 The reason why I played up music in the beginning is because we need to have our energy going, particularly when we're writing what's like a copy, need to be a little bit creative. So I'm Gail Williams and something about myself. So I came up here from Sarasota, Florida. I'm actually a Florida native born in Orlando before the mouse is what we say. Before the mouse ate Orlando. If you really ask me who I am, I'm going to say I'm an orchestral flutist. Classically trained in flute and played in an orchestra for many, many years as principal flute. And a sideline of that is I'm also a music critic for 20 years. I've been a music critic for the Herald Tribune, so I've written on deadline a lot. But that has nothing to do with why I'm here necessarily. I have been in marketing for about 25 years prior to that university administration. And in marketing I was a corporate, not-for-profit marketing executive. Then with an agency, business development and project management with an agency, and started my own agency in 2008. Right around the time, everything crashed. And it was great. I had a virtual start and went to bricks and mortar. It was vision, PR, and marketing. Working with a number of larger not-for-profits and businesses. And then as I got older and things got in a way a lot easier with digital marketing, I decided to scale back down to just me. And it's been a great ride. And today, I write a lot of content. I build websites and I help clients build their businesses and not for profits. So that's why I'm here, a little bit about me. We're gonna write winning website copy. I don't know why I did all that alliteration, it's really hard to say. But today we're going to go into the why, who, and what of writing copy. We'll talk about use buyer personas, who we're writing to. And the sequence flow and the journey of the content on your website. Voice and tone, and then we're going to spend some time on writing rules and grammar. Is everyone really excited about that? Oh good, thank you. It's because it's really important. We may not have time for hands-on practice. I gave this talk in Baltimore and we ran a little long because we got into the meat of it. But we'll see what we can do, okay? Starting off with why. Why should our website copy be winning, compelling, good copy? Bad copy's boring. Mm-hm. Yes. It doesn't convert, it doesn't do the, you know, I was thinking of more mundane reasons like to please the client and get paid for the job and of course to produce the best website for my portfolio and to feed the search engines. It's all about SEO. Well you all had it right. It's really to resonate with the website visitors and create some action, engagement and conversion. And you can't do that with dull copy or incorrect copy or disorganized copy. This is actually a copy I found on the live website and I changed the names to present, to protect the innocent. So just take a moment and look at that. And I'd love to have you just kind of poke some holes in it if you have a suggestion for them. Start over. Yeah. Yes. Right. Right. And a lot of these things you can do visually. You have to think, when you're telling your story, what can you tell visually and what do you need to spend your precious copy on? Yeah. Exactly. It's really, you know who this is resonating with? This is the owner. And the funny thing is this is the copy. I work with a lot of small businesses and if I'm not careful to discuss copywriting and content development and put that into the contract, I end up kind of stuck with it like this and I feel compelled to clean it up because I don't want something like this on a website that has my name on it. Right. Right. So resonate with the people who are visiting the website who are our potential customers, clients, donors. We need to think about them. And that's the next. Yes. You had a. Okay. So who do you really want to resonate? We've answered that. Right. Although we always do have to remember we have to bring the company owner along our client along and any of their population. But we want to resonate with our clients, buyer personas. Now do you all talk about buyer personas with your clients? Is everyone here a designer, developer working with clients? Do you talk about buyer personas? I see some nods. Just raise your hand if you that's definitely part of your conversation and your lexicon. Okay. Great. Great. For those who might not know what buyer personas are, they are here. I have the definition so I don't have to remember. It's a semi-fictional representation of your ideal customer based on market research and real data about your existing customers. In my world I work with very small companies and they don't have a lot of data. So I have to talk to the owner, maybe talk to the lead sales person, and ask a lot of questions to put together the picture of their buyer persona. And sometimes it's not the best to be. Is there anyone here who has a way that they get their buyer persona from their clients that just is really working for them? Oh, segments. Right. Okay. Smart. You do need to think in terms of segments because it's not always a monolithic, this type of person visits the website, yes sir. Uh-huh. Right. Okay. And that specifically talks about online behavior and that's very, very useful. However, you also, yes sir, that's really good. Uh-huh. Right. So when we start asking questions like this, and we're really getting into this detail, who of us thought that they were actually a sales consultant? For really a business consultant? Sales consultant? Really, there are times where I say if we really go through the process that we need to, to create a killer website, we've gone through a lot of your business planning and strategy, so it's great. Couple of resources, Adele Ravella wrote a wonderful book. It was the book about buyer personas and her information is at buyerpersona.com. If you haven't played on that site, I recommend it. Now this is an example of, their avatars, buyer personas can look, they come in a number of varieties. This is one, and I particularly would be paying attention to challenges and common questions and fears because that's going to tell me how to address them with the words on the website. Your background will let me know a little bit about their education and where they're coming from, but really their challenges, common questions, and biggest fears. That information you usually get if you're talking to the lead sales person in the company. As you were saying, sir, talking about their sales. Have you ever gone to a website and you're looking at it and you're thinking, what do they do? Yeah, right, but that has never been a website that you've built, right? Never. But sometimes you have to state the obvious. It's not just going to be in your name. The what is important, but far too often, if we get that what from the client, it's all about the features. It's kind of long-winded. It's full of industry jargon. So stay away from that. Watch out. This is the number one question. When I look at any page, it's what's in it for me? If I've gotten my mind in the place of the buyer persona, at least one of the segments, and I look at it and I just think, is this going to resonate with me? Is it telling me anything that I want to know? This is a series of questions that I propose, that I hypothesize, is a common sequence. I want to know what is it, what is being offered, how have others benefited from it? And that's social proof. That's testimonials, but you want to tell me right up front. I want to know what makes this company, individual service, qualified to provide what they do. So I do want to know a little bit about credentials, how long you've been in business, and maybe your specialties. And then in many ways, I'm going to be looking at the site, the way they talk to me, how they present themselves, and I'm going to ask, can I trust them? And I want to know what others say about them. That's very specifically social proof testimonials. And then very often, the visitor is thinking, well, what would it be like if I'm working with them? And if you don't say, okay, this is what it's like to be working with them, you have lost an opportunity there. And if I'm interested, what's the next step? I have seen more than my share of websites that have no call to action anywhere. That's a huge missed opportunity. It's like, well, I've got the contact page. They can just go and contact me. The phone number's up there, very specific. Now, if we're talking about the buyer persona, we need to think about the sequence of their line of inquiry, the flow of the website, the flow that we're taking them on. And I call it the buyer's journey. What are the things they're going to be looking for? And we have to consider what the brand voice is, but how does this brand voice of our client resonating with the buyer persona? I think of a grocery store. You know that there's a huge science, I'm sure, of exactly where to place things in a grocery store. And they know exactly what they're doing when they kind of lead you through the floral area and the deli. And around the cases of processed meats, there's a science to it. And they've researched what we want, what's the natural path of our shopping experience, and what they want. And they're placing things, their specials, exactly where they should be along that path. And so a website is no different. You're building the flow, the navigation, the internal links to places so that you guide them along the preferred path, but you also give them an opportunity to make their choices. So that's the sequence and the flow and the voice. There are a lot of ways to convey the voice with word choice, tone. Are you writing in first person? Are you writing in the authoritative third person? I think, for me, a lot of my clients like first person. That just seems I'm talking just to you because you have visited my website. And so we offer you these things. And you will feel so much better when you buy one of these things along those lines. This photo really reminds me when I was in college and just barely drinking age. My friends and I would go down the street into town and visit the wine store. There was a little wine shop, a small little place. And we got to know the owner. And through the year, my junior year in college, we bought a bottle of wine a week. And it was our little course in learning how to drink wine and how to discern what wine is what. And I think of that as what you can do with a website. You're visiting. Let me show you this. Let me give you an opportunity to come back for this other content, your blog posts and such. Here sign up for our opt-in. Opt-in so we can share a little more with you. So it's always very helpful. So I say your website content should be helpful, whatever voice it's in. Oh, so I wanted to show you. We could look at any number of websites. But this one, come on. Oh, we just lost it. There's a website that I built. It's a long scroll. And I just wanted to share with you the logic behind it. And then you can tell me if it's useful or not. So obviously, we catch their attention. Who we are, what we do. We're going to make this very, very clear. So basically, we want to be your project solution source. And very specifically, we're going to save you time. And I'm not going to read the whole thing. But this is kind of our opening salvo. We're saying special projects, specifically your events. And again, it's what's in it for me. We make your events exquisite and profitable. Then we go into a little bit of background of our credentials and experience. We get a little more specific. Sometimes all we need is a prompt. Everyone's looking for, well, what is it that I need? Oh, no, I need a bar mitzvah. I need someone to do the bar mitzvah I'm planning. Or I have a corporate annual meeting. So we give them the list so that they can begin to nod. We get into details. This client is actually a not-for-profit consultant working on development projects as well. A little deeper than just the special events. A little deeper. This is kind of the list of what we do, what we do. And a little more what we do. But all you'll see in the way that it's worded, it's worded in ways that mean something to them. I'm going to save some time. I'm going to have more accuracy. I'm going to build better relationships with my donors. And then our services include lists are good. And here we start the social proof. We have a testimonial here. We introduce the owner, owners, and more testimonial, social proof. You can trust us, we've worked on all these projects with all these people. And our call to action, our last bit, turn your events into unforgettable memories. Let's start a conversation. This is what you do. This was a very compact flow, one-page role. I would love it. Y'all have any suggestions to improve this? Yes, please. Who's your developer? Well, it's not optimized for any of that. But that's, I know, that's party planners, event planners. Yeah, yes. Right. Right, and so you thought the bridge reminded you of infrastructure. That's thank you. I know. And what so what do they do? In your projects, the special ability to blah, blah, blah. OK. Thank you, thank you. Yes. Great, first of all, I'm going to say who we are and what we do. Yeah. But it's the hope. Yeah. Are you checking to see what it looks like on a mobile device? Oh, you're just checking your mail. It's OK. I caught you out. Yes, sir, you're over there. Yeah. OK, thank you. Thank you. I'm a better writer than I am a WordPress, I mean, website builder, yes. The entrance of the bridge. It's low. Yeah. OK. All right. OK, OK, so thank you very much. I'm going to take that back. This is one of those. Never mind. All right. Wait, wait, wait, see if. What can we do? We're switching it to the page and it's going to be immediate. It's going to be immediate. Yeah. So I should kind of do something else as the header. See, in Sarasota, there's great pride in this bridge. And the market that we're going to, they're just like, oh, and they go on. It's not an incredibly. Yeah. It's funny if people are just loving that video. But then again, how many are converting? Right. Exactly. That flow is, yeah, y'all are just a bunch of developers and stuff, right? Yeah. Yeah. Yes, sir. And we'll move on. No, it's OK. It's OK. I got like two on the test, but I'm driving pretty fast. OK, so here's here. I'll end it with this. This is a friend of mine who started business, started it, and came to me after she named it. SRQ Special Projects, don't you think that's great? So tell me more about why you came to this name. So SRQ is what the Sarasota Airport acronym is. OK, so in Sarasota only, that means something. Special Projects, I kind of had the same thoughts you did, which was you do stuff with not-for-profits. You do events. So this is an example of you work with what you have. She didn't have high-res photos of the events she'd done. So I needed something for her header. So I found this and thought, this will pop. Oh, we are moving on. We're not talking. Just raise the 10-minute things. OK, we're going to talk about compelling word choices. There are more words than these on the screen. There are a lot of really good words. And I'm going to encourage you to always think of action verbs, descriptive action verbs. Think of how you can describe things with more specificity. In the art of storytelling, you are going to connect more deeply when you paint that picture. And I would recommend that you just kind of start playing as you're writing boring company copy. Look for ways. Use your thesaurus. You know, right click, thesaurus. Check the words out. Now we get to the fun part. We're going to whiz through grammar. And I will tell you that I do have these slides on my website for you to pull down. You're welcome. And so this grammar matters. I'm really not trying to be agist. I thought this was really funny. I'm that person with the whiteout. But grammar matters. The number one reason I say your website should have copy that is clean, well-written, is because if you have error, maybe you didn't use the right way. Or you dropped a few commas. Many of us will let that slide. But we'll bet on that. Proper grammar, well-used, well-put sentences, it's going to be very hard for you to build credibility and trust. Trust goes out the window when someone sees a typo. That's just, that is fact. Unless the person doesn't know. But anyway, that's another. When you're using spellcheck or if you have the Grammarly app or plug-in, it doesn't catch everything. If the word is thee, obviously, if it's thee, and it actually says they, it's not going to give you the little red line to tell you something's wrong. So be careful of words like break down and break down. Break down is a verb. Break down, together, is a noun. Did anyone know that distinction? You'll start seeing these things with every day and every day. Every day, together, is an adjective. Every day is describing every day. It's versus it's. If you don't, when you're writing, quickly go in your mind, it is. Or it's possessive. You might be making mistakes. This is my number one mistake, because I type fast. And if I don't get that apostrophe in, it's a problem. It is. Contraction is the only one that uses the quote. Worthless? Worth it. Oh, worth it. OK. I found Grammarly very helpful. A friend of mine who's an editor says it's worthless. Because it makes mistakes. I find it helpful, because I always look at it and think, is I right or not? OK. But Grammarly is useful. Yes. That's very good. Exactly. Thank you. Right. So that's the inconsistency. Very quickly, I want to tell you the rule of pie, because people use quotation marks in italics in all wacky, wonky ways. So think of, I love this example of the thriller. Michael Jackson's album, The Thriller, would be the larger piece. And so that's in italics. The actual song, Thriller, is in quotations. This goes for, I do a lot of reviews, so opera's and arias. But when you're talking about something, a book, a chapter, anything that's a subset, that's where it's used. Italics are used in visual copy to emphasize. And if you use the quotations in a way to emphasize, you're actually, you're not emphasizing it like this is important. You're saying, this is maybe not right. Does everyone understand the difference between that? No. Yes, nod? Is that OK? I was going to say, if you don't nod, I'm going to repeat it. You don't want me to. Never hyphenate an L-Y verb. People use hyphens where they shouldn't, and people use them where they should. This is one place where you should not use a hyphen. Commonems, words that sound alike, but mean something different. The two most commonly misused, other than here, here, and there, there. Our insure, it only has to do with insurance. And insure is when you want to make sure. Effect is the noun, and affect is the verb. I love this. Where are you supposed to use capital, capitals? Capital letters, in a title. So when you have an H2 tag or something like that, go ahead, capitalize each word. But if it's in the middle of your text and you're talking about engaging, I love this engaging, dynamic keynote speaker, making them capitalize does not make it more important. Makes it wrong. Oh, this goes without saying. Just watch your pronoun agreement, please. Client, well, you can download these because we have no time. Collective nouns, singular, run on sentences, watch. If you have two sentences and you put them together, you have to join them with a comma and a conjunction or with a semicolon, one of those two. And there, that's the end of the lightning fast grammar review. So I hope we covered some things that were useful. We don't have time for comments, but I'll be here and I'll be out there in the hall if you have any questions. And the resources link is right up there. It's my website, visionprm.com at WC Philly. And feel free to go in and download what you need. Okay, thank you very much.