3. Keep it simple - the average person's level of reading comprehension is
much lower than you might think.


4. Come straight to the point - in this digital age we all have short
attention spans. Decide what are going to be your key points and stick to
 them; do not ramble or people will lose interest.

 5. Make it readable - people are reluctant to start reading a huge block
 of text, even if you have made the content really interesting.  Make it
 more readable by breaking it up.  Use headings, paragraphs, graphics and
 text boxes and make sure you incorporate your key words or phrases into
 your headings.

 6. Don't leave your text naked - liven it up with pictures, charts and
 video snippets.

 7. Get to know your audience - research what your target audience wants
 and how they like to be spoken to.

 8. Find your own voice - find a style that suits you, your personality and
 your subject matter.  Make it authentic - believe in what you're saying
 and people will listen.

 9. Add value - give the reader something in return for reading your blog:
 information, advice, entertainment or a give-away such as an e-book.

 10. Market your blog - engage with readers and other bloggers to become
 recognised as a go-to expert in your field. Encourage readers to give you
 their email contact address - that's a precious marketing resource.

 11. Use SEO techniques - by using search engine optimization techniques
 you can raise your blog's profile and help people to find you by improving
 your Google ranking.  SEO experts will charge you a fortune for
 this, but there's so much free SEO advice on the internet that any
 intelligent person can get to grips with it very quickly.  Free software
 such as Jetpack and Yoast will guide you towards sharpening up your blog's
 hit and conversion rate.

 12. Finally, before publishing - always try to get some feedback on your
 latest blog piece.  Ask a friend or someone whose opinion you trust to
 give you honest feedback.

Image 1: “Wocintech (Microsoft)” by Flickr User WOCinTech Chat, used under a Creative Commons License.

Image 2: By Musicaline - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=47059265

One of Write Centre’s most recent clients is Rev Richard Sharples, Minister of Wrexham Methodist Church.  The Methodist Church nationally has one of the most prized collections of modern art in the UK and, as you would expect, most of it has a biblical theme.



Working jointly with Glyndwr University and his church in Regent Street, Richard has helped organise a joint exhibition of more than fifty of the paintings, including works by Patrick Heron, Graham Sutherland, Eric Gill and Ceri Richards.  The project, titled Heaven and Earth, runs from 19th January to 26th March 2015 and features a series of talks, workshops, concerts and other events at both sites.

Richard asked for Write Centre’s help as he wanted to reach out to people in the local area and beyond and communicate what was happening with Heaven and Earth.  He felt this was an exciting initiative for the arts scene in North Wales and wanted to get people, not just church-goers, involved in the project. 

Working with Richard, we set up a blog and Twitter feed for Heaven and Earth, both of which will run until the end of March, and possibly beyond.  The response so far has been tremendous:

“It’s a really great thing to open up church as a space for hospitality and conversation this way – where we can share what matters to us most and what moves us most, across the boundaries of belief and non-belief.” - Frances Eccleston

“This is beautiful.” - Matheus Yuhlung

The impact of the Heaven and Earth blog and Twitter feed has been to encourage more people to attend the project events and to provide a forum for people to discuss and reflect upon Heaven and Earth as a whole.

Richard Sharples is extremely pleased with how his work with Write Centre has turned out:

“Believing that the Arts is a common language for secular atheist, religious believer and everybody in between, I would like to use this blog to reflect upon what the Creative Spirit is doing amongst us.”

He is so pleased, in fact, that he now wants to set up a permanent website for his Methodist Church Circuit.

Sustainability is not just a trend or a new fad, it is about the ongoing responsibility we all have for ensuring that our businesses have a positive impact on the environment and on the communities we operate within.  As the European Union’s Review of Sustainable Development Strategy, 2009 puts it:



‘Sustainable development stands for meeting the needs of present generations without jeopardizing the ability of future generations to meet their own needs – in other words, a better quality of life for everyone, now and for generations to come.’

Sustainable businesses operate in a way that is in balance with the wider environment.  They demonstrate by their actions concern for the impact they have on employees, suppliers, customers and the broader community.  A sustainable business does not just care about today, but about its environmental impact in the years ahead.

But what about the business’s responsibilities to its shareholders and employees?  Surely going down the sustainable route will have a negative impact on the bottom line?  The fact is, however, sustainable development happens to make good business sense.  Adopting a sustainability strategy for your business can lead to:

• Enhanced brand image and a positive impact on public relations
• Reduced energy bills
• Improved employee morale; people like to be able to take pride in the company for whom they work

Companies following a strategy of sustainable development now can also steal a march on their rivals by being prepared for the legislative demands for sustainability that will inevitably be introduced by the EU and our own government.

At Write Centre we are trying to do our bit for the greater good by promoting sustainable development.  To this end we are offering:

• FREE copywriting support to local voluntary environmental groups.  The number of such groups we can support at any one time is limited, so it’s a matter of ‘first come first served’; and
• Special reduced terms for local businesses who need copywriting input to help them adopt and promote a sustainability strategy

 

The climate change clock is ticking; isn’t it time your business faced up to the challenge of sustainability? To quote the US Environmental Protection Agency:

‘Sustainability creates and maintains the conditions under which humans and nature can exist in productive harmony, that permit fulfilling the social, economic and other requirements of present and future generations.’




Image courtesy of Friends of the Earth

The Snapchat app allows users to send pictures or short video clips to each other.  The clips ‘self-destruct’ after a few seconds creating, from a marketing perspective, a feeling of immediacy and exclusivity.  MTV UK is another company which has taken up the Snapchat initiative by sending ‘exclusive’ behind the scenes clips to followers of the show ‘Geordie Shore’.

Though available only to iPhone and iPod users at the moment, Twitter’s Vine app is designed to be a platform for video clips of up to six seconds.  Gap and Urban Outfitters are amongst the first companies to use this platform.

So is using video on social media simply a trend that will come and go, or does it offer businesses who wish to promote themselves something more substantial?  Taking into account the amount of money that global brands are investing in social media video advertising, the latter seems to be the case.  Indeed, research commissioned by Business2Community suggests that people are ‘40% more likely to have a better response to visual content as opposed to plain text’ and 'posts with videos attract 3 times more inbound links than plain text posts'.  The future, quite clearly, is visual.

It was my friend Jenny who first told me about morning pages.  I was wondering how she found the energy to be a creative writer whilst also being a full-time carer and studying for a Master's in psychology.  She pointed me in the direction of Julia Cameron's The Artist's Way and, in particular, the section on morning pages.

Julia Cameron is the author of The Artist's Way, The Right to Write and a host of other books, plays and scripts.  She is also an award-winning journalist.  Cameron believes that we all carry an inner well of creativity that, for most of us, has been thwarted by self-doubt, uncertainty and the pressure to conform.  She urges her readers to adopt a rigorous programme of 'recovery' to rediscover one's inner creativity.  To do so, she argues, we need to connect with the higher power that lies behind the universe.  Now I have to say I found all of this a bit off-putting with its resonances of Californian new-age spirituality; as a concept it all felt a bit 'woo'.   But I pressed on with the practical exercises.

At the heart of Cameron's programme to stimulate one's creativity is a practice she calls her morning pages.  Put simply, the morning page exercise requires your attention every morning as soon as possible after you get up and definitely before you start work.  It requires you to write three sides of A4 in longhand each day.  What you write is of no consequence at all, the important thing is the process, which is basically stream-of-consciousness writing.  Cameron argues that this process is a kind of meditation that frees up one's creative urges.  Looking at it in scientific in terms, it accords with psychological concept of flow.

Cameron insists that your morning pages should never be published nor shown to anyone else.  In fact, you should never look back over your own pages once you've completed the day's exercise; again it's this emphasis on process and not content.

So, although I've never really kept up any of the other exercises recommended in The Artists Way, I've been keeping a morning pages journal on a more or less daily basis for some nine months now.  That's an awful lot of words, so what do I write about?  I write about what I'm thinking, what I'm feeling, note down memories and draft my plans for the day.  I use the journal to kick around ideas, make plans and rough drafts of things I want to work on.  This last point is where I depart from Julia Cameron; I definitely go back into my previous journal entries, some of my best ideas are in there!

Have I noticed any changes since I started keeping my morning pages?  Well, I won't say it's been a life-changing experience, but I do feel a discernible improvement in my focus and creativity; the exercise seems to get the creative juices flowing each morning.  I'm doing a lot of creative writing, on top of my daily copywriting projects, and I've started writing poetry again after a lay-off of a couple of years.

You can take the whole thing on board, if that's what appeals, or you can select the bits that you find useful, like me with the morning pages.  Either way, if you're interested in writing or any other creative endeavour, it's definitely worth having a look at The Artist's Way.