I was recently advised by our SEO agency to look at our website content and change it from being so ‘me me me’ in the copy. In horror I looked at the homepage and lo and behold – despite always trying to write things from the other point of view, there it was. ‘We’ was all over the page – big fail.
As I quickly set about rectifying this mistake, it made me realise how easy it was to fall into the trap of communicating about ourselves instead of speaking to our audience in their voice. I may start out using the customer voice but after days of meetings talking about ‘us’ and how we’re going to be doing this with a product and that with a campaign, it can be a quick trip down to ‘Me’sville.
It was good to get the jolt, I’m now refocused with my copywriting and have reset back to thinking about who I’m talking to again.
So in that light – here are some tips that YOU can take away from this mistake:
- Even if you think you’re writing for the audience, that may not be the case
- Ask your team or even better someone unrelated to your company to read through important copy and give it a ‘me me me’ rating
- Before you start writing, list out objectives – not yours but your audience’s – what are they looking to get out of visiting your site, reading your email, downloading your report?
- Try to use your company name instead of ‘we’ and only when you can add a ‘you’ in the same sentence
- At a minimum the number of ‘you’s on a page should outweigh the number of ‘we’s
- Pass this advice onto anyone who copy writes for your business and prevent them from making the same mistakes
Marketers can’t get away with putting themselves first anymore, our readers are too savvy and even the likes of Google will take into account self-wording when ranking sites for SEO.
You’ll connect much better with your audience when you write things from their point of view. It’s just more genuine and better at building relationships. Good luck.
