Do you get a look of surprise or pity when you say that you are travelling somewhere solo? You are going on your own because you have no friends?
We probably all look at someone eating on their own in a restaurant. Eating is a social activity. We break bread together. So when we see someone eating on their own we can’t help but wonder. What is their story?
And yet solo travellers would not have it any other way. We value the freedom too much, the freedom to do what we want, when we want, where we want and if we have to leave the who we want behind, then so be it.
I came across another reason for travelling solo on a recent jaunt to Lyon.
I had planned the trip as an exploration into rail travel. Travelling by rail uses about 90% less carbon than flying, and of course I would like to reduce my carbon footprint. What responsible traveller does not?
But was I prepared to pay the price in longer travel times and a more expensive ticket?
The train was a little more expensive, but most budget flights charge for cases, which is not the case on the train, so there was not a great deal of difference. Time wise, the convenience of stations being in the centre of cities reduced travelling time considerably. The overall journey was 6 hours, and I must admit I was flagging a bit by the 5thhour. However, once you have taken the decision to go by train, so many more destinations are opened up to you.
But enough digression. On to Lyon!
The modern part of Lyon into which the train draws is fairly unremarkable, grey buildings on a grey, almost raining day. Once you are out of the station, the city has a French feel, wide streets, bustling…even in covid times… but without being too busy or crowded. It is once you start getting close to the first River, the Rhone, that you begin to see why you have travelled here.
Most great European cities are based around the river that brought them trade. Lyon is remarkable in that it has two great rivers, the Rhone and Saone. As you reach the Rhone and see the colourful old part of the city on the hill on the other side, you begin to see the beauty and magic of this city.
The hill on the other side is steep, and although there is apparently a funicular to take you up, I didn’t see it. And those steps didn’t look too bad. If you are thinking of training Rocky-style, come to Lyon. Those steps are a killer!
I had come up here to see the Roman amphitheatre and museum in the heart of Roman Lugdunum. The amphitheatres are impressive, for there are two. One for plays and one for poetry. The museum on the other hand from the outside looks quite mundane. Until you go inside. It is huge, well spaced out over several floors going down. Lyon was a centre for mosaics. It still boasts a world renowned mosaic training school. The mosaics they have on display are well preserved, beautiful, and help us to understand why the skill is still practiced today.
But what really blew me away was an exhibition they had entitled “Enquete de Pouvoir.” It is a study of the pursuit of power when the succession of a leader is interrupted by sudden death. The two examples they take are the vacuum caused by the death of Julius Caesar and secondly the struggle at the end of the year of the Five Emperors, AD197 between Severus and Albinus. It is particularly apt because Severus’ victory at the Battle of Lugdunum gave him control of the Empire.
What struck me were the modern parallels of how ordinary people were sucked into the ego and ambition of those people who wish to lead. It would have made little difference to the people of Lugdunum, those mosaic makers, the people trading along the Rhone, whether they were ruled by Severus or Albinus, but they paid a heavy price for backing the loser, as did the people of Lugdunum. Is it really any different now when we consider the egos of a Boris Johnson, a Vladimir Putin, or really most other leaders? The quest for power is always paid for in someone else’s blood.
Coming out of the museum and turning back to look at it, you then realise that the museum is in fact hewn out of the hill. It is impressive and one of the best museums dedicated to the Roman empire that I have come across.
But now it’s time to walk back down the killer steps. At the bottom is the area known as the Traboules, a series of secret passageways. They were used by the silk weavers of the past to get down to the river, and by resistance fighters during the German occupation to evade capture. Atmospheric, but still part of an active city, doorways leading to homes.
My feet were aching after a morning of going up and down steps, so I stopped at a local café for a coffee. While waiting to be served, I was having a browse on my phone when I came across a quote from writer Virginia Woolf which seemed really apt to me.
“I hope that you will possess yourselves of enough money to travel and to idle, to contemplate the future and the past of the world, to dream over books and loiter at street corners and let the line of thought dip deep into the stream.”
And I thought to myself, “Isn’t that why we travel solo? To have the time to think, to read, to browse and loiter. I can sit back and watch the people wandering by outside the café, the young lovers with not a care in the world, the middle aged man walking very fast… perhaps late getting back to work from lunch, the old couple with their elderly dog. We can watch the world go by, our world, and think “is this it?”
We can ponder on the pursuit of power, or on how we are ravaging the environment on which we depend for life, inequality or great compassion.
And then perhaps instead of contemplating the future and the past of the world, we can narrow our focus to our own future and past. What do we want from the world, and from ourselves?
While we are away, we are disconnected from our normal life, from the usual distractions, and that means we can think with more clarity about what really connects us to our purpose. We can allow our curiosity to roam, to explore the things that are important to us. Can I learn anything about myself from watching these Lyonnais, how they live, they love, they die?
There is an inscription on a Roman sarcophagus which reads
“Make the most of life. Where you were, I was, and where I am, you’ll be.”
A great epitaph which really resonates with mem and one which prompts me to ask myself “Am I making the most of life?”
Travelling alone gives you the time to think, and to dip into that stream of thought.
Effective copywriting can be as difficult or as straightforward as you choose to make it. The aim is to persuade the reader to take an action. Persuade the reader to take an action.
To persuade, to lead the reader on a journey to the point where they take the desired action, normally to buy from us.
The reader, not everyone, not a reader, but the reader. We are writing for just one person. We know that person, we understand them, what motivates them, what will persuade them that they want to take the action that we want them to take.
To take an action, there is a purpose to what we are writing. We want our reader to do something, so we give him or her the reasons why he or she must.
I adopt three principles to ensure that my copywriting is effective.
1. Keep it simple
2. Keep it honest
3. Keep it relevant
Simple
Our readers have a very short attention span. If we do not give them immediately what they want, they have moved on elsewhere before we can blink an eye. We have a little more time than that to engage our reader. Research shows we have between 6 and 10 seconds to hook our reader in before they click back and onto the next website.
So our impact has to be instant. “This is the answer to your question, dear Reader.” If the reader is left guessing at what we mean, they won’t.
I aim to get across your message as simply as possible. This is where it is so important to know who your reader is going to be. Let me give you an example: have a look at a blog/news page on a lawyer’s website. Is it written in language for their potential client or for their peers? Your potential customer/client has come to you for answers. If you “blind them with science” will they be impressed with the breadth of your knowledge or your beautiful writing style? Or bored? LIkewise if you are writing as a legal expert to an audience of lawyers, writing in simplified terms may not be the right approach.
Honest
Tired of exaggerated claims on a website? Broken or unfulfilled promises? So am I. So are we all. It is now said that honesty in our copy is the new way of standing out and being original, and we have to stand out.
Honesty can be a dangerous commodity. You may remember the jeweler Gerard Ratner describing one of his sherry decanters as being “total crap” (his words) when asked how he could sell it so cheaply.
A tie seller described his ties as “good enough… for 25 cents.” Does honesty like that help? Perhaps not, although it is unquestionably true. Our customers do not want to be insulted.
But claiming your sherry decanter is the epitome of style and gracious living when it clearly is not is only going to lead to disappointed customers, particularly in an online marketplace where the customer is relying on pictures and words to buy the product or service. We may get the sale, but at what cost in this era of reviews and keyboard warriors?
Let’s find the positives and undersell the negatives. But by including the negatives, it gives less room for our online critics to damage us.
Relevant
If your customer does not want to read what you have written, they won’t. We come back to knowing our customers. What are the questions that they want answering when they come to our website or when they read our email or visit our social media? If it is relevant to them, they will read it, and if we cannot show them within a few seconds why they should read it, they will move on.
Establishing what is relevant and what is not takes time to research. But that time is well spent. Not only does it inform us what we should be writing about, it tells us what we can write about. By giving the customer what they want, we establish ourselves as the authority or the expert on the issue that concerns them. We position ourselves as the person that they want to do business with.
There should be a strategy or gameplan behind our copy and content. We are persuading our reader to take an action, and not simply writing for the sake of it, or to improve our Google ranking though SEO, or because everyone tells us that we should be blogging because everyone does.
The Action
I am writing this post because I want to show you the approach that I take to writing. If my approach resonates with you and you would like me to write for your business, please contact me via my website http://www.travellingcopywriter.com
You will also find out why I am known as the travelling copywriter, the writer who persuades your readers to become your customers. That is the ultimate goal of effective copywriting.
After the first lockdown period of 2020, I decided to launch Local Writer as partial rebrand of my business. Local Writer is my copywriting and content marketing website, specialising in writing for businesses which target local customers.
Of course, there is deliberately some ambiguity in the term “local.” What does “local” mean in a global marketplace. I was expecting my first client to be local to me in Hackney as that was where I was pitching my services. But the first enquiry that came in through the door was in fact from New York. The second was from Bromley.
I studied hard during the lockdown period, taking a direct response copywriting course and an email mastery course from Digital Marketing Lab, the business run by Ryan Deiss, and a copywriting course from the Blackford Centre. I also read extensively, covering material from David Ogilvy, the “godfather of advertising”, Andy Maslen, James Newell and many others. I also subscribed to several blogs on blogs, including pro blogger and copy blogger.
All good stuff, but at the end of the day, the best way to learn is to learn by doing, which is one of the reasons for writing this blog post today. I also want to provide a link to www.localwriter.co.uk for SEO purposes.
But why take up copywriting? I was struggling to make time for my travel business, so surely it makes no sense to start yet another business?
Travel has had a terrible 2020, with pretty much all travel being cancelled. At the time of writing this post, it looked unlikely that much travel would be opened up much before the spring, if not much later. I could not face another year without income.
My Linked In posts generally get good engagement and many people, including copywriters have commented on how well they are written. I am developing a bit of a reputation as a story teller, so I decided to place my writing on a more formal basis.
Writing in Marrakech
Of course, copywriting is a very different discipline, focusing much more on persuasiveness. I have had to work hard to discipline myself when writing copy to pare everything down and to concentrate on the benefits to the reader rather than writing style and personality.
The image for Local Writer comes from a picture I took in Berlin, being of some street graffiti or art and the words, “You can run, but you can’t write,” which seemed like a good slogan for my writing business. I want to write for my clients’ business so that they can concentrate on running their businesses. It is not easy writing consistently for a business and even harder writing for your own business.
I have set myself a difficult target with Local Writer. The Blackford course suggests that it should be possible to earn £500 during the first three months. It will be interesting to see how they recommend that is achieved. I want to be hitting £1000 a month after three months. If I start making that sort of money, I will put some of it towards the purchase of a Leica Q2. It is expensive, perhaps a completely unnecessary purchase, but I want to set something tangible as a goal. It has a fixed 28mm lens, which is a lens I hardly ever use. I do have a 28 mm with my Nikon and I will start to use it.
I went into 2020 with great hope and expectations. I still have great hope and expectations, but my direction has changed a lot. I have a great deal of work to do to get ready for 2021, and I need to start earning quickly.
I have an interesting and challenging six months ahead!
One of my favourite Photography Meet Up Groups is London Photographer’s School run by Zara Matthews. A format that she frequently chooses is to base the workshop on the work of a well known photographer and to give us a few exercises to complete in that style.
This format gives us a sense of the history of photography as well as the opportunity to broaden our skills. Of course one drawback will be immediately apparent. Well known photographers have had a lifetime to hone their craft, and to build their portfolio of work. We have three sessions of about 40 minutes to emulate examples of their style. Sometimes we do not quite get to that elevated level, but the thought process of seeing and and doing is invaluable
Street Photography in the style of Cartier Bresson was a particularly challenging series of exercises. Cartier Bresson was the master of what he called the decisive moment, waiting for that perfect moment to click the shutter, and Cartier Bresson could wait for hours for that decisive moment to come to him. We only had 30 minutes or so.
First Exercise
Our first exercise in Street Photography in the style of Cartier Bresson was to focus on staircases and the action that occurs on them. Staircases provide diagonal lines, and are usually framed between to horizontal lines. Occasionally those lines can be curved if we have a curved stair cases, but in either case the stairs will often provide a framing mechanism and a backdrop. We can shoot at the bottom, looking up. We can frame our shots at the top, looking down, or we can be at some point on the staircase looking up or down.
We took two staircases as our “model”, a set inside Somerset House and the stairs on the adjacent Waterloo Bridge. Cartier Bresson invariably used a 50mm lens for his work. I decided to use my Lensbaby Velvet 56, shooting at an aperture of F8 or F5.6. The Lensbaby is perhaps not the best for Street Photography because it is a manual focus lens, and if you are looking for a decisive moment, you do not want to be trying to focus and time your shot perfectly. However, the subject on most of these shots would be distant, so I could leave the focussing on maximum distance and concentrate on composition.
The shots inside Somerset House were less successful as I had spent too much time at Waterloo Bridge, and there was not enough time to wait for people to interact with the staircase. Instead I had to satisfy myself with a shot of the detail of the staircase.
Second Exercise
The second exercise involved us moving up towards Covent Garden to take images of people interacting with each other. For this exercise I did switch to my standard Nikon 1.4 50mm lens with autofocus. Time would be of the essence, and I would be at varying distances. Couples did not seem particularly amorous this afternoon, perhaps because it was cold, or perhaps just because everyone was rushing about. I was pleased with the shot of the two Chinese girls and dog in the gallery below. I just missed the embrace of the couple with the child, and goodness only knows what the girl facing the man was saying.
While I was reviewing these shots (in camera), the saying of Robert Capa came to mind, “If your pictures aren’t good enough, you are’t close enough.” This saying is of course interpreted in various ways, and it does not mean that you need to get right into the face of your subject. It can be important to the composition of the picture to show the context, and that may mean stepping back a little. For example, the picture of the boy photographing the seagull needs to have the seagull in the picture. I took the shot excluding the rubbish bag the seagull was trying to tear open to get as close as I could, but perhaps I should have been further back, and I definitely should have stopped down.
It is always difficult being in the right place at the right time. Very often the best strategy is to just wait for the scene to come to you rather than going out looking for something that might develop. For example, and taking as an example, Cartier Bresson’s famous photo of a man jumping over a puddle. That shot was not taken through chance, but through patience. Seeing something that has potential and then waiting to see what happens. I sometimes stand on a street corner and just wait, sometimes taking photos of people as they get closer and closer to me. Of course I am left with a lot of photos that are completely devoid of interest, but, that is the beauty of digital photography, just hit the delete button. It also enables me to check on my focus, particularly where the subjects are moving, and also on the background. Is it interesting? Would a slight shift in angle provide a different background?
Third Exercise
The third exercise in our Street Photography in the style of Cartier Bresson was also the one that I found most difficult. Cartier Bresson frequently took as a theme windows, either people looking inside windows at displays inside, or at the people inside, or indeed from inside a shop, looking out.
In terms of technique, shooting through a window into the people inside can be difficult. If it is dark inside, reflections on the glass really obscure what you are shooting. You might get a double exposure effect if you are lucky, but the reflections will make it difficult to capture what you are trying to shoot. Brightly lit interiors such as hairdressers make a good subject with plenty of action inside.
But bizarrely I found it difficult to shoot, pointing my camera at people inside a shop. Bizarre, because I have no problem doing it in the street. It should be more easier shooting someone who is having their hair styled. They can hardly get up and chase after you.
But like all challenges, it is just a question of meeting that challenge, going out and doing it. So my next challenge will be to shoot some people in brightly lit shops and cafes.
Lead generation through Linked In is an essential part of the features of the media, but one that is frequently misunderstood. Linked In was originally a tool to recruit employees or employees to find employment. It is still is, but the platform has developed in many ways and is now as important as Facebook or Instagram for lead generation, or perhaps even more so. It is regarded as the “social media for business”, but remains misunderstood.
As a business consultant in Hackney, my advice to most businesses is to treat the platform as a form of networking, and to adopt the same principles as physical networking. If you follow a well thought out strategy it is perfectly possible to generate leads through Linked In.
Turn Up
As with physical networking, you have to turn up on the platform. it sounds obvious, but it is a step that is neglected by a great many businesses.
Turning up means more than just being there. Just as you can go to a networking meeting and sit there quietly, waiting for people to come to you, so too can you sign up to Linked In, and wait for people to connect with you. Connect they willl, but it is to benefit them, not you. You can boost their number of connections.
If you take (actual) networking seriously, you will probably take care with your appearance when you attend a meeting for the first time when you do not know anyone there. You may wear smarter than usual clothes. Hopefully, you will arrive on time and you will have an idea of how you want to present yourself.
Turning up on Linked In should be treated in exactly the same way. You will have a properly set up profile, with a good quality headshot and background profile. It is your first impression to a visitor and first impressions count, both off line and online.
Are you the sort of person who attends a networking meeting and doles out as many business cards as possible, but speaks to only a few? Generally speaking, it is not an effective networking strategy.
Effective Networking means
building relationships
Contributing to your network
Attending meetings regularly.
Effective Linked In networking means
building relationships
Commenting on the posts of others
posting regularly and consistently.
Should you attend a networking meeting and try to sell your goods and services to the room? I mean, you are attending the meeting for business not just a good breakfast. So why would you not be there, selling?
The image gives a visible representation of what networking is all about. You are not selling to the room, you are selling to the connections of the people in the room.
Linked In operates in the same way. You attend, by posting, by connecting, commenting on the posts of others, liking and sharing.
Commenting, liking and sharing is part of the “contributing to your network. If one of your connections posts, a like, comment or share tells the Linked In Algorithm that this is a popular post that should be shared to more people. The more engagement, the more people will see it.
Consistency
Networking Groups like BNI, Biscotti, Your Business Community (YBC) emphasise the importance of Consistency. You cannot turn up once and expect a business tap to be turned on. Relationships have to be nurtured by gradually building knowledge and trust in your brand. In Linked In networking, this translates into posting regularly. And just as importantly as posting regularly is ensuring that you are posting content that your audience wants to read.
So it is important to resist the temptation to post offers and sales. Lead generation through Linked In is based upon building your brand as something that people can get to know, like and trust.
As you will have seen from this website, I sell holidays. It should be an easy sale: everyone goes on holiday. But it is not, because the vast majority of people going on holiday will book online rather than pay a little more for advice and service from a travel agent.
I therefore use Linked In to portray myself as an expert on travel and to educate my readers on the advantages of using a travel agent. I do not post offers. I want people to enage with my posts by commenting on them, liking and sharing them, and it is difficult for people to comment on an offer which might not be relevant to them. The more people who engage with my posts, the more people will see them. Their connections will see that they have commented on, or liked my post, and then hopefully will read the post.
People do not want to be sold to, whether on social media or at a networking group, so my strategy is to present myself as someone who can help them when they need help or advice.
SO IN CONCLUSION……
TURN UP
Make sure that your profile on Linked In is fully completed and is interesting.
Post regularly and consistently, providing value and interest. Develop your brand and thought leadership rather than trying to sell.
ENGAGE
Engage with your readers and followers by liking and posting interesting and relevant comments. The purpose behind this is that everyone who reads your comments thinks “Hey, this person is interesting, let’s find out more about him/her, and start to read your profile.
FOLLOW UP
There is no point in going to a networking appointment and not following up with the connections you make. Geography may make it difficult to move that online connection to an offline meeting, so keep i touch through messaging. Find out how you can help your connections.
I started my walk along the canal with this shot from the bridge to the Marshes, looking back at the Millfields power station you can just see in the background. This view has not changed at all in the 30 or so years that I have lived in Hackney. Perhaps the boats are in slightly better condition but essentially this could have been taken at any time and nothing really has changed.
My next shot was taken with the lens thrown quite wide open at F2, and I have to say that I do like the dreamy effect the lens gives at this aperture. The building in the centre background is a modern block of flats which replaced an old, iconic view of Hackney, the Matchbox toy factory.
The architecture of the new block is impressive in its way, and stands in contrast to many of the new, faceless blocks that are going up in Hackney Wick.
Moving briskly on, we get to the next bridge, which is significant for me because of its stairs. You may see stairs and passages feature heavily in my photography as I like the sense of movement that they portray. I tried converting this into black and white, but the part of the frame which shows the canal appeared too flat in monochrome, and a little colour brought it to life. What do you think?
The next stage of the walk really sums up the changes in Hackney now. The old give way to the new, but the old hangs on in the form of grafitti and street art. The canal branches to the right towards Victoria Park and straigth ahead lies the new Olympic Stadium, now home to West Ham football club. New of course means dating back to 2012, so hardly new. The picture below represents the old Hackney, small estates with parking, while the new will be much bigger apartment blocks. Often one of the planning conditions imposed on the granting of planning permission is a prohibition against new owners having their own cars. Instead owners are encouraged to use car sharing clubs.
The graffitti or street art really kicks in from here, particularly on bridges which offer a wide canvas
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