The South Yorkshire-led, pan-European project is all about getting young volunteers to share their IT knowledge with the whole community, and to develop new mentoring skills in the process.

The copy I provided was for a special newsletter about the project’s trip to Malta – the newsletter format being a great way to make a very long report more accessible.

Download the PDF here.

When it comes to web page headings, I’ve always been a fan of good old sentence case myself. And for lots of good reasons.

In case you aren’t familiar with the terms, sentence case is where you capitalise only the first letter and all proper nouns (such as the names of companies and people). Just like an ordinary sentence, basically.

Title case is where you capitalise the first letter and all nouns, verbs, pronouns, adjectives, adverbs and subordinating conjunctions (because, if, that etc.). Little words like ‘and’ and ‘the’ aren’t capitalised, although different style guides offer varying rules on this.

(The AP Stylebook and Economist Style Guide are useful books if you’re interested in these rules.)

I like to use sentence case in headings because it’s easy to read. It doesn’t lead to confusion over what’s a name and what isn’t.

Take this example heading from a news story on Pitchfork, for example:

“Odd Future Side Project the Internet Announce Debut Album Details”

Pitchfork use title case for all of their music news story headings. But if you’d never heard of hiphop collective Odd Future, would you be able to decipher the meaning easily? I think not.

Now let’s put it in sentence case:

“Odd Future side project The Internet announce debut album details”

See what I mean?

The other reason I like sentence case is that to me, it comes across as more ‘natural’ than title case. Less self-important. It talks to readers, instead of shouting at them. Title case , on the other hand, is only one step away from all caps. It’s Too Loud.

And why do you need to be loud? Your heading is already in bigger, bolder and differently coloured type, isn’t it?

Which brings me to the one and only valid use of title case: when your heading is the same size as your body text, title case helps it to stand out. Good work, title case. Now go back to your cupboard.

If anyone can provide a decent defence of title case, feel free to share it in the comments below. Otherwise, give sentence case a try. It might even help you stand out from the crowd.

By current standards the body copy is too wordy and technical. There’s hardly anything about the games themselves or what makes them fun.

It is however one of the very first video game ads. And it reminds me of the Nintendo Wii.

Look at the headline for a start. The Maganvox Odyssey, which was arguably the world’s first home video game console, was “a total play and learning system for all ages”.

A bit like the world conquering Wii, which offers “Great times with family and friends. Get-off-the-couch fun whether you’re 5 or 95.”

Odyssey also came with “six printed circuit game cards” – one of which let you recreate “the excitement of Wimbledon… in your own living room”. Sound familiar?

The language of video games

Photo: Martin Goldberg

So there’s no controller or joypad. Odyssey came with two ‘player controls’ that allowed you to “move your player vertically, horizontally and even apply ‘English’”. (I’ve no idea what this last part means.)

The system itself is not a console but a ‘master control unit’.

There are no graphics either – quite literally in this case. Odyssey used card overlays you placed on your TV screen instead.

So if the copy is awkward, there’s a good reason why. This was one of the first attempts at selling video games to a mass market family audience.

Odyssey’s marketing could only ever have been a careful stab in the dark at how videogame companies should talk to their customers.

And yet with 300,000 units sold between 1972 and 1974, the original Magnavox Odyssey blazed an impressive trail. One which every other games console since – including Wii – has followed.

Those rising bubbles on the site are cool, you should see them.

Yes, it’s time for another guest Think Tank article.

This month I offer some tips on how to write web copy that appeals to the demanding couch potato in all of us – because we are getting lazier. I know I am anyway, at least when it comes to buying things online.

So please go on and read “5 ways your web copy can satisfy lazy people (that’s most of us)”. And don’t forget to leave a comment if you enjoyed it – I love reading them.

TBT are a performance improvement and event management agency who currently deliver services to three of the world’s top five brands – a dream client, in other words.

The project went pretty well too, with TBT’s Operations Manager Lucy Bartram saying:

“The copy was perfect and exactly what we were looking for.

“Our previous websites just haven’t quite summed us up as a company, or provided the right image for us. We asked for copy that would give the reader enough information about us, yet leave them with the need to know more resulting in them having to contact us. It’s been a huge success.

“However, our main aim was to ensure that we came across as being experts in our field without sounding arrogant and this is where Neil well and truly hit the nail on the head.

“Neil and the service he provided were professional and efficient. He quickly grasped the concept of our business and understood what we do as a company.”

Design of the banners and website came from Midsomer Norton-based superstars Burfield Creative. The other five banners can be seen below.

Read the rest of the new TBT website, one of the chief purposes of which was to re-brand the company formerly known as ‘Top Banana Team’, at www.TBTLtd.com.

Top o' the Google to you

So to celebrate, here are five SEO web copywriting tips for reaching No. 1 in organic search.

1. Set the right goal. I went after ‘copywriter sheffield’ just because I like the idea of being #1 in my town. But I also used Keyword Tool to find popular, relevant search terms (like ‘press release writer’ and ‘annual report writer’) and targeted them successfully. You can do the same.

2. Longer isn’t better. More content on the page equals better results, correct? Incorrect. Don’t go over 300 words unless you genuinely have a lot to say. Excessively long copy will bore most customers and won’t impress search engines either.

3. Don’t shoehorn too many keywords into your copy. Two or three instances of each keyword per page is a good guide to follow. Any more and you’ll find it difficult to write naturally – and it will be obvious to everyone, including Google, that you’re up to something.

4. Optimise microcopy and HTML tags, too. ‘Web copy’ isn’t limited to what your customers read on the page. You can also promote keywords in title tags, image names and alt text, button text, description meta tags, page footers and lots of other places. It worked for me.

5. Blog strategically. I don’t have time to blog every day, or even every week. Instead I choose topics that are related to the services and search terms I want to promote, and I try to post something once a fortnight. Every post is a new source of traffic for my site. Regular new content keeps search engine robots coming back. And hopefully, my readers find something useful when they get here.

And remember – always prioritise high quality content over excessive ‘optimisation’ of your website. Because although good SEO can bring you more traffic, customers only click Buy if they like what they read on the page.

Did these methods work for you? Or is your own experience of SEO web copy completely different? Share your thoughts below in the comments.

A local businessman asked me recently how long his press release should be. After reading a guide to press release writing online, he was under the impression that it should be no more than a page in length.

(I’ve no idea what silly guide he’d been reading.)

Here are four tips I would have given him if I wasn’t so mean:

1. Let the story dictate the length of your press release. Yes you should keep it concise, but don’t worry about going over a page. If your news is complex – a science story backed by interesting research findings, for example – then dumbing it down won’t do you any favours.

2. Don’t waffle to fill a page. There’s simply no point. News editors appreciate a sharp and snappy story as much as you do.

3. Imagine you are an editor who just received your release. Or in other words, try to think objectively about its content. Would you find the story newsworthy? Which details are most interesting and relevant? Foreground those key points and cut parts that have no real value.

4. Keep your story in focus by using editors’ notes. Sometimes you’ll need to provide a lot of background information in your press release, so that editors have the full picture. Instead of allowing all this detail to overwhelm your actual news, just include it at the end under the sub-heading ‘Editors’ notes’.

The interesting question to me is this: Why should a press release be “kept to one page or roughly 400-500 words”? I can’t think of a single reason besides habit or tradition.

So make your press release stand out – focus on offering newsworthy content (as most successful organisations do) and let size take care of itself.