Slightly Askew

The alarm was sounding. I stood there like a lemon with a guilty look on my face.

I’d go down for this. I’d lose my job, my house, my girlfriend, the lot.

All for a bottle of Pimms.

Have you got your receipt, Sir?

Shit. What if wasn’t in my back pocket where, on auto-pilot, I’d probably put it? What if the dopey cashier hadn’t scanned it?

Thankfully it was, and she had.

She hadn’t taken the security tag off though. That was why I was currently looking like a criminal.

And as the customer services assistant walked past me and muttered “I’ll tell her off for not taking that tag off”, it was left for the security guard to apologise.

In customer service, you deal with the problem first, then you assess the cause. And never forget to say sorry if you’re at fault.

If I was the guilty party, would an apology from my dad have been sufficient? I doubt it.

Ah, the serial (or Oxford) comma

You may have heard Vampire Weekend’s take on it.

Who gives a fuck about an Oxford comma?

Erm, I do.

No idea what I’m talking about?

Some people would write

Red, white and blue.

I prefer

Red, white, and blue.

The serial comma is the comma before an and or an or (the conjunction, darling) in a list of three or more things.

Without the comma, white and blue seem somehow related. And less important than red. The serial comma restores equality.

We’d say “red… white… and blue” with equal pauses, so why not let the comma denote that pause?

And when using semicolons to separate a list, it’s common practice to put a semicolon before the last and (or whatever conjunction you decide to use) - so why not with commas?

My real bugbear is that many copywriters pretend to worship the classic Strunk & White book The Elements of Style, yet decide not to use the serial comma.

Did these copywriters give up at page one?

Because on page two of that book it reads:

In a series of three or more terms with a single conjunction, use a comma after each term except the last.

Thus write,

red, white, and blue
gold, silver, or copper
He opened the letter, read it, and made a note of its contents

Who knows what fate has in store for my beloved serial comma. Its usage on these shores is slim, but our American cousins keep the flame burning.

At school, I wasn’t taught to use it. Thankfully I’ve seen the light. My schooling ruined my education.

And it’s lost me some friends (they were bizarre drunken conversations), but nobody said that finding clarity in writing would be easy.

Maybe I’ll send the words “I give a fuck” to vampireweekend@gmail.com.

Thank the lord for Apathy and Other Small Victories. Or Paul Neilan, he wrote it.

If you’re a dullard without a sense of humour, you won’t like it.

If you have a deluded Mother Teresa complex and get a little upset by things that haven’t been signed-off in triplicate by some unelected bunch of students parading as a human rights movement, you won’t like it.

If you weren’t born yesterday, have a healthy chunk of cynicism for pretty much everything, and have ever worked at an insurance company, this is the book for you.

Follow Shane through his life as a saltshaker stealing insurance temp who’s having sex with a woman he hates and happens to be his girlfriend. And his landlord’s wife (but only on Tuesdays).

On my first day I tried to alphabetize for about ten minutes, but being twenty-eight years old and not severely retarded I really couldn’t justify it to myself so I stopped.

The guy who live above him sells guns and walks his guinea pig, his local bar’s happy hour is between 7 and 10 in the morning, and he’s learnt sign language.

Oh, and Marlene - the deaf dental secretary - is dead.

Read it.

It was a sunny weekday lunchtime. Any self-respecting male not at work would’ve done exactly the same thing. Surely.

Pint of Stella please.

It came quickly. And with a smile. I was quickly falling in love with this restaurant. Love blossomed when my rump steak burger with handcut chips arrived.

Good lord above, please open one in Ipswich.

Another Stella. A little more sunshine. Smiles all round.

Then the bill arrived: £12.45 for two Stellas and a tasty meal. An absolute bargain. I got out my Maestro and was all set to pay £15 and reward the friendly waitresses £2.55 for their wonderful service.

And my card sat there untouched for twenty minutes. Twenty bloody minutes. My food had arrived in half that time.

So when I finally did get the chance to pay, I paid £12.45 exactly.

Because one bad thing can undo the work of so many good ones.

Marketing isn’t an event. It isn’t an advert, an email, or a website. It’s a process. You’re marketing when you hire and you’re marketing when you fire. When some idiot dials the wrong number and calls you instead of the local tyre kickers, that’s right, you’re marketing. It continues when you’re not looking.

And the problems start when you’re not looking.

But solving the problem isn’t impossible.

So when I walked out of that restaurant, a little grumpy and £2.55 better off, I was annoyed. Let down maybe. But I needed to get the tram. And I had no idea where from.

So I asked the waitresses. And they told me - with the same friendly smile that I’d received in every contact I’d had with them. I got my tram, and my happy face returned.

Those twenty minutes were a blip. Everybody has blips. Marketing gives you the opportunity to iron them out. Keep doing things the right way and when you’ll be forgiven for the odd time when things go the wrong way.

And next time you’re in Sheffield, do me a favour would you? Visit Yorkies and tip them that £2.55 I owe.

The ability to blockquote is only the touch of a button away in Wordpress, so it’s easy to add visual emphasis when I’m quoting someone.

It’s a town for losers, but I’m pulling outta here to win.

But when using my better-half’s laptop - that’s still making use of the wonderfully archaic Internet Explorer 6 (or IE6 if you’re up with web slang) - I noticed that text underneath a blockquote was shifting to the left slightly. And then after the next blockquote it would shift even further to the left. And so on. Not good.

Oddly, I’ve managed to solve the problem by adding a simple border to the offending blockquotes. I’ve no idea why this works, but it does.

Usually, I’d never take this approach. I need to the exact cause of the problem in order to understand why the solution works.

But I’m getting older. IE6 is getting older too. Hopefully it will be extinct before me.

The moral of this story: pick your battles.

I was once - I say “once”, it’ll probably happen again - confronted by someone questioning my use of the word and at the start of a sentence.

When I questioned why the position of this little word caused a problem, the response was this:

My teacher at school always told me not to start a sentence with and.

Many of my teachers weren’t particularly clever. My English teacher often changed her mind to go with the general consensus of the class. I swear on at least one occasion she stole my answer and passed it off as her own. So forgive me if I don’t really care for what your English teacher taught you.

Sadly, a simple “fuck off” doesn’t satisfy people; you have to provide evidence. Fortunately I found some on the back cover of Bill Bryson’s Troublesome Words.

The belief that and should not be used to begin a sentence is without foundation. And that’s all there is to it.

Thanks Bill.

The act of questioning someone else’s work is sadly commonplace. Long gone are the days when people were simply trusted to do a job well. Management consultants probably call it inclusivity. I much prefer interference. Or back-seat driving.

David Ogilvy sums it up brilliantly (as he often does).

Why keep a dog and bark yourself?

Thanks David.

If your goal is to knock people’s confidence and generating average work, keep opening your mouth. Otherwise, it’s probably better that people wonder why you don’t speak than why you bother to at all.

Just a thought:

Would a pedant, stuck alone on a desert island, still write SOS?

Because SMS doesn’t look the same upside-down.

If yesterday’s post about search engine optimisation (SEO) was like throwing you in the deep end, then I hope you’ve learned to swim.

Only because SEO is a great way to spend less money on Google AdWords and generate more profit per sale.

And you don’t need to be a genius to get the basics right.

The even better news is that Google are on your side; they want you to rank higher - they really do.

No, I’m not talking shit; let me explain…

Google’s goal is to return the most relevant searches to a user’s query.  That’s why they’ve grown as big as they have - their search engine brought back more relevant results more often.

For instance: I’m a freelance(ish) copywriter based in Ipswich who’s good with websites and marketing-savvy.  If somebody is looking for a copywriting marketer based in the county town of Suffolk - I’m your man.

So, obviously, I want people to find me for terms such as “Copywriting Marketer Ipswich”.  And as of today, this website is number one for that search term.

It’s not me that’s clever - it’s the people at Google.  They’ll find you and work out how relevant you are unless you deliberately tell them not to.

But if you do want to be found, what’s wrong with giving them a few tell-tale signs?

Imagine you were lost.  You know there’s a helicopter looking for you, equipped with one of those fancy heat cameras that they use to track criminals.  So no matter where you are, it should be able to find you.  Having said that, rather than sit in the undergrowth, you’d probably find a clearing, write SOS with anything you can cobble together, and start a fucking big fire.

So if you’re business is lost amongst all the others, SEO could be your SOS.

You’ve probably heard of search engine optimisation (SEO): it’s the art (or otherwise) of getting your site to rank highly in search engines.

The good news is that it’s not actually that difficult.  And, on the other hand, er… it is.

It all depends on what keywords you want your site to rank highly for.

Keywords are the words or phrases that a user types into Google (other reputable search engines are available, but I don’t use them).

The keywords you want to rank for will for will affect how easy it will be to rank highly.

If you want to rank highly for “fish restaurant” then you’re going to struggle.  Much easier is to include the town or county that your restaurant is in.  The search term “fish restaurant Ipswich” will be easier to rank for as there’s less competition.

It’s a lot more relevant too - someone isn’t going to drive from Newcastle just for the halibut.  (If they are, you needn’t worry about search engine optimisation - go open a few more restaurants).

But how do you know people search for the term “fish restaurant” and not “seafood restaurant”.  The answer, gentle readers, is Google trends.  Ideally though, you’d want to rank highly for both terms.

This where an SEO copywriter should do their bit.  An SEO copywriter, as you’ve probably guessed, does their copywriting with search engine optimisation in mind.

The first, and most important, thing to do is to look at the HTML title tag.

The title tag is what you see at the very top of your browser.  The words in the title tag are the words that appear in blue on Google’s search results pages.

A nifty title tag will include your restaurant’s name, what type of food it serves, and where it is.  Aim for 65 characters or less.  Something like:

The Captain’s Table | Fish & Seafood Restaurant, Ipswich, Suffolk

That’s exactly 65 characters long and includes all your keywords.  And more to the point, it’s still clear and easy to read.

That’s all for today’s lesson.  More on SEO in the coming days, weeks, and months.

Don’t be a dullard.  I’ve probably read it before, I’ll probably read it again.  Make your stab at it interesting.  Please.

If you like looking stupid, continue to spell things the wrong way.  If you don’t, wake up and smell the apostrophe.

Linking to a site in the middle of text is good.  It offers the reader a way out of your boring copy, or provides evidence that you’re not talking utter shit.

Do not even think about using the word solution.  Ever.  You are a fucking gardener.  You do not offer gardening solutions.

Write like you talk.  Unless you speak like a fool.

Punctuation isn’t word-decoration for posh people, you thickie.

You want people to find you in Google for certain words - copywriting, for instance.  So use those words - like copywriting - every now and again.  You can even format those important words - like copywriting - in bold type to really ram the idea down Google’s throat.

But don’t use that word - you know the one I mean - that often, or Google will realise you’re a filthy, cheating, dirty spammer.  With a black hat.

Write lists with irksome headlines like Eleven copywriting tips to turn your ugly ducklings into an elegant swans!

Get your keyword into italics without anyone realising.

Use loads of paragraphs to mask your minimal output.