Merlin, iMuse Design's Web Marketing and Social Media manager, can assist you with individual services tailored to the needs of your overall web presence. He can assist with proofreading, copy editing, as well as establishing tone and voice tailored to your audience.
Click here to contact Merlin.
Send me your grammatically-challenged text yearning to be correct (with misspellings, typos and questions of usage), and I will free it of its constraints.
Copy editing
From the copy you submit, I extract what you're trying to convey, and either polish it or rewrite it.
Copywriting
It's still rare : how often do visitors find web copy that is tailored to them as an audience, presented in a moving tone, using the correct voice? It's still the exception, and the advent of the social web has only worsened the situation. Speed may be the priority for many blogs and updates, but for core website content, good writing is still what every visitor responds to. It gets the clicks and the return visits.
If it had been an art form -- I was never aware it was so difficult -- then we've quietly lost it (online). I'm bringing it back.
Blogs
Whatever the company, organization or project, blogging has a place in the strategy. Blog posts and updates are all about relevance and consistency. Can you frequently capture (or recapture) the Big Idea in your topic area? Can you feed them something they find topical and tasty right now. That's all your readers want to know. Where the blog is posted and mirrored for maximum exposure is also crucial, but that's not my job.
Articles
Conversational, non-Wikipedia tone + I don't shy away from controversy = appreciative readers. In terms of content, I have a lifelong affinity for topics of interest to ethical businesses and cause-driven non-profits.
Sales copy
The art of online sales copy has two aspects : do make it compelling but do not employ it too soon. So many webstores and sales pages try to sell on the first page and every page, rather than first providing what most visitors come to their site searching for : specific information. Only when warmed up with an abundance of pre-sales information (the amount varies considerably) will they reach a buying threshold. In this process, the site not only builds a 'buying trance' but demonstrates the company's credibility.
Our clients typically aim to attract values-based purchases, donations and other involvements. These require an incremental process of engagement.
Product/service descriptions
In the case of e-commerce sites, the final task that the copy must perform is triggering purchase decisions. This typically falls to the item descriptions, which must be dense, compelling and contextual, and contain no elements that could raise an objection. It's the art of short sales copy.
Establishing tone, voice and audience
These are parameters that any good writer clarifies (hopefully before beginning). To whom am I writing, for what purpose and with what emotional bearing? Who do "I" represent? The answers are crucial to the effect the final product has on the reader.
Structuring of extensive content areas for clickpath patterning
If writing a content-dense website were the same as writing a book, just hire a reputable ghost author for your site. But it's not. Whereas a book is meant to be read from start to finish, a website is navigated via non-linear clickpaths. Visitors will cut through the site in every direction imaginable, and in every case, the material must hold together as comprehensible and interesting. Writing a content-dense site therefore means understanding what the reader already knows, and building on it, no matter where on the site, or offsite, they just came from. It's a dance involving keyword placement and repetition, yet constant freshness of the selected messaging that increases in depth as you click deeper into the architecture.
In-company content research
There's typically a problem. Building an extraordinary web presence requires putting into words the core messages, stories and market advantages of your company/practice/non-profit. In so many cases nothing, or very little, has ever been written -- instead all this information is in the heads of one or more founders or other leaders. "WE know why we're such a special company, and as soon as our market/audience really understands us, our growth will explode." Solution? I interview those people for their vision, stories and market analysis, etc, and either compose pages from there or edit and print the interviews.
Outside research
Both on- and off-line resources are accessed to compose text that will be viewed by a critical online community as not only interesting but authoritative, qualities that are two critical drivers of valuable, engaged traffic.
Social media integration....
With outreach needs : marketing, PR and relationship development with members, donors and prospects.
With in-house news reporting : getting company/organizational news online.