Wordsmithing and content: Marketing Therapist, Amber Raney-Kincade, puts Words by Jacqui on the couch (Part 1)

Amber (of Raney-Kincade, ARK): Content is an essential part of your marketing strategy. But what is content? Well, if you break it down to the basics, content can be the words on your website, the words on your marketing materials, the words you use to promote yourself verbally. Content is king in the virtual world, thanks to search engine optimisation. It’s extremely important to get the content right. So, how do you do that?

Some people are blessed with the gift of the gab, and they can easily translate their words to written text. Others struggle with their old friend Mr. Writer’s Block. Still, some people are really great at speaking what they mean, but converting a verbal explanation into content that takes advantage of SEO and online marketing exposure isn’t something they are familiar with.

I met up with Jacqui Hogan, a wordsmith and expert in writing content, to get the lowdown on how a small business owner can tackle this fundamental and important ingredient: CONTENT.

ARK: Hi Jacqui. It’s so great to chat with you. So first of all, I want to ask you to define a wordsmith. I’m not sure everyone will be familiar with that term.

Jacqui (of Words by Jacqui, WBJ): Hi Amber. First of all, thanks for suggesting this blog interview – it’s great to spend some time unpacking the subject of content. Though I spend a lot of time writing it, pondering it is something I rarely do!

Now the word ‘wordsmith’. As you say, it’s not one that’s bandied around much and it may even be unfamiliar to some. The dictionary tells me that a wordsmith is (and I quote) ‘an expert in the use of words’, ‘a person whose vocation is writing’, ‘a person skilled in using words’, all of which give you the general idea. Personally, when I think of the word, I associate it with sweat-soaked blacksmiths (!), people whose job it is to take molten iron and forge it into beautiful, often utilitarian shapes – as a wordsmith, I consider that’s exactly what I do. I see myself as taking raw, often tricky-to-handle, batches of words and hammering then filing them into shape through several rounds in the furnace. By a process of gradual refinement, the gleaming product emerges! 

ARK: And what exactly is ‘content’ in today’s terminology?

WBJ: Content is a word that has arisen in its current meaning out of the exponential growth of the digital revolution. Before that, say five years ago, no-one (I’m referring to professional writers here) talked about content. What we talked about was ‘copy’, the name understood to mean all the words that occurred on a given page, be it a magazine ad, 48-sheet poster, bus side or news feature. It was also used to refer to promotional words that were spoken, as in TV or radio commercials. Hence, a person skilled in writing promotional words, across all media, was known as a ‘Copywriter’. As a Copywriter myself, I can vouch for receiving many a blank stare when asked what I did for a living – copy and copywriting belonged behind the relatively closed doors of elite advertising agencies.

But, forgive me, back to your question – what is content. So against this background comes the digital revolution – the democratisation of advertising, if you will.  The who-o-o-o-le thing is turned upside-down by the rise and rise of the internet, because now, no matter who you are, you can sell yourself online AND to a world market. Suddenly everyone has a website and a social media portfolio and the new collective holy grail is to make your way to the top of the search engine rankings. Because the programmers and geeks are now ruling the promotional world, they can come up with whatever the damn hell name they like for the words contained within websites and blogs, and the word they come up with (rather unimaginatively in my opinion) is CONTENT. You know, the in-fill, the stuff that needs to be there to keep the bots happy and to make the whole system run. The bottom line is, content is the words used to flesh out websites, blogs and social media communication of all kinds. It’s copy, but as conceived by the digital mediasphere. Which means that it not only needs to promote the owner’s enterprise and make narrative sense, but be optimised to ensure that rapacious little search engine robots like what it has to say.

ARK: What are the first steps in gathering content for a website or marketing material? Where do you look for content or recognise what you should/shouldn’t include?

WBJ:
 Well, that depends very much on the task at hand – let’s, for the sake of the exercise, assume a website. The first step is to take an inventory of all the information, printed, digital, conceptual, you have in relation to your business or enterprise – just get it out of your head (or wherever it resides) and onto paper (yes, good old paper) and spread it all out on a table. If you’re already in business and seeking to add services, improve SEO and/or revitalise your brand, you’ll obviously have more resources to work with than if you’re starting a business from scratch. In the case of the former, you may find you have printed leaflets or existing web content that has elements of what you want to say but no longer quite nails it – examine these materials carefully and see what you want to use or lose. Integral to this process is competitor analysis – check out the people who do what you do and find out what you’re doing better. Discerning competitive advantage is vital to honing what you say and how you say it. It’s also vital to look at all the information you have in the round – not piecemeal, but as a whole. This allows you to see where you’re communicating inconsistent or conflicting messaging and terminology.

If you’re starting from scratch, you may have a business plan, which should be a good source of basic content. If not, the process of generating and gathering content becomes a form of business plan – that is, strategic – and will force you to think long and hard about what it is you’re actually doing, how you plan to do it, who you need to tell about it and which media you see yourself using.

As a Copywriter, one of the things I learned over many years working in agencies was that the buck stopped with me – it was easy for an Account Executive to ask me to express a half-baked strategy – until you have to commit yourself to the actual words your target audience will read or hear, you can get away with that! A lot of the time, what I wrote defined the business strategy and I guess what I’d say to people trying to do it for themselves is the clearer you can be with your strategy before you sit down to write, the easier it will be to create and find content that says what you want it to say and will distinguish you from your competitors.

ARK: How do you know if you have ‘bad’ content?


WBJ:
 Ah, how can I count the ways? The first and most obvious indicator of bad content is poor grammar and spelling. I don’t know about you (and of course I come to it with a critical eye), but as soon as I notice a typo or a vagabond apostrophe, I find it difficult to take the business seriously. The message I get when I see this goes something like ‘this business is not operating in a professional way – they’ve obviously written it themselves and not even bothered to get it checked. I wonder where else they’re behaving unprofessionally?’ That might be an intensely biased view, but subliminally I think it’s there for a lot of people. From there, it’s a sliding scale, the next misdemeanour being stuff like duplication of headline in body copy (or body content, should I say), duplication of words and phrases (unless being used for specific effect), shoddy sentence construction, ungainly headlines and poor narrative flow. Somewhere in all this is the horror show of poor navigation or poor breakdown of content into appropriate categories (e.g. content which should be in the ‘About’ section being in the ‘Contact’ section, that sort of thing). Then there’s the SEO side of it, so for example, search engines prefer a specific number and distribution of keywords per page – sometimes it’s clear to me that the content has been written with an eye to cramming in key words rather than narrative flow (which, by the way, the bots are wise up to and penalise you for in the rankings).  I suppose the other thing that comes to mind is failure to have your content lead to a clear call to action for your audience – and the other side of this would be overly manipulating them to do what you want (e.g. until you give me your email address I’m not giving you any information), which can put people right off.

ARK: Are there any rules to go by when putting together content?


WBJ:
 Know what you want to say before you start crafting narrative. Have an idea of the tone of voice you want to use. Find out which key words pertain to your enterprise, and use them appropriately. Always take a bird’s eye view of your entire enterprise before sitting down to write i.e. be clear on the overall picture. This will impact the way your social media interrelates across the board. Do your research, market and subject. Know your audience and anticipate their experience through your content.  Where appropriate, make sure you have a clear call to action.

ARK: What sort of buzz words are good or bad to use?


WBJ:
 I’m not quite sure what you mean by buzz words, but it’s important to know the current jargon being used in your area of enterprise – that is, the jargon that will be understood by your target audience. So, if I’m writing a website for a personal trainer, for example, I may need to find out more about the latest words or phrases trending among those with an interest in fitness – maybe it’s ‘fat loss’ for example. This is vital if you’re going to connect in a meaningful way with an audience – and if you don’t, the message is ‘I’m not actually speaking to you’ and they’ll move right on to the next website that makes them feel more at home. The word ‘content’ itself has become a bit of a buzz word, having nudged its way into common parlance in the way I’ve described. It still has a fizz, because its relatively novel. The word ‘branding’ is interesting, too – in my opinion a buzz word whose star is on the descendent, as its novelty wears off and it becomes relegated to the ranks of communication wallpaper.