Last time around I dealt with the dreaded wall of text, this time I’m looking at another couple of the crucial considerations that come into play when writing copy for a website. As a copy-writer myself, I appreciate how much many people writing online copy want to stamp their style and personality over their copy – and there’s absolutely nothing wrong with that, but there are a few guiding principles that should be borne in mind when doing so.

Photo by sure2talk

Search marketing?

Tucan play at that game!

I’m really looking forward to working with the adventure tour operator Tucan Travel to manage their search marketing strategy. We will work closely with the multi-award winning travel group, which has been offering high-quality adventure tours to worldwide destinations since 1989, to boost their exposure and increase their marketing opportunities online.

We have been very lucky during the recession. After a rocky year or two, we seem to have finally reached a stage of stability where we have not only increased our portfolio of clients but, more importantly, our existing clients have increased the amount of work they are giving us.

This has made us realise how important client retention is and how important it is to ensure that we can give more time and more focus to each of our existing clients. Actually this is far more important than finding more clients!

Which is why we have been working hard over the past six months to introduce a new management model.

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Everyone has a different taste and style when it comes to how they like to see things presented, and web copy is no exception. We work hand-in-hand with our clients to shape the online copy that they require to make their brand successful, but there are few rules more golden to us at LeadGenerators than ‘Thou shalt not have huge walls of text’.

Photo by spaztacular

We know as web-users ourselves that no one likes to be confronted by a huge impenetrable wall of text. People want to find information quickly and easily when they come to your site, and once you’ve hooked them in hopefully they’ll stay.

We were glad to hear this week that since using eHiveCMS, Danube Express’s travel website has seen its enquiries and sales figures drastically increase. The luxury train holiday specialists have a really fantastic product, sending passengers through some of the most enticing destinations in Europe via rail, so it was great to be given the opportunity to help push their product online using our powerful CMS platform and experience in adeptly communicating products graphically.

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I have a special message for a guy who got wet for nothing.

Does the name Oldfield ring any bells? No?

How about elitism leads to tyranny? Any closer?

Probably not. I’ll help you out: the guy who flung himself between the Oxford and Cambridge rowing teams during the boat race to protest about something. Yes, him!

Photo by Peter Trimming

Trenton Oldfield made headline news for a couple of days and had tongues wagging about his boat race stunt.

I was thinking about this the other day and it seems such a futile waste of one of the most amazing social media opportunities in the history of the Oxford-Cambridge boat race.

All the exposure he got on national and international media. All those people who heard his protest. All those people who captured it on their phones. All those people who tweeted it. All those people who sent Facebook messages.

The numbers would probably make any social media marketer drool with excitement. And for what?

I know it is so easy to sit by the sidelines and tell someone that they got it all wrong, but the more I think about it, the more convinced I become that, well… he got the boat race stunt all wrong!

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When my boss asked me if I would write a short ‘personal reflection’ about my new life in an online marketing agency, I was a little apprehensive. After all, a few months ago, I thought PPC was something you could buy from Homebase and Viral Spread was something your GP could prescribe a cream for.

But, as many a wise man will tell you, there’s nothing like being thrown in at the deep end to speed up the learning process. They say, if you want to learn French, go and live in France; if you want to play great jazz, listen to nothing but Herbie Hancock.

And now, I can add to that list, if you want to know online marketing, go and work for LeadGenerators!

Plugging the Dam

So, what’s day-to-day life really like in an online marketing agency? In short, life in an online marketing agency is a bit of a whirlwind. The last month has been a constant flux of keyword research, blog-writing, social media, PR, meetings, seminars, and, of course, that one word which can make all young executives quake in their linen shirts and leather brogues – deadlines.