Here’s another instalment of our ‘Day In The Life’ feature. We asked Amy Loudon, Content & Copywriting Coordinator for the WhiteLabelDating.com Partner Team, to share her working day with us…
My working day pretty much starts like any other. After a quick glance over Twitter for all the latest news, gossip and everything in-between, of course, I open up my inbox and check my emails. Among the usual emails, I can always spot a success story straight away. You see, every day I am charged with the important job of sending out a follow up email to members who have cancelled their subscription with our customer care team, due to having had success on the site. I send out a personalised email to each member congratulating them on their success and asking if they would be happy to share their story with us.
I head straight for this email and start having a read. The success story in my inbox today is a particularly nice one, with an equally lovely picture to match, and it has come from one of our mature sites. It’s so nice to hear how a simple wink or initial message can blossom into a relationship and great that they are not only happy to share their story with us, but also their plans for the future. I arrange for gift vouchers to be sent out to the happy couple and forward the testimonial on to the respective partner, so they can get the testimonial up on the site.
Myself and Lauren, one of the partner managers, decide that as this success story is so nice, it would be great to send it out as a newsletter to the site’s database. This is a great way to demonstrate the success that can be had with online dating, builds trust in the service, and enhance the relationship with existing members. We liaise with the Comms team to arrange a date to get this sent out and I set about working on some copy to accompany it. Job done!
Next, I refer to my trusty ‘to do’ list to see what’s on the agenda for today. Blogs, blogs, and more blogs. We encourage all partners to set up blogs on their sites as they are great for boosting SEO ranking, generating Media and PR interest, and most importantly great for giving a business a personality, which in turn helps to engage users. My job involves writing monthly blogs, so for me, every day is a different niche or brand. I could go from writing for a cuddly niche one day, to writing for a mature site the next. Now, being neither of the aforementioned, the challenge for me lies in tapping into the target audience, understanding their view point and writing effective content, that they can connect with.
Today it’s a monthly blog for one of our single parent niche sites. I try and work a month ahead of myself so I’m coming up with ideas for a blog that will be sent out at the end of August. I start by considering what will be going on around this time and therefore what would be relevant to a single parent. As the school holidays will be in full swing, I decide on writing something that incorporates the kids being off school with dating (if that’s possible). Right, fingers to keypad, I write a blog on great ways to introduce your partner to your children, with ideas for fun activities to do and good places to go. For this I really have to put my feet in the shoes of a single parent who is on the dating scene and constantly ask myself ‘would this appeal to me’. I have to be careful to use the right tone, correct language and appropriate subject matter at all times.
I can hear Lauren on the phone to one of her partners and she’s mentioning my name quite a lot. Now, call it a sixth sense if you will, but I can feel some ad-hoc work coming my way. I grab my pen and paper and get ready to start taking notes as soon as she’s off the phone. She wants me to put together some copy for one of her partners who runs a single parent niche site, to generate more interest around their Facebook profile page. Luckily I’m already in the single parent frame of mind so no need to switch characters. I’m putting together a basic and a full version of the newsletter so that it makes sense to members on differing levels of membership.
Writing for a newsletter is completely different to writing a blog. People are likely to engage with a blog they’ve stumbled across themselves and as a result spend time reading it. However, when writing content for direct, or email marketing, where you are actively communicating a message, you have to cater for scanners not readers. You need to avoid bombarding your audience with shed loads of text that they will have to wade through and instead, provide entry points. Headlines, subheadings and bullet points work great in a newsletter, as do clear, concise sentences with short blocks of copy.
By the time I’ve finished the content for the newsletter and sent it over to the Comms team for scheduling, the clock has hit 5.30 and I’m all out of words for the day. Well, except for ‘see you in the morning!’