Copywriting for Your Website: Why Entrepreneurs Need to Care
Entrepreneurship, or starting your own community initiative, can be overwhelming. As a creative, there’s the design process, sourcing of materials, and actual creating that needs to be done.
As a community-minded entrepreneur or the leader of a values-driven small business, there’s research, grant and tender writing, project coordination and administration, as well as legislation to deal with.
For both, there’s also insurance, marketing, stakeholder relationships, and network building to do, not to mention start-up expenses. My heart rate is going up, just thinking about it all! And if you're a carer or a parent, you've got extra balancing challenges.
So, even as a copywriter and proofreader, I completely understand why many people either knock up their website copy quickly, or don't bother at all. Worryingly, doing this (or not doing it...) costs your business more than just money. But there is peace to be had.
Polished Copy = Professional Image
I love following other entrepreneurs and small business owners and supporting them. Not only does it feel great to give back, it’s also inspiring and can ward off that loneliness that sometimes creeps in when you’re a solopreneur.
But the amount of times I see otherwise-smart looking people use an apostrophe in a plural, or capitalise a word they shouldn’t…well, it’s pretty much an everyday occurrence. Whilst I totally understand how easy it is to make a typo when you’re rushed, it DOES affect how professionally your business comes across. Even when your business has nothing to do with spelling or grammar.
(If you want a gorgeous, very succinct checklist to look through when you’re writing a blog, a post, or a course, then subscribe to my monthly e-newsletter and I’ll send it over to you.)
Your Client’s Time is Valuable
To them, but also to you, and not just because I know you’re a caring, considerate human being. Because when you lose them, you lose a potential sale or funding opportunity, i.e. you lose business.
Yet, how information-saturated is today’s world? I mean, we ride or die with our smart phones, right? (Sadly, some may say.) The abundance of knowledge at our fingertips is a blessing, but it also means (and this is not a new insight) that we are fighting a phenomenon that causes our attention spans to shorten by the second.
Being intentional with our attention is something that many of us are trying to do, and there’s a good bet that if your target audience values hand-crafted goods and ethical living, they’re included in that ‘many’ too.
So you need to give them a good reason to stay on your page, and not be a hypocrite by only half-arsing your copy. (Sorry; weren’t expecting such a hard truth from me? I am mostly gentle, but I will tell you how it is.) If you want your readers to connect with you, then you need to take the time to connect with them, too.
Connect Your Writing with SEO
The third reason you need to be intentional about what you write on your website is that your words have a direct effect on how often your website will be found by new, potential, paying/investing customers. You need to take a little bit of time to educate yourself on SEO keywords in order to ensure that your business will show up in a top listing. If you want extra eyes on your site, you also need to be consistent in showing the search-bots that you are an expert in your field.
If the only people you want to attract are the audience you already have, that’s OK, and you can kind-of skip this step. Although, even loyal clients want to know that they are putting their trust in a valuable place, and your ranking in a search engine does go towards how trustworthy your business seems.
I will have an upcoming blog on how to optimise your copy for SEO, so watch this space, or sign up for my monthly newsletter and I’ll give you a heads’ up PLUS an inside tip exclusive to my subscribers.
The Quick and the Read
I promised you peace, so here is something to ease your worried mind: writing polished copy, that connects with your audience, and ranks in SEO, doesn’t mean you’ve got to spend any more time on it than you would have if you’d just typed any old thing out, just to fill in a page. (But you will need to spend some time on it.)
This translates to: you can still write an enticing About Me page or a well-funelled landing page in half an hour. The difference is that you need to know how first… and it takes a teeny bit of research.
Still can’t be bothered but now understand the importance? Email me to set up an obligation free quote for website copywriting. Small jobs are welcomed and prices are per individual circumstance.
