5) Marketing Experience

Actual marketing experience is a big plus. It brings with it a broader understanding of strategic marketing and realities of working with a range of challenging people and evolving products and services. Look for an IT copywriter with corporate experience as a marketing manager or marketing coordinator, or someone who runs a copywriting business with a heavy marketing focus.

6) Testimonials

Anyone can call themselves an IT copywriter; few have client testimonials to prove it. Testimonials are a great way to validate your IT copywriter’s claims. Ask to see some and read them carefully. Don’t just look at company name and logo. You need to determine if clients’ words back up copywriter’s claims. And make sure testimonial relates to type of work you’re commissioning (or something with similar requirements).

7) IT Samples

The proof is in pudding. ALWAYS ask potential IT copywriters to send you samples of their work. And – as with testimonials – don’t be fooled by flashy packaging, big names, and recognisable logos. Read words. Are they relevant to your project? Do they convey a clear understanding of subject matter? Do they convey benefits or just features? Are they written in a style that you find easy to read, yet compelling? And after you’ve read words, double-check exactly how much input copywriter had in their writing. Not all copy is written from scratch. Some copywriters work in teams, and others do more editing than writing. Make sure you get a clear understanding of your IT copywriter’s abilities and experience before commissioning them.

8) Understand Benefits

Your customers aren’t interested in what you do; they’re interested in what you can do FOR THEM. In other words, they’re interested in what benefits your product or service will deliver. How will it make their day easier, more enjoyable, less stressful, safer, or more profitable? Identifying benefits is one of hardest tasks in any advertising project. In fact, many people rely on their copywriter to help them uncover most compelling benefits. Does your IT copywriter truly understand benefits you’re promoting?

9) Contributes value

A good IT copywriter should have solid professional experience. They should bring value to your marketing push which goes far beyond written word. Strategy, tactics, imagery, contacts, anecdotes, corporate identity… Your IT copywriter must bring more to table than grammar and punctuation. Expect them to make suggestions, not simply take notes and say “Yes”.

10) Plus all normal copywriter requirements…

Of course, your IT copywriter must be able to satisfy all normal copywriter requirements. Ask for a contract of works to be completed, a time estimate, a plan of attack, a CV, and SEO copy skills (if search engine presence is important to you). For more information about what to expect from a normal copywriter, see http://www.divinewrite.com/websitecopywriter.htm.

Conclusion

Traditionally, copywriters have been seen as a small cog in big advertising machine. As a result, most copywriters have risen through ranks of generic advertising agencies. These days, however, more and more people are sidestepping agency and going direct to copywriter. This approach gives them consistency across all of their written collateral, more compelling and engaging copy, and more responsive service. Within industry, this change means that copywriters aren’t confined to ad agencies, and are able to specialise. The end result to you? While finding a good IT copywriter with an IT background is still a big challenge, it’s certainly becoming easier. You simply need to take time to ask right questions.

Good luck.

* Glenn Murray is an advertising copywriter and heads copywriting studio Divine Write. He can be contacted on Sydney +612 4334 6222 or at glenn@divinewrite.com. Visit http://www.divinewrite.com for further details or more FREE articles.

Evoy’s company, Sitesell.com, has an excellent, free link exchange service, which I have found very satisfactory for gaining links to my own sites.

Once you have a few quality links to your site, that’s enough, according to Evoy. From then on, concentrate on adding more and more content to your site.

There is an important place for keywords on these new content pages. It helps to focus each page on one or two keywords (actually, it’s better to use key phrases, because these are what Web searchers typically use) sprinkle these keywords and phrases throughout your page.

You can find best keywords by using a service called Wordtracker. This is particularly useful because it saves you from simply guessing which words and phrases people are searching on, and gives you actual search terms being used – and how much competition there is for these terms.

I won’t go too much into keyword analysis here. Suffice it to say, if you follow Evoy’s advice, you’ll focus mainly on writing content-filled pages that are of genuine value to your prospective customers or clients.

As search engines see content on your site continually changing, they’ll return more often. They’ll spider new content on your pages faster and faster. This is good news and helps your search engine rankings.

The only downside of Evoy’s approach is that it does take time and commitment to keep adding content to your website. It may seem easier to pay an SEO expert.

But consider this. Even if you do achieve a good ranking in search engines through SEO, if a visitor arrives and finds mediocre content, what’s use. They’ll simply click away. For most small businesses, with limited financial resources, key to getting your website noticed in search engines is a slow, steady approach of adding more and more pages with great, relevant content for your marketplace.

Then you can forget about SEO and every other trick.

Focus on building content and everything else will take care of itself.

Chris Mole is a freelance website copywriter based near Christchurch, New Zealand. He has more than 20 years experience writing for print, radio and Web media and now specialises in writing truly persuasive sales copy for small businesses.