Tag Archives: Twitter
Online Marketing – Doing a John Terry
Anyone watching the Europa League Final on TV last night will have been impressed by the last-gasp winner scored by Chelsea. Far less impressive however was the trophy presentation after the match. As you would expect, the entire Chelsea squad filed past the assembled dignitaries, collected their winners’ medals and lifted the cup. But what you may not expect was John Terry’s quick costume change at the final whistle.
Having been sidelined with an injury, John Terry failed to make even the substitutes bench for the Cup Final. He was therefore sat in the Chelsea technical area in suit and tie watching the match, effectively just another spectator. However after Ivanovic’s winning goal, Terry felt the need to change into his playing kit (complete with shinpads) to collect his medal.
The John Terry Celebration meme could potentially overshadow his on field achievements. And extra-curricular activities.
Terry’s contribution to the winning cup run is undeniable. But why he felt the need to put on his playing shirt and shorts to collect a trophy remains a mystery. A quick glance at Twitter last night showed that Terry had become the laughing stock of the nation thanks to his “me too” antics.
But why does any of this matter to your content marketing efforts? Because of a new marketing/PR technique known as “newsjacking“.
Newsjacking involves using a current theme or trend as a vehicle to promote your company. Twitter is a fantastic place to get a hold on public sentiment and tailor a marketing message to suit. But newsjacking is so very easy to get wrong.
If the hook of your newsjack attempt is tenuous, your message looks like an instantly-forgettable attempt at “me too”. You look like John Terry – all the kit but in the wrong place at the wrong time. The worst that happens is your message is ignored and forgotten. Do it on the world stage however and you could be the source of reputation-crushing scorn – just ask John Terry.
Terry is now the star of a series of memes showing him celebrating victories in which he played no part, dressed in his full Chelsea kit. If your brand was on the receiving end of similar sarcasm, recovering your reputation may be impossible.
When considering newsjacking, take these tips from Terry:
- If simply providing comment on a current story, make it clear that you were not directly involved.
- If capitalising on a current trend, make sure your copy demonstrates your knowledge and experience.
- Keep it relevant!
- Don’t dress up and pretend you played a pivotal role.
And one final point. If and when you do make a newsjacking mistake, learn from it! John Terry had previous form when it came to dressing up to collect cups after matches he did not play in; he did exactly the same thing after the 2012 Champions’ League Final. It is therefore little wonder Terry now has his own hashtag on Twitter (Warning! Salty language). Don’t make the same mistakes mistake. Don’t be a John Terry.
If you would like help with getting your own newsjacking attempts underway without becoming a John Terry, get in touch. And I promise I’ll never wear a full football kit to your awards ceremony.
Happy Birthday Twitter
Whether you regard Twitter as an annoying distraction for txtspk-obsessed teens, or as a useful information sharing and gathering tool, the fact that it has reached the mature (in Internet terms) age of 7 is an impressive feat. Loved by celebrities and common people alike, Twitter has become an important communications tool in the 21st Century.
Happy 7th Birthday Twitter. Enjoy it!
Twitter themselves estimate that their 200 million users send 400 million tweets daily. The microblogging platform allows anyone to reach a global audience and the succinct nature of tweets make it hard to bore your audience (in theory). During the Arab Spring uprising in Egypt, the US State Department even claimed that access to social media was a human right. “It’s the same kind of right as walking into a town square,” spokesman PJ Crowley claimed in an interview with the BBC.
With a global reach and millions of active users, Twitter offers a fantastic way for businesses to connect and communicate directly with their customer base. Receiving and answering product questions or support requests is simple and relatively easy to maintain. Twitter is also brilliant for sharing snippets of information or links to your audience. As long as you have some top quality content that your readers might like to tweet of course.
But Twitter can also be used for so much. You have the ability to see what people are saying about your brand and products, a way to communicate directly with industry leaders and the opportunity to profile your customers for instance.
Although Twitter is still far short of Facebook’s user base, the fact that the service has reached its seventh birthday and continued to grow, suggests that it will be around for some time. In which case, is your business on board yet?
If you need help with managing your company Twitter, or would like assistance with putting together tweetable content, drop us a line. And don’t forget to follow @techwriteuk on Twitter for more useful content too.
Copywriting tip – Don’t disappoint with your writing
A quick glance at Twitter sometime after 10pm on Thursday would have shown a lot of interest by people who had just finished watching BBC1′s shiny, new drama series “Mayday”. Over the course of five nights, viewers were treated to a story of child murder, small town lives and the general freakery of the human race. Sentiment on Twitter was almost overwhelming – how do I get those 5 hours of my life back?
Perhaps PC Alan should have arrested some of the Mayday scriptwriters for theft – stealing 5 hours from their audience (Image © BBC 2013)
Mayday was beautifully shot and spent plenty of screen time establishing its characters, so it should have been another triumph for the BBC. Yet it all went wrong. Why? And more importantly, what does this have to do with copywriting?
Wasting your audience’s time
Mayday took a long time to tell what was actually a simple story. An episode of “Murder She Wrote” could have covered the same storyline in 1 hour (including adverts) without being any more annoying. However the 5-night format of Mayday meant that the scriptwriters had an additional 4 hours to throw in unrelated details in an attempt to keep the viewer guessing. My discussions with others about Mayday suggests that we were only watching through to the end because we had already invested 2, 3 or 4 hours into the programme already.
For the online copywriter (or website owner) you cannot afford to think like this. Website visitors spend mere seconds on your pages before they decide to read on or move on. You cannot rely on them reading a whole page just because they bothered to read your first paragraph.
Schizophrenic presentation
Many of the characters in Mayday were portrayed in a certain way for four episodes, helping to establish an identity. However in the interests of “tension” these same people then did and said things which were clearly designed to rush the story to its conclusion. This schizophrenic characterisation was unconvincing and ruined any credibility created by the first four episodes.
Changing your corporate identity in your copy without clearly explaining why could cause people to doubt your company. If you used to follow a particular ethic or company line, but then change it suddenly and without warning, what are your customers to think? It is unlikely to be positive. Create a clearly defined corporate identity and stick to it.
Bait and switch
The first four hours of Mayday clearly established that viewers were watching a crime drama. The finale however introduced elements of the supernatural to conclude the story, changing the genre and subverting the series as a whole. Not only did this confuse many viewers, it was also wholly disappointing. We had been promised one thing but at the end were actually presented with another.
Known as “bait and switch” some copywriters rely on this technique to capture a reader’s attention before going on to a completely unrelated product or service. Readers always feel cheated when your copy promises one thing (such as a free widget) but then delivers something completely different (your free widget costs £99 to post for instance). You wouldn’t knowingly defraud your customers, so why do it to your website readers? It just leaves a bad taste in the mouth.
No closure
Like the unwelcome genre change, Mayday also failed to close any of its storylines in a satisfactory way. Plot lines were left hanging and the “wrong” outcome to the series was also reached. Viewers of these programmes “know” what to expect and Mayday failed to deliver what was expected of it – an ending.
Your website readers will probably have expectations of your pages and text – it is the professional copywriter’s job to meet them. People also expect closure, a satisfactory ending. Failing to conclude cleanly will fail to convert visitors into customers.
Hopefully these observations will help your own website text please your readers, rather than annoy them. If you would like to know more about how professional copywriting services from Tech Write can create compelling, entertaining and fulfilling text for your readers, please drop us a line.
No blog? Your website is doomed. Or not.
Your website must have a blog. If your site has no blog, you have no hope of getting the attention of potential customers or search engines and your website is doomed. And your business too. Or so many web gurus will tell you.
Your blogless website will sink like a stone. Not.
Balderdash.
The blog is a powerful tool when generating website traffic and developing your brand. A blog really does help demonstrate your industry expertise and help your potential customers understand who you are and what you do. But there are other ways to achieve similar goals.
Consider social media. If you maintain a business presence on Google+ or Facebook is there really any difference between posting a focused, informative status update and writing an identical article to be hosted on your website? Of course not. Your followers and their friends will still see that you know what you are talking about and that you really are an expert. And if they want to know more they can leave a post on your wall or click through to your website. They might even buy something.
That’s not to say that posting to a social network is necessarily any easier than writing a blog post. You will still need to read, research, write and edit until you have something interesting and engaging to share with your followers. Is it easy to generate compelling content day after day, week after week? Absolutely not, and nor is it a quick job. Which is why you may still like to consider outsourcing the job.
The SEO gurus are correct on one issue however. It is absolutely essential that your business be actively creating web content somewhere on the internet. And not only writing for the web, but engaging with people and forging relationships. If you miss this key point, your website really could be doomed.
Need help creating content for your social network (or even your blog)? Tech Write can help, just drop us a line!
Klout changes it’s algorithm – should you be concerned?
The Internet has been abuzz over the past 48 hours with chat relating to a change in the way Klout measures social influence. For many people it’s a big deal, while others appear completely unfazed. So should you be concerned?
Do you use social media?
If the answer is no, then you can forget all about Klout. Without a Twitter, Facebook or Google+ account it is impossible to obtain a Klout score.
Should I focus on improving my Klout score?
If you are a business, absolutely not! Your core focus should be providing the very best products and services to customers, rather than chasing down a rather arbitrary guide on how popular you are. Make the use of social media another channel by which you interact with clients, resolving their issues and educating them. Make that your overall goal and your Klout score may well improve as a result. 
However, just because your own Klout score may be irrelevant to your business, you may find it a useful way to track down individuals who could add value to your proposition. Businesses can use Klout to identify individuals who are influential in their industry or key demographic and link with them. By providing “thought leaders” (as Klout classifies them) with demos or free access to your products, they become much more likely to talk about your business with their network of contacts, increasing your pool of leads and your brand exposure.
Does it matter?
At the end of the day, Klout is a tool which has many keen fans and just as many detractors. The results generated by Klout are an interesting metric into which users can read as much or as little as they want. It won’t harm your business to check it out, but as with any “influence measurement tool”, there are no guaranteed returns.
