Don’t Forget to Wipe!

You may not have heard of this little mom 'n' pop operation

As a companion piece to our last entry, here is a website I wrote* for Johnston Brothers Custom Imprinted Gun Cloths and Bags, a South Carolina maker of… wait, I knew it a minute ago!

This was a writing gig that was probably more fun than it should have been. First of all, it was 4 hours start to finish – including the client interview – and I received payment in under a week. What’s not to love?

Secondly, I love the client’s entrepreneurial spirit. I am always in awe of that kind of carve-a-niche energy some clients have – because I sometimes (ahem!) find it lacking in myself!  Here is a guy who saw that 90% of the little gun shops in the US do little to no advertising or marketing. They basically count on the fact that they are the only shop in the neighborhood.  So this client makes gun cloths, which every serious shooter must have and use, and personalizes them with the name of the shop and contact info.  That’s about all I can reveal, but the benefits should be obvious.

Anyway, you hear a lot of doom and gloom about small businesses. In order to survive, small business has to get creative. This is exactly the kind of quick, inexpensive yet good-looking website that can do the trick. It’s exciting for me to be involved in this kind of solution. Take that, commies!

*hat-tip to Charleston SC designer Studio 7 Design, and programmer Metatation. Thanks for the gig, fellers!

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Guns and Blammo!

I wrote a print ad appearing in Soldier of Fortune in either June or July.  Won’t my artsy liberal friends in Charleston be thrilled!

Sort of like the Wild West replica ads, brochures and web content I wrote way back (and for the same client) I had to get inside the mind of someone looking to purchase a badass-looking piece like this. Of thinking like a Navy SEAL when in realtity you’ll probably use it to shoot possums by your trash cans.

All I had to go on was the word “Carbine,” which is like a rifle only shorter and less powerful.  Why would you want this and not the other? When you’re closer to the enemy, on the move, need to be ready in an instant to fire. Who might use a carbine? Special forces. And so it went.  I managed to paint the picture of kicking in the door and capping a room full of terrorists, prefaced with the clever “You may never have to…”

Anyway, here it is. BTW, my original headline was SPECIAL FORCES! The client changed it to HOMELAND SECURITY, which is also good. The callback at the end makes no sense now, but who cares? If you’re the guy this ad is intended for, you’re just drooling over the picture of the gun anyway! BLAM!

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Location, Location, Loc…well, you get the idea

Downtown Charleston Homes: Lots of Charm for LOADS of Cheddar!

And now a few thoughts on Real Estate writing – Charleston’s third most popular professional writing topic (behind Old World Charm and Missile Guidance Systems!)

Writing for Real Estate is tricky, especially in a town the size of Charleston SC. Whenever a realtor comes to me, he or she needs writeups on the usual things like Home, About, Services, etc. So far so good. 

But then they want me to write charming descriptions of the part of Charleston SC where they specialize. And, in a town this size, “everywhere” is our specialty!

When I first got to town I had no clue about West Ashley or Mt. Pleasant or Park West…or anywhere. So it was research, research, research. I believe the pieces I wrote were fine, especially considering my lack of knowledge of the area. They did the trick and got the Google hits. I don’t believe, however, that the reader would get the sense that the author had “lived it.”

Time took care of that. Now, all these years later, I know the Charleston SC area pretty darn well. The stuff I write about Isle of Palms or South Windermere actually DO sound like they were written by a local.

Cozy and charming. And in Downtown Charleston, it’s only $575,000!

The final piece of the puzzle was Historic Downtown Charleston. That’s how you’re supposed to say it. Downtown had always been a once-every-few-weeks occurrence for me. Usually a Saturday, and usually to chill on a lawn chair at the Battery or something.

My 8-month stint at Philips changed that. I only worked a 20-hour week, but I was there every day. Working in Ansonborough, lunching on East Bay, vendor meetings in the French Quarter, happy hour on Upper King, and so on. The feel of Downtown started slowly seeping in.

So, when a realtor asked me to write a big SEO-drenched essay on Historic Downtown Charleston, I was ready. Now, I can say “Ansonborough is a charming neighborhood of Charleston Singles and Doubles, refurbished row houses and even modern condos with harbor views” with confidence! I LIVED it, by gar!

Anyway, check out my Historic Downtown Charleston SC Homes article! And a special shout out to Realtor extraordinaire Heather Lord!

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If YOU need compelling copy  – real estate or otherwise – that feels like it’s been lived in, please contact livelyexchange (at) gmail (dot) com!

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Award-winning Copywriter…

An awards logo that's bold, proactive and in your face!

Welcome to Lively Exchange, where our shakes are thick and creamy and our horns are self-tooting!

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Usually, it’s the first thing you learn about me after my name, as in “Michael Lively, comma, award-winning copywriter…”

Why? Because, as a potential client said to me today, “this is a business of perceptions.” I agree, and one perception is that if you don’t have a bunch of awards up on your wall for your copywriting or web design or video production, you are something less than truly successful. I think that’s BS. On the other hand, I have my share of awards.

Which is the long, tortured way of saying that a piece I wrote copy for just got a Bronze Addy from The Charleston SC Advertising Federation. You’ve seen me mention it a couple of times: The Dead Battery Anxiety website for Philips. The wacky videos were recognized in the “Internet Commercials” category. So, kudos to Philips Art Director Kit Hughes, the gang of creative creatives at Slant Media… and me!

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If YOU would like to see what the award-winnin’ is all about, contact LivelyExchange (at) gmail.com!

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Ein bier, bitte!

ImageMatrix Halloween Party, City View Tavern, Cincinnati 1989

For those of you who aren’t Cincinnati Krauts, that means “Beer please!” As I was going to press last time (or whatever) I learned that the long-gestating Kroger Supermarkets beer web page I had written had gone live.

This one was fun. Working with a Cincinnati web marketing firm that I can’t name, I had to dig in to all kinds of beer ephemera to write web copy about beer trivia, food pairings, beer history in America and so on.

As I said previously, I have done a bunch of beer writing for Anheuser Busch, Miller Coors and Kroger – mostly for video. And of course, being some internal merchandising or training video, I almost never get to see the final product. So it’s really fun to see it all come to life. Especially the timeline of Beer in America. So check it out!

And now, I leave you with the words of Norm from Cheers: “Women! Can’t live with ’em, pass me the beer nuts!”

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And if YOU can’t live without compelling copy for web, print, social media or video, Please contact LivelyExchange (at) gmail.com!

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A Busy January, Just How You Like It!

A video production friend of mine (and frequent partner in Las Vegas shenanigans) made the mistake of asking “What are you working on now?” I answered, and thought I would share with you, my Legion of Fan:

• Consumer electronics website, point-of-sale, brochures and trade show materials,
• Real estate website,
• Social media for a consumer testing firm,
• Legal Services website,
• Liquor and spirits press release and article,
• Mental health practitioner website,
• Residential and commercial HVAC website,
• Social media for a home security firm,
• Producing a video for a certain giant healthcare firm, and a
• Financial planning website

…all at different stages of development, of course.

I then asked him, “What are YOU working on?” His reply? Editing “Party Sluts Invade Lake Havasu!!” Which is infinitely cooler than all my stuff combined and multiplied by Pi!

So, how’s YOUR two-thousand-eleventy so far?

Contact livelyexchange (at) gmail.com!

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Getting Back in the Social Media Groove

Re-using old Baby New Years: Part of the "new austerity"

January 2011: New Year, new resolution to blog more consistently, blah blah bling bling blah.

Anyway, so far so good in the new all-freelance era of Freelance Copywriter Charleston SC (see what I did there?) The Philips stuff is less prominent but more satisfying, pound for pound, so there’s that.  The healthcare client is undergoing some personnel changes, but I am confident it will find its equilibrium.  My Charlotte web marketing client is hitting the ground running in 20-oh-11, and apparently they aren’t sick of me yet.  I’m doing a couple of web and print projects for a giant Midwestern grocery chain.  A law firm in Columbia SC needs some web copy. A Charleston realtor needs some blogging, a mental health professional needs web content, and so on. My biggest new project has been cooking along for about 4 months now – social media coordination for a marketing website. Nice steady tentpole gig, Praise Be, though the workload and the success of it is a primary reason for my lack of personal blogging lately. What, you mean I have to log out of THEIR WordPress site and log back in to MINE? That reeks of EFFORT!

So, that’s the update. I actually have several ideas for blog posts upcoming, so consider yourself warned! Talk soon!

Please contact livelyexchange (at) gmail.com

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Dramatic Reveal!

General, in all my years of covering top secret discoveries with sheets, I’ve never dramatically revealed anything as shocking as this! Dun-dun-DUNNN!

As I may have whined earlier, the type of work I have been doing lately has really cut into both my time and my desire to blog.   This is primarily because much of that work has been of the social media genre – blogging, article writing, posting to Digg and Reddit, tweeting, tweeting and more tweeting. And also tweeting.

Additionally, a large part of what I was doing was developmental in nature.  Since early October I have been writing for this pretty cool “everything Charleston” website that covers dining, shopping, history and real estate.  We have been slowly stocking the thing with content – monthly articles, weekly blogs and daily tweets.

Well, I guess we have reached an acceptable minimum level of content, because finally we are ready to dramatically yank away the sheet from our top secret discovery (or something.)  Anyway, it’s called PremiereCharleston.com and…oh, sorry. Let’s back up.

Dun-dun DUNNNN!!  it’s called PremiereCharleston.com and it’s really shaping up. And since it has sapped my will to live blog, I figured I would start excerpting some of my stuff here, starting next week.   Oh, and visit the site, dammit!

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Motivation

I would love to know how other bloggers find the motivation to keep it up. Let me clarify – I don’t mean model train enthusiasts, or movie fans or music aficionados who blog about their particular passions. I mean professional writers like me who also blog. These are people who spend all day researching, brainstorming, writing and rewriting. How do they find topics to write about, let alone find the energy to do the actual writing?

For the millionth-billionth time, I will tell you that I began this blog in order to drum up some Google wonderfulness in this new market of Charleston SC.  I didn’t have any compelling urge to write about copywriting, nor did I think I had anything in particular to say.  What I had was a need for exposure, and time. Lots of time.

So, for the first two months or so I wrote every day. Every day! I can’t imagine. And as I did it, I began to like it. I began to feel the urge to write about copywriting. And I realized I did have something to say. And slowly the blogging, combined with tireless cold calling, led to more and more work. Subsequently, I had less and less time for blogging.

You may say, why not blog about the various projects you work on?  And I do. But again, success is the death of variety. I have been blessed to find regular gigs with the healthcare newsletter, the “everything Charleston” consumer website, and the web marketing agency in Charlotte. They chug along nicely, but I have already told you as much as I can, other than the fact that two of those three gigs also involve blogging!

I don’t have the answer. But I am determined to figure it out. And I would love to hear some suggestions! Oh, and Happy New Year!

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Much Rejoicing in the Land

Finally got the new laptop today. The old one, a Gateway I got in December of ’04, was really showing its age in terms of speed and a weird, green vertical raster line that I KNEW was bad news. I did some research and got a good deal on an HP from OfficeMax.

And here’s the thing about OfficeMax: rather than THANK you for spending $700, they make you feel like CRAP for not spending $750 to get the warranty! “Hey, man…if you drop it on the way out to the car, or get hit by a truck, don’t think you can bring it back!”  Yeah, I’m sure that when I am pinned under a truck, my laptop would be my chief concern!

You suck, OfficeMax! Great price, though!

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