Business Interview: Lesley Morrissey

Jul 7th 2011

In this business interview, we talk to small business owner Lesley Morrissey, owner of copywriting and readability company Lesleywriter.com. We caught up with Lesley about writing for the web, her past and future projects, as well as her five top tips for someone looking to get started in the industry…

Hi Lesley. Could you provide us with a bit of background about what it is you do and how you first got started?
That’s a long story! I’ve always written and was a freelance feature writer when I lived in Dubai (1980-1997). I volunteered to do the Institute of Management branch newsletter and ended up with a contract with Ford Motor Company at the end of 1999 doing their internal newsletters. This grew to other commercial copywriting and I’ve learned more and more about how people read as well as what they read.

What inspired you to start Web Copy That People Read, and how has it grown over time?
Originally this blog was a stand alone blog, but has recently been integrated into the Lesleywriter.com website. I started it as I like writing and my idea was to give people as much helpful information as possible. This is particularly important as there is so little information about readability – it’s a bit of a black art!

What have been some of your favourite projects that you’ve worked on?
Every project is interesting – I’ve had to learn about everything from electrical contracting to couture gowns, fire safety to flower arranging!

I’ve edited a few non-fiction books and really enjoy that, but it’s more of a sideline than the core business.

I like working with a team of professionals so working alongside Lara Rankoff of Reflect Design and Paul Edwards of Datastore Computing on the Morestan Services [project] was great – I project managed and provided the copy.

Last year I worked with one of my long standing clients on developing the content for a level 3 training programme in Fire Risk Assessment for the Chartered Institute of Environmental Health – a big challenge and lots of revamping and restructuring went on while we were writing.

We notice that you’ve got a very healthy presence on Twitter, LinkedIn and a whole host of other social networks. What do you use these channels for professionally, and how effective are they?
Social media isn’t going away and I’ve built my business on networking, online and offline. I worked for Ecademy, running their support and best practice teams for three years, so I know my way around a bit.

If you engage with people and get into conversations they remember you. The advent of Twitter has created a whole different way of communicating and if you’re not making a noise you might as well not be there. My take on ‘making a noise’ is to share my knowledge in the form of tips and talk to people who are interesting.

I don’t reinvent the wheel – I use Hootsuite to feed Twitter, Facebook, Facebook Pages and Ping. Then I use Ping to distribute to other social networks I’m on. It also gives me a link back to my website from each profile (which Google likes).

What would be your five top tips to someone who wants to start writing for the web?
I’m writing a comprehensive training programme for professional writers who want to write commercial copy, so I really need to give you a good answer to this one!

1. Understand your client’s potential customers – it’s more important that you know what they want than that you have a detailed knowledge of your client’s business.
2. Ask good questions when you’re taking the brief!
3. Write compelling headlines that are reader-focused on every page so you get the reader engaged.
4. Stay focused and don’t ramble. Write short paragraphs and short sentences – one idea per paragraph; one thought per sentence.
5. Don’t forget to ask the reader to take action. If you don’t ask, you don’t get!

How has the current state of the economic climate in the world over the past few years affected you and your work, if at all?
It doesn’t seem to have affected me at all. What did affect me was when I stopped networking – business dropped off dramatically. As soon as I realised what the problem was and got back into the networking scene business thrived – and continues to do so.

What would you say are the biggest challenges in your industry at present?
For my particular business it’s finding writers who really understand commercial copywriting. There are many writers, but few who are really focused on the reader. Good English isn’t enough to write commercially.

As always there will be people who think ‘I can write’ and end up with copy on their websites and brochures that doesn’t work. If people are struggling financially it’s a big temptation to cut costs by writing their own copy. However, marketing material that doesn’t work is a false economy!

In a similar vein, what would you say are the hot topics of the industry at this moment?
I don’t know about ‘hot topics’, but the constant seems to be writing ‘for the search engines’. There’s a lot of rubbish talked about what search engines do and don’t rate. The SEO experts I work alongside (Google University graduates) always say ‘don’t sacrifice the copy in favour of the key words’. Search engines are fairly sophisticated these days and understand grammar and syntax – they’re looking for relevant copy not lots of key words.

The other topic is one I mentioned before – social media. So many people claim it doesn’t work, but when asked it turns out that they don’t use it much and don’t have any specific goals for what they want it to do! It really needs integrating into any organisation’s marketing plan.

In your opinion, what more could be done to help small/medium businesses thrive in the UK?
I think that, if people are entrepreneurial enough to go into business for themselves, they will find a way to flourish. There have been various government provisions to help small businesses – like Business Link, the Learning Skills Council, Train to Gain and many more funding opportunities. People still don’t take advantage of these at the level they could. The phrase ‘you can lead a horse to water …’ springs to mind!

This may make me cynical, but I really do believe that if you want something badly enough you will find a way to get it. The problem is not with not enough help, it’s not enough motivation.

Are you attending or speaking at any business events or conferences this year? Do you find that networking events are helpful to those who operate small businesses?
I’m a strong advocate of networking and, whilst I have spoken in the past, I don’t pursue conference gigs. I do many short presentations at networking events and have several lined up over the next few months. I’m a very active member of 4Networking.

What’s the best piece of business advice you’ve ever been given, and by whom?
More of a quote than specific business advice:

“Whatever the mind can conceive and believe, it can achieve.” Attributed to Napoleon Hill.

What’s in the pipeline during the next year (and beyond) for you?
When I’ve finished development of the writing course I plan to license it and also to create it as an online product.

I’ve also got a social media programme that will cover a year to load onto a membership site on the starting blocks.

My plan (although it’s a bit behind schedule, currently) is to have more writers and editors trained to my standards and working through my brand – so I can sit down and write a novel – a completely different skill!

You can engage with Lesley Morrissey through her Facebook profile, Twitter profile (@lesleywriter) and LinkedIn profile. You can also engage with Executive Offices Group on Twitter (@ExecOffices).

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