This is a guest post by Michelle James, post-grad student in writing and publishing at UQ and all-round lovely lady. Michelle interviewed me about what working as a web copywriter entails and the fundamental differences between print and online. Here’s her take on the conversation.
Writing well still the key
Since the mechanised printing press was invented [...]

While editing a client’s web copy today I became baffled by just how many words there were!
As a writer, I see my way around a fair few of the things, but today I was reminded of how few of the words on a page we actually read.
People scan to a certain extent when reading books, [...]

I haven’t had a report card since school days, but I came across these ‘Grader’ tools which essentially rate your marketing effectiveness.  I was curious to see how we fared…

Twitter Grader: Helps you determine how influential you are on Twitter.  You simply enter your Twitter handle & it analyses your followers, number of tweets, retweets [...]

I’m currently reading Reality Marketing Revolution! by Mike Lieberman & Eric Keiles.
Reality Marketing is based on adding an extra step to the marketing cycle – Lieberman & Keiles argue that going straight from an ad to a sale just isn’t realistic anymore. Instead, it takes more to take the cake: Mix advertising, public relations & referrals, [...]

Three months ago Sarah McVeigh brought her skill and passion for writing to Bluewire Media. Coming from a journalism background, Sarah is interested in many areas of the media, and wants to eventually take her career to radio or print journalism. For the time being though, Sarah’s taking her talents online in the position of [...]

Today at Bluewire we have been discussing how important it is for a website to reflect the character and personality of the business that it represents. When it comes to design this is obvious – you don’t need to explain to companies that the way their website looks will reflect the way people see their [...]

Reaching the top of Google (and staying there) is akin to playing a game with ever changing goal posts. There are so many elements that contribute to where your website is placed and for how long.

And while it’s granted that Google moves in mysterious ways, and you will never be able to control every single variable, there are nevertheless loads of techniques you can use to keep kicking goals when the Googlers make it tricky for you.

A marketing coordinator at a flagship radio station recently made a comment which got me thinking about what we really take from the words we read. She noted that many of us spend upwards of three years learning how to win grades with fancy words, only to unlearn much of it as soon as we [...]

Matt Cutts from Google’s Search Quality Team gave this compelling workshop-style presentation on 28 May 2009 at the I/O conference in San Francisco.
He politely critiques actual websites that people in the audience have had the opportunity to submit for review.
He offers amazing web design tips covering:
- how to improve website usability
- tips for having search engine [...]

This article, Write Interesting Emails & Avoid the Inbox Vortex was originally published on Digital Ministry on 2 June, 2009.

By now most marketing decision makers know that Email Marketing campaigns can be a wonderfully effective way to communicate. But how do you avoid getting lost in the Inbox vortex?
You probably get 100s of these emails [...]