Corporate Blogs - Failing with the copy

So Forrester says consumers don’t trust corporate blogs (Time to Rethink Your Corporate Blogging Ideas). Although it saddens me, it doesn’t surprise me. At all!

As Debbie Weil (author of the The Corporate Blogging Book) rightly notes, a lot of this is down to ”too many corporate blogs being written in corporate speak”.

I’ve been thinking about this quite a bit recently and was complaining that too many web writers forget to be human yesterday.

Corporate blogs need to quit the cheese
As social media matures, corporates have got to ditch the cheese. Readers spot advertising fluff a mile away – even if it’s written in the form of a blog post.

If you’re a business blogger, you’ve got to speak to your audience as a human. You wouldn’t appreciate it if you stepped into a local store and the salesperson hit you with corporate speak.

You’re more inclined to buy or listen to what sales staff have to say if they speak to you as a person, rather than churning out corporate jargon.

Blogging changed the way we write on the Net. Twitter (and other microblogging services) are changing it even more.

We aren’t writing anymore. We’re speaking in text.

If business bloggers are going to start winning over audiences, they have to put the user at the forefront and start communicating in ways that people listen.

Time for a new corporate blogging voice
Plugging your sales pitch or corporate message into your website isn’t working. Nowadays you have to be more like the village shop keeper who cared about customers, forty or fifty years ago. Talk to people:

• be engaging
• establish trust
• don’t oversell
• be enthusiastic, not pushy
• and be polite and helpful.

Then, only then, will your blog cease to reverberate with the corporate claptrap customers are so wary of.

Web Writing 101: Be natural, polite and human

When you write web copy, remember you’re talking to people. Not corporations.

It’s people that act, make decisions, choose to purchase from your company and so on. No matter how big a company they work for.

Nowadays, corporate copy is a major turnoff.

XXXXXXX is an industry-leader in the innovative utilisation of XXXXXXX, strategically leveraging a unique value proposition to uphold its position as the world-class XXXXX solutions provider with unmatched, seamlessly integrated and robust best practice.

Compare that claptrap to Flickr.

This is one of my favourite examples of great web writing from a company. It’s the response they gave after they upset a lot of users by adding video to the popular picture-share site.

The way Flickr chose to tackle the issue and talk directly to users tells you a lot about what kind of company they are. It certainly tells me they a company that value the way they communicate. They’re talking in a natural, polite way that comes across as entirely human.

Even if “Heather” didn’t write this and it’s crafted by a professional copywriter (I’m speculating here!), the communicative act itself is exceptional.

First and foremost, they write with personality. Even when criticised for getting some of the copy on the site wrong (See smiley face) they respond in in a human way:

Yup. This is stupid. We’re working on fixing this.

I think we’re getting to the stage where businesses need to start speaking to customers on the web as person to person, not corporation to customer.

Great Copywriting: What You Can Learn from Virgin

I love the way the current Virgin Atlantic site talks directly to the reader.

“Hello gorgeous”!

What a great way to come across with personality. Although they’re corporate, they’re talking human to human. They’ve got personality and it’s rolled up in a cheeky (cheesy!) two word greeting.

The other thing that works for me here is the way the word “earn” is used.

Visually it’s striking enough to succeed as a call-to-action, but pychologically its even stronger.

You surf into the site looking for cheap tickets and suddenly you find yourself drawn to signing up for their credit card. All on the promise of earning something for yourself.

Short, snappy, and deftly nailing the brief. Premier web-writing to observe and learn from.

Web Copy:  Speaking in Text

One of the things that makes a great website is great copy. But great copy has changed. Since Web 2.0 happened, when we write for the Net we aren’t writing: we’re speaking in text.

There are stacks of examples of this all over the Net but here’s one of my personal favs. Feedburner.

In this screenshot you’ve got a really good lesson in Web 2.0 copywriting.

For starters, it’s personal.

Welcome. Let us burn a feed for you [emphasis added] a

In an instant, you’ve got a great invitation to action.

There’s more, too.

The following text emphasises that Feedburner is working with you.

Your new feed...your new account...your feed…

Even though they’re offering to do all the hard work for you, they’re still telling you it’s your feed. But the even subtler message is that together we can partner on this!

Finally, I love the balance of the opt in / opt out buttons at the button of the window:

“Activate Feed....[or] do not activate”.

Although it’s very subtly done, this is digital copywriting at it’s very best, guiding you through the process, talking to you with words.

The (great) copy has become the guide that prompts action.

It’s Not Just Words - [Copywriting]

Being a wordsmith by trade, I tend to focus on words. Naturally.

But any digital copywriter worth their salt will tell you that you’ve got to have a great graphics team to back you up.

My favourite piece of copy this week has to be the Pedigree Adoption Drive plea to President-elect Obama. Who can resist a cute dog? The animal’s face draws you into the text, even if you don’t read all of it.

My only criticism of the ad is the way they use it to promote their dog food. The Pedigree logo is shown on bag of dog food. The full image is available after the jump. 

Page 1 of 3 pages  1 2 3 >