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Actually they don’t award Oscars for copywriting (although the D&AD awards come close), so here’s my OSCAR rules of creating great web content instead.
“I’d just like to thank my copywriter, my content marketing team, my branding consultants…”
O – One Theme
If you can keep your blog entry or article focused on a single theme, you make your reader’s job easier. People struggle to follow multiple threads, so limit yourself to a single theme throughout. That’s not to say you cannot raise multiple points, you just need to stay on topic.
S – Simple
According to research conducted by Jakob Nielsen a few years back, people actually only read 18% of the text on a web page. Rather than getting upset about their apparent wasted effort, copywriters need to focus on making text simple to read, helping their readers skim through the text.
C – Call to Action
This is the point at which you encourage readers to act on what they have read. Tell them to sign up for your email newsletter or to make a call to your sales team for more info. You must have a call to action somewhere within your text so your reader knows what to do next.
A – Add Value
Don’t waste your reader’s time. Tell them something they don’t know. Educate and enrich them through your website copy. Reward them for their time and effort. Add some value – it will make the difference between a one-time website visitor and a potential repeat customer.
R – Relevance
Make sure your content is relevant to your readers. Don’t trick Justin Bieber fans into visiting your industrial widgets website using keyword stuffing and dodgy PPC tactics. They are not interested and won’t buy – instead your company pays for the wasted time and effort of your SEO copywriter and marketers. You will develop a bad reputation for deliberately misleading people.
So there you have it – put the OSCAR rules to work in your own copywriting efforts and see how things improve. Alternatively get in touch with Tech Write to see how cost effective copywriting services relieve you of the burden, so you can focus on doing business.
Image reproduced under CC2 license from Dave_B_
