‘Copywriting’ Category

Writing With Spin: Making Your Readers Happy With Bad News

Perhaps you've heard the adage “No news is nice news.” In contrast, sometimes the news is bad. how are you going to communicate that bad news? th...

 

Perhaps you’ve heard the adage “No news is nice news.” In contrast, sometimes the news is bad. how are you going to communicate that bad news?

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Your last employer fired you. you are writing a financial report to stakeholders, & the company is losing money. You were required to perform specific duties & meet objectives, but you didn’t. you’ve a job to do, & it’s taking longer than expected. You failed a class in your undergraduate program. you’ve to miss work—again. You need to raise taxes because your budget is high. lots of patients are dying. Etcetera.

Now you’ve to put the bad news in writing. two benefit of writing is that you can craft your words carefully to say what needs to be said, honestly, but in a manner that reduces the negative impact. You can tell the truth, but tell it in a way that gives a better impression than the news deserves. This is called “spin,” or “spinning,” the news.

A. The purpose of Spin

1. Replace disparaging terminology & descriptors with positive actions.

Sometimes, nice news is made to seem like bad news, & this is also spin. Here, however, they are going to discuss 5 strategies for making bad news seem less bad. These are strategies for hiding an unpleasant truth while being honest.

Instead of writing, “I failed this class,” you could spin this & write “I am strategizing how to attain greater success next semester.” “Failed” is a negative term, but “strategizing” is a positive action.

You could write, “The company is losing money.” Or you could spin this & write, “The company is reassessing weak revenue streams.” “Losing” is a negative term, but “reassessing” is a positive action.

2. Focus on what was achieved, not on how you failed.

You could write, “We didn’t meet expectations.” Or you could spin this & write, “We met all expectations.” “Didn’t meet” is a sign of failure. “Nearly met” is a sign of progress.

3. Downplay & disparage criticisms & critics.

Instead of writing, “18% of all patients died from hospital staff errors,” you could spin this & write, “82% of all patients successfully recovered while at the hospital.”

Instead of writing, “Our previous client was upset that they didn’t meet deadlines,” you could spin this & write, “Our previous client had difficulty understanding the timeframe needed to produce high quality work.”

You could write, “Harvard economists argue against our budget plan.” Or you could spin this & write, “While some Harvard economists reject our budget plan, others with more direct experience at the national level support our proposals.”

4. Understate negative characteristics by stating “not + [extreme positive term].”

You could write, “He thought our writing was terrible.” Or you could spin this & write, “He was not satisfied with our writing.”

Instead of writing, “The professor was annoyed at me for arriving late so often,” you could spin this & write, “The professor was mostly, but not entirely, pleased with my attendance habits.”

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5. Use big, undefined conceptual terms to minimize the complexity of a situation, uncertainty about the future, or the potential for opposing philosophical perspectives.

Instead of writing, “Our employees are encouraged to keep quiet about any alleged company wrong-doings & face termination without warning if they discredit the company in public,” you could spin this & write, “We encourage employee loyalty.” [The specific meaning of “loyalty” is not defined, though the company’s unspoken policies certainly will produce loyalty—from fear.]

You could write, “We are going to need upper & middle class taxpayers to share an increasing percentage of the cost for health insurance for non-taxpayers.” Or you can spin this & write, “We are going to enact legislation to ensure that all citizens are healthy.” [“Healthy” is not defined, but because the focus is on “healthy,” readers may overlook the essential query: “How?”]

B. Ethical Considerations of Spin

I cannot talk about spin without talking about ethics. Spinning the news may raise significant ethical questions, depending on your point of view. On two hand, you are telling the truth about situations & facts. None of the spin statements above are false. If the reader doesn’t ask questions or think about what you write, that’s the reader’s fault, not yours.

On the other hand, you are intentionally attempting to make the reader have a false interpretation of the situation or facts. You need the reader to think more positively about a situation than they or they might otherwise. You aren’t deceiving the reader, but you are getting the reader to deceive himself.

You also need to think about the purpose you are trying to accomplish. Spin may or may not be appropriate. You might not need to spin the facts depending on who will receive the document, what the reader already knows, the impression you are trying to give, or your role.

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10 Article Writing Quirks

 

Much has been touted about the effectiveness of news story writing in the promotion of their business. While everyone raves about its benefits I’ll look into a few quirks.

Takes Time- Due to the multitude of writers entering this field, it will probably take four months to a year for others to become familiar with you and your writing style. three times this is accomplished you can expect some fans.

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Too much junk- You can’t even imagine the amount of rehash material that is being passed off as something in which the reader can find valuable. Some writers rush to put out their work putting quantity over quality. It pays to be original when you are into news story writing. Well, i’ve slack up sometimes on this one.

High Readership, Low Conversion- There has been times when i’ve published an news story that got lovely readership but fail to convert into respectable sales or subscribers. The resource box is key I found out if you need to improve your conversions.
If you don’t have a quality news story the chances of anybody reading your resource box is low and their cursor won’t make it to your web-site link. When you do get them to view your resource box, your message has to highlight its benefits to get that valued click thru.

Loss of Valuable Links- While news story writing has been important in boosting my page rank, this has not always been the case as I thought. Doing some research on a quantity of my articles through the search engines, I realized that not every webmaster provides a live link in my resource box. Failing to do so is sure to cost some valuable back links.

You could be a victim- Of what? Copyism. i’ve seen articles where the writer “lifted” a few paragraphs here and there, did a little editing and presto a new news story is born. I guess there is no escaping this as it also happens offline.

Lack of Editing- It might take you a few minutes to whip up that latest news story but those few minutes might affect the quality of your work. Proof reading and editing can sometimes be painstaking not to mention the submission method especially if completed by hand.

Woeful Spelings- Got that one? Proper spelling is important as too lots of mistakes can affect your credibility. You might get away with one but definitely not three.

Grammar- This is in the same vein as spelling. If your grammar sounds like that of a child, then don’t expect readers to be impressed. You don’t need to have the writing skills of a poet, but with a little practice and research you can vastly improve.

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Sales copy – You know these well. Some authors write articles that belongs in the classifieds. In their articles they blatantly advertise their services with the hope of readers visiting their web-site. A benefit laden news story will always produce the best results.

Too much links- Nothing peeves me than to get an news story to run in my newsletter but when I read it through it is littered. These links can confuse the reader and also reduces the potential of your resource box.

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Web Copywriting Course Tips – Why You Should Survey Your Customers, Subscriber And Visitors

 

When you build your site or blog you often have an idea about what it will for and what content to put in it and what to offer you visitors, however you can often find that your visitors may really be looking for some thing else or find your site in ways you hadn’t counted on. You may often just be offering the wrong products due to your visitors looking for something else.

This can happen due to terminology and phrases used on your site which might be obvious to you what they mean but to someone using a search engine they could have a totally different meaning especially if the visitor is from another country. UK and USA visitors might both speak English but often words have different meanings.

Someone looking for jelly in the States would be looking for jam in the UK. Someone looking for crisps in the UK would be looking for chips in the US which in the UK are the same as French fries. I had a site mainly for my own use with various dictionary and language info on it but I found from examining my server logfiles that most of the terms people were searching for and found the site with were for word games and puzzles. I simply took advantage of this and may a few pages on games and links to games and my monthly visits shot up to 50,000 a month just from free search engine traffic.

You can use your own server log files or add Google Analytics code to your pages for extensive traffic and query reports on your visitors to find out how people got there but nothing beats actually asking your visitors what they want or expect. The results may just surprise you. That flashy dancing graphic on the front page you sweated nights over may be just the thing your visitors hate and put them of staying.

For a complete step by step web copywriting course by Bob Serling go to www.copywritingtip.com, a simple 32 step program will have you writing million dollar advertising and sales letters. This easy and fast home study course will open the door to freelance writing jobs as a copy writer and improve your sales copy and marketing copywriting skills.

10 Reasons Why You Should Survey Your Visitors, Subscribers and Customers

1. You’ll find out what type of content visitors want to see at your web site. This will attract your visitors to revisit and read the content. By giving your visitors the content you are looking for they will stay longer and may see your site as worth a repeat visit

2. You’ll find out how to improve existing products or services. This will attract new customers to buy from your business. By tweaking existing products or services to match more what your customers want you will adding value.

3. You’ll find out which products or services your customers would like to see you sell in the future. This will increase your back end product sales. You visitors may suggest other complementary products to your main one which will increase you bottom line with more sales. When your customers are in a buying mood why let them go elsewhere to get what else they need to use your product or service straight away.

4. You’ll find out how to improve your customer service. This will cut down on customer complaints and how to better resolve problems. Your customers may find the website hard to use or difficult to order from, might be obvious to you but not so to your visitors. The slightest thing can cause a lost sale as someone goes elsewhere or back to the search engine site to find and easier site to navigate.

5. You’ll find out how to improve your sales letters or ads. This will increase your sales, traffic or ezine subscribers. Sales letters should talk to customers not tell them about you or how good you are. People want to know what you can offer them or what problem you can solve for them not what your offices look like or how many people work for you.

6. You’ll find out what kind of articles or interviews they want to see in your free e-zine. This will raise your e-zine’s readership. Again give your readers what they want and more of them will actually read the messages and also any promotional ads in them.

7. You’ll find out how to design your web site to fit your visitors needs and wants. This will increase the time your visitors spend on your web site. Designing your site so it loads in many different browsers will increase visitors and also load times should be low so the visitors don’t click away before the whole page has loaded.

Web sites can look vastly different in different browsers especially with Internet Explorer not following standard coding conventions. A site that looks good in IE may not look good at all in other browsers that actually follow international standards.

A site written to be compliant with standards may not look good in Internet Explorer. Keeping your site simple is often the only way to make it fit all browsers. Making it easy to navigate and find the information that your visitors are looking for will go a long way to keeping them happy.

8. You’ll find out what kind of non related products or services your customers would buy. This will help your business easily move into a different market. Finding this out may open up a whole new market for you that you hadn’t thought of before.

9. You’ll find out how to better price your products. This will help you sell your products or services at at a price that will pull the most orders. What are your customers prepared to pay, sometimes you may be able to charge more or sometimes you may have to charge less but perhaps give a little less to fit with what your visitors want. If someone doesn’t have much storage then perhaps smaller packs of your product might be more suitable. If your visitor can’t get this elsewhere then they may not buy at all. Conversely the opposite might be true, your visitors might prefer larger packs, it depends what you sell and what your visitors want. Better packaging and pricing will attain the optimum profit potential.

10. You’ll find out were your potential customers are hanging out. This will inform you where to market and promote your products. Buy seeing where your visitors are coming from to find you you will know best where to target your advertising or perhaps concentrate new promotions for best results.

More free web copywriting course articles are available at www.copywritingtip.com, where you can also find out how to increase your sales by up to 917% just like one of the clients of Bob Serling did after he applied Bob’s simple step by step ‘Power copywriting for the Internet’ web copywriting course program. Become a web copywriter with these copywriting secrets and take advantage of freelance writing opportunities.

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