Who Wrote Your Website?

Tina Karelson

Co-president of Creative

Risdall Marketing Group

tina@risdall.com

www.risdall.com

Topic: Marketing/ Communications

Web copy can spell trouble.

Too often, organizations outsource a web project to an ad agency, or another partner, while keeping the copywriting portion of the project in-house.

If you've done that, how did it work out for you? You structured the project that way because you wanted to save money, and you thought you or your staff could handle the content. However, you may have found that this approach resulted in frustration, delays, and copy that didn't match the quality of the site's design and functionality.

Consider the following:

1) A writer makes your site more effective.

Your site has a commercial purpose. Having a writer on the team from the start will help keep the concept, organization and content of the site focused on that purpose. At Risdall Marketing Group, for example, everyone who writes copy for websites is an experienced advertising copywriter or PR professional. These are people who write interesting, purposeful copy that makes sense from a marketing perspective.

2) A writer knows what not to say.

Just as it's tempting to overstuff your advertising and collateral with too much information, it's tempting to ramble on in your web copy. After all, you're not paying for printing, right? A good writer knows when to stop writing and start editing. A good writer also knows how to "think outside the sentence," as my colleague John Lutter describes it. Maybe a graphic element really is worth a thousand words, or some bullet points make more sense than a paragraph of buzzwords and hype.

3) A writer helps your site make sense.

Face it, the dev folks are wizards, and the designer is some kind of magician. Writers? Just regular guys and gals who think and communicate with a special combination of clarity and creativity. And that kind of clarity and creativity will help your site make sense to-and really connect with-your audience. Correct spelling, grammar and usage are important, too.

4) A writer gets the job done.

You have more important things to do than write your website, especially if you run a small business. Find the budget to have your ad agency or PR firm put a writer on the team. Or find a freelancer to help you. Because odds are, creating the web content is going to keep falling to the bottom of your to-do list, holding up the launch of your new site for weeks or months. (It happens.) A writer will get it done when you need it done.

5) You can take the credit.

If you've read this far, you are probably a conscientious client. Go ahead, guide the strategy. Ponder the color palette. Tweak the copy. Be involved. But in the end, your web project will reflect more positively on you and your organization if a writer is involved from the beginning.

Next time you're in charge of a web project, make sure there's a writer on the team-not someone who writes out of necessity, but someone who writes for a living.

2010-05-06 00:00:00 -0500