A diamanté watch that will sparkle all day and all night – how to write a product description

Emily Hill // January 9, 2012

E-retailers frequently have long lists of product that tell the potential customer technical specifications and price with very little zest in the descriptions.

Writing product descriptions is an art that can help to boost online sales but in a hundred words(which tends to be what writers get) how can you maximise the impact of your prose?

Here are five ideas for attracting the eye of browsing customers to your lines:

Accurate – The description must accurately enumerate the characteristics and qualities of the item being described whether it’s a camera or a cushion. But there’s a world of difference between merely stating that something is red (for example) and using more exact words. Is the product magenta, scarlet, crimson, red as a rose? Does the metal of which a waste bin is made have the appearance of silver, tin, bronze or gold? Search for the exact word. A thesaurus can be useful here.

Imaginative – This shows not merely in the choice of nouns, adjectives and verbs, but also in the use of exciting contemporary references. This is where wide acquaintance with contemporary culture is useful.  Does a given piece of clothing remind you of something Marilyn Munroe might wear? Then refer to the film ‘My Week with Marilyn’. Look at any pictures and see what comes to mind as you dream a little.

Targeted – While it’s great to be imaginative, as stated above, bear in mind who the product is for. If it’s comfortable walking shoes there’s no point in referencing Lady Gaga. Judi Dench might be more appropriate. On the other hand,  a product such as  apiece of jewellery might be made to appeal to a young woman and her boyfriend who wants to buy her  a present.
Amusing – if we laugh we are in a good mood and maybe more likely to buy.  Gentle humour could be useful, but no irony at the expense of the product. This will undermine your message and displease the client. Your job is to attract buyers through your description. Take your tone from your client’s website.

Truthful – Last but not least, go back to the manufacturer’s or retailer’s description and check that you have not made any unjustified claims. Imagination is one thing. Lies are something else altogether. Phrases such as ‘has the appearance of’ and ‘puts one in mind of’ are useful here.

So write with pleasure next time you describe the funky, turquoise, viridian, gold, midnight black and scarlet hat that might grace the head of the Duchess of Cambridge at the 2012 Olympics.

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Breaking news to get views

Emily Hill // January 3, 2012

It might be tempting to put successful blogging down to luck, rather than hard work. But as previous posts on our blog have pointed out, there are a vast number of things you can do to increase traffic and to reach the right readership. It’s all the gentle art of blog management.

In the fast-moving world of up-to-the-second information and 24-hour searching that is the internet, fate can sometimes present opportunities for the switched-on social media user.

Writing an article or tweeting as quickly as possible after a press-release by an industry leader or a legal ruling that impacts your sector can get you many times more views than you might otherwise receive, simply because clients, consumers or competitors will all be simultaneously searching for information on this new turn of events. If they find a well-written piece of analysis or a great synopsis of the key issues when they find your post, they’ll keep coming back in future.

Although posting on a breaking story is, to a certain extent, dependent on whether or not you happen to be within arm’s reach of a keyboard at the right moment, here’s a couple of practical steps you can take to make sure you are best placed to seize such opportunities when they arise.

•    Don’t wait on a piece of news. If you hear about something of interest in the real world, then it’s worth putting it online as soon as you possibly can. If you’re in a hurry, tweet it; as soon as you’ve got more time, post on your blog.

•    Fact-checking is key, as is putting together insightful comment, but don’t let these important considerations prevent you from seizing the initiative. If you’ve only heard rumours about some earth-shattering development, then say so. The hypothetical can be just as interesting to your readers as the actual – just be honest about which is which.

•    If you get more information, don’t be shy about posting updates and clarifications. If you’re interested, your readers will be interested.

•    If you do get something wrong – easily done, if you’re writing up-to-the-second – admit to it. Correcting yourself demonstrates your own commitment to giving your readers the right information, and is far better than paying no heed to changes in the story as it unfolds. Otherwise, you’ll risk looking out of touch and dishonest.

•    You don’t need to be the first person to write about something to get a share of the buzz. A diverse and regularly updated RSS feed and a well-populated list of twitter accounts to follow can be incredible tools for making relevant posts on trending topics.

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Who owns Twitter followers?

Emily Hill // December 28, 2011

Noah Kravitz is being sued for keeping the Twitter followers that he attracted while tweeting for Phonedog as @Phonedog_Noah.  When Kravitz left the company, where he worked as a blogger, he changed his user name but took 17,000 followers with him. Within a short time he had 22,000 followers.

According to a story in The Guardian yesterday, the company is now seeking damages of $370,000 – $2.50 per user, per month.

Kravitz  told the New York Times that Phonedog had permitted him to make the account personal as long as he agreed to “tweet on their behalf from time to time”.

However, eight months after Kravitz had left the company, it filed a lawsuit claiming that the account’s followers were a customer list, and that it had invested “substantial” resources into building it. Phonedog Media claim that the list of followers is the property of the company.

A spokesperson for Phonedog Media said, “We intend to aggressively protect our customer lists and confidential information, intellectual property, trademark and brands.”

Corporate control of Twitter accounts has been a contentious subject. It is clear that  this latest case could set a precedent for future ownership tussles.

“Companies will now be developing careful ways of deciding if they want to tweet with a conjoined account,” said Barbara Cookson, an intellectual property lawyer in the UK.

She continued: “For ordinary businesses it’s quite difficult to gain a following without a strong personality. You have to have a very strong brand for it to work.”

Ms Cookson argued it is hard to pinpoint a financial value to Twitter followers as it is not clear why they follow a particular account.

The issue is whether a Twitter follower mailing list is equivalent to a mailing list.  In the Phonedog case, if the company had been using it to run offers it could be seen as a mailing list with consequent value.

Intellectual property solicitor Leigh Ellis said Phonedog are likely to have a strong case as the original account featured the company’s name.Speaking to the BBC Mr Ellis said, “Let me put it this way, I’d prefer to be on Phonedog’s side.

“If you’re a follower, who are you following? You might be following Noah, but it’s PhonedogNoah. There’s a very good argument that the reputation accrued is to the company, rather than the individual.”

Two lessons emerge from this story:

First, tweeting can be a powerful tool in the quest for brand awareness.

Second, if you leave a company for which you’ve been blogging or tweeting  don’t assume that the corporate can become private and that you can start a new blog or Twitter account with a multitude of fans..

 

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The Pen is Mightier than the Sword

Emily Hill // December 20, 2011

“The pen is mightier than the sword” is often bandied around as an axiom.  Literally, it’s unlikely that you’d be comfortable confronting the fighter with the Kalashnikoff if you only had a pen in your hand.  But words have had enormous power over societies and changed the course of history  – think of the Communist Manifesto and Mao’s Little Red Book.

But they have to be the right words at the right time, for the blogger no less than for the revolutionary. This is where keyword research comes in.  In the past, writers of publicity material and political manifestoes used keywords, the words most likely to appeal to the intended audience, instinctively, drawing on memory banks created by extensive reading of what the intended audience liked to read.  But now we have the latest on-line research tools available so the job of finding the right keywords becomes both easier and more scientific.

If for example,  you want to create a popular blog about blogging you can consult keyword research tools like Wordze, Keyword Discovery, and Wordtracker that will estimate the number of times people search for certain phrases. Thus, according to Wordze, approximately 11,222 people search for the term “blogging” each month.

Some caution is needed – responses to keywords may be significantly less or more for your website. However you can guage the popularity of soem terms relative to others. The general term “blogging”, for example, is more popular than the more specific term “business blogging,” which only has an estimated 3,319 searches per month.

Keyword research is about understanding the niche in which you want to place your blog from the inside out. You can use it to help you choose:

•    A popular (or profitable) niche for your blog
•    Post topics that people want to read about
•    Related markets to tap into
•    Products and services to promote (for a fee) on your blog
•    Ads that will bring you the highest cost per click (CPC)

Do all this and your pen might begin to take on sword like characteristics in terms of reaching your desired audience.

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Why keep a good thing secret – Facebook boss speaks out

Emily Hill // December 14, 2011

Continuing on the theme of our last blog – open information, it was recently reported that one of Facebook’s data centre managers has spoken out against rival companies’ decision to keep their data centre designs a secret.

Ken Patchett, who manages a Facebook data centre in Prineville, Oregon, USA, has criticised the likes of Google for trying to gain a competitive advantage by keeping the designs of their data centres under wraps.

According to the magazine Wired, Patchett left Google to join Facebook last year; whilst at Google, he supervised the company’s data centre campus at The Dalles, Oregon.

Patchett said  that on joining Google he was made to sign an agreement that would prevent him from sharing any details about Google’s data centre design for at least a year after leaving the organisation.

In Patchett’s view such secrecy “doesn’t make sense at all” because there is in fact no competitive advantage to a company who keeps their data centre design secret.

He told Wired: “How servers work has nothing to do with the way your software works and the competitive advantage comes from manipulating your software.”

In contrast, in April Facebook launched the Open Compute Project in order to share the custom-engineered design of its Prineville data centre.

In an environmentally positive move, the centre features rows of energy efficient machines which cool the facility with air from the outside instead of electricity-powered water chillers.

The specs and CAD files for the data centre’s servers, power suppliers and building design are available on its blog.

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