Should tech startup sites be easy to read?
I’ve been attending meetings of the Lean Startup Circle since I arrived in Santa Barbara a few months ago, meeting entrepreneurs and looking at their sites. Being “easy to read” is not in the Top 10 of their wish lists. I’ve worked for sixty tech outfits, so I’ve seen the marketing trends in a lot […]
I’ve worked on marketing projects for these technology companies as a freelancer/contractor:
Abex Aerospace Hydraulic control systems Actian Big Data Analytics Akiet Downhole composite tubulars American Institutes for Research Courtroom presentations Anxiety and Panic Disorders Clinic of Santa Barbara Aplin, Uno & Chibana Apple Computer product guides Aracor Digital radiographic and computed tomography systems Austin Kerr Marcoccia Collateral for NEC’s Comdex Show C3Nano Transparent Conductive Films CAT […]
Technical copywriting
I’m a technical copywriter–an adbiz guy, not a technical writer. My job is to learn your strengths and innovations and make a straightforward explanation in plain English. Technical writers create instruction manuals and specifications and technical reference documents. That’s not me. Technical writing is aimed at people who have already bought the product. The intent […]
After 25 years in Silicon Valley,
I have returned to Santa Barbara
I started out as a writer/editor at Santa Barbara Magazine in its earliest days. Now I write text for websites and brochures and ads the same way I wrote articles: as an informational conversation with a human reader. A copywriter assembles all the information about your company and refines it to bring the most important parts […]
If you want people to read it, make it easy to read.
Most people seem to think “readability” is a foo-foo add-on, or catering to imbeciles. We’re too serious to worry about readability, see. Or, this ain’t school, we aren’t chained by your archaic “rules of grammar” that were made by old white men before there was even an internet. As a freelance copywriter, I’m always looking […]
Santa Barbara Web Design Professionals
It’s been a couple of months since I moved to Santa Barbara and I’ve been contacting the local web designers to offer my copywriting services. I’ve identified 79 local web design shops. You can see my full list here.
The kind of copywriting I’m bringing to Santa Barbara
In a previous era of my career, my freelance copywriting assignments came from ad agencies and graphic design shops. Now, they’ve been replaced by web-design shops. I’ve been searching the websites of local web shops, hundreds of them, and I see that few of them mention copywriting, and even fewer list a copywriter on staff. […]
I’ve moved back to Santa Barbara
My writing career began here long ago–I was on the masthead as Associate Editor for Issue #3 of Santa Barbara Magazine. I spent a couple years writing Dodge commercials for BBDO Detroit, then returned to Santa Barbara as a freelance copywriter in the 1980s. Then I left town to go to the Bay Area for […]
What’s the first thing about your company that you want people to know?
Some companies have never articulated what it is they are offering. They have no elevator pitch. Their site assures us they are the best and that they deliver optimal solutions. They proclaim that they are different from the other guys. They assume you have at the forefront of your mind every known fact about the other […]
What a copywriter adds when you’re advertising your technology.
Graphics folks and coders are typically indifferent to the substance of the text they are manipulating. They are highly focused on the look and the functioning of your site. They accept whatever text their technology clients provide. I recently looked at the websites of a couple hundred web design shops on California’s Central Coast. Virtually […]