Experience
The years teach much which the days never knew. —Ralph Waldo Emerson |
I started in direct response copywriting (print). Then the rise of the Internet and website development made for a natural segue into online/SEO copywriting, e-commerce, usability, and the content specialties: content development, management, marketing, and strategy.
Not all at once, mind you! It's taken a lot of years of hands-on project work and ongoing study to get to this point. See my Resume [Infographic]. Today, I offer my services to help busy marketing professionals and creative agencies achieve their goals. |
How did I get here?
Girls, writing, drums and lyrics. How else?
After four issues, I discovered that Marvel had already been publishing their own Crazy magazine – for several years! (Copyright check, anyone?) That was okay, though. New interests were taking hold...
My third and fourth loves: Drums + lyrics (and the rhythm of writing) Through junior and senior high school, I was particularly adept at English, history and soccer. History and soccer awesomeness aside, I could diagram a sentence like nobody's business. About this time, I evolved my table top tapping skills into playing the drums, and my writing skills into song lyrics. Great lyrics roll effortlessly off the singer's tongue like a ratamacue off a snare drum (with practice!). There's a rhythm to the phrasing. And careful word choice is required to flow with the melody. There's a rhythm and flow to many forms of writing. Take copywriting, for example. It has a conversational tone. Some sentences are short. Others are long or fall somewhere in between. There are natural pauses... And exclamations! And just like a real conversation, a copywriter's sentences may begin with "and," end with a preposition, or break some other grammar rule your stickler of an English teacher warned you about. Writing copy and content isn't about creating a masterpiece. The goal is to persuade, inform, instruct, influence and/or entertain. And just like great song lyrics, the rhythm of great copy and content helps hook the reader. Ultimately, much of what you're paying for is copy and content thinking. It's not easy! Whatever the guiding strategy, that thinking must begin with questions like:
About that last question... Clear communication also means deciding when a chart, image, video... or some combination can do the job better than text alone. More thinking! |
Communication problems to solve. Opportunities to connect.
Writing lyrics and playing the drums are fun and challenging pastimes when I'm not hanging out with family and friends, or on the golf course trying to perfect the rhythm of my swing. For my career, I love solving marketing communication problems. What is your brand all about? Who is your audience? What do they need or want? What motivates them? And what words (among other things) are going to sell your products or services? Or help ensure your website and mobile app create a great customer experience? Talk about fun and challenging! I also enjoy helping people. That’s one of the things I like most about inbound marketing and one of its components, content marketing. Content marketing presents opportunities to connect – to start and build relationships – with your target audience by first helping them with content that’s relevant to their needs and to what you have to offer. Call it the rule of reciprocity. Call it good karma. When you provide value to your target audience in the form of content, they’re more likely to be interested in your brand – and buy your products or services. Cool, right? Your target audience is more empowered than ever. As I wrote in a piece for Honeywell: “Thanks to digitally connected consumers, the mantra, ‘the customer is always right,’ could well be coined, ‘the customer is always empowered.’” That’s why your ability to connect with your target audience and to create great experiences for them at every opportunity is more important to your success than ever. Sure, B2B and B2C can be very different; we're still talking about people connecting with people. How can you best answer your target audience's questions? Solve their problems? Satisfy their needs, wants or desires? Make them look good in front of their boss? I'm here to help! |