Who I Work With
I work with subject matter experts (SMEs), product owners, UX designers, brand and marketing professionals, lawyers, and developers.
What I Do
My goal is to develop copy that converts well, ranks highly on search engines, and is easy for users to understand and follow. I do this in a number of ways.
Digital Copywriting and SEO
I use plain language principles to ensure that sales or informational copy is clear and easy for customers to understand — because if people don’t know what you’re saying or how you can help them, you risk losing your audience.
In other words, I put myself in the reader’s shoes to figure out what questions they might ask ahead of time, then make sure that what I write answers those questions.
I also keep technical considerations in mind to ensure that online copy is optimized for search, including taking long-tail keywords and voice search trends into account.
Editing
You may think of an editor as just a glorified spellchecker, but that’s a myth. From making sure that copy is reader-friendly, to ensuring that content is consistent across several documents and webpages, to managing feedback from multiple people at once, editing means so much more.
On an average day, I may
- draft sales copy for an upcoming promotion,
- revise a landing page based on feedback from stakeholders,
- research keywords to improve a page’s SEO, and
- update copy destined for a mobile app based on wireframes and mockups from designers.
On projects like these, I ask myself the following questions:
- Does the current order or flow of information make sense?
- Are there certain elements that need to be moved to different locations of the text, expanded, or omitted?
- Is there jargon, and is it appropriate to use in context? If not, is there a simpler alternative?
- Is the language too formal or informal for its target audience?
- Can a sentence be rephrased to avoid awkward constructions like double negatives or the passive voice?
- Are headings, links, and calls to action (CTAs) formatted consistently within a page, and across multiple pages?
These questions go above and beyond issues of grammar, punctuation, and syntax. But even so, I’m an expert at those things too — I’m a Certified Copy Editor through Editors Canada’s certification program, an increasingly-recognized mark of editorial skill.
Content design, tech, and UX
Aside from crafting copy, I also work with developers, accessibility consultants, and UX designers to
- track projects using Agile-friendly tools like JIRA and Confluence,
- tweak copy to see what converts better using A/B testing,
- monitor usability testing sessions and incorporate user feedback into future drafts,
- develop text for user interfaces based on wireframes and mockups,
- track search analytics using tools like Domo and Adobe Analytics, and
- use SEO tools like BrightEdge for keyword research.
Types of Projects
- SEO keyword research and competitive analysis
- Landing page copy
- Online sale and promotional copy
- Support and FAQ copy for customer-facing webpages
- Mobile apps
- Blog posts
- White papers
- Accessibility updates to meet AODA guidelines