”. (And if you haven’t seen the movie yet, he says it A LOT).

So what did I see? Well, when spending time in a foreign country as I currently do, you usually want to do your best to blend in with the locals. Part of this process is not only to improve your grasp of the language but to make it sound less textbook, more natural and ‘vernacular’.

To do this, you can start by peppering your speech with commonly used words and phrases. The idea being that you will sound more fluent, demonstrating to native speakers that you have a deeper knowledge of their lingo because you are conversing with them the way they actually speak on a daily basis.

But therein lies the danger, of which Gatsby was apparently acutely unaware.

For the more he bandied about his quaint old English term of endearment, the more he drew attention to the fact that it sounded like an affectation, something he had learnt rather than come by naturally; and it ended up doing him much more harm than good.

And so it is with a foreign language. There you are, standing around at a social gathering, quietly congratulating yourself because you are using argot, or slang - and that could mean the language of a country, a social class, or even an echelon, as in Gatsby’s case. But in reality, your attempts to fit in are only setting you apart.

So my advice? Be careful, and be aware. Take note of to whom you are speaking and the social context. It’s far better to speak slowly and correctly, using a few well-placed - but never vulgar - terms that show you haven’t just learnt in a classroom but at the same time didn’t pick things up on the street.

And be aware that the more familiar language you use, the more your comprehension and fluency will be expected to match. Should you fall short, you run the risk of sounding even more foreign than if you had just stuck with the basics and kept your ‘bah ouah’’s and ‘oh putain’’s to yourself.

If not, you could end up like poor old Gatsby: with a catch-phrase whose jarring presence in an otherwise smooth and seemingly well-bred exterior brought attention and ridicule in the worst possible way. In short: not great at all. 

Tina Antarakis © 2013 The Copy Collective 

Thanks to www.clientsfromhell.net

Maureen Shelley shares what she's learned through redeveloping the company's website

What you can learn from us (well, it was me really; sorry Dominique) being The Client From Hell

As a writer, I spend a lot of my time shaking my head over other people’s grammar or their attention to detail or their basic inability to keep to deadlines. Generally, there is a lot of muttering over all the things that humans do that means we turn to a professional for assistance with writing.

I was determined that, when we set about engaging a website designer, we were going to do all the things that an ideal client does to make the job of redeveloping our website as simple and straightforward as possible. It was going to be a pleasure, really.

You are ahead of me, I know, because you know we did everything that the perfect Client From Hell does.

The Brief

We wrote a beautifully, detailed brief – and then we changed our minds. When we changed our minds we did a 180 and then a 360-degree shift in our thinking. I think we ended up back where we started from but I could be confused. Having a very clear idea of what you want the website to do/be is a very good idea and it is one you should adhere to through thick and thin.

The Deadline

We developed what we thought was a realistic deadline – three months. We’d created that beautifully detailed brief, set out the timeline and milestones, said what we’d provide in that time and when we’d provide it by – and then ignored the lot.

We were late with copy (we didn’t have time to write copy – we are too busy writing for other people, we had to employ a copy writer and, fortunately, we know about 50), we didn’t supply stuff we said we would, we forgot things, we changed our minds on the site architecture plan after we’d signed off on the design and the site architecture plan. Yep, we committed all the cardinal sins that a client could possible commit without being struck by lightning.

We extended the deadline to six months and backtracked to four, back to six and – in the end – it took what it took, which was eight months from concept to “go live”. Be realistic in your deadlines. Don’t fix a date based on a Ministerial launch, the calendar or financial year or any arbitrary nonsense such as when the moon is in the 7th house or Jupiter aligns with Mars.

The Rabbit Holes

In Alice in Wonderland, Alice keeps disappearing down rabbit holes pursuing some fantastic idea or creature and going completely off track[i] from achieving her ultimate purpose. In website redesign, there are an inordinate amount of rabbit holes to tempt you – even for the strong willed.

We decided – mid-way through the process – that we wanted to achieve integration of our customer relationship management (CRM) software with our website’s content management system (CMS). 

We thought it would be a good idea that if we were collecting data from our website, it should funnel that data through into our CRM, so we could serve our customers better. We also wanted to be able to update the site ourselves for minor things without having to go back to the web design company.

Well, it is a nice idea in theory and you can do it if you have a spare $28,000 floating around (and I know by writing this I will be instantly pursued by every web designer/CRM/CMS software sales person in the world with a workable, cheaper solution – big tip, don’t bother; I’ve already spoken to you).

Pursuing this particular rabbit hole delayed our “go live” date by about three months. Decide what is really important for the website to do – from the outset – and stick to that.

The Budget

http://lifehacker.com/5725282/how-to-create-and-stick-to-a-realistic-budget-with-mint

We set a realistic budget, I know we did. We worked out how much time it would take and how much it would cost to write the copy, design, develop and collect all the images and illustrations, film and edit the videos, obtain permissions and testimonials from clients, take the photos of the staff (we had to do that three times because we kept hiring more), purchase the CMS licences and approve the design from the designer. I mean, this is our business; we know these things.

Unless I’d been there, I’d say we plucked some number out of the air that had no reference to anything. In the end, I decided the best way to establish a budget for a website redesign is what I’ve been doing with renovating houses for years. 

You take the biggest, most ridiculous number you can think of (based on what you know of costs through the most expensive builder you have ever met), you then double it and then you add 20 per cent. If it comes out to be less than that, you will be happy. This isn’t to say our website designers were expensive, they weren't. It’s just that, like shopping, when you add up all the different product elements, the total makes you cough a bit.

The Design

Some of our clients instantly become experts in copywriting after they’ve engaged us to do their copywriting. It’s a phenomenon I’ve noticed before.

Well, I suddenly became an expert in web design. It was clever of me really, without any training or experience I became more expert in design than our long-suffering designers. I fiddled, I suggested, I offered specious advice about fonts and positioning, I consulted other designers (who I hadn’t entrusted with my money) about the ‘flaws’ in the design.

After a few tears, too many glasses of wine and wringing my hands a bit, I turned to my very sensible son (he must take after his father) who said: “Don’t listen to other designers, they will always find flaws and faults and they will be negative and you will lose faith in your designers. Go back to the designers and tell them what you would like changed and see if it works. And, realise, that you don’t know everything and what may look ‘wrong’ to you is perfectly fine for your audience because – after all – you’re not an expert in web design” (Well, I did something right). You’re paying for expert advice – take it. 

Thank you Beena and Nupur at Blazing Designs. We made it.

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[i] http://www.alice-in-wonderland.net/pictures/alice-pictures.html

My favourite punctuation mark

Correct use of colons and semi-colons is good for showing-off. The comma does a fine job separating things. Brackets, dashes and the ellipsis all have a role to play. The exclamation mark adds drama.

Yet my favourite beast in the punctuation zoo is the humble full stop. Or, for Americans, the period. Some call it a dot.

It may be tiny. Sometimes it is hard to spot. On the printed page it uses next to no ink. On your smartphone screen it may be a single pixel.

The smallest punctuation mark is the most powerful. That’s because it ends a sentence. At the other end you’ll find a capital letter. Between the two you should find a group of words that hang – hopefully logically – together.

Better sentences contain a single idea. The best ones are also short.

Academic writing, poetry and literature have their own priorities. Most other types of writing work best when sentences don’t ramble.

This means lots of full stops. They make writing easier to understand. They help get ideas from one person to another quickly and efficiently.

Short sentences are clear. They are more likely to be unambiguous. They don’t need advanced reading skills. Nor do they need English as a first language. If you want to reach the biggest audiences you can’t go wrong with short sentences.

Don’t let people tell you short sentences are patronising. They can be powerful. Take the shortest sentence in the Bible. Jesus wept. Those nine letters pack a hefty punch.

‘Staccato’, ‘tabloid’, ‘simple’. Some say these words as if they are bad things. For me they are a sign of a writer who knows their art. I aim for ‘spare’, ‘tight’, ‘efficient’.

So the next time you put pen to paper aim for the maximum number of full stops. You’ll make me smile. 

‘Nouns’ and ‘verbs’ may shape my words, but typography ‘x-heights’ me

When I first started in the media, it was as a layout editor at the largest Sunday sports section in Australia. 22-year-old me, of course, naïvely thought my few years of attending media communications, journalism and layout courses at university ensured I knew all that there was to know about how a newspaper page worked.

Looking back, the one thing that I took from my layout subjects was that the human eye reads diagonally down and to the right (starting at the top left) subconsciously upon first encounter with say, a newspaper page, an advertisement, a website or blog. With that understanding being pretty much the only thing I knew about layout and design (besides my knack for writing headline puns like the one atop this very blog) I had to learn a few things very quickly concerning exactly how much work goes into making newspapers look the way that they do.

So, in the next few blogs, I’m going to go into a few of the ‘unseen’ elements of a page (or any piece of writing really) and try to clarify a few of the first things I had to learn about reeeeeally quickly in order to keep my job. Let’s get into it, starting with Typography!

One of the unappreciated duties of many professional writers and editors is not only to make sure the content of any piece of copy is top-notch, but also that the way the letters and words are placed together on the page is visually appealing to a wide variety of readers.

I got reprimanded for my awful typesetting skills by one of the older sub-editors at the desk when I was doing both page layout and copy editing in the first few weeks of my job at the newspaper. He was always grumpy and I was sure he hated me always failing to notice widows and orphans on the page. I cracked his craggy exterior one day by exclaiming “leaving an orphan at the end of the column – that’s a paddlin’.” He burst out laughing (evidently he too, was a fan of this scene of the Simpsons), and from then on he was a lot more friendly and forthcoming with advice.

There are a few features of typography that are overlooked by a lot of novice designers. I was going to make a comprehensive list of the most common typography mistakes that I made and saw, but it has already been quite expertly handled. Instead, I’m going to give a brief primer into a few elements of typography that any writer and designer should have an understanding of (plus a few tips that couldn't hurt).

Baseline Typography:  If typography is simply the art and technique of arranging, designing and setting type, baseline typography is its most common form. This blog, and most other text you will read on any given day, uses a baseline (which can be seen running invisibly below all text like a ruler). Often when designing pages, advertisements etc. the opportunity to deviate from the baseline will present itself, but without a good understanding of the principles of baseline typography, you will never be able to understand the presentation of text well enough to adhere to the strict fundamentals of type and design. Even very complicated typographical images like the one below require an understanding of baselines in order to distort and manipulate the text for artistic effect. Some typefaces in other languages than English do not use a baseline, particularly East Asian scripts where each individual character has its own square ‘box’ with no ascenders or descenders.

X-Height: The name-sake of this blog, the concept of an x-height is fairly simple, yet important to a deep understanding of what comprises visually appealing typography. Succinctly put, an x-height is the height of a lowercase ‘x’ in any given alphabet or font. Many regard the x-height as a determining factor in the readability of text, with a larger x-height preferred especially for any copy that is aimed at an older demographic who may have vision issues. The larger the x-height, however, can lead to a bevy of headaches for an inexperienced typographer, with leading and kerning in particular becoming a chore. This leads us to…

Kerning and Tracking: These can be confusing (they definitely stumped 22 y.o. me for a while), but these are two very similar typographic concepts that are often misunderstood. The ‘tracking’ refers to the spacing between letters overall, whereas ‘kerning’ is a selective change in letter spacing which can be used sometimes to make certain pairs of awkward letters look more visually appealing. The common acronym ‘AV’ for instance is often automatically kerned by most computer fonts to remove the unnecessary ‘white space’ between the two letters.

Leading: Similar to Tracking, Leading (pronounced ‘ledding’) is the space between lines of text. Although the space refers to fonts, leading in any kind of design software will always refer to the distance from baseline to baseline, and is usually measured in points, just like the type. Changing the leading also can affect the appearance and readability of the text. When starting a new project involving any amount of copy, a good tip is to always experiment with the amount of leading after choosing the font to establish what looks best on the page.

Serif/Sans Serif: The small decorative ‘strokes’ added to letters are known as ‘serifs’, but not all fonts apply them. The differences between the two fonts are often understated by novice layout editors and graphic designers. A handy tip that is the generally accepted norm is that for printed copy, a serif font like Times New Roman is the most professional looking and easiest to read, yet for digital copy a sans-serif font (or a font without serifs) like Arial is almost universally preferred.

Ascender/Descender: This one is fairly simple, which means it’s fairly simple to overlook when organising copy on the page. A letter’s ascender extends above the x-height, such as the ‘stems’ of the lowercase letters ‘b’, ‘d’, ‘h’, ‘k’, ‘f’ etc., while a descender, you guessed it, descends below the baseline, as in the letters ‘g’, ‘j’, ‘p’,  and ‘q’. While often computer programs will not allow ascenders and descenders to clash by automatically adjusting the leading, a lot of design programs allow a much tighter fit, which can often lead to ascenders crossing paths with descenders, which DRASTICALLY reduces the quality of the text’s readability.

So there you have it! There’s an introduction to typography elements that might not be immediately apparent when you start manipulating fonts and customising the design of your copy. They should always be at the back of your mind when assessing the presentation of the words you write, because they have many subconscious effects on the brain of readers. Often, a poorly kerned or leaded article will be so subtly hard to read, that readers don’t even understand why they stop reading, only that they don’t want to anymore. It’s our job as writers, editors and designers to ensure that won’t happen.

Stay tuned for next week where I delve a bit deeper into typography as well as a few other design elements. Be sure to hit this week hard, you definitely won’t have any excuses for not producing top quality typography.

Three things to get you through the tough times . . .

They visit us all - they can be personal, work-related, world events and everything in between - they are the tough times.

The Copy Collective is going through a tough time at the moment - all due to our success. Our business is going great, we have clients walking in the door with new jobs every week, we've doubled - and then some - the number of our employees in less than a year.

We are going through an amazing period of growth and we're like little ducks looking serene above the water with our feet going as fast as they can paddle underneath.

So what are our top three tips to getting through?

• The drug of your choice - for me it's lolly bananas
• Find something funny in the chaos - for me that was Jim choking on his tea at my lolly bananas
• Thank God It's Friday - and if it isn't Friday, then stay in bed until it is

I promise, if you apply these three simple steps it will either a) all look better than before or b) if not, you will have left things for too long and so some of them won't matter or c) at least you will have got to scoff a bag or two of lolly bananas. Have a great long weekend!