A recipe for success - fun microcopy on the Warburtons website

We’ve said it before, but it’s worth saying again: microcopy matters. It’s a little touch that shows you’ve really thought about your audience. And it can make even the simplest site far more effective.

But to be really great, microcopy doesn’t just help people to navigate around your site, it shows personality and captures your brand. Take Warburtons. Their website is a cut (or should that be slice) above the rest. They use microcopy to prove they’re ‘passionate about baking’. So when you click on a page, you see ‘loafing’ instead of ‘loading’ - it’s a small change that makes a big difference.

We want more sites to start thinking like Warburtons and pay closer attention to their microcopy. That’s why we’re working with organisations and agencies like Pepper Digital, showing people that really great web copy means thinking about everything - right down to the smallest detail.

Time to get rid of the waffle and make your business writing more compelling

In our work we come across some shocking jargon - from the nonsensical to the ridiculously over-used. The good news is that it’s easy to cut jargon from your business writing. Here’s how:

1. Think about your audience

To reach your audience effectively you need to write for them. Think about how much they know about the topic, and replace jargon with simple explanations. For example, instead of writing ‘our deliverables are’ simply say ‘we are going to’.

2. Cut out technical terms

Will your reader understand technical terms, industry references or abbreviations? If not, cut them out. Alternatively, you could include technical explanations in a separate fact box, rather than the main text.

3. Remove unnecessary words

Go through your writing and remove unnecessary words. Jargon usually equals waffle so get rid of it. Why say ‘think outside the box’ when you can use ‘be creative’? Four words are definitely not better than two.

4. Get feedback

Get someone else to look over your writing and give you feedback. This works best if it’s someone who knows nothing about the subject - they’ll be able to tell you whether it’s simple and easy to follow.

Ask them to highlight any jargon they find. Then re-write the piece to get rid of it. The end result will be effective, engaging copy.

Looking around for more ways to help save energy, I came across the Wattson website. With effective use of language, this site puts fun and humour into energy efficiency.

A neat little energy meter, Wattson measures and displays how much electricity you’re using at any moment, in W or in £. But while the product may be great looking, it’s the language of the website that really helps sell it.

I was designed by the nice people at DIY Kyoto to help you do more for the environment. And to do it in style.

With the site written in the first person, Wattson talks to you directly, telling you about the benefits it will bring, and making a personal connection.

The products names are cleverly chosen too — Wattson works together with specially-designed data software, known as Holmes.

While Wattson got the looks, I got the brains. Together, we tell you how much electricity you’ve used over the last 28 days, and how much you’ve saved and when.

The combination of a great product and effective, engaging language certainly persuaded me. 

Tom Salmon, Leeds University Union’s marketing manager

Impact reporting is a pretty involved process.  It’s not just about the this-is-what-we-did-last-year content of many corporate annual reports.  It’s about what we said we’d do, and showing the effect that it had on people.  It’s about accountability, transparency and setting up systems that keep organisations focused and disciplined about their work.

Imagine all the things that you do at work as if they were noises. Do they sound like a series of dull thuds (like a group of chimps hitting a drum) or are you orchestrating something more meaningful? Something with long-lasting resonance?

Impact is all about the combined, long-term, meaningful, measurable and purposeful effects of the work that you do. Leeds University Union is a charity that helps over 32,000 students through university. We help them with their employability. We help them to live as part of a local community. We help them when things go wrong personally, financially or academically. We also help them to enjoy themselves, network and make friends for life.

Thinking about impact means that we concentrate on outcomes rather than outputs. It means that we try to measure our success and failure in the right way and with a long-term view, regularly updating people on how we’re doing. Working with a view on impact, and reporting on it honestly and publicly, provides focus.

Like many organisations, charities are facing tough times at the moment. Impact helps focus resource and effort. More importantly, it provides a way of inspiring other people to support our cause.

Storytelling can inspire sustainable actions. Photo: homard.net

Here at Polon, we know just how effective engaging communication can be. And when you’re asking people to live more sustainably, there’s nothing as persuasive as stories with everyday heroes: ordinary people working together to be as sustainable as possible.

It’s what we look for when we write engaging sustainability communications for brands like Nokia, because stories about everyday heroes show that people like you and me can make big changes. They offer social proof that sustainable behaviour is possible, desirable and - above all - normal.

As part of its work helping communities in Scotland to become more sustainable, Transition Scotland encourages people to tell others why they got involved in making sustainable living a reality. It describes storytelling as an important way to ‘capture real life experiences’. While in New Zealand, interactive website OurFuture gives people a place to share their green stories.

We’re hoping more people will start to realise the power of storytelling, and use stories to make sustainable communications more inspiring.

Writing in the 9 December edition of Design Week [subscribers only], editor Lynda Relph-Knight claimed that – in the South West – ‘writers are in short supply, according to the digital design community in particular’. Fortunately for all those agencies without words, copywriting reinforcements are just a short train ride away up here in Cheltenham.

We’re already working with some great agencies – like Bath-based Complete Control. And we’d love to meet more design, digital and advertising agencies from the beautiful South West.

So if you find yourself lost for words, give is a call.

With the message ‘we shape a better world’ at its core, Arup is a firm with a strong focus on sustainability. So in the latest edition of its magazine A², the company wanted to look at what the future holds for powering our planet.

Using engaging copy to produce interviews and news stories, we helped Arup write about energy. The magazine looked at how companies can become more energy-efficient and examined the different ways of generating power from renewable energy.

And as supporters of Triodos Renewables – a company that invests in projects that generate clean, green energy from renewable sources – we were particularly interested in the subject.

You could say it was bit of a turn on (but, of course, we’d never reach for such a terrible pun).

Poorly prose? Sick syntax? Photo: Andres Rueda

Seven symptoms of bad business writing

1. Typos and spelling mistakes. (Would you do buziness with someone who spelt like dis?)
2. Too many adjectives. (Our committed team of dedicated professionals is ready to service your every need.)
3. Telling, not showing. (We’re really good. We’re great. Brilliant. Just take our word for it, OK?)
4. Endless lists of services. (We write websites, brochures, leaflets, tag lines, books, emails, flyers, postcards…)
5. Boasting. (We’re the best and everyone agrees.)
6. Hedging your bets. (We aim to, perhaps, try to do something.)
7. Long-winded wordiness. (There is absolutely no benefit whatsoever in cramming more words into sentences).

Diagnosing bad business writing is important; it’s the first step towards creating really compelling copy.

Each year millions of people are affected by natural disaster and conflict. To help them rebuild their lives, international charity RedR trains and supports aid workers for relief programmes around the world.

With expertise in everything from emergency shelter to sanitation and hygiene, RedR provides vital emergency response, supporting aid agencies after large-scale disasters such as the Haiti earthquake.

As well as having links with skilled professionals in organisations such as Arup, the charity trains local workers, so communities are prepared for future disasters.

On 18 February we’ll be showing our support for RedR by joining in their Wear Red for RedR campaign. Run every year, the event raises money and awareness for the charity.

Taking part couldn’t be easier – just wear red and donate some money.

Update: 21.02.11

On Friday, we raised £100 for RedR by wearing red and writing a few haikus. Even our office dog, Wispa, sported a bright red collar for the day.

So naturally, this was our favourite poem.

Raise lots of money
Even your dog could wear red
Donate to RedR

Telling tales – we’ve written stories for the NHS Clinical Leaders Network

What exactly is storytelling? Well, according to NHS Evidence, it’s ‘the use of stories in organisations as a communication tool to share knowledge.’

Using everyday language and personal experiences, storytelling engages, involves and inspires people. And that makes it the perfect tool for connecting with your audience.

Effective communication

Storytelling is a great way to share information, experiences and knowledge within an organisation. You can also use it to encourage organisational change, helping people to imagine the future.

Interactive and engaging, storytelling is a highly effective communication tool. It gives a human voice to processes, technology and facts. As copywriters, storytelling is at the heart of our work.

Storytelling projects

For the NHS, storytelling is helping clinicians and professionals to understand the experiences of patients.

One of several storytelling in health-care projects, Patient Voices collects patients’ stories for policy makers to learn from. It creates digital stories in the form of short video clips, still images, music, and a recorded voice-over by the patient. These engaging stories have attracted worldwide attention, and are being used as teaching tools in universities across the UK, US, Australia and Canada.

Established at the University of Glamorgan in 2009, StoryWorks is a similar storytelling project. The unit gathers stories and feeds them back to health-care organisations. It also incorporates the stories into awareness-raising workshops, which it runs for health-care staff, management and trustees.

Engaging tales

And we’ve been working with the NHS, using storytelling to share knowledge about a successful leadership initiative. When the NHS Clinical Leaders Network wanted to engage people in their work and spread ideas about good leadership, they chose to use storytelling.

Interviewing clinicians and managers, we wrote a series of case studies showing how CLN members have used their time with the group to improve services. These stories offer personal accounts of projects. They give a human insight into the work of the CLN – far more engaging than data or statistical analysis.

Natalie Davies, knowledge and communications manager for the CLN, takes up the story (our emphasis):

For the NHS Clinical Leaders Network, sharing individual stories through storytelling is an extremely effective way of spreading knowledge throughout the health-care community. Polon has helped the CLN to produce more than 50 examples of innovative service improvement projects, from midwives working to reduce high caesarian rates, to ophthalmologist developing new techniques to improve eyesight. They interviewed the lead clinicians in a refreshing, engaging way and produced case studies that were immediately very accessible to read. This led to an increasing number of clinicians reading, using and spreading the learning from the projects throughout the CLN community. Storytelling is a fantastic way of illustrating good leadership.

The NHS isn’t the only famous organisation using storytelling. Recently NASA asked storyteller Jay O’Callahan to create and tell a story to celebrate its 50th anniversary. Why? Because only a story could capture all the different experiences of NASA’s people and its space missions.

Wouldn’t it be great to see more organisations embrace storytelling?