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Boy, is this ironic. My editorial calendar calls for a post about le mot juste—“the right word” in French—and I’m clutching…

I’m a copywriter by trade, and I know that even professionals sometimes struggle to get the right word out of our heads and dancing merrily across the page to join its fellows. Mind maps, brainstorming, and outlines all help, of course, because they allow us to do so much thinking before we put pen to paper. Often the words are right there, leaping like trout. Still, there are days when they don’t come easily at all.

Most of us probably think about writers of literature when we think about the struggle of writing. We visualize endlessly blank white sheets of paper on a desk or crumpled up wads of parchment lying around the base of a wastebasket, tossed there in utter frustration. We imagine the sighs of the tormented creative. At those points, writing seems not to be a very glamorous endeavor.

Yet those who make their living writing for others have some of the same experience. We want what we write to convey the message our clients are too busy to write or feel they are insufficiently skilled to express. If we care about what we do, we never phone it in. Instead, like Jack London, we sit at our desks until the words come. And when we’re done, we arise, stretch, and send our work out to meet the public.

Frankly, it’s been a long time since I’ve looked for a “real” job, as a friend once referred to corporate employment. So I haven’t spent a lot of time thinking about cover letters. Actually, now that I think about it, they bear more than a passing resemblance to marketing direct mail and are worthy of any copywriter’s attention. But I digress.

The real story here is that cover letters are still relevant, and some companies insist that you submit one with your resume. The question is how to make your cover letter memorable.

Jimmy Sweeney, president of CareerJimmy and “author of the brand new Amazing Cover Letter Creator,” has one answer. The way to get your cover letter read, he says, is by putting a powerful, attention-grabbing headline at the very beginning. A strong header persuades the poor soul reviewing stacks of missives to read on. If you don’t screw up in the body of the letter, you may actually move ahead in the hiring process.

When you think about it, a headline in a cover letter focuses the reader. Like eyebrows on a face, a headline creates interest and engagement. Done right, it’s a perfect sales tool. Now the question is: Will you do it or will you nod agreeably and consider that it’s just a touch too undignified?

Thanks to Shareef Mahdavi of SM2 Strategic, I’ve just learned about Pecha Kucha (pronounced “pe-chach-ka”), a wonderful new presentation technique born in Japan.

Derived from the Japanese phrase for “chit chat,” Pecha Kucha limits a presentation to 20 slides x 20 seconds of talk per slide. That’s 6 minutes and 40 seconds maximum, folks. And by the way, the slides advance automatically, leaving the verbose scrambling to keep up.

Limiting the amount of time presenters can ramble on forces them to focus on the essentials of their message. Parenthetically, how many copywriters out there have created or edited those 50-slide monsters that are guaranteed soporifics? (“It needs to be that long so we can really tell our story.” Yeah, right.) Technology companies in my part of the world seem sadly enamored of them.

Shareef, by the way, walks the talk. You may not be particularly interested in hearing about cataract surgery and laser, but he demonstrates the power of Pecha Kucha by actually making the topic compelling for lay people. If I were a cataract surgeon, I’d be signing up for a laser unit right now.

Take a little creativity break and learn more about Pecha Kucha.  I can promise you’ll be glad you did.

In Writing for the Web, Part 1, I talked about how people read on the web and why it’s essential to capture their attention fast if you want to get your message across.

Now, with the help of Jakob Nielsen and countless unnamed (but gratefully acknowledged) others, I offer a few tips on great web writing:

• Keep it brief – 150 to 250 words per page is the ideal. (Really.)
• Avoid marketing hype – It reduces your credibility and annoys the heck out of busy readers.
• Use bulleted / numbered lists – Each list element should fit on one line.
• Write single-topic pages and single-idea paragraphs – They’re easy to digest.
• Include headers – Make them strong and action-oriented and use keywords or phrases.

I hope I’ve piqued your curiosity. Just Google up “writing for the web,” and you’ll find tons of information.

My goal in writing these two posts is not necessarily to send you off to create your own web content, though you certainly can and should if you’ve a mind. What I really want to do is to help you appreciate the skill that it requires to create copy that’s concise, credible, and meaningful. And that’s why you probably want to hire a copywriter.

As a copywriter, I spend a fair amount of time creating content for websites. And in the process, I also educate clients about the right way to write for the web.

The temptation—and it looms large—is to tell site visitors everything about what your company does and why it’s a such a wonderful organization. Giving in leads to big, cluttered pages and a lot of below-the-fold content that never gets read.

The horrible truth is that when someone lands on your home page, you’ve got about 8 seconds to grab their attention. Given our incredibly fast-moving lives and need to digest heaps of information every day, that figure will probably get even smaller.

What’s an honest business person to do? Well, it’s helpful to view your site as a Scheherazade. Tell all, and your visitor decamps to another site (the moral equivalent of losing your head).

You want to make your copy concise, credible, and relevant. Jakob Nielsen, who has been referred to as “the king of usability,” notes that only 79% of people actually read web pages. Instead, they scan them, searching for key words and ideas. The longer and more hype-y content is, the less likely they are to hang around.

More about writing for the web in my next post. But I must hasten. The king is calling.

(Gasp!) Is it true? Is an endeavor on which so many hard-working copywriters have staked their incomes, though perhaps not their sanity, really going down the tubes?

Well, of course not. But that premise was the basis of an interesting piece “Is b-to-b marketing really obsolete?” recently published in B to B: The Magazine for Marketing Strategists.

In the piece, a panel of three prominent advertising executives—Rick Segal of GyroHSR, Gary Slack of Slack & Co., and Tom Stein of Stein Rogan+Partners—offered opinions about the evolution of business-to-business outreach.

The article was a bit long for my tastes, but these guys are professional communicators with strong egos, and they can be pardoned for pontificating a bit. This is the wisdom I distilled:

• Being at work is a state of mind. You’re no longer in an office much of the day and are continually switching back and forth between your work and personal lives. In fact, the demarcation is very, very blurry, aided and abetted by smartphones and the social media.
• B2B marketers, past and present, just wanna be where the buyers are. As Gary Slack notes, “That was true 40 to 30 to 20 years ago…and it’ll be true 10, 20, 30, 40 years into the future.”
• Creating custom content that speaks to customers and their communication preferences is now accounting for up to 25% of the marketing budgets of a lot of companies.

This quote from Rick Segal really sums it all up: “B-to-b marketing has always been social network marketing. It has just simply been conducted without the assistance of the wider range of tools and applications.”

Couldn’t have said it better myself.

I have a confession. I love to watch men at work. Not just any men, but what were once referred to as workingmen. Now, this post is not intended to denigrate the efforts of corporate managers, lawyers, or top sales professionals. But I feel compelled to pay homage to the guys who work with their hands. They are often invisible to the rest of us citizens and all too often looked down upon.

During the past few months,at a nearby strip mall, I’ve had the opportunity to indulge my predilection for observing working guys in action. For the 10 years I’ve lived in North Central, this little shopping center has looked sooo ‘60s. You know. Permastone facing, globe lighting, and those weird-looking curved roof supports. Then, in November, teams of guys showed up and began the work of creating a shiny new retail paradise.

At least twice a week, I’ve found an excuse to play sidewalk superintendent. It’s been a joy to hear the snap-snap-snap of nail guns and watch the workers as they focus so intently on what they’re doing. There’s so much groovy stuff to see—roofs demolished, electrical cable pulled, lathing and dry wall mounted. Really much more fun than one girl should have. As I see it, they’re creating order out of chaos, which is not unlike the act of writing.

My recommendation? The next time you want to see purposeful activity and smart, hardworking guys, check out the nearest construction site.

Funny, I’ve been posting for nearly a year and am only now getting around to talking about why companies (should) hire copywriters.

A few years ago, I was on a conference call when one of the participants—in my imagination an Ivy League smoothie type—referred to copywriters as the “bottom of the food chain.” I smothered my indignation and consoled myself by visualizing this worthy punctured with little pins like a voodoo doll.

Far from an afterthought, good writing is vital to any marketing effort. Copywriters bring open, curious minds and very special skills to the table. Without us, great products and services might get less than their due.

Here are three good reasons why your company might want to use a professional:

1.       Lack of time – Whether you work in a cube or at home in your fuzzy robe and bunny slippers, you just don’t have enough time to get your job done and write too.

2.       Lack of manpower — Your team is stretched to the max. Who really wants to sit down at 10 pm and crank out a landing page or customer success story?

3.       Lack of inclination — You write well but don’t enjoy it. Or you’re a lousy writer, and you’d rather have a root canal. Either way, you’re just not up for the job. And that’s not a recipe for good copy.

What are your reasons for hiring a copywriter? Or if you’re on the other end of things, how have you persuaded someone to bring on a scribe?

Writers are observers, and we’re generally jazzed by acquiring interesting little tidbits of knowledge, whether or not we ever use them.

Take this one. According to Melissa Lamson, a global business consultant, weddings in parts of Eastern Europe are often held in gas stations. Huh? Well, the wines are high quality, and the restaurants inside them are good. Best of all, gas stations have lots of windows and parking, so everyone gets to see what everyone else is driving. In an area of the world where cars, not houses, are status symbols, people can showcase their prosperity quite handily.

When I first moved to California, one of the first things I noticed was that people drove really great cars and lived in pretty modest places. (Later, of course, I learned that some of those little houses commanded top dollar.) Perhaps Melissa’s observation resonated with me because it was similar to my own experience. California, so many years ago, was like being on another planet where everything was done in a new way. I still remember being open-mouthed at people roller blading to work and young women sporting multiple tattoos. (Gosh, I thought, I guess they’ll never be able to move to Dubuque.)

What experiences with other cultures have shocked or amused you?

I am an unashamed cheapskate, so when I heard about Safeway’s recently launched Just 4 U program, I thought “Great! I love to save money on groceries.”

The details of the program seemed a touch complex, still, I went ahead and signed up. I started getting emails immediately, exhorting me to load up my Safeway card with items I normally buy and to visit the coupon center on the Safeway.com site. There, they said, I would find bargains on a veritable cornucopia of comestibles and household supplies.

Then the fun began. First, my password was rejected, and then a temporary password was rejected, so I called Customer Service,  bailing after 15 minutes on hold. A couple of days later, I tried again and got through to a nice woman who told me my email address wasn’t in the system. Huh? She fixed that problem, walked me through a few tweaks to Firefox, and generated a temporary password. (I tried it 24 hours later, as directed, and it didn’t work.) During our conversation, she confided that there had been quite a few problems with the program.

Safeway, like a lot of smart companies, wants to build and maintain brand loyalty. And its execs probably thought that Just 4 U would help the organization stay closer to customers. It seems that they may have rushed it into production prematurely, though.

Will this stumble do lasting damage to the Safeway brand? Of course not. But I tend to agree with the person the Customer Service rep told me about—the one who said, “This is really not simple at all. Why don’t you guys just reduce prices across the board and be done with it?”