Most marketing material, from your website to your adverts, will feature a written element. This text is called copy, and its essential to communicating your brand as a DJ and a business to your customers. But how can you make your copy more compelling?

While design is undoubtedly an important part of how you brand yourself as a mobile DJ, the way you communicate with your customers through the written word is equally essential. You could have the best-looking website in the world but if the text doesnt tell people what you do, why you love doing it and how you can help them, its essentially useless. What you say and how you say it will often determine whether a potential customer is converted into a customer.

In marketing terms, we refer to any text used in advertisement as copy. But this really applies to any text that is fulfilling the purpose of marketing you and your DJ business brand the text on your website, your business card, the flyers you leave out at gigs and even the posts you make to your Facebook page or business Twitter account.

Recap: What is a brand?

A brand is the emotional connection between company and consumer; between DJ and dancer, if you like. Its through branding that companies communicate their beliefs and values to their customers; its how the customer comes to perceive a company in a certain way.

Recap: What is brand identity?

So, if a brand is the emotional connection between you and your customers, then brand identity is how this connection is represented physically. Its what a company looks like in the public eye. Just like we, as humans, have a unique identity made up of characteristics and physical features, as well as personal choices such as the clothes we wear, companies build up their identity through their use of logos, fonts, imagery, colour and language. A strong brand identity carefully considers all of these design elements and ensures that they are replicated in a consistent form across all brand materials, both on and offline.

THE BASICS?

The attitude of some people towards copy (or content) is one of oh, thatll do but in reality it takes hardly any time to make sure your copy is legible, informative and free from mistakes. You dont need to be a grammar nerd to get this stuff right; just take a few minutes to check over your writing, make some sensible changes and youll be well on your way. Here are a few basics to bear in mind before we take a look at some ways to better communicate your brand:

Be your own spin doctor

Something we can all do is change negative words for positive ones. To use a simplistic example, a DJ may add to his website the words I never fail to turn up to a gig. While the overall point is positive, the words never and fail have negative connotations. Changing it slightly I always honour my commitments gives us two positive words always and honour in place of the negative ones. Swapping such words will give your writing more impact, give your brand a more positive tone and make you sound more professional. We all know what words are good and what words are bad; these sorts of changes can be spotted just by scanning your website content or marketing copy.

Avoid jargon

It isnt just negative words you need to avoid. As tempting as it may be, its no good using DJ jargon to communicate with your (potential) customers. To them, it just sounds like an incoherent jumble of words, letters and numbers that mean nothing and will turn them off booking you. They probably dont care about your latest wireless-DMX moving heads, or what size woofer your new speakers have. Talk the language of your customers, not in technical terms. Sell them the impact your equipment can create. Sell them emotions. Sell them your personality. But dont sell them your setup, because they wont buy.

A crazy little thing called spellchecker

Spelling is something else that can be easily corrected to make your copy more professional. It may only be the odd word, but it only takes one typo or spelling mistake to throw off your reader. After all, if you dont even take care over your spelling how can customers trust you with their events?

Microsoft Word features an effective spell-checker, so there really is no excuse; just paste your writing into a Word doc (or, better still, compose your writing in there in the first place) and anything underlined in red is cause for concern and likely to need changing. Of course, this excludes things like brand/company names and other variations which may cause the program to question your spelling. You should also be aware that spellchecks wont pick up on words that are spelt correctly but used incorrectly! Too and to are a sneaky pair, while there, their and theyre can also escape your spellchecks and proofreads if you arent careful. Finally, make sure that your spellchecker is set to English (United Kingdom) as our American cousins spell a number of words differently.

Final checks

Once youve checked over your writing for negative words, typos and spelling mistakes, its worth asking someone you trust to read over the text. Four eyes are better than two, after all; they may spot something you missed or be able to advise you on what works and what doesnt. You could even fork out for a professional proof-reader, who will guarantee an accurate and professional job. Likewise, if all this copywriting business seems like too much, professionals are out there to help.