How do you handle rejection?

If your answer is along the lines of “I curl up into a ball and whimper”, it’s probably just as well you can’t see what happens when people look at your website or see it listed in search engines. Because most of the time they take one look, shrug their shoulders and go “Next!”.

It’s a truism that web users have short attention spans. Perhaps this is exaggerated sometimes. But when it comes to searching for a product or service and “shortlisting” a few possible websites, you really do only have a few seconds to convince someone that they really, really need you.

So what can you do to make sure they make the right decision? read more >

This one works (spelling mistake and all):

(From Grill’d.)

This one, I’m not so sure:

(This is the first in a series of posts about how people use the words on your website.)

Here’s something about writing for the web that’s totally unique. On the web, whether people can find you or not depends (in part) on the words you write. To be exact, it depends on how the words you write relate to the words they type into a search box.

As a word geek, I find this fascinating. The ancient art of rhetoric – to which every copywriter owes his or her livelihood – is about using words based on how you think people will behave. You predict that pressing certain verbal buttons will trigger the behaviour you want. So you could say that all of us in the word business use language in predictive ways.

But I can’t think of any other word-based activity that’s so specifically, mechanically predictive about human behaviour as writing search engine optimised (SEO) content. (SEO is about a lot more than content, actually, but content is a good place to start.) read more >

Imagine you’re launching a new clock radio. Clock radios are a rather boring item (apologies to fans and collectors), so you’re racking your brains to think of something your product can do that will excite people. Then you hit on it: there’s this button you can press that will turn off the alarm and it will turn itself back on nine minutes later! It’s like magic!  Is that cool or what?

You’ve read Copyblogger enough to know that you need to sell benefits, not features, so you carefully craft a benefit statement for your snooze button that cleverly leverages a pain point or an emotional hot-button. “Give Mondayitis the flick!”, maybe. Or “Catch an extra few minutes of precious sleep…and still make your 9 o’clock meeting!”

You’re pretty pleased with yourself. You plaster your new tagline all over your website and your promotional materials, sit back and wait for the sales. And they don’t come.

The reason is hopefully obvious. Every single clock radio on the market has a snooze button. Snooze buttons were probably really groovy when they were first invented (their inventor is no doubt either very rich, or cursing him/herself about not taking out a patent). But nowadays, you’d no more be surprised to see a big button on a clock radio that you can press to make the alarm go away for nine minutes (why is it always nine minutes, incidentally?) than you would to see a handle on a saucepan.

This might all seem very self-evident, but it’s amazing how many businesses – large and small – are out there selling the snooze button. From airlines selling the generic benefits of plane travel, to work-from-home financial planners offering to “grow your wealth with a comprehensive range of investment services”, these businesses are doing some great pro bono PR for their industries, but totally failing to explain why customers should choose them over their competitors.

What you need to do instead is sell that nifty iPod dock that you’ve just added to your line of clock radios. Well, actually you needed to do that five years ago; iPod docks on clock radios are the new snooze button! But you get the idea. Work out what you’re doing that nobody else is, and sell that.

Image: seanmcgrath

When I started in business a few months ago, I decided to operate under my own name. It wasn’t so much that I loved the idea of being my own brand; it was more that I couldn’t think of a name that really captured the kind of business I wanted to be. So many copywriters’ business names were, I thought, just lame – wincingly bad puns, or try-hard attempts to be “writerly”. If anybody should have a kick-arse brand name or nothing, I thought, it was a copywriter. So for want of anything better, I became Angus Gordon, Copywriter.

Then, one night, I suddenly sat up in bed (the way you do). I won’t pretend I yelled “Eureka!” but I certainly thought it. Usable Words just seemed to encapsulate everything I stood for. On top of that, it was four easily remembered syllables. Talk about pithy! With trembling hands I got onto the net and checked for the domain name: bingo! It was available – not just the .com.au, but to my surprise the .com as well. So Usable Words was born. read more >

Here are three recent blog posts that I highly recommend you read right now:

• SEO Copywriting – You Can’t Make a Silk Purse Out of a Sow’s Ear. She’s right, you know. You can’t.
• Copyblogger – Warning: Narcissistic Marketing Can Be Dangerous to Your Business Health. Actually, I probably need to read this more than you do.
• IttyBiz – The Only Thing You Need to Know About Copywriting and Conversions. Of course, if that was literally true, you’d never have to read my blog again. I don’t suggest you stop reading my blog. I do suggest you start reading IttyBiz.

This recent post from Social Media Guru Chris Brogan echoes something I’ve recently been banging on about to anyone who’ll listen:

For every “we” site, you now need a “me” person on the site. Why? Because we do business with PEOPLE, not with corporations. The corporations give us branding and other legal constructs, but we buy from humans.

Nowhere is this message more direly needed than in the so-called “business to business” (B2B) sector. People seem to think that if you’re “talking to businesses” your communication needs are different – because unlike human beings, businesses have (supposedly) completely rational and transparent motivations. They exist to make profits. Show them a good bottom line impact and you’ve got ‘em; anything else is pointless.

But of course you can’t talk to a business, only to a person within a business. And you’re not necessarily talking to the person who owns the business either, so the bottom line might in fact be pretty low on their list of motivations, compared to pleasing the boss, making themselves look useful, having fun while they’re at work, avoiding tedium, and so on. Emotions, people. Your accountant has just as many of them as your grandmother.

Image: fabbio

Wondering why you’re reading something called the “usable words blog”?

This is the blog formerly known as “Textual”. Usable Words is the new name for the blog and, pretty much, me. Yes, I’m rebranding, and you (all, er, three or so of you) are the first to know. I hope you like it. Logo, website and more to come.

Image: takomabibelot

Here is a handout [PDF link] I used for a presentation at BNI last week. It’s a quick 3-point check for the front page of a business website. Pretty basic stuff, but it’s amazing how many sites fail it.

Image: foundphotoslj