Category Archives: Copywriting Tips

Make friends not war

Posted on by
Reply

You’ll get an unpleasant feeling in your stomach when you notice your copy on another website. The sad truth is that if you write decent copy, it’s likely to happen to you. The Internet lends itself to plagiarism and it seems almost acceptable these days. It’s not and fortunately, if it happens to you, you’re well protected (although you will almost certainly have to spend some time with the lawyers).

Intelligent people don’t copy and paste. They’ll adapt, bend and grow their own story from your copy. This is pure evolution and it helps you grow too. Without competition, the world would be a very dry place.

Over the last 12 months, we’ve discovered 3+ companies who’ve borrowed our copy for their own sites and weblogs. We let the first one continue (I will explain in a later post), the second one took the offending copy down and the third ended up in court and landed a fine that almost sent them out of business.

How to deal with it

Blatant copy / paste plagiarism is simple to tackle. Write a firm but polite message to them asking them to remove it. It’s likely they’ll panic and remove it immediately. Rightly so.

If they refuse, find a decent copyright lawyer and send them the offending copy along with your original. Remember, it’s not worth dragging them through the courts unless you know they can afford it. The fines are hefty these days – only those with money in the bank or a decent insurance policy will pay.

Subtle copyright infringement is still worth pursuing. You can receive compensation from a company on the basis that they’ve profited from your ideas.

You can’t really copyright an idea.

And you can’t stop your competition from copying your prices. However, ideas are nothing without good implementation… Think about it.

Make friends not war

In today’s market, it’s better to be friends with your competitors than enemeies. At PolkaSpots, we routinely share information between a select group of Wi-Fi companies. It’s one of the main reasons for our growth this year but was not well received when we started. After all, would you trust your competition? Try it, just be careful.

Use the tools and publish everyday.

Posted on by
Reply

I wrote this blog from a garden centre, somewhere in Shropshire on Wednesday afternoon. I’m killing a few minutes between a site visit and a 250km drive back to West London. The perfect place to write a blog – no distractions, coffee and some ice cream :)

These days, my time is always limited. In the office, I’m constantly bombarded by questions, emails and phone calls. Everyone needs some space to write something interesting.

Amazingly, I’m not always near an Internet connection despite being the proud owner of polkaspots.com! And yet, I publish a blog everyday…

By using all the tools you have, you can easily write half a dozen blogs in one go and then publish them automatically over a week or more. New blogging software does this at the click of a button.

This means your readers still get their daily digest despite the fact that you’re half-way up a mountain or on a beach. It also means you can relax a bit more.

It also means, you can come back and check your blog before it goes out for typos. If you feel like writing, sit down and write.

Wordpress makes it simple to publish your blogs in advance

Warm up and you’ll find your momentum

Posted on by
Reply

One of my first blogging rules is to find your place of inspiration. A place where your mind can wander off and think of nice things.

Once you’ve found this place and have some ideas in your head, sit down and write your blogs. A few of them – in one go.

Blogging is a little bit like running – you have to practise a lot before you get good. Naturally some of us are better at writing than others, but there’s a blogger in everyone.

If you have a few ideas in your mind, writing them will be easy – they should flow out of you. Once you’ve written one or two, you’ll find your fingers and mind are more flexible.

You don’t even need to publish them in one go. Set your blogging software to publish them in advance or just save a draft so you can come back to them later.

Pyjamas that you could wear to dinner

Posted on by
Reply

You’ll start to realise soon that my first bit of advice is always: relax and enjoy blogging (replace with most words). Don’t force anything – if you do, your blogs will fail.

The same goes when you’re choosing your blogging software. Pick the one that suits your needs best and don’t obsess over it – just start writing! I write two blogs: the first for PolkaSpots Supafly Wi-Fi which is hosted by the excellent PolkaSpots Content Managment System (CMS) and the second using WordPress.

But why not the PolkaSpots CMS for everything? Shouldn’t I say this is my favourite blogging platform? I own the company and I don’t think it’s as good as WordPress!! It stands out when used as part of a suite of other tools: email marketing, online shop, forum, analytics, website, CMS. I wouldn’t use anything else for a business website.

WordPress is where it’s at for me when it comes to blogging. Unbelievably customisable, easy to use, manageable with all the plugins and themes you could ever imagine. But, best of all, it’s easy to use to write your posts.

It doesn’t matter what you use. Just find something that you like, or ask a friend.

Some like it hot, others don’t

Posted on by
Reply

There’s about a zillion bloggers out there and not that many are excellent. Myself included; although I’m getting better. Most people write once or twice a week and struggle to find interesting topics.

Look at the big bloggers out there, like Seth Godin or Chris Brogan. They publish an article at least once a day – where on earth do they find their inspiration? It’s amazing their posts are even interesting – I can’t claim to read them all but 80% of the time they’re spot-on.

You shouldn’t care about what inspires others – after all some like it hot, others don’t. You just need to find your place…

Running PolkaSpots Wi-Fi means I spend a lot of time strapped to my Macbook Pro or in the PS office. Here I get no inspiration. In fact, it ruins my creativity. I can’t even think when I’m there sometimes. This is bad for blogging.

I’m training for some triathlons and this is my place. Sometimes when I’m out, all I can think of is new blogs or ideas, solving problems or even composing emails. Other times, my mind’s completely blank, just focused on the pain. Either way, I’m always full of ideas afterwards and ready to write. Good for blogging.

Find a place where your mind is not thinking about work and your writing will quickly improve. Just remember, your blog subscribers read your blog because it’s relevant – keep on topic at all times. If you’re writing about cheese, don’t talk about Santa, unless of course you can relate the two.

Don’t burn the candle, both ends and the candlestick

Posted on by
Reply

Multitasking is an amazing skill but does it actually do us any good? Is it better to get all your jobs 70% completed or 70% of your jobs completed perfectly?

I’m in two minds about this. Sure, sometimes you just need to get things done,  but at most times perfection is the only route.

With the onset of tabbed browsing, 24meg broadband, iPhones, iPads, Wi-Fi Hotspots, 3g Internet, SMS, twitter and blogging, you’d think we’d have enough to do. These days we’ve got too much on our plates. There’s been lots of coverage in the press recently about how all this is affecting our brains, and I’m starting to wonder where we’re heading. Our ability to process large amounts of data is diminishing daily.

This last week I realised that I needed some time off. A miserable cold has been following me around for 2 weeks (it’s 32degrees in London now). My lack of sleep, 16 hour days and triathlon training were killing me. There are times that you need to step back, look around, think. And not just panic about what’s getting done. It’s completely counter productive.