Greetings from Words by a Pro! We hope everyone’s enjoying the holiday season so far.

But if you’re like most folks, you’ve already had your fill of holiday cheer thanks to the nonstop barrage of Christmas music that comes post-Thanksgiving. We’ve all heard these holiday tunes in stores—in coffee shops—running through our heads nonstop—for nearly a month now.

Enough!

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As a marketer, you don’t need me to tell you how important mobile is for your marketing strategy.

Even back in 2016, users spent over 3 hours per day on their mobile devices. In the latter half of 2018, I’m willing to bet it’s even more.

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I was checking out one of the educational marketing courses offered at the HubSpot Academy the other day when I was struck dumb. Dumbstruck, even.

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EMERGENCY! Your clients want to try inbound marketing and are coming to you for help.

What do you tell them? That you’re not a marketer?

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Writing content for use in inbound marketing inevitably intersects with the world of SEO. Keyword variations and backlink quality are two obvious points of contact, but many marketers don’t stop to consider that the placement of on-site content, and website page design as a whole, also plays a significant role in their website’s SEO value. It’s called writing with user intent in mind.

In most cases, you’re getting the biggest bang for your SEO buck by providing readers with the answer they want immediately, and then providing details after. Your goal is to understand what brought each reader to your page and then to hammer that value proposition home as early in the page as possible to fulfill that user’s purpose for coming to your page in the first place.

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There’s something terribly wrong with the current state of content marketing.

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I used to think I was a great writer.

Of course, that was back in eighth grade, before I had any serious education or formal training in the craft. Back then, all it took to be a great writer (in my mind, at least) was a great vocabulary and a desire to cram big words into small thoughts.

Ahh, it was a simpler time. You can imagine my surprise when I received feedback in my first serious writing class.

I saw red. Lots of red.

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Ahh, the music of language.

We’ve all heard the phrase before, but many of us haven’t given much thought to what it actually means. Is it how words sound? The “flow” of a sentence? Or something more?

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Now, I know what you’re thinking. Trader Joe’s is doing some guerrilla marketing, isn’t it?

Don’t worry—the advertisers haven’t bought me yet. This has nothing to do with advertising and everything to do with me stumbling across some marketing materials that have plenty of copywriting lessons to share. 

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Copywriting is a peculiar thing.

Online copy and business-directed content don’t follow the same rules as other literary and journalistic works. Copywriting is looser in many ways, and it offers more flexibility in tone and style.

However, this doesn’t mean that you can cram your writing with whatever you want and expect it to work for your clients. The goal of most online copy is to educate and engage a readership about a topic, and just slapping words on a screen won’t do the trick.

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