If you are a new business in the South Dublin area then check out this event being hosted by the Dun Laoghaire Rathdown County Enterprise Board START network - my good friend Denise Fay will be speaking about an essential skill that you must have in your business to help you market your products and services (you will have heard her on a webinar with me earlier this year) - copy writing.

Here is a summary of the details:

Time: Tuesday October 11th 7pm to 9pm Location: Radisson Blu Hotel, Stillorgan

Event: Write to Wow your Audience - Get 7 steps to write winning copy

• How to talk to your audience like they are an old friend
• What to do if you get writer's block
• How to write captivating headlines with three headline types
• How your customers are buying on emotion not logic
• The most important step in copywriting.

 Registration: Book your place with angela@dlrceb.ie

 

Next week is the start of the Mountains to Sea Book Festival in Dun Laoghaire which has a great series of workshops for anyone who is interested in writing their novel, their memoir or even songs. The festival takes place from the 1 - 11 September 2011.

Be sure to check out the site and plan your itinerary before they get fully booked up.

Long copy works!

I know this to be true through the onle copywriting programmes I have attended over the years and the research that has been undertaken that has demonstrated increased sales results for.

However there is a formula that you need to apply to ensure that you do maximise your conversion - it's something I teach in my online digital marketing programmes and once you have the formula you can easily apply it to your own sales copy.

However in Europe we seem to have been less tolerant of long sales copy than in the US.

Here are three resources that you will find of assistance when looking to write your own long sales copy.

1. Brian Clarke recently write an article about when long sales copy works and in summary he commented that ling sales copy works when you are selling:

   a. a product or service that is expensive
   b. information aqnd education
   c. a product that is rich in features
   d. a new innovative product
   e. a product or service that is online.

2. Read the case study and review the sales page from 37Signals about their redesignof their sales page for their HighRise product that increased signups to their service by 37.5% having tested it with 42,000 visitors to their site.

3. Read the article by Jeremy Reeves about the anatomy of a long sales letter.

Don't forget to test your online sales copy - for additional resources make sure that you read my recent article about 16 resources to improve your digital marketing and website conversions and access the free podcast of 80 minutes of content about 5 keys to better online copy.

Photo credit World of Good on Twitter

 

If you are in the Dublin area and looking for activities for the children in the Summer check out the courses taking place at Camp Rathdown in the area of creative writing and digital story telling.

The workshops take place during the weeks of June 27 and August 8 2011 and the mornings will be dedicated to the children working on their stories and the afternoon they will animate their stories.

For details of the the programme and other courses running at Camp Rathdown head over to their website.

There is an interesting article on Problogger about content scrapping of your blog and talking about the issue of copyright.

One helpful link they provided was how to report content that you want removed from Google search - you will find the link here to report content you want removed from Google.

Make sure that if you ever quote an excerpt from an article oline you alway ensure that you give attribution and a link to the orginal source.

Here is a great new network and event if you are involved in non fiction writing or copywriting - it's a programme called ScribeTribe and is launching in March 2011 Belfast, facilitated by Dawn Baird of Sensei Learning and Performance.

The meetings will include a brief seminar by someone experienced in writing and the opportunity to network.

If you are based in driving distance of Belfast and are a copywriter, web content writer, write press releases or in fact are interested in learning more about non fiction writing then check out the event.

And if you are experienced in writing non fiction, get in touch with Dawn as they are looking for speakers.

The first ScribeTribe event is on 8 March in Belfast between 5.30-7.30pm and costs £25 to attend.

You will also find ScribeTribe on Facebook.