Blog: Wordsmithery
News and views from me, Charlie Hobson, about all things Wordsmithy-related.
From copywriting and comms trends to grammar pedantry, things I’ve learned from our latest client projects to inspiring people and resources, I’ll share it here in my fairly frequent, shortish blog posts. I hope they help you get to know me better.
Email subject lines: a copywriting conundrum
Five or six of the hardest words One of my most challenging copywriting tasks is coming up with email subject lines. Getting cracking on the content itself is no problem for me. But it can take as much time as a whole article draft to pick a catchy little phrase that...
Digital newsletters: the new rules are tougher
I last wrote about newsletters two years ago and was already apologising for them feeling like old hat. But still they keep on coming. Businesses use email newsletters to reach out to customers and prospects because it's an easy way to put information in front of them...
Working collectively: freedom to flourish
Last week marked the launch of an exciting new venture for freelancers like me. The Difference Collective opened its doors to support clients in the healthcare sector with projects and extra resources. And I’m delighted to be a part of it. So have I gone over to the...
Home for Christmas?
Reading the Crisis at Christmas website as I made the Wordsmithy's Christmas donation, one statistic jumped out at me. The average age a homeless person dies is 47. Homelessness is a complex topic and there's lots of debate about how to define and number the homeless...
Iterative copy drafting: tearing a straw man apart
When you need to get something down on a web page or on paper, it's hard to know where to begin. As a professional writer, I'm not immune to that problem! It's easy to become paralysed with the fear of not getting it right first time, or worse, of getting it very...
Thinking out loud – keep it to yourself
A great coaching and development session today left me with as much food for thought as my client. Looking at someone else's communication habits and challenges always helps me refresh my own approach and remember how useful tools and techniques are. For example,...
Putting a price on words: the true value of verbal identity for business
BT has saved £6m by rewriting its call centre scripts, with the help of copy experts at agency The Writer. I was delighted to read Marketing Week's excellent feature headlining on the substantial tangible value that has been calculated by BT's Head of Brand Language,...
Paper beats digital for browsing
I had an interesting conversation the other day about why the print press continues to be popular, despite the proliferation of online feeds and sites. Whatever my favourites (in my case, Red magazine, The Times and the Metro) do to enhance their user interface and...
Better get a newsletter…
Social media is where it’s at with customer communication and relationship-building these days, right? Blogs, vlogs, tweets and instagram and all the rest of the trending social gang are hogging the marketing comms limelight, for sure. But the word is that...