Be a Better Writer Blog

It's Spring Cleaning Time for your Copy

It's been a hard winter over most of the United States this year, and that means one thing now that March is here: It's Spring!

Traditionally, Spring is the time to start all over. We fling open our windows, turn and air out our mattresses and bag up tons and tons of stuff we don't need any more to take to the local Goodwill or Salvation Army.  After all, one person's trash is another person's treasure, right?

While doing all that spring cleaning in your house is a great way to get rid of the winter months and all those items that are collecting dust in the corners, have you ever thought about doing some spring cleaning work with your marketing efforts?
 
We all tend to hoard and save when it comes to our content. Do you know that all that clutter might be hurting you in the long run?

It might just be time to revisit some of that copywriting you've done in the past and see if you can freshen it up a bit, now that it's spring.  If you're a person who really makes an effort with your writing, you must be aware of what articles you've written that have been successful. You know, the ones that you got a lot of comment on or that maybe even brought you an award. The ones that still get your name high up on the Google rankings.

Now take a look at that article. Is it stale or is the information outdated?   If the information is so old that it's making your efforts look outdated, why not clean it up? Open it up and take a good, objective look at it, and freshen it up. 

You don't have to do that with all of your content - after all, it's important to stay original when you're chasing SEO rankings. However, you can really give your efforts a boost by freshening your older information.

And while you're freshening up your copy, why not add some new elements to whatever new content you're creating? Artwork, video or even a well-placed interview will really go a long way toward attracting readers to your content.
 
Now, let's look at your social media networking. If you're like most people, you've friended people on Facebook who you didn't really know, and you have way too many followers on Twitter.  Problem is, those Facebook "friends" with whom you bonded over Farmville may not be helping your social media marketing efforts, particularly if they're posting offensive content that might come back and embarrass you.

Since you don't know these people anyway, it may be time to do some spring cleaning by way of unfriending those hangers-on.
 
The same thing goes with Twitter. It's rewarding to click on and see that you or your business have hundreds of followers, but are these people really helping you through mentions and retweets? Or are many of them just spammers, online to try to sell people like you software and content you'll never need?

It may not be as gratifying when you start deleting followers from your Twitter list, but if they're just followers who are making your Twitter site look like a playground for spammers, spring clean them right off your site.  You'll never miss them, and you could even attract new followers who won't be repulsed by the content they see on your Twitter feed. If you court unique, interesting followers, other ones will come along behind them.

And unlike the stuff you cleaned out of your closets at home, you won't need to bag up anything and take it out of your house. You'll just be cleaning up some of the problem areas with your content. Since spring means rebirth, there's no better time than now to give your efforts new life!