Emma Siemasko is the founder of Stories By Emma. She is a copywriter who specializes in content marketing strategy and building brand voice.
Ever since she was a child, Emma has always seen herself as a writer, she studied writing in college and after graduation found herself in a number of marketing copywriting positions, most prominently in those related to technology. Four years ago, Stories By Emma was founded.
Ghost Writing for Busy Tech Execs
Through Stories by Emma, she has worked with growing tech companies that are looking to invest in and scale up their marketing efforts. The bulk of her work is done with non-traditional and unique consumer tech, software, and B2B companies in Silicon Valley.
Emma considers part of her job to be “extracting value out of subject matter experts,” acknowledging that high ranking professionals have the ideas, but they don’t have the time to write them down and build content around them. Emma helps translate their thoughts and ideas and assists in strategically distributing them to their target audiences.
Why Copy Is Important
In the digital age, copy touches everything you do. So remember, people have short attention spans—it’s important that your copy is effectively catching and keeping your audience’s attention. What is considered “good” copy can vary depending on what kind of copy you are writing. For example, good writing for case studies is different than good web copy.
“Any way you promote yourself is essentially copy.”
Non-Negotiables For Good Digital Marketing Copy:
- Make sure you have a defined goal. For web copy, this goal may be to convert leads. If this is the case, you would want your writing to be concise, persuasive, and actionable. For a case study, it may be a longer sales process, and you will need to offer proof. Understand your goal (and why that is your goal) and make sure that you and your client are on the same page about what that goal is.
- Know your target audience. Effective copy for one audience may be totally useless for another. Know your audience and double down on what channels are working; whether it be a blog, website, referrals, or social.
- Invest in your website. You may need to hire someone to assist you with this. Your website does not need to be excessively fancy, in fact, simplicity and accessibility can be helpful in maintaining your audience’s attention.
- Make investments in your writing skills. Even if it is just for emails, taking time to improve your writing skills will be beneficial—no matter how advanced you may find your skills to be. Tools such as Grammarly and Hemingway can have a huge impact on your copy.
Effective Case Studies
Case studies provide proof for your potential customers from your current and past customers. They allow your audience to see what it is you have to offer and are crucial for generating new leads—and ultimately follow-through.
“Good writing for a case study is a little bit different than good writing for web copy, but what it all comes down to is making sure that the writing—especially for business—is always aligned with a goal.”
Non-Negotiables For Good Case Study Copy:
- Demonstrate the transformation. Case studies provide proof and illustrate your product or service in action, as well as the results of such actions.
- Customers are looking for a mirror. Seeing other customers who have been through similar situations can help potential customers begin to imagine what benefit they may gain from working with you. For example, a customer doesn’t have time to create a certain kind of copy. In your case study, they see that another customer also had this problem and that your services were able to help.
- Highlight what you have to offer. What are your customer’s pain points? How can you alleviate these problems? Customer testimonies within the study can demonstrate that your services solved their problems. You saved them time, money, or visibly helped them grow their business.
- Be deliberate with the questions you’re asking. Start broad and narrow in from there.
- Be conscious of everyone’s time. A 30 to 40-minute phone call should suffice.
- Record your interviews. Your full attention should be on who you are speaking with, not on jotting down notes. A recording will also provide a reliable source to look back to for accurate quotations.
- Shut up. While many hosts may find it awkward to stay silent, it is important to let the customer talk in order to get all of their points across in the short amount of time that may have been allotted for the interview.
Emma’s Advice:
Look at the way you use words and copy in your business. How are you communicating? Emails, blogs, proposals, etc… Are these avenues as optimized as possible? How can you improve?
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