And I thought I’d more or less run out of things to say about marketing! As it turns out there’s more to look at, which I’ll be interspersing with posts about other subjects close to my heart. Here goes, a bunch of current marketing and content creation stuff to cover.
Second impressions – Networking on LinkedIn
I only have so much time to spare for marketing my business. A while back I wrote about dropping Twitter after six years in favour of LinkedIn. My first impressions of the network were lacklustre – LinkedIn isn’t exactly exciting, or fast-paced, or even immediate. It’s a whole lot slower than Twitter, people post a lot less frequently and it’s very serious.
A few weeks down the line I’m feeling more optimistic about networking on LinkedIn, and I’m beginning to see the point. Yes, it’s a bit sluggish compared to the constant flurry of activity that is Twitter. And it’s pretty po-faced a lot of the time. But I can actually see people responding to one another and winning new business. And that’s not a bit like Twitter. It’s a whole lot better.
One of my fellow copywriters obviously keeps her finger firmly on the LinkedIn pulse. If anyone in our network posts a request for a content creator she’s on it instantly, offering to help and putting herself forward. I can see that she wins a whole lot of work that way.
If I needed to drum up more copywriting clients, I’d be at it myself. I’d be networking like a woman possessed. As it is, I’m busy enough and don’t need more customers right now. But thanks to LinkedIn for providing a B2B network where people really do post projects and find suppliers to handle them. Best of all, I haven’t seen a single incident of trolling… or anything remotely like it. And that’s a big relief.
I missed Twitter at first. Now I’m perfectly happy to focus my business networking efforts on LinkedIn.
Changing copywriting briefs – Is this fair?
Picture this.
- You’re working with a creative agency. They send you a copywriting brief for a client project. You do the work, a series of 250 word introductions to categories on a high tech retail website. So far, so good
- The agency comes back and asks you to edit the descriptions back down to 150 words each, because the client has decided 250 words is too long. You do it, even though the brief has changed through no fault of your own
- The content comes back, this time with a list of products to weave into the copy. You do it, although it’s extra work added to the original brief
- The content comes back again. This time they say that several of the products they asked you to weave into the descriptions don’t exist any more. The agency wants you to carry out another set of amends, adding in replacement products. But they want you to research them yourself, which completely blows your copywriting fee out of the water
Hm. I feel my good nature has been taken advantage of. Thank goodness this type of thing happens very rarely. In fact it’s extremely unusual for me to have to take content to a second draft. I usually either get a rock solid brief from the client or, if not, I create a brief myself for them to agree to so we all know where we stand from the offset.
Changing briefs 2 – More madness
May is proving tricky. Two changing briefs in one month? It’s unheard of!
- A direct client sends a brief for me to quote on. I quote and they accept it
- I carry out a load of research in preparation, spending several hours dropping product information into a document and formatting it ready to begin writing
- I ask for clarification on a couple of points and they send a second brief requesting a list of totally different product pages from the first brief, which means all my research and preparation has been wasted
- The format they want the copy in doesn’t fit the layout of the test website, either
I’m not sure what’s going on here. But it’s crazy. If all my clients worked this way I’d be mad and broke in no time. Let’s hope June doesn’t bring any more! In the meantime, as an eternal optimist, I’m still smiling…
