Romford - Where Life Isn't a Lottery!

So National Lottery research has revealed that Romford, north-east London, is officially the luckiest town in Britain. In the last 17 years, more than 300 people there have won 50,000 big ones or more on the National Lottery. 

Makes me wonder if electronic music duo Underworld predicted this back in the 90s with their song Born Slippy: Mega mega mega going back to Romford! Perhaps they were blowing pound after pound on National Lottery tickets, only to keep coming up with two or three numbers!

Now, we can't all win the National Lottery, nor can we all live in Romford. So today I'm asking if there's a particular place that feels lucky to you, and why. Maybe you got your first job there, met your partner there or just have had good times - and still do - there?

Maybe you have some crazy or funny stories about luck? For instance, do you know of someone who moved to Romford just so they had more chance of winning the National Lottery? Perhaps you know of someone who has insanely good luck?

I think Edinburgh is my lucky place. I've graduated here and now I work here. I met some of my best friends here 10 years ago; and 10 years later I've been reunited with them. 

And best of all, I didn't even have to buy a National Lottery ticket for that. Nevermind Romford - Edinburgh is where it's at for me. 

Won't hurt to buy a National Lottery ticket though.

Tell Me a Story

Recognise the man in the video below? 

Correct. It's the late Steve Jobs - Rest In Peace - giving his famous 2005 Stanford Commencement speech. At the same time, although it wasn't his intention, he's giving a masterclass in copywriting.

By encouraging people to follow their dreams, it's inspiring. By drawing on his own experiences of adversity, it's poignant. It connects with people's emotions and moves them to action. It's one of the best speeches I've ever heard. It's beautiful.

And how does he do it? With one of copywriting's most effective techniques: some good ole storytelling! People love to hear stories, and Steve Jobs's story, as Apple-ites and non-Apple-ites alike know or will imagine, is particularly engaging.

By telling his own stories but making them relevant to his audience, Steve Jobs taps into people's emotions. By explaining what he learned, he rewards them. By combining the two, he moves them to action. Brilliant.

Whether you're a techie or not, whether you're a copywriter or not, listen to this speech and learn from it. Your future starts now!

(Source: Stanford University; http://www.youtube.com/stanford)

(Licence link: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/.) 

Spice up your life - or search engine optimise it!

I work in two areas: copywriting and customer service. Part of copywriting involves what we marketers call search engine optimisation. That's SEO, for short.

This means designing, writing and structuring websites and their content in such a way so that they rank highly when you search for a certain product, service or piece of information on Google. The purpose is to attract lots of visitors to the website and then, once they're there, persuade them to buy the company's product or hire its service. 

But I feel you can apply some SEO aspects to life too and have a little more fun. Here's how:

Keywords
When people search in Google, they search for something specific. SEO specialists identify the most popular terms used in searches for specific items, services, etc. and tailor the website and the content, or part of them, to these searches. In SEO, we call these terms '(meta)keywords'.

So what are you searching for? A new job? A new home? A new love? What is it about them that would make you happy? Identify the important aspects - these are your 'keywords' - and base your project on them. Once you know what you're searching for, you can optimise your own search. In other words, you can tailor it to achieve the best results: to live a happier life.

Links

Links are a great way to optimise your website. Ideally, your links should be to good quality websites or to benchmark websites. If these link back to you, they'll optimise your website even better: Google puts quality before quantity. Of course, the more high-quality links on your website, the better. And these links may even generate more links.

We all have friends, family and workmates or colleagues. These are our 'life SEO' links. Live a happier life by spending time with family and friends (the high quality links!). Visit them, go places with them, have fun with them. They can introduce you to new 'links': new friends, new experiences or even a new love.

Looking for a job? Chat to workmates. See who or what they know, what links they can offer. Do that and you may just increase your happiness on the work front. 

Headings 

All good copywriters know that headings are crucial for copy, especially on websites. Internet users scan text before they read it (a kind of internet look-before-you-leap equivalent!). Breaking up a text with headings gives it structure, and makes the text easier for readers to scan and go straight to what they're looking for. A whopping big block of text, on the other hand, will frighten them away.

SEO-wise, headings are a chance to slip in some good ole keywords and optimise your site further! They make the website more useable in the eyes of St Google too.

But what do these headings mean for your life? Well, you should never let one part of your life absorb all the rest. 'Family/Partners', 'Friends', 'Work' and 'Education' are just a few of our life SEO headings or sections. Try to split your time up evenly.

If you work or study a lot, find time to play, for the other headings can disappear if the links aren't strong enough. If you spend lots of time with your friends, be sure to always find time for your partner too, and don't let your social or personal life interfere with your work.

Ultimately, try to find balance.

Alt Text

This SEO term refers to the text beneath images that describes the image content for the visually impaired. 

How the Dickens (since he's topical at the moment!) does this apply to life, you ask. Well, take plenty of pictures and capture as many of those special moments as you can. Then you can enjoy explaining your adventures when you show your friends and family the photos.

If there's one thing I've sometimes regretted, it's that I didn't bring a camera with me to certain events (like the Motley Crüe concert, darn it!). The ones I have brought it to, I've loved looking back over the photos. 

Okay, so I stretched that last SEO analogy a bit... but hey, aren't we here to have fun? 

And if you're an SEO specialist, or even if you're not, perhaps you can optimise my joie de vie with some of your own SEO lessons for life!

Codename Copywriter: How Crime Novels, Thrillers and Spy Fiction Can Improve Your Copywriting

I love the ability of crime, thriller and spy fiction authors to hook us with twists and turns to the very end. I admire their general storytelling panache. Recently, it occurred to me that they'd make tremendous copywriters. 

How so?

Short sentences

One reason these novels move so fast is that they contain short sentences. Writers keep the narrative crisp - and the reader turning the pages - with short sentences. In fact, they've become a James Ellroy hallmark.

Good copy does the same. You've got to grab the reader's attention and hold it. Dip into a decent crime or thriller and see how it's done.

Attention to detail

One of the terrific things about fiction is the attention to detail. I love the sharp observations that make a certain novel so characteristic of its genre. The George Smiley trilogy is masterful at it. Only in Smiley's world would you mistrust the postman or postwoman, teachers or lecturers; and would seemingly innocent conversations be loaded with codewords and secret messages.  

Copywriters must pay attention to detail, especially while researching products and target audiences. Do so and you can sell things from angles the competition has never even thought of. Tickety-boo!

Do tell, but not too soon

Ninety-nine per cent of the time, copywriting gets the product's star benefit, the unique selling point (USP), straight off its chest rather than bottling it up inside. We can't always save the best till last. By that time, you could have lost your audience.

However, sometimes it's good for copy to keep the reader in suspense. How do our friends in the crime, spy and thriller world do it? By delivering bit by bit. The end of each chapter normally has a twist that compels us to keep reading. Of course, you don't get the twist, the whole twist and nothing but the twist: you just get part of it.

We can do this in copywriting. Veil your benefit in mystery slightly to make your audience read on for closure. Don't string it out too long, however. And make sure you reward them for reading to the end. If you don't, they'll feel cheated and angry.

Right... 

I'm off to continue with The Honourable Schoolboy (I'm gagging to know if Smiley nails Karla in the end! But don't tell me just yet!). 

Have any novelists influenced your own writing or, for that matter, your life, even? I'd love to hear who they are.