Making your home sell quickly involves more than choosing the right agent. It also requires you to maximise its appeal
You don’t need to live in a large or luxurious house to
make the most of its appeal. Over the last year, house prices have soared, and
many properties have sold within days of being listed. From £100,000 city studios
to £1 million country piles, it’s a seller’s market here in 2021 – yet there
are still plenty of things motivated sellers can do to maximise the appeal of their
homes.
Small changes around the house can assist with making your home sell quickly
The level of interest in your property often has more to
do with presentation than anything other than the all-important location. It’s
obvious from a glance whether a property has been loved and cared for, or
neglected and overlooked. You can’t do much about your home’s location or the
condition of neighbouring properties, but a quick sale can often be expedited with
some easy tweaks and tips.
A little goes a long way
As a property journalist of almost twenty years’
standing, and having recently bought and sold myself, I’m continually surprised
by how little effort people put into presenting homes which are for sale. You might
consider it acceptable to leave the toilet seat up without scrubbing the pan,
but buyers may not be so understanding. That teetering pile of paperwork on the
home office desk isn’t just a nuisance for whoever has to photograph the room –
it suggests a chronic lack of storage. And a weed-strewn front garden could
stop people attending scheduled viewings, since subconscious decisions about a
property are often made even before the front door has opened.
With that in mind, G75 Media has compiled a ten-point checklist
for our estate agent and property marketing clients to hand out to their own
customers. These ten simple tips on making your home sell quickly won’t just
help us when we come to provide our award-winning freelance property journalism
services. They’ll impress vendors and valuers, too. Crucially, they’ll increase
the sense of pride in a home, which shines through when conducting viewings and
persuading people to buy the property…
Clean
and clean again. Our first tip for making your home sell quickly is
encapsulated in the photo above. Scrub and polish every unit, appliance,
skirting board or window.
Ensure
every light works. Pools of light add brightness to your home, whereas dead
bulbs infer neglect. The kitchen shot above sparkles with light, and looks
better for it.
Eradicate
clutter. Don’t hide it in cupboards – bin it. Clutter suggests the home is too
small to be practical, so ensure floors and exposed surfaces have lots of clear
space.
Optimise
the approach to your home. Remove weeds, oil hinges, add plants and wash the
windows. Maximise first-impression kerb appeal, or risk people walking away.
Eliminate
odours. Scrub the oven, wash fabrics, leave every window open for a day… Do
everything in your power to minimise smells, which can be very off-putting.
Do
a DIY list. Walk round and note down every squeaky hinge, paint chip and loose
handle. Repair them all, to make the property look well-maintained rather than
tired.
Clear
the house of children and pets prior to viewings. Avoid unnecessary mess and
impromptu embarrassment, and ensure visitors can wander round in peace and
quiet.
Practice
a sales pitch. This is another useful step in making your home sell quickly.
What’s included, and what’s great? Celebrate positives and downplay negatives.
Start
and end in the best room. Building on the last point, first impressions count,
and the last thing viewers see will stay with them. Make both your home’s best room.
Let
people wander round themselves. After the tour, give viewers the opportunity to
wander around again without you. This is often when buying decisions are made.
If you’ve found this article through social media or a search engine, you probably want to know how to become a freelance writer. You’re not alone. A seismic event like this year’s lockdown is bound to make people question their life choices, especially since many employees will have discovered the productivity gains and stress reduction which come from working at home.
It’s entirely understandable that many working-age adults will currently be considering a career change, either through necessity or choice. And it’s equally logical that writing will figure highly on the list of alternative career paths. Writing is enjoyable, requires little in the way of specialist equipment or training, and dovetails with the modern need for flexibility. If you’ve always wanted to become a freelance writer, what better time could there be than now?
The write intentions
The sad truth is that copywriting and content production is
a ruthlessly cut-throat industry. It always has been, and the recent influx of
new entrants (bringing varying degrees of experience and professionalism) has
made it even harder for genuinely talented writers to elevate themselves above
the hordes. With this in mind, I’ve taken an in-depth look at the
practicalities and challenges you’ll face if you want to become a freelance
writer. I’ve added ten important tips to take away, alongside a few case
studies from my own career.
Let me be clear at the outset – I’m not trying to scare anyone off a potentially transformative career change. There’s a lot to love about writing, but work won’t fall into your lap. You might think you’ve got the enthusiasm to carve a niche talking about parenting, but you’d be competing with my wife and our next-door neighbour, who both have very unusual stories to tell. Maybe you’d like to be the next Jeremy Clarkson, but you’d be staggered by how many people apply for any job involving four wheels. A recent LinkedIn advert for a freelance writing gig received 268 applications after 48 hours, and that’s not exceptional these days. A freelance content writing job on a popular recruitment site attracted 439 applications within a fortnight, meaning 438 people were ultimately left to look elsewhere.
A positive spin
Let’s begin with some good news. What are the main upsides if you decide to become a freelance writer?
Getting paid for doing something you enjoy. Imagine booting up your computer every morning with enthusiasm, rather than despondency. And imagine seeing money arriving in your bank account in exchange for doing work you enjoy, rather than something you resent or dislike. Work to live, or live to work?
Make your career work around you. If you’re a night owl, you can work through the small hours and sleep in the next day. If you love being sociable, you can seek the company of fellow creatives in coffee shops and shared workspaces whenever they’re allowed to reopen. Writing about topics you’re interested in or passionate about also plays to your strengths.
Freedom. Freedom comes in many forms – the freedom to move outside a city and live in a farmhouse, or the freedom to use a MacBook where an employer might insist on Windows. You’re also free from office politics, the frustrations of commuting on public transport, and having to watch junior colleagues get promoted ahead of you.
This final point leads into the first main challenge anyone who wants to become a freelance writer faces – the high standards of your competitors. You’re not just up against me. You’re up against companies with entire teams of creatives in their employ. You’re up against media agencies, who can write dazzling copy but also construct websites and record radio ads. And you’re up against hardened journalists, who are increasingly being cast aside as print media continues its dispiriting death spiral. If you think you can wing your way to success just because you own a bookshelf full of paperbacks and love drinking coffee, please stop reading.
Case study
When I started freelancing in 2005, I was using a Yahoo email address and working from a dressing table in my living room. That was fine back then, but today, higher standards are required to stand out from the crowd. I’ve since launched a mobile-optimised WordPress website with a proprietary email account, but I also have a backup Gmail address for clients who prefer to communicate through G Suite (some do, most don’t). I’ve cultivated social media profiles, which are often necessary simply to get past the first stage of many application processes. And I have a portfolio of work available to view online. My website is updated regularly for SEO purposes, and if you don’t know what SEO means, it really is time to stop reading.
Two simple rules for making your content better
Play to your strengths
Once you’ve established a respectable online presence, the
next challenge awaiting anyone who wants to become a freelance writer is finding
specialisms which play to your strengths. If you’ve never written in
American English or taken a Transatlantic flight, don’t even try to bluff your
way through blogging for Stateside audiences, where every tenth UK English noun
has an American variant. Similarly, if your knowledge of football doesn’t allow
you to demonstrate second phase offside laws using sauce bottles on a café
table, you won’t be published by When Saturday Comes any time soon.
(If you’d like to see the standard of journalism required to
write for WSC, there’s an example on the Portfolio page of this website. If you
haven’t already checked it out, take a look when you finish this article.)
In every niche you can think of, there will be retired
journalists, redundant marketing executives and former industry insiders
competing for work. And while that doesn’t mean your hopes of freelance work
stand at zero, it means you’ll need to be passionate and knowledgeable about
any industry or niche you’re hoping to write about. Experts recognise a bluffer
when they see one.
Pro tip #1: Build a portfolio
Developing a portfolio is essential for being taken
seriously by recruiters, with most job ads asking for weblinks to three
published examples in the specific sector/s you’re applying to work for.
However, this is a chicken-and-egg situation – how do you build a portfolio
without one?
The best way is to either reference work you’ve had
published earlier in your career, or – and bear with me here – do some unpaid
writing to build a catalogue of online content. I’m not suggesting you apply
for one of those loathsome unpaid internships which callous employers use to
get free labour from desperate graduates. However, you could do worse than
reach out to websites in regular need of content and offer them a freebie. Once
your name is in print, it becomes much easier to secure more work, especially
if your output impresses the editorial team.
Pro tip #2: Never do unpaid work as part of a recruitment process
While unpaid work offers some merit in terms of getting your name out there, it’s ruthlessly exploited. Some uncharitable recruiters are now demanding unpaid trial articles as part of their application process. I recently saw a job advert which required applicants to write three bespoke articles, three Facebook posts and six tweets, just to be considered for an unremarkable-sounding freelance copywriting vacancy. This is known in industry parlance as taking the piss, and should not be indulged in any way – especially since there’s nothing to stop the recruiter uploading a pretend job vacancy simply to harvest a stockpile of free content.
A high percentage of G75 Media’s workload comes from clients
I’ve dealt with in a previous capacity, such as account managers who’ve taken
new jobs, or third parties who’ve reached out to me because they’ve seen my
work in passing and liked it enough to remember me later. I make a point of
being a single point of contact, from brief allocation to proofreading and
accounting. That dependability (allied to being available at least 48 weeks of
the year) sticks in the minds of stressed commissioning editors, who are sick
of less diligent creatives letting them down and leaving holes all over their page
plans.
Pro tip #3: Write in your natural voice
Was that last sentence too long? Nobody wants you to become
a freelance writer obsessed by achieving perfect scores in Grammarly, or someone
who sneers at the use of the Oxford comma. I’m not representing a specific
client in this article, where a predetermined house writing style might need to
be followed. Many recruiters like to hear a natural tone of voice in a
candidate’s work, even though successful applicants would obviously have to adjust
their writing style to meet that client’s requirements. A former boss of mine
hated the use of the % symbol, while another was pathological about sentences
starting with words like ‘and’. A good writer can easily work around these idiosyncrasies,
and nobody will expect you to replicate their preferred TOV before you’ve even started
working with them.
Having said that…
Pro tip #4: Spell-check and proofread everything you write
A contributor to a national newspaper recently tweeted a
request for article suggestions. Unfortunately, she didn’t bother to re-read the
tweet before posting it. The result? A request that people “make is a succinct
pith”. Any self-respecting employer or editor who found two typos in a
five-word sentence from a potential employee would dismiss them immediately. It’s
easy to overlook amateurishness, whereas professionalism tends to linger in the
memory.
Case study
Back in the late Noughties, I freelanced for one of the many content production agencies in London. Because my work was always delivered ahead of schedule and to a high standard, one of the commissioning editors remembered me years later, when she’d moved up in the world. I’m now a regular contributor to one of the UK’s leading engineering publications, even though the articles I send her today are worlds apart from the mass-produced content I used to supply in our agency days.
Pro tip #5: Record all your victories
Whenever you get something published, add a hyperlink to a
Word or Google Docs file, with a one-sentence summary of what the article’s
about. If you’re covering multiple industries, it’s also beneficial to note the
sectors each link relates to. When you’re looking for work, you can instantly
find examples of published online content to cite and include in your
application.
If you don’t have any demonstrable experience in the
specific areas the employer is asking for, don’t waste your time (or theirs) by
applying anyway. They’ll have dozens of high-quality writers getting in touch,
and they’ll have no interest in someone with no expertise “but a lot of
enthusiasm” or someone who’s “keen to learn”. Such clichéd platitudes cut little
ice in today’s ferociously competitive freelance marketplace.
Pro tip #6: Establish yourself in directories
A better way to showcase your availability is to create
profiles on media directories and bulletin boards. Many of these are still
free, though an increasing number charge either a monthly or annual membership
fee. In the style of service provider platforms like Rated People, some are
free to sign up to but charge you for every position you apply for. It can cost
up to £10 just to make a proposal to a client looking for copywriting work.
While most free listings give you a chance to create an
external link back to your website (with attendant SEO benefits), I would
strongly advise against spending money through pay-to-bid platforms. They’re fine
for tradespeople, where only three professionals in the client’s local area are
allowed to respond. On an international copywriting site with no limit on how
many people can bid on the same job, they’re basically exploiting people’s
desperation. Some don’t even indicate whether you’re the first or the tenth person
to get in touch, while I was once quoted a fee of £10.20 to bid on a
vaguely-worded editorial project of “up to £120” in value. You’d make more
profit buying scratchcards.
Penny wise, pound foolish
The thorny topic of paying for the chance to become a
freelance writer brings us onto the main reason you’ve probably read this far.
If you’re planning a career change, you’re not going to be writing for
philanthropy or out of sheer passion. You want to earn enough to enjoy a
comfortable standard of living. And yes, there are clients out there willing
to pay generously. But they’re usually looking for many years of
industry-specific expertise, and writing a 1,000-word article at ten pence per
word once every two months is not going to pay your mortgage. It’d barely cover
your broadband bill.
Pro tip #7: Be flexible about income
When I first started freelancing, I put a very ambitious
per-word fee on my website. Unsurprisingly, I didn’t get any work. It took a
while to realise I couldn’t apply the same expectations to a 500-word listicle
about interior design trends as I could to an in-depth review of CNC machines. Today,
some of my clients pay three times more than others, but that’s fine because
the lower-paid content is far easier to produce. You’ll naturally evolve a sliding
scale of costs (per word, per hour, per project) based on how long assignments
take and how straightforward you find them.
There’s a spectrum of payment rates across copywriting and
journalism, but most entry-level work tends to be at the disappointing end. Two
or three cents per word will regularly be quoted by clients and agencies whose
desire for quantity outweighs their desire for quality. Negotiating with a
client you’ve never worked with before is unlikely to endear you to them,
though you might be able to up your per-word price once you’ve proven yourself
to be dependable and original. Originality is critically important in the age
of Copyscape plagiarism checkers, and any attempt to repurpose existing
content will be spotted and censured.
Pro tip #8 Build a blog
If you’re unable to get work because you’re unable to get
work published, a personal blog gives you a way to become a freelance writer under
your own steam. More importantly, it gives you something to post in the
Portfolio section of a job advert.
Case study
I had a fairly lean year in 2013, and I spent the year blogging about whatever took my fancy. I then referenced specific blog articles in relevant job applications, until I was able to replace them with more heavyweight content. Although these blogs were personal rather than corporate in nature, they accurately represented my tone of voice and writing style.
Pro tip #9 Set yourself up with all the hardware you’ll need
My blog was rather over-engineered – written on a custom-built PC using the latest versions of Office and Windows. I didn’t need an HD webcam or a combined printer and scanner to produce foresighted articles about poor grammar, working from home and self-repairing lampposts. However, when I started attending Zoom meetings with clients (long before Boris tried to make it fashionable), having high-speed broadband and Bose speakers made the process much easier.
It’s very embarrassing to have to tell a prospective client
you can’t sign and scan the Non-Disclosure Agreement they’ve just emailed you
because you don’t have a scanner. Similarly, being unable to provide a landline
number becomes an issue if your mobile phone is faulty or needs replacing, your
network experiences issues, or your signal strength fluctuates.
Decisions about whether or not to invest in dedicated workstations and full spectrum lighting speak volumes about whether you really do want to become a freelance writer. Professionalism is easy to identify, just as amateurishness tends to betray itself in the unmodified ‘Sent from my mobile’ signatures on webmail accounts, and the typos which slip through the net without a proper spell-check. I’m not suggesting you need to invest in thousands of pounds worth of technology to make it in this industry, but at the minimum, you’ll need:
A laptop you can take to meetings, events and presentations, once they resume (as they inevitably will)
A large monitor and full-size keyboard at home, connected to a docking station
A printer and scanner – it’s surprising how often you need to sign things, even in 2020
High-speed wired internet connectivity, which is crucial for uploading media files and accessing cloud-sharing platforms like Dropbox.
So can I become a freelance writer?
The short answer is yes. But you’ll need to commit to it for
many years to really get anywhere. I started freelancing in 2005, went
full-time freelance in 2010 and won a national freelancing award shortly
afterwards (for a client I still work with today), but it was 2012 before my
career as a freelancer really took off. Copywriting and journalism are
industries where – and I hate typing these words as much as you’ll hate reading
them – the cream really does rise to the top.
You won’t get anywhere if you approach freelance writing as either:
(a) A short-term fix, while you plan for bigger and better things
(b) An evenings-and-weekends way of supplementing your day job
Or, worst of all:
(c) Something you try for a few months until the rejections get too much.
It’s no exaggeration to say I have had thousands of rejections
over the last fifteen years. I once sent 300 personalised letters to marketing
and PR agencies, offering my services for holiday cover and overflow work. It
cost well over £100, back in the days when that would get you a night in a
five-star hotel, and took countless hours of letter editing, mail merging and
envelope stuffing.
Acknowledgements: 0. Work: 0.
It turned out that the world didn’t want or need yet
another writer. And this was a decade ago. If you tried a similar exercise
today, the postman would probably return your envelopes out of pity.
So if you’ve read this far and you still want to become a freelance writer, you know where to start. Set up a dedicated working environment, build a portfolio, register on directories, quality-check everything you put your name to, and…
Pro tip #10 Remember it’ll be years before your labours bear fruit
As you are now, so once was I. As I am now, so you will be. You’re
welcome to join me in this uniquely exciting industry, and the very best of
luck to you.
Finally, I’d be remiss if I didn’t finish this article with what marketing professionals refer to as the CTA – the call to arms. If you’re looking to recruit rather than be recruited, and you like what you’ve just read, I am available for copywriting jobs, freelance journalism and all forms of print and online content production. Get in touch if you’d like to receive a competitive quote for copywriting services. A typo-free reply will arrive in your inbox shortly.
It’s May 2000. A fresh-faced young graduate by the name of
Neil Cumins is starting a marketing job in the motor trade, writing press
releases and producing a customer magazine. Among the key features being
promoted by manufacturers at the time are a four-speed automatic gearbox
(Chrysler PT Cruiser), twin airbags (Suzuki Jimny) and electric windows
(Vauxhall Astra Coupe). Radio-cassette players were still being fitted in every
new BMW 3-Series, and the entry-level Citroën Saxo model didn’t even have power
steering.
Fast-forward to May 2020, and even buyers of affordable
family cars increasingly take for granted features which would have astonished
any freelance motoring journalist two decades ago. Scotland’s current Car of
the Year, the Mazda 3, has a head-up display which projects satellite
navigation instructions onto its windscreen, while the Ford Fiesta can reverse
itself into parallel parking bays only 20 per cent longer than the car itself.
Increasing levels of automation enable cars to keep themselves in lane on the
motorway, with radar-guided cruise control maintaining a steady gap to the
vehicle in front. We may not have fully autonomous vehicles just yet, but the
prospect feels increasingly close.
The car’s the star
Keeping up with such rapid progress would be a challenge for
any freelance motoring journalist, but it’s a challenge which your humble
correspondent has embraced. A 40-year archive of motoring publications and
manufacturer brochures fills a six-foot bookcase in the G75 Media office, augmenting
an encyclopaedic knowledge of model specifications and technical attributes. As
such, every piece of freelance motoring journalism produced by G75 Media is
thoroughly fact-checked for accuracy before it’s filed (ahead of deadline,
naturally).
Twenty years spent proofreading sales materials and
marketing copy (mostly as a freelance motoring journalist) means there’s no risk
of any confusion between ABS and EBA, or selectable four-wheel drive being
described as permanent. And because G75 Media currently works for motor trade
clients on both sides of the Atlantic, we’re equally comfortable talking about PS
or HP, hoods or bonnets, NHTSA or Euro NCAP.
Driving up standards
Of course, quality freelance motoring journalism isn’t just about knowing the difference between pushrods and overhead camshafts, or understanding why carbon ceramic discs provide fade-free braking power. A successful freelance motoring journalist needs an instinctive ability to judge a car’s effectiveness and quality – something which can only be achieved with hands-on testing. That’s why the review of the Mercedes E-Class All-Terrain on the Portfoliopage of this site highlights the impracticality of thick carpet in the boot of a vehicle designed to tackle rutted fields. It’s also why ride quality is a high priority in any road test review – because who wants to be jiggled around over motorway expansion joints or scarred urban tarmac?
If you need freelance motoring journalism services, or require a freelance motoring journalist to produce copy for your brand, give G75 Media a call or send us an email here. We’ll be happy to assist with any motor trade editorial brief, and provide a competitive quote for motoring journalism in the UK or overseas.
We are living in historic times. The Coronavirus pandemic
has led to the suspension of public life in ways unseen in British history, including
restrictions which prevent businesses up and down the land from trading.
However, even companies unable to trade are still able to advertise and market themselves
online. And promoting your business during the lockdown is particularly
important given the unprecedented number of people trapped at home with unlimited
internet access, and plenty of free time to surf and browse.
3 – 3 – 0 – 6 – 3 – 3
At some point in the near future, the current state of lockdown will be partially lifted. And very quickly, people will start trying to catch up on everything they’ve missed. As a result, there is likely to be a dramatic upsurge in demand for products and services, as all the things we’ve postponed start happening alongside all the things which would have been occurring at that time anyway. Temporary restrictions on movement and trading haven’t stopped people needing to replace faulty appliances, or negotiate a new mortgage, or choose a new car. A massive backlog is growing across numerous industries, and the months after lockdown are going to be much busier than the months before it in many industries.
This simple fact gives forward-thinking companies an
opportunity. By promoting your business during the lockdown, you can position your
products, services or brands in consumer minds. You can become a go-to firm
when the nation starts tackling everything that’s been neglected and put off. Forward-thinking
companies can also extol the virtues of services which are desirable rather
than essential – the holidays, the clothing, the spa trips. Because what else
is there to do today other than plan how we’ll spend tomorrow? And if finances are
tight – as they will be for millions of UK households – brands with compelling
sales pitches will be optimally placed to attract available cash.
Search and destroy the competition
The benefits of promoting your business during the lockdown
are particularly compelling when you consider search engines. We’re all
spending more time online than ever, with Google and Bing acting as gatekeepers
to the internet. Positioning your brand towards the top of search results is
more important at a time of unprecedented internet traffic than it’s ever been.
And the benefits of search engine optimisation tend to last for years.
Informative original content won’t just benefit your brand today – it’ll remain
a valuable resource which attracts enquiries and custom for years to come.
As a freelance copywriting agency, G75 Media is used to
working remotely on behalf of clients. For the last 13 years, we’ve exchanged
contracts via email and uploaded content to WordPress. We hold Zoom meetings
with opticians in Hampshire, write new car reviews for American consumer
websites, and use Trello to manage blog schedules for Ofcom-approved comparison
platforms. We can handle content production and copywriting for business of all
sizes, from start-ups seeking to establish an online presence through to
household-name brands wanting to bolster their market share. And by promoting
your business during the lockdown, we’ll ensure it emerges from this
frightening and unprecedented period with an optimal online presence.
Don’t put off til tomorrow what you should be doing today. This is the perfect time to boost your SEO, refresh your online presence and assemble a stockpile of content in readiness for normality returning. The latter is especially pertinent, as marketing and PR might be a low priority while trying to rebuild your customer base and dealing with a backlog of orders. Get in touch with G75 Media to discuss how we can help with promoting your business during the lockdown.
We are currently living under unprecedented professional, personal and social restrictions, whose consequences could take decades to fully understand and repair. For anyone struggling to cope during this oppressive and uncertain time, I’ve published an article with some advice on preserving mental health. You can read it here – https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/preserving-mental-health-during-difficult-times-neil-cumins/
At the time of writing, the UK is experiencing the unwelcome advance of the Coronavirus, or COVID-19. Sporting events are being suspended, festivals are being cancelled, and commuters are nervously applying hand sanitiser while sweating underneath stifling face masks. We’re being encouraged to avoid large public gatherings and refrain from unnecessary travel, while consumers panic-buy toilet roll and shysters try to sell us 49p bottles of antibacterial gel on eBay for £25.
At this stage, it’s impossible to know how far COVID-19 will
spread, or how serious its repercussions will be. However, the latest
Government advice is to work from home if possible. And that has raised a wider
debate about why millions of people struggle through chaotic rush-hours to
reach an inconvenient place for an arbitrary time, to sit at a desk and email
people sitting six feet away. Accountancy firm KPMG is running a trial where
many of its staff work from home on Fridays, to see whether productivity is
affected. In fact, there’s a good chance productivity will increase, since
people will be committed to making the trial a success. Plus, they’ll feel more
energetic and less fatigued without an early-morning commute…
No place like home
It’s a shame that it’s taken the Coronavirus outbreak to make
employers question the necessity of making staff sit in an office all day. The
benefits of home working certainly aren’t lost on me. Exactly ten years ago, I quit
the safety of a full-time job as a property journalist to become a full-time
freelance writer, running my fledgling copywriting agency from a spare bedroom in
East Kilbride. That didn’t just mean surrendering a guaranteed salary, a
pension scheme and a chance to chat about last night’s episode of Homeland
while the kettle boiled. It also meant giving up an expensive and frustratingly
slow commute into a draughty and noisy office in an industrial estate, and then
repeating the process in reverse when I was tired and it was getting dark. And
although the ability to dramatically reduce my exposure to airborne pathogens wasn’t
a key factor behind establishing G75 Media, avoiding other people’s germs is
one of many advantages to working from home.
Of course, some professions lend themselves to home working
better than others, and not everyone has the flexibility a freelance writer
enjoys. Doctors can’t squirrel themselves away in their spare rooms, though
they could potentially make greater use of video calls. Taxi drivers still have
to collect passengers, albeit with their windows open and a box of tissues handy.
And nobody expects police officers or firefighters to log on remotely. Yet
millions of people could base themselves at home for at least part of the
working week, from call centre staff to architects. And if they did, they might
discover the following benefits:
More time. How many hours would you save by not having to endure ten rush-hour journeys every week? You could spend some of this extra time doing additional work, some of it taking proper breaks from your desk, and the rest enjoying quality time with family and friends.
Less distractions. Office camaraderie can be enjoyable, but small talk and blaring radios become a distraction if you’ve got a deadline to meet. Large offices can be antithetical to productivity, with constant interruptions and background noise. Being based at home may provide greater freedom to concentrate – helping you to be more productive and efficient.
Greater flexibility. The concept of working from 9am to 5pm with a one-hour lunch break seems archaic in today’s 24-7 global culture, yet this 19th century hangover persists through sheer inertia. Many people work better at other times of day, don’t want a full hour for lunch, or would benefit from more flexible working hours due to family commitments.
Better breaks. Isn’t it annoying when you have to wait ten minutes to use the solitary microwave because someone’s cooking a baked potato? At home, you can eat and drink whatever you want, whenever you want. No more stolen milk, no more fixed break times, and no more offending everyone around you as you unwrap an egg mayo baguette.
Same. But different.
Many people are surprised to discover how much of their
working week relies on technology, rather than proximity. We’ve all emailed colleagues
sitting within a few metres of us, driven to meetings which would have been equally
productive as a Skype call, and printed off emails to hand out when simply forwarding
the email would have saved paper and ink. Collaborative workplace tools like
Slack and Trello make project management easier than the traditional
whiteboard-and-weekly-meeting approach, and email remains the finest method of
data distribution ever invented.
As a freelance writer, I am typing this blog on a laptop at
home, which I could relocate anywhere with a decent WiFi connection. According
to Google Analytics, you are probably reading it on a portable device – another
laptop, a tablet or a smartphone. And while any of us could potentially
contract an airborne virus like COVID-19, my ability to avoid public transport while
picking and choosing when I leave the house should reduce my risk of (a) being
infected and (b) unwittingly infecting other people.
If you’re an employer reading this, it’s worth considering the
extent to which you could permit staff to work from home. If you’re an
employee, consider what (if any) parts of your job may be achievable while
being based at home, and suggest it to your line manager. And if you want to
enjoy the benefits of high-quality content production by an award-winning
freelance writer, from blogs and listicles through to opinion pieces like this
one, drop me an email or give me a call. You don’t need to arrange a
face-to-face meeting to benefit from G75 Media’s copywriting and content
production services.
The start of a new decade provides an ideal opportunity for reflection and analysis on the decade just passed. And while 2019 proved to be a turbulent year politically and a disruptive one technologically, it was also an eventful one for writers and journalists. Our industry has changed so much since January 2010 that it’s worth taking a moment to consider how the art of copywriting and journalism has changed since we last welcomed in a new decade…
Copywriting and journalism changed almost as much as technology in the 2010s
Putting the word out
Ten years ago, the internet was absent from millions of
UK homes, and many people still relied on dial-up connectivity. Websites had already
evolved away from early experiments with Comic Sans fonts and animated GIFs,
but there was little video content, and photography platforms remained niche.
Instead, the written word was king – particularly given the growing importance
of search engine optimisation, or SEO.
By the middle of the last decade, websites were
experimenting with the potential offered by home broadband connectivity. Parallax
scrolling, single-page websites and auto-playing video content became briefly
fashionable on many corporate websites. However, 4G’s arrival in 2013 triggered
meteoric growth in mobile internet services, which literally and metaphorically
rendered flashy (or Flash-y) sites unsuitable for a smartphone. As a result, we
came full circle, relying on professionally-written copywriting and journalism to
underpin any successful website.
Make it a large one
More recently, Google and Bing have emphasised the
importance of long-form content. The days when a 500-word blog provided optimal
SEO benefits have passed. And while we’re not going to extend this article to be
5,000-8,000 words long (which search engines increasingly regard as
demonstrating authoritative content), long-form copywriting and journalism
makes up a growing percentage of G75 Media’s monthly workload.
The last decade also saw the inexorable rise of the blog.
Although Blogger debuted in 1999 and WordPress launched in 2003, blogging only really
took off towards the end of the Noughties. By 2010, there was huge demand for freelance
bloggers, and G75 Media began offering blogging as a service. At the time, IT
and technology clients were identifying blog archives as a way of boosting
keyword recognition among search engines, and two of G75 Media’s biggest
clients still depend on us for weekly blog content.
Another trend which dominated the 2010s was the welcome
increase in flexible working. Brands like WeWork have revolutionised the concept
of office space, and millions of Britons now work from home either part-time or
full-time. Copywriting and journalism are ideal sectors for both freelancing
and working from home, since employers can call on specialist writers as and
when their services are needed. Many of G75 Media’s clients will contact us
once a year or even less frequently, knowing we can quickly and effectively
deliver copywriting and journalism to meet any brief.
Goodbye and good riddance
Other trends rose and fell with equal rapidity, such as
overseas copywriting firms. Agencies popped up around the world, offering cheap
online copywriting for corporate clients. Almost as a rule, these firms
delivered fairly dreadful content. Their writers generally spoke English as a
second language, their proofreading and editing skills were negligible, and the
balance of keywords and long tails (key elements of SEO) was usually wrong.
When Google and Bing began downgrading websites with lazily-written content supplied
by overseas copy farms, the writing was on the wall – but not on the websites.
The phenomenon quickly died out as companies realised it simply isn’t worth paying
for cheap copywriting and journalism.
More recently, we have also seen the welcome decline of
academic writing websites. These enabled lazy students to outsource
dissertation and essay writing to ‘qualified professionals’. Like all
respectable content production agencies, G75 Media flatly refused to get
involved in this distasteful practice, despite being approached on a number of
occasions with unsolicited requests for assistance. Our copywriting services
have always been ethical and honest, and they always will be.
Taking care of business
Despite these unwholesome sub-sectors of copywriting and
journalism, the internet’s meteoric growth came at a great time for a business which
was founded in 2007 as a dedicated copywriting agency. In February 2010, G75
Media’s founder Neil Cumins made the decision to quit his part-time day job as
a property journalist and become a full-time business owner, freelance
copywriter – and property journalist! Having retained his former estate-agency employer
as a client, the process of building a successful copywriting agency could
begin.
Today, G75 Media regularly works with clients on three
continents, from America to Australia. We employ freelance writers whose areas
of expertise dovetail with our client base. We deliver everything from
listicles and social media content through to white papers and how-to guides
for clients as diverse as manufacturers, optometrists and tourism firms. And as
we enter our third decade as a limited company, G75 Media is proud to be a
copywriting agency with few peers.
But why stop there? A new decade brings new
opportunities, while our greater resources and superior expertise should ensure
we’re able to continue growing and expanding throughout the 2020s. We don’t
know what the last decade will be referred to as – possibly the Tens or the Teens
– but it’s been the making of G75 Media. Here’s to another decade of
award-winning copywriting and journalism.
The philosophy behind fake reviews is the polar opposite of everything G75 Media stands for
The thorny subject of fake reviews has been in the media
recently, with allegations about false five-star reviews on Amazon and
interviews with self-confessed fake review writers. There has also been a
greater focus on falsifying academic records on both sides of the Atlantic,
coupled with a crackdown on dissertation writing firms.
Fake content is a topic G75 Media feels very strongly
about, since trust is a cornerstone of our copywriting services. Before getting
into the specifics of why this matters, it’s important to clarify our position
on fake reviews:
We have never sought or published fake reviews for any of our online profiles or accounts. As a result, you’ll occasionally see other copywriting agencies ‘scoring’ more highly than us on review sites, even though a cursory glance at their websites and marketing materials might not suggest they’re the best in the business.
We’ve never written a glowing testimonial that we didn’t wholeheartedly stand by. We rarely review service providers; if we do, it’s because our experience justifies it. If we have criticisms, we tend to address them directly to the company or individual, giving them a reasonable chance to address these issues.
When writing on behalf of clients, we deliberately avoid belittling and bad-mouthing their competitors. Even when a rival brand is clearly falling short of the standards our clients have set, we promote the latter’s achievements rather than denigrating the former. Negative advertising should be left in the 1980s, where it belongs.
We don’t use social media as a steam valve or echo chamber. Like everyone reading this article, we’ve had good and bad client experiences in recent times. Unlike some people, we don’t resort to splashing hyperbolic language over social media platforms. At worst, we’ll discuss any marketing lessons to be learned from high-profile failures.
Our word is our bond
The cynic might wonder why any of this matters. After
all, consumers know fake reviews exist. We recognise the temptation to use
emotive phrases like “ruined” and “worst ever” to illustrate disappointment or
frustration. And it’s hard to escape the fact that copywriting is a cut-throat
industry, where earning any form of income is often challenging.
However, some things are more important than boosting
your monthly turnover, or filling the working week with projects. Fake reviews
are deceitful, and false writing of any kind is morally unjustifiable. If you
spend your days writing fraudulent reviews for products and services you’ve
never experienced, you’re effectively a professional liar. Anything you
subsequently say will be tainted by association, and you’re also making life
harder for everyone who still places their trust in online content.
In a virtual world where the senses of touch, smell and taste are non-existent, the written word is all-powerful. Abusing it for short-term corporate gain is as unforgivable as it is unacceptable. While positive PR and promotional content inevitably only tells one side of the story, at least these stories are rooted in fact. That’s where the true power of written communications comes from, and it’s something G75 Media will continue to champion in every article, blog and promotional feature we produce.
If you’ve ever struggled with mental health, your smartphone and social media accounts might be contributory factors. G75 Media’s founder Neil Cumins explains in his latest LinkedIn blog post why the cure has increasingly become the condition, suggesting ways to reduce the burden on our overheated minds…
After a strenuous year at the copywriting coalface, G75 Media will be closing its doors tonight. We’ll be returning to action on Thursday January 3rd. In the meantime, have a wonderful Christmas and New Year – and get in touch if you’d like any assistance with copywriting, content production, journalism or web copy…
It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas in the G75 Media office…
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