It was from RBS and it was ok, the first paragraph a little flabby perhaps. It recognised that as a really important business-type person, I was probably really busy looking at spreadsheets and barking instructions down the phone to my minions. Way too busy to mess around with piddly money, but I was not to worry because the kind people at the bank can do all that for me. For free! For a while, until I’m rich, anyway.

So far, so uninspiring. I’ve had a business account with RBS for years, so I was only interested in the charges really. Slightly bored already, I moved onto my next leaflet.

As I opened the NatWest leaflet, I noticed the chap on the front looked pretty smug. I want to be smug with my choice of bank too! I thought, and hurriedly started to read the first paragraph. Same old spiel about me being a really important business-type person. Hang on. This seems familiar. Next sentence: not to worry, the nice people at the bank can do all that for me… what?

Drawing the two leaflets together I realised they had almost exactly the same copy on them. What’s going on? Do they buy their copy from the same (unoriginal) copywriter? Is one bank owned by the other? (After some research I see that yes, NatWest and RBS are subsidiaries of The Royal Bank of Scotland Group.) But still – can’t they rewrite a leaflet to avoid confusing me?

So now I’m wondering why I would choose one bank over the other. Why don’t they make it clear they are part of the same group and that’s why they can offer me these great deals? Or perhaps change the copy on one of the leaflets to avoid this groundhog day experience?

Take a look through the images to see what I mean:

So how did this group grow to be so big, so good and yet so discreet?

I went along to a talk by the head of Linney Design, Michael Fisher, at Friar Gate Studios on 3 April. Michael gave us an overview of the company with plenty of anecdotes on how he grew the design side of the company from just him and some Letrasets in the 1980s, to one of the UK’s top five design agencies in the country with over 70 employees. Here’s a roundup of his presentation, and what you can learn to help you grow your creative agency:

• Don’t be afraid of technology

• Change and brevity are the biggest drivers

• Understand your customers’ business (better than they do)

• Have a light touch

• Look after the numbers

• Anticipate the trauma

• Invest in your staff

Your clients want you to come up with bright ideas, be challenging and restless. They don’t want the same thing all the time – they need to keep up with the changing world as you do. So keep them on their toes!

A relatively unknown celebrity was voted out of TV show Celebrity Big Brother (boo hoo). In her post-show interview she made some comments about housemate Denise Welch. Denise is much more well known and her behaviour had been a bit bizarre in the house (stripping off and jumping in the jacuzzi with a teenage boy).

So although the comments are being made by one person, it makes sense to show the person they are talking about, because they are better-known to the AOL audience. I knew we had a photo of Denise looking upset, and as this photo directly relates to what Georgia was talking about, I felt it was appropriate to use it.

You’ll also see I’ve used a quote from the interview as the headline, because that’s much more intriguing than the ‘someone says something about someone else’ style.

Because we process images much faster than words, you can really pique users’ interest with a great image and drive those click throughs. Strong images that provoke an emotional reaction work well, as do pictures of well-known celebrities. If your story isn’t about a celebrity, try to at least have a person’s face in the image, as that immediately draws the eye.

Here’s an example of rewriting a two-line headline:

This first attempt is uneven with the top line too short and bottom too long.

The second attempt sees the second line looking much too short.

Finally, the two lines are much more even and feel 'right'.

Sometimes it means that your headline might end up being written in the passive tense, which isn’t always ideal but sometimes you need to compromise!

With our combined experience writing for websites such as the BBC, AOL, Yahoo!, ITV.com, Magic FM, Heat and working on social media campaigns for Coronation Street, Paul Smith, Toshiba and Ted events among others, we feel we have bags of experience and are happy to share it. We offer people our best practice tips gleaned from spending hundreds of hours sweating over headlines, tweets and status updates.

The event today was fully booked within an hour of going live – so there’s plenty of appetite for people looking for how to make the most of Twitter, Facebook and other social networks to promote their content.

The workshops cover:

• How to get Likes on Facebook
• Writing tweets that travel
• Crafting headlines that people will want to share
• Social media dos and don’ts
• Loads of good, bad and plain ugly examples from our experience.

We also include a couple of practical exercises so people can start putting the tips and tricks to use straightaway.

We’re looking to put on more workshops in the coming months, so do get in touch if you’re interested in coming along.

The Sweet Retweets event today is sponsored by Islington-based branding and design agency Handstand Creative, who will be providing some delicious cakes to match our sweet theme. Yum!

Christine can work for you as part of your team when you need content producing for a website. She can meet the client directly or work to a brief supplied by you. If there’s work for more than one person, Christine has a network of reliable copywriters she can call on.

Copy takes time to get right and sometimes it’s hard to know where to start. Christine is experienced in handling all sorts of clients and getting the right information to produce cracking copy, on time and to budget. See Crocstar’s clients, find out about services Crocstar offers or get in touch.

Have a look over the projects we’ve worked on: looking after social media for the launch of Paul Smith’s latest perfume, training content producers, helping charities, writing copy for lots and lots of websites and seeing students graduate.

Read the full birthday blog post.

Champagne for everyone!

Back in 2007 I had an idea. The idea was to rid the internet of rubbish website copy. You know: the drab intros, the flabby sales copy and the tired old clichés. So, early in 2008 I left my job as a BBC broadcast journalist to set out on my mission and today I’m celebrating four years of Crocstar.

Clients love clear copy

I have written my crisp copy for some pretty impressive-looking clients such as Yahoo!, the BBC, AOL and Workmoose (part of the Bauer Media Group). I’ve also written web copy for one-man bands, government department websites, bridal dress designers and wedding planners, the wall of Boots’ flagship store in London, the Wilkinson catalogue, financial news podcast scripts… all projects that needed fuss-free copy to get the point across.

Super students 

I’ve been teaching at the University of Sheffield’s journalism department for a few years. I wanted to show student journalists that they make fantastic writers for the web. And yes, I always hope I can encourage some to follow a career in the online world so they can help me clean up all those long, dusty pages that no one reads.

Persuade me… in 140 characters

Social media really started to take off a couple of years ago and Twitter both amused and baffled us for a while. I realised that my experience writing character-limited headlines was the perfect training for using social media well and getting results. Getting the story across in an appealing way and teasing at the content beyond is exactly what Twitter and Facebook are for. Along with my former Yahoo! colleague Sue Keogh (of Sookio) we set up Sweet Retweets, training people how to write well for social media. We’ve done workshops at Social Media Week London in 2011 and have another planned for next week. We also do tailored training for businesses (interested? Get in touch to ask for more info).

More Crocstars

Last year I took on Jess Elsey – an extremely bright young copywriter who’s a natural on social media. She’s been working with some of Crocstar’s regular clients including Location Estate Agents. Jess writes clear, concise copy and works extremely hard to get the tone just right. She’s brilliant.

Today I’m celebrating four years of Crocstar. Celebrating the projects worked on: looking after social media for the launch of Paul Smith’s latest perfume, training content producers, helping charities, writing copy for lots and lots of websites and seeing my students graduate. Most of all, I’m celebrating ridding the world of rubbish web copy, one page at a time.

By telling the reader how everybody else is behaving, it makes them want to conform. This idea is known as social proof and it can be more persuasive than simply asking someone to do something.

Do you think the sign would be as strong if it read:

Please shower before entering the pool

It’s shorter, but it’s very plain and formulaic.

By including some detail (the areas are hygienic because of the showering) we understand that everybody is taking a personal responsibility for the group’s benefit.

The “(Don’t you!)” is a little bit cheeky (exclamation mark rather than question mark – which could feel too accusatory), it singles the reader out and makes them consider their own behaviour and it ends the message on a light note.

Using social proof is a great way to let people know how you want them to behave, without sounding too bossy about it.