Q&A with Jamie Thomson (Brand New Copy)

Can you tell us about your business? What is a work day in your life like?

Well, I have two websites – one is an educational services website called The Tutor Website and the other, Brand New Copy is a copywriting website, offering my services as a freelance copywriter.

A typical working day is pretty hectic because I still have a day job. After my 9-5, I come home and start working on my websites. At the moment, my focus is on Brand New Copy and my goal is to make the transition to full time copywriter by the end of the year! I normally spend my evenings writing website copy for digital agencies and b2b companies as well as catching up with any new registrations on The Tutor Website’s directory.

Are you blogging as part of your business? If so, what part does your blog play in developing the narrative of your brand?

Yes, blogging is a huge part of my business – without it, I’d never be found in search engines. Particularly for Brand New Copy, my blog reflects my brand as it’s one of the first pages people visit when looking at my site. My blog is the page that gives my website personality and gives readers the chance to get to know my voice better. 

You appear to have lots going on with your two websites and blogs; do you have any tips on managing your time? How do you manage it?

It’s tricky J especially since I’m still working during the day. I think the trick is to be really organised and schedule your tasks realistically. I’ve learned not to make things difficult for myself in terms of timescales – something that might only take a day to complete often ends up taking me three nights because I’m only part-time at the moment. In terms of producing the goods for clients, I try to under promise and over-deliver, that way things never get too stressful.

You run the website ‘Brand New Copy’ Can you describe what a copy writer is and how it can help bloggers?

A copywriter is someone who writes for the web with the aim of getting people to do something. It normally involves selling products, promoting services or engaging with a brand. Copywriting can also involve writing articles, blog posts, video scripts, press releases, website landing pages, eBooks and white papers to name a few.

Copywriting itself can help bloggers gain more readership, increase website visitors and fulfil calls to action more successfully. Copywriters often focus on writing engaging headlines, which can really make all the difference to the success of a blog seeing as only 20% of people read past the headline on a blog post.

I notice on your blog you have written about SEO - a dreaded term for a lot of bloggers. Are there any simple tips you can give us to promote our blogs?

To start with, I’d suggest having a think about what keywords you want to target for a particular page. For example, if you’re a fashion blogger, you might want to home in on specific keywords relating to a topic you’re covering like ‘British fashion trends’, ‘fashion trends Britain’ etc. Once you’ve chosen your keywords, you want to work them into your blog post somewhere so they’ll show up in search engines.

Be careful though, search engines hate keyword stuffing so make sure that your post has a keyword density of around 2 – 4%. There are lots of free tools online you can use to check an article’s keyword density. If you’re blogging using WordPress, I’d also suggest installing the ‘All in One SEO Pack’ plugin, which gives you control over your website’s meta description.

Do you have any tips or insights to share with our bloggers setting up their own business (or dreaming to do so!)

Not that I’m an expert by any stretch of the imagination, but I’d say taking the time to plan is always good advice and discussing your ideas with other people can really help you gauge whether you have a good business model or not. Also consider how much time you’ll be spending on your new project – inevitably, things will go wrong at some point and it can be difficult to plan for mistakes but if you’re prepared to work hard at it, there’s no reason your business can’t be a success. I’d also suggest reading as many articles as you can about starting a business as some of them are really inspirational and can help remind you why you want to be your own boss.

Twitter: @BrandNewCopy⎮@TheTutorWebsite