Our ACME Writing and Solution Content websites get more attention with articles about SEO, copywriting and web copy added regularly. Our focus as a content writing business has been on Google’s Panda update and the implications that has had for website owners and designers. The public announcements from Google remind us that content is still the most important component of SEO success.

The Great Writer remains our “small business” writing and editing provider business. ACME Writing provides an array of services from tagline development to press releases to SEO content services. ACME is also a social network and marketing consultant. You can find a list of services offered by The Great Writer on our services page.

Our service offering encompasses a wide range of writing and editing services, website and social media consultation and English language copy editing. We write content that sells, feature stories that entertain and marketing materials that extend your brand. Our clientele includes companies in many countries and across the U.S.

As specialists in social media, we can develop timelines, tweets and blog posts that reflect well on your company. We can teach your company how to best use social media and create a strategy that best utilizes this medium of communication. We write blog posts for companies every week.

If a story needs to be told on a website, in a magazine or for an article-marketing campaign, we can craft an engaging story that achieves its goals. There are few writing services that provide more value than The Great Writer. Contact us today to find out why.  info@thegreatwriter.com

With fully 43% of companies currently using blogs, the usefulness of this medium is growing. Blogs represent an easy, efficient and informal means for a company to communicate with customers and prospective customers. This format has always worked for The Great Writer website and dozens of web properties that we own.

We Create Blogs
In addition to writing press releases, web copy, SEO copy, reports, articles and marketing materials, we often produce blog posts for our clients. While I can write “off-the-cuff” for our own blogs, we delve into substantial research for client blogs. Those blog posts must provide real value to our client’s site visitors, whether existing customers or future customers.

Blog postings can also help foreign companies build a relationship with prospective customers in countries far from their shores. We provide English blog posts for businesses where English is not the primary language.

As I have stated in the past, the blog offers a unique channel for reaching readers. It is less formal, more personal and usually written in the first person. This establishes a relationship between the writer and reader that a corporate website cannot.

Ask Us About our Business Blog Solution
In addition to providing writing and editing services, The Great Writer can set up a WordPress business blog for companies of all sizes and develop the content. Contact us for more details or see a more complete description here

What we have known, from these confessions, is that since this past spring we have been proven right. Our approach to SEO copywriting and web copy in general was right all along. Good quality writing, the kind that brings visitors back to a site again and again, is the same type of content that the search engines like also.

As copywriters, we know now to sell and as SEO copywriters we know how to sell and get our clients found by customers online. This has turned out to be a good combination and explains some of the success of our company ACME Writing, LLC. Our specialization in all things Internet has been the impetus for the success of Solution Content also.

In the process of all this writing for clients worldwide, we learned that we can develop remarkable taglines and slogans, so Super Taglines and Taglines R Us were born. Both have been great niche market performers.

We are now venturing off to be the go-to source for web copy and SEO copywriting advice and counsel. Our site Web Copy Today is brand new and will provide an abstract of everything new to the discipline. Our retail sites are growing in number also and the total Internet portfolio is impressive.

One downside to all this success is this great old website. One trick that SEO experts know is that fresh content is of great importance to any website so it is treated well by the spiders and bots that scour the Internet daily.  We have neglected The Great Writer in this regard. The shoe makers children often go barefoot. And so it goes.

Here is an example of what I am referring to.  A mainstream copywriter may advertise their business thus:

We provide effective copywriting that sells your prospective customers by appealing to their most basic needs. Our copywriting has proven results with dozens of client testimonials to support our claims. We write professionally to enhance your company’s reputation and brand.

Then, there is the outrageous copywriter, who has been catapulted to cult status because of the way they ignore image to concentrate on absurdity.

We reach out and grab your prospects by the neck and squeeze until their eyeballs pop. We drag them kicking and screaming and beat your products’ benefits into their heads. Our approach smacks them in the face until they buy while we throw your competition against the curb.

Which writer is the better one? There is one way to discern the difference between the pop-culture heroes and the tried and true copywriters.  Good copywriters have verifiable results they can point to. They have legitimate clients, companies with established brands and products. The outrageous copywriters point to their own self-promotion and followers pronouncements as proof of their prowess.

Does it seem that one group of writers spends more time pushing their style and making millions based on their perceived capabilities?  The plain-vanilla copywriters work every day and get real results. They research their client’s markets, connect product or service benefits with client needs and produce sales. They offer their clients real value.

Next time you hear someone suggest a copywriting superstar who has a long-copy sales-page website screaming of their success, tell them; no thanks. Good copywriting works when the client’s brand and image are considered along with selling their product. The outrageous copywriters write for companies that will last for a year or less. By this time, they have made their money and moved on.

© 2010 K Richard Douglas

At the beginning of this decade, companies were allocating just a smidgen of their marketing budget to digital marketing.  Some big companies still allocated none of their marketing budget to the Internet. Today, the focus has made a monumental shift. Brand recognition and product and service sales are dependent on the Internet. A new generation goes to the Internet as a matter of routine.

Copy writing for print media was still the focus of most big companies at the start of the decade. Content is slowly replacing print media copy.  There are no trees sacrificed to create a virtual page. Internet pages allow linking and viewer interaction.

Content still has the same mission as copy.  When content is employed on an ecommerce site, it must sell products or services. Content must also build brands. Some content goes viral and gains the influence and power of millions in ad revenues for free.

The next decade will bring an entirely different use for words. Portable devices will be the norm and content will have to deliver in very new ways. Smart companies will work with experienced content writers to harness a whole new set of opportunities for utilizing words.

Ironically, in an age of Internet marketing, brand building isn’t always related to SEO or SEM best practices or even a Web 2.0 or 3.0 focus. Sometimes brand building can effectively take an ‘old fashion’ approach and be very successful. That is going to be the approach with The Great Writer.

A good copywriter must think of everything
For the past few years, The Great Writer has proven to be a good domain name and has aided in SEO. It has also been central in the effort to build a positive image based on a client-focus, superior writing and effective copywriting. There has been only one potential downside of the name; some prospective clients may find the name too egotistical or haughty. In the world of marketing, everything has to be considered.

The result of this soul-searching and insightfulness will be some renewed brand building. In the weeks ahead, The Great Writer will become Acme Writing.

What’s in a name?
The word Acme means the highest point; summit; peak. Besides the legendary image of the word ‘acme’ in stories and comic strips as the generic, fictitious company, it has a meaning that is very fitting for the way we do business.

We always raise our gaze to the highest point when we are writing for a client.  Our aim is never low, but always pointed at the summit so that our writing is of the highest quality and nothing less.

In addition to the ‘established’ feel of the word ‘acme,’ it is easy to remember and does not suggest any sense that we consider ourselves pompous or self-aggrandizing. It sounds like a company that was established a hundred years ago and not a half-decade ago.

Marketing the old way to build a brand
None of the explanations above have anything to do with the Internet or digital considerations at all. A change from a business name that has some SEO benefits to one which comes out of traditional marketing speaks to the true constants in marketing and brand building. What matters most is how other people see your company. What is the emotional or intellectual impact on the prospective customer or client?

In the zeal of modern day marketers to embrace all things digital, some of the fundamentals of marketing not only survive, but prevail. When building a brand, its all perception. Much of this approach has not been advanced much by the advent of the digital age. The psychology of prospective buyers is constant.

What has changed? Even a small company, with a minimum of capital, has the ability through smart marketing to reach a global audience. This would have been impossible twenty-years ago. These same small companies can build a public perception through digital channels that can be magnified beyond the means of traditional marketing. Social media and other means of creating a buzz can amplify the company’s image and persona to gigantic proportions.

Our Company
By all measures, The Great Writer has been an enormous success. We have clients all around the world. What’s even more important, those clients have been very happy with the deliverables. We have grown our business, and it’s related buzz through many channels, but in the end the focus on quality has been our calling card.

What we do know, when the smoke clears, is that its many of the traditional means of introducing a company and creating its image that get peoples’ attention and stimulate their imaginations. For that reason, Acme Writing will carry on the best attributes of The Great Writer, but rely on a company name with a broader appeal. Brand building still has to consider these incremental changes to take companies to the peak of success.

Maybe I should say, the acme of success.

© 2009 K Richard Douglas

This last point explains why investment advisors should leave web content, marketing collateral and other forms of copywriting and content development to a specialist. They may have the ability to write accurately, observing good grammar and sentence structure, but the goals of effective writing are best left to a professional.

Writing has to achieve a number of goals, among them entertainment, information, disclosure, education and persuasion.  All of these goals can be achieved through carefully crafted writing. All of these goals are also important elements of an advisor’s website, marketing collateral, client communications, engagement standards and newsletters.  Some creativity even helps craft engaging bios.

The Great Writer can help advisors develop an image and a message that is effective and engaging.  We can also help devise a strategy for utilizing social media, blogs and viral marketing as an extension of the advisors’ current written documentation.

As the chief copy and content writer for The Great Writer, K Richard Douglas offers special insights for advisors that most writers would be hard-pressed to match. With twenty-six years in the financial services business, Richard held several Principals registrations as well as other designations.  He has expertise in the areas of defined contribution plans, annuities, mutual funds, TSA’s, insurance, brokerage ops and asset allocation.

Advisors can outsource their writing tasks to a real specialist. There is no need to be a jack of all trades when your written materials and web content may be compromised in the process. Let us know how we can help.  Contact us today.

A great domain name serves many purposes. It is very important for successful SEO.  It can bring instant recognitian to your on-line presence. It can be easy to remember and serve to enhance your public image.

And what of a bad domain name? It can waste your time, energy and digital funding by taking your company nowhere on the Internet.

The Great Writer and Solution Content offer a domain name consultation service that can enhance your company’s on-line presence, increase your SEO success and further develop your brand and image.  We can provide you with great content, that can achieve many of these goals, but your domain name is the ultimate tool for success.

Our domain consultation service looks at your company, your mission statement, your goals, your market and your competitors.  We then determine several potential domain names that best express your company, its products or services and the image you would prefer to project.  We do extensive research to find the perfect domain name and check on its availability.  We also make sure that it is unique and does not duplicate what your competitors are using.

We have performed this service for companies for a fee close to $5,000.  We are reducing this service, for the month of July, to only $500.  Your only additional expense is the minimal cost of the new domain name.  This provides an enormous opportunity to advance your company’s on-line image and your SEO success.

The Great Writer will either replace an existing domain or help your company with its introduction to cyberspace.  Our research will find the perfect domain name for your company. It can mean all the difference in your company’s digital success.  Contact us today.

It is an illustration of just how dismal the market is for lower-cost writers and the buyers who are guiding soon-to-fail businesses.  For those of us who work to turn small businesses into big businesses, it is disheartening to know that so many short-sighted business owners are driving their businesses into the ground.  Copy and content writers, who provide services to this market are generally new to the market or hanging a shingle out with a sign that reads ‘copywriter’ without any formal knowledge.

I spend about 5% of my time looking at projects posted in the service marketplaces.  There was a time when good projects could be found there.  Today, the rates paid by buyers are 80% lower than a year ago and the need for quality writing is nowhere to be found.  If you need proof of this, take a look at this project cancellation notice from one service marketplace website. (they must have thought that my bid was stratospheric…it would have been a fun subject, so I placed a bid)

The buyer should learn to spell ‘professional,’ but I doubt that he knows the word.  The project required an amount of writing that would cost $400 on the low end of the commercial copywriter fee scale. Most of the writers bidding on the project bid $50 in open bidding.  These are not full-time commercial copywriters as a rule, but 50 bucks for the amount of writing required was a cheap rate for even mediocre writing.

Note that the buyer cancelled the project and complained that $50 was too high considering that he can get the work done for $20.  Will this buyers’ business be around a year from now? Very likely NOT.

Business owners very rightly focus on ROI.  They have to get the most bang for their buck.  They have to balance this concern though with the need to build a solid image and brand.  One of the worst mistakes they can make is to compromise on the quality of their content and copywriting. If their target market is made up of reasonably bright people, the prospective clients and customers will remain just that; prospective.

On this site, I have talked about the downside of hiring a $60 writer, but just imagine the $20 writer.  It’s a good thing that the buyer does not expect ‘professional’ quality writing. Unless their target market is made up largely of illiterate buyers, then they are shooting themselves in the proverbial foot.

The disturbing fact is that the service marketplaces no longer offer professional working writers with a venue for connecting with serious buyers.  They have become a repository for low-quality writing and soon-to-vanish companies. I can’t speak to the state of graphic arts, web design and programming, but as for writing, the writing is on the wall.

The lesson to be learned here for buyers of copy and content is that they may have to seek good writing elsewhere.  The other reminder is that scrimping on quality will result in steadily decreasing sales. Worse yet, for small businesses, it can mean no increases in struggling sales.

The lesson for writers is this; don’t waste too much of your time in service marketplaces. You will be reduced to the lowest common denominator.  It’s like a brilliant person marrying an imbecile; the imbecile doesn’t become brilliant in the process.  The brilliant person, on the other hand……….

If you need quality writing and expect to have a successful company or continue a record of success, then by all means, contact us.