In my last post, I wondered aloud if “Engagement Writers” weren’t about to become a critical subset of the copywriter species.
Matt Ambrose at the Copywriter’s Crucible posted in much the same vein (and it’s worth reading even though I won’t cover most of his post here).
Of interest was how he ended his post:
The Tamar report highlighted the problem of negative comments in blogs and social sites clogging up search results, and scaring off visitors. Over half of those surveyed would switch to a competitor if criticism cropped up in a company’s results.
Copywriters are needed to drive down negative search results, by building a website’s positive exposure with happy news stories and cheery case studies.
I recently wrote a product launch for an ecommerce client who suffered from a “protest” site. This site ranked high on Google searches for the brand; sometimes appearing as high as #2.
It was a black eye for the company, but higher ups didn’t appreciate the damage, and no budget was allocated for dealing with the problem.
Does it matter? The Tamar report Matt referenced had this to say:
Negative comments in natural search results have a profound impact on click-through and sales for the brand in question. Faced with negative comments about a particular company, 58 per cent of consumers put off by negative comments would go as far as visit a competitor’s web site instead. The remaining 42 per cent abandon their search completely.
It’s too bad. And it illustrates the dangers of treating the Internet as if it were a traditional, one-way marketing channel amenable to “push” marketing techniques.
On the Internet, your customers can push back.
What’s the emerging role of the copywriter in all this? Clearly, the “copywriter-as-hired-wordslinger” role will continue for a long time to come, but a writer oriented towards engagement stands to retain clients longer — and could even become an indispensable element of the marketing mix.
That’s a state of affairs that could easily lead to higher fees, countering the downward trend we’re seeing for “standard” copywriting projects.
I’m going to cover these topics in an upcoming series of posts. Until then, stay engaged.
Technorati Tags: engagement, copywriting, engagement writer, marketing
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