John McGarvey – web copywriter

An experience this week has reminded me of one of the internet’s truisms: once you’ve put something online, you can’t control how it gets used.

Along with a few hundred other people, I went down to the BBC’s Broadcasting House last weekend to protest against the closure of BBC 6 Music.

While I was there, I snapped a bunch of photos and put them up on Flickr.

They’re not great shots, but nonetheless the Love 6 Music website wanted to use them. Fair enough, I thought. After all, I support what they’re trying to achieve. Some of my pictures duly appeared on the site.

The next day The Guardian covered the protest – and included some of my photos in a gallery, all credited to www.love6music.com. It turns out the people behind the campaign had spoken to The Guardian and allowed them to use the pictures.

Now, initially I was taken aback by this. I felt I’d given permission for the photos to be used on a non-profit campaigning website, not on a commercial newspaper’s site.

However, once I thought it through, I realised I’d been pretty vague – I’d given permission in an easily-misinterpreted tweet which didn’t really explain under what circumstances I’d be unhappy with the photos being used:

“Sure, be my guest [to use the photos]! They’re all Creative Commons anyway.”

I allow most of my photos on Flickr to be used for non-commercial purposes under a system called Creative Commons. However, I’ve never wanted commercial websites to use my pictures for free. It’s the same for my writing; if someone’s making money from my work in some way, I expect to get paid.

Anyway, in this case I decided to bend my principles a bit. It is pretty cool to have your pictures on a national newspaper’s website, and I care a lot about the survival of this particular radio station, so I emailed The Guardian and asked for a credit, which they duly added.

So, all’s well that ends well? Yes, in this case. But it goes to show just how hard it is to keep tabs on your digital content.

It doesn’t matter if it’s words, pictures, video or sound – someone can always grab it and use it the way they want. And even though technically you keep the copyright and can forbid people from using it, in practice it’s hard to even find out it’s happened.

That’s a pain where your professional work is concerned. But when it’s personal photos, musings or other stuff you absolutely have to keep control of, you’re better off not putting it online in the first place. That’s the only way to be 100% certain it’s not being used in ways that make you unhappy.

The specific lesson I learnt in this case is that when someone is nice enough to ask permission before taking your content, always make your answer specific. If you’re not happy for them to pass your stuff on for publication on other websites, tell them. Because if you don’t, you can’t really complain when your content starts popping up in unexpected places.

No matter whether you’re a professional web copywriter (like me) or a professional something-else (maybe that’s you), we all have to edit our own work from time-to-time.

We do it when we read through an email before sending it, when we put the finishing touches to a new business proposal or when we dash off a press release. (You probably don’t do it when writing the weekly shopping list, but that’s ok.)

Editing isn’t easy

It’s not easy to edit your own text. Because you wrote it, you’re less likely to spot mistakes. Trust me – I once wrote a blog post promoting an event which got a the date of the event totally wrong. I wrote “14 November” instead of “14 January”. And I didn’t realise until a reader pointed it out.

That happened because I was in a rush. I wanted to get the information out there as soon as possible. Want to avoid this sort of embarrassing mistake? I’ve put together a few tips for you:

Continue reading ‘How to edit your own writing’

You might have spotted from my previous posts that I like to work out and about. Cafes, pubs, bars … they’re all fair game for me and my little laptop.

I enjoy working on the move, but this very modern way of getting stuff done isn’t without its pitfalls.

Here are six situations to watch out for when it’s just you and your laptop:

1. The lunchtime rush. At 10.30am, the cafe you’re in is nice and quiet. But at 11.30, something happens. The door doesn’t stop opening. People pile in, ordering take out or grabbing the last spare chairs. Nursing a small coffee while the world passes through, you feel conspicuous and in the way. Especially when some noisy office workers elbow their way to the table next to yours. Productive? You might as well give up now.
2. The noisy children. These normally appear mid to late afternoon, though you can encounter babies and toddlers at any time of day. I’m undecided which is worse: the hyperactive ones who run about and push bits of furniture around, or the well-behaved, over-inquisitive ones who sit near you with their mum or dad and just won’t stop asking questions. Often about what the strange man with the computer is doing.
3. The power crisis. Less than one cup of coffee into a stop at a café and my old laptop was gasping for juice. I constantly had my eye on the location of power sockets in the room, ready to shift tables when a prime spot became free. No matter what precautions I took, the machine would inevitably die during a highly productive spell. And have you ever had that awkward conversation when a member of café staff spots your unofficial power hook-up?
4. The ergonomic nightmare. Starbucks chairs weren’t designed with the prevention of carpal tunnel syndrome in mind. In fact, they were probably designed to be uncomfortable to sit in for long periods, thus encouraging a fast customer turnover. (Ok, so maybe that’s just me being particularly cynical. But pay attention to what your body’s telling you. Wrists aching? Back sore? Time to find a proper desk.)
5. The beer-on-tap temptation. One of my favourite spots to work is a bar/cafe just round the corner from my flat. The thing is, they have beer on tap. Good beer. A pint is ever-so-appealing, especially if I’m struggling with a tricky bit of work. I can usually resist the temptation, or postpone it by promising myself a glass when the job’s done, but every now and then (usually on a Friday afternoon) the pull is too strong.
6. The toilet dilemma. Some cafés make you feel bad if you’re not constantly sipping while you work. With that much fluid intake, the inevitable tends to happen sooner rather than later. And that can lead to a difficult choice: do you pack everything up to guard against theft (in which case you might as well move venues), or trust the slightly shifty bloke on the next table to watch the laptop and papers you’ve spread out?

What obstacles have you faced when working out and about? Leave a comment and let me know.

You might have read about how I broke my netbook the other week. The computer’s hard drive – contanining important work I’ve done for clients – could have been destroyed when it hit the ground, and the incident has rammed home the importance of keeping safe backups of my work.

Thankfully, I’m already pretty clued up. A few months back I started using Dropbox, an online backup and file sharing tool. It does three important jobs for me, and I wouldn’t be without it now:

• It keeps my files safe. Dropbox creates a special folder on my computer. Anything I save there gets backed up across the internet to a secure server. It means that if my laptop is stolen or broken, or files get deleted, I can hop online and get them back.
• It synchronises files across my computers. Dropbox keeps files up-to-date on both my computers. If I edit a file on my main PC, it gets copied across to my netbook the next time I turn it on. I’m never without the latest version of my work.
• It lets me share files with other people. It’s easy to set up shared folders with Dropbox, so lots of people can access them. I occasionally use this feature to get work to clients, but I can see it could be really useful for working together on projects.

That’s not the end of this handy service. It has a web interface, so I can log in and grab my files from any internet-connected computer. There’s even an iPhone app.

It does version control, so I can roll back to an older version of a file if I make some horrendous mistake. And – I’m aware making a statement like this is asking for trouble – it’s never crashed on me. Not once.

If you don’t have a safety net to protect your important files, go and get Dropbox. Now. It’s free for up to 2GB of storage, and a piddling $9.99 a month for up to 50GB. I can’t think of many services I’d recommend more wholeheartedly.

When I started out, I didn’t have any kind of copywriting contract for my clients to sign. But after a few months of relying on informal, emailed proposals, I felt I needed something more official.

Yes, contracts are boring, dull, tedious and generally unenjoyable. But they are important.

They explain exactly what each party in a business relationship should expect – and what they have to do. They can also be invaluable if things ever go wrong, because it’s harder to argue with something if it’s written down in black and white.

Here’s my copywriting contract for free

Most contracts I’ve encountered are written using lots of legalese and can be very confusing. I wanted mine to use plain language, so anyone could understand it. To get going, I needed some inspiration, so I hunted around and found Andy Clarke‘s excellent killer contract.

This seemed like a great starting point, so I grabbed it and made some pretty substantial changes. Andy offered his contract up to anyone who wanted to use it, and in the same spririt, I’m doing that too. So download my copywriting contract now. It’s available in several file formats:

• Copwriting contract in Word format
• Copywriting contract in PDF format
• Copywriting contract in Open Office format

I received a lot of really helpful feedback while working on this. So thanks to Simon Wicks, Matt Telfer, Matthew Stibbe, Jim Anning and Martin Grocock.

What you need to know about my copywriting agreement

Feel free to download my copywriting agreement and use it however you like. All I ask is that if you republish it, you mention me and link back here.

You can change it any way you want. At the very least, you’ll need to replace the bits in square brackets with your own details and decide how you want to handle cancellations.

Oh – and this is important: I’m not a legal professional, so get your legal eagles to examine it properly if you decide to use it.

More information about my copywriting agreement

I tailored this contract to address the following problems in particular, because they’re things I’ve been concerned about when working with clients:

• Scope creep. I usually work to a fixed price on projects and try to be flexible. Clients seem to prefer this – but I’ve been worried they’ll see my flexibility as an invitation to change the brief midway through a project, creating lots of extra work for me.
• Tardy payment. So far, I’ve been pretty lucky – most clients are super-speedy payers. But with no agreed payment schedule beyond the 30 days stated on my invoice, I’ve not been particularly well covered if I do hit problems.
• Deadline drift. It’s a real pain when you turn a job round fast only for the client take forever to decide on revisions. It makes scheduling jobs trickier – and it takes longer to get back up to speed if I’ve not worked on a project for a while.

These may or may not be things that concern you – and so you might want to add or remove bits from the contract before you use it.

Bad clients are still bad clients

I don’t think even the best contract in the world can ever substitute for treating your clients properly, communicating with them effectively and doing each job to the best of your ability. And it would be a bit naïve to think a contract can protect you entirely from bad clients.

But what it can do is make your business relationships more official, provide a clear document to refer to in the event of any sort of disagreement – and give you a bit leverage if things go wrong. If you use mine, please, let me know how you get on.

As you’ll have seen if you’ve been near a TV, radio, Twitter or Facebook, sweary activist rock group Rage Against The Machine have pipped the X Factor’s Joe McElderry to this year’s Christmas number one.

Like many people, I’m pretty pleased about this. And I’m also a bit suprised, because had you asked me a week ago, I’d have said the Facebook campaign to get the song to the top of the charts had about as much chance of success as the Monster Raving Loonies have of winning the next general election.

Why the scepticism? Well, joining a group on Facebook only takes a couple of seconds but it’s getting people to do more that has always seemed like the tricky bit. There are thousands of well-meaning Facebook groups and online petitions that have plenty of supporters but achieved nothing else of note.

So why did this campaign succeed – and make such a big impact – where others have failed?

• It tapped into something people feel strongly about: frustration at the X Factor’s dominance of the Christmas number one slot.
• It went huge on Facebook and Twitter. The sheer amount of support indicated that maybe it could actually happen.
• Mainstream media picked it up in a big way. That lent credibility to the grass roots campaign and fostered a real belief it could work.
• It wasn’t asking for a huge commitment. Sure, downloading the track cost a few pence, but it was easy and cheap to make a difference.

I think a lot of it came down to credibility. It wasn’t until Thursday, when Rage performed live on 5 Live’s breakfast show (swear words and all), that I seriously thought there was a possibility we’d see them at number one. And it was only at that point that I was willing to purchase the single myself. Continue reading ‘Rage Against The (X Factor) Machine’

I have this idea that the quality of an ebook can be judged by the hyperbole used to market it. The more excessively shouty and lurid the sales blurb, the less valuable the advice itself is likely to be.

You’ve probably seen the worst offenders. Over-excitable, garish web pages employ capital letters, bright colours and phrases like “THE BOOK THE PROFESSIONALS DON’T WANT YOU TO HAVE!!!!!!”  Making unfeasible promises about unimaginable wealth, they only say one thing to me: run away.

Once you’ve seen a few of these it’s easy to tar every ebook with the same brush. Easy, yes. Unfair? Definitely.

One ebook worth reading

I say this because over at Bad Language, old pal Matthew Stibbe has released a comprehensive ebook to help make you a better business writer.

There’s no guarantee of lifelong wealth and a conspicuous lack of garish promotional graphics on Matthew’s site, yet this excellent guide offers some of the best business writing advice I’ve seen.

Grounded firmly in the real world, the book is packed with practical information to help you write better. It explains how the principles of good journalism are just as important to business writing. It’s all about telling an interesting story and geting under the skin of your audience.

Structured as a 30-day course, (but almost as useful read as and when you get the chance), Matthew’s book is free, well-written, and useful regardless of whether you write a bit, write a lot, or just work with writers.

Rather than listen to me bang on about it here, just go and take a look.

I’ve been thinking about website usability lately, and this recent blog post over on Signal vs Noise really struck a chord with me. It’s the first time I’ve seen the idea of usability expressed so succinctly:

“It’s about putting yourself in the other person’s shoes. It’s about looking into the future, foreseeing any potential obstacles, and removing them. And that’s a great way to get people on your side.”

I think when you get down to it, if you’re building a new website, application or physical product, those are the important things. Whatever you’re creating, it needs to be simple to use. Like my iPhone, it should just work.

That applies to copywriting too, of course. It’s why you should should always consider every sentence – every word, in fact – really carefully. First of all, is it necessary at all? Second, assuming it is, have you expressed whatever you’re trying to express clearly and succinctly as possible?

While I’m on the subject, I think Dare Obsanjo makes a good point about introducing new features to your product, service of website:

“If a user can’t find the feature, it might as well not exist”

I agree completely. You can cram your website full of information. You can make your product full of cutting edge features. But if poor usability means people can’t find that information or use those features, then really … what’s the point?

I started using Twitter a few months ago. If you haven’t encountered it yet, it’s a kind of micro-blogging tool which lets you post updates about what you’re doing. Each update takes a similar form to Facebook‘s “John is…” function, and you’re limited to 160 characters, so it’s a bit like sending a text message.

You can see my latest update in the right column of this blog, or see my stream of tweets (that’s what the little updates are called) over on my Twitter homepage. Once you’re a member, you can follow other Twitter members. When you follow someone, all their tweets appear in your Twitter stream.

Frankly, it’s not immediately obvious what Twitter is for. As a copywriter, I joined without a good idea of why I was joining it or what I’d use it for. I mainly just wanted to work out what the hell it was all about: it’s not the easiest of things to get your head around, and the best way to work it out is to try it.

But since I started using it, it’s become clear there’s a lot more to Twitter than meets the eye. It’s not just a way to let your mates know you’re just back from the shops or down the pub. It’s a seriously useful tool that can help you in all kinds of ways.

I’d definitely recommend you get over to Twitter and sign up for an account now. But if you need some persuading, here are six things I’ve found it useful for:

Finding useful contacts. It can be a networking tool, basically. Whether you’re a web copywriter, like me, or in a completely different line of work, you can make some great connections on Twitter. One of the best ways is to take a look at the people you follow, and see who they follow. If anyone looks interesting, follow them too. Because most tweets are public, it’s fine to follow whoever you like.

Keeping in touch with your mates. I’ve all but given up on Facebook. I never entirely got the hang of it, and these days I find if I log in I just get overwhelmed with information. The most interesting bit is following friends’ status updates. And Twitter lets me do that, without all the other spurious stuff that’s part of Facebook. Of course, you’ll need to persuade your mates to join too.

Getting answers fast. If you have enough followers, Twitter becomes a bit like one of those services where you can text any question and receive an almost instant response. For instance, before a recent trip to Berlin, I tweeted asking for recommendations. Within a few minutes, I’d discovered that one of my followers had edited a guidebook of the city. Result!

Connecting with celebrities. When I discovered national institution Stephen Fry was on Twitter, I thought it was absolutely fantastic. Because it’s so obviously him tweeting, you get a direct connection to someone you only usually see on TV. Not sure how he deals with the massive number of direct messages he must get though. Apparently Britney’s on Twitter too, though it looks like a rather sanitised, PR-driven effort rather than Britney tapping away at a keyboard for herself.

Keeping up with the news. I’m not going to claim that Twitter is a useful tool for in-depth journalism and analysis of current affairs. But it’s great for getting eyewitness snapshots of events as they unfold. For example, there was an explosion on Slough Trading Estate the other week. I used to work there, so was interested in what was going on. Local news sites weren’t reporting anything, but by searching Twitter I found someone who was there as it happened. And just yesterday, one guy tweeted from a plane crash. Yes, really.

Venting your frustrations. I’m not sure how much my followers appreciate it, but I’ve vented at the terrible train service offered by First Great Western more than once. With Twitterific on my iPhone I can tweet from anywhere, and it makes me feel a little less helpless when I find myself awaiting a delayed train yet again. Try it sometime. It really does make you feel better.

There are plenty of other ways to use Twitter, and plenty of other reasons to use it. So if you haven’t given it a go yet, hop on over and sign up. You can tweet directly from the website, or use one of the many web-based and mobile phone clients to make it easier.

And if you don’t mind the occasional train-related rant, do add me once you’ve signed up. I’ll be sure to return the favour.

I moved house this weekend and hired a car; a tank-like Vauxhall Vectra. Actually, despite having the appearance of a lumbering behemoth, it wasn’t that bad being behind the wheel.

Bizarrely enough though, the car’s indicators got me thinking about how important it can be to conform to people’s expectations.

Conventions abound in virtually every product we use. They make things easy-to-operate and easy-to-understand.

Imagine if every kettle worked in a different way, or if some door handles were postioned on the ‘wrong’ side of the door. Making a coffee would be a nightmare. And each time you opened a door would be a gamble; it might hardly move, or it might fly open and send you crashing through it.

As any web designer worth their salt will tell you, conventions work online too. Following them is a good way to make your website easier to use. Just ask Jakob Nielsen.

Put menus where people expect to find them, make the normal things happen when people click links and using your site will be a less-frustrating, altogether more pleasant experience.

Challenging conventions

Every now and then, a company tries to challenge a tried-and-trusted convention. Just occasionally, they’ll do so successfully; think of the iPod’s click wheel. Why use ‘up’ and ‘down’ buttons to navigate through lists when you can do the same thing faster (and more accurately) with a touch sensitive wheel?

But most of the time, these convention challenges fall flat. The Vectra’s indicators are a fine example – because they work in a different way to virtually every car I’ve ever driven. To turn them on, you push the indicator stalk one way. To turn the indicators off, you push the stalk the same way again.

It’s true that, like most other cars, you can also stop the turn signal by pushing the stalk the other way. But often it doesn’t work well; you simply end up signalling to turn the other way, and then get all confused.

Honestly, I’ve never driven another car like it, and I do apologise to anyone who had to share the Hanger Lane gyratory with me yesterday afternoon. I was trying to go right. Not right-left-right as you might’ve been led to believe.

I’m sure that, given time, you get used to this new way of doing things. But why bother when the old way works just as well?

Because this was a hire car, I was stuck with it for the weekend. However, if it had been a website with a dodgy navigation, I’d have been right out of there.

Clear benefits

Don’t get me wrong: I don’t think challenging convention is always a bad thing. If nobody ever did it, all our vacuum cleaners would still have bags and the world wide web probably wouldn’t even exist.

However, if you do decide to do things differently on your website, remember that you’re asking a lot from your visitors. You’re asking them to learn a whole new behaviour, just for you. Essentially, you’re forcing them to do something different to what comes naturally.

For it to work, there has to be a definite benefit for them. It has to be easier, or faster, or better for some other reason. If it isn’t, don’t do it.

So be careful when you go against convention – or even when you bend it a little. Your great new idea might end up driving visitors away. If you’re running an online business, that could be costly.

Image © GM Corp