When she was eight years old, Liz Danzico – future information design consultant and AIGA advisory board member – sat in front of the keyboard of her father’s room-sized Hewlett-Packard, slowly typing child-like commands into the system and watching them print out on its archaic dot-matrix printer.

“This is control,” she realized excitedly. “I can make technology do what I want.”

Years later, Danzico consults major companies on how to make their technology do what they want, but with a matured perspective.

“My [interest in information systems] has evolved so that now I’m studying people, trying to understand how technology meets, or doesn’t meet, the needs they have,” she says.

It’s what she calls control over technology “with a purpose.”

Her left- and right-brain thinking and never-ending awareness of people and objects led her to fall hopelessly in love with information design as a graduate student in Carnegie Mellon’s Professional Writing program, which focuses on technical communication and information design. She had a brief stint writing product manuals for washers and dryers after graduation before packing up for New York City, where she landed a position as an information designer with Razorfish, which proved to be a major stepping stone to her current career as an independent consultant.

Among her major accomplishments, Danzico was recruited by Barnes and Noble to head the interface design of its website and has sat on the boards of both AIGA and the IA Institute, a high honor in the design community.

Finding it difficult to pursue the projects she juggled while keeping a full-time position, she inevitably moved on to an independent consultant career, working from her Brooklyn-based studio where she now creates and shapes her own schedule and projects.

“I never really set out to be an independent consultant,” she says. “But one day, I found that my extracurricular projects started getting in the way of my full-time job.”

As a woman in a male-dominated profession, Danzico says she would be naïve to think gender doesn’t impact her.

“Gender affects me—both positively and negatively,” she says. “It sometimes gives me opportunities I may not have otherwise gotten, and denies me opportunities I should have. But for me personally, the discrepancies have zeroed out at this point, so I think I’m left with a pretty fair result.”

Her advice to young women looking to pursue careers in information design is to turn to both formal and informal resources, since the profession is relatively new and constantly evolving both in and outside of academic arenas.

Among these include studying information design through programs like the School of Visual Art’s (SVA) new MFA in Information Design, for which Danzico is both co-founder and chairperson. She also advises joining online mailing lists that are both educational resources and social networking tools for anyone looking to pursue a career in the field.

Danzico is currently busy reviewing student applications for the SVA’s MFA in Information Design program, consulting clients, and spending time with her dog Lucy.

When asked where she sees herself in 10 years, she throws out neuroscience as a possibility, but with her tendency to evolve it’s hard to be certain.

To learn more about Liz, visit her blog at bobulate.com.

Web owners are possessed by the idea of search engine optimization, believing that as long as their website is chock-full of great keywords that produce a high ranking in Google, their site will produce thousands of conversions. Hence many websites receive thousands of hits but few conversions. That’s because conversions aren’t produced by keywords – they’re produced by great copy.

You know the old saying, ‘You can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make it drink.’ If you’re the owner of a badly written website filled with great keywords, you probably understand the meaning of that age-old adage more than anyone.

If you want to convert visitors into customers, you need to combine good keywords with compelling website copy. Therein lies the secret of getting your stubborn horse to drink that water.

SEO specialists are not copywriters
Some web owners believe web copywriters and SEO specialists are one and the same. Certainly, there are many SEO specialists with backgrounds in computer science and programming who’d like you to think that, though there are a few shinning literary stars among them.

What SEO specialists don’t want you to know is that SEO is easy – writing is not. That’s why many of them are good at SEO but not so good at creating conversions.

To the common not-too-savvy website owner, SEO has the appearance of a great white shark. It looks scary. Heck, it’s a three-letter acronym! But SEO is simple and not necessarily worth the bundles of money web owners pay the specialists they hire.

If your website is hundreds or thousands of pages long, hiring an SEO expert experienced with large-scale websites is worth the investment because you probably don’t have the time or knowledge to do it yourself. If your site is small, however, you can easily figure out the keywords on your own and hire a good copywriter to work the keywords into the copy. Most copywriters can also easily find the keywords for you if you don’t have time to do it yourself.

Good copy matters
Your product is great and you know how much people will benefit from it, but the question is: Do they know how much they will benefit from it? Probably not. You might have what they want, but what you need to give them is the reason why they want it.

Imagine a shiny new corvette without the shiny or the new. It might have a great engine, but people won’t buy it if it doesn’t have a great look to go with it. That’s true even if their primary motivation is to buy a car with a fast engine.

Good keywords without sales-driven copy are no different.

Web users input keywords into search engines to find things they are looking for. They have an idea of what they want based on the keywords they use, but they depend on you to tell them what they really want, though they don’t know that.

Good copywriting convinces website visitors the product they are reading about is the product they want to buy. In many cases, the visitor came to the website not even realizing they wanted to buy a particular product until they saw that eye-catching tagline or product description that lead them directly to your online shopping cart and persuaded them to buy, buy, buy.

Generic SEO copy is self-centered while good copywriting is customer-centered
Consumers are not rationale creatures. They do not buy products based on reason; they are motivated solely by emotion. Good copywriting grabs at the emotions of your website visitors, similar to the way the sleek, shiny body of a Corvette grips at the heart of its owner.

Can you tell which of the following was written by an SEO specialist and which was written by a copywriter?

www.raphaels.com
www.partysavvy.com

Whereas raphaels.com talks all about how great its services are and how it’s the bestest of the bestest bestest, partysavvy.com tells the customer why its services and products can complement his or her needs.

In other words, generic SEO copy is self-centered while copywriting is customer-centered. Good copywriting sells because it’s written from the customer’s point of view.

SEO and good copywriting are both important, however, you must use them together. Hiring a copywriter to write compelling copy that sells your product or service is well worth the investment. Copywriters will often charge a percentage of the profits you earned based on the number of sales conversions their writing produced, whereas many SEO specialists will demand a flat rate based on the number of hits your site received, which may or may not result in any conversions at all.

In short, you can save a lot of money by researching the keywords yourself and hiring a copywriter to convert the hits those keywords generate into sales through well-written, customer-centered, sales-driven copy. The income earned through the investment will speak for itself.

There’s a saying among marketers that a buyer needs a hundred eyes, the seller only one. But as brands multiply and customers become more selective, the seller needs to get smarter.

I’ve helped a number of organizations gain brand recognition in a crowded marketplace. From that experience I can give the following advice.

Tall oaks from acorns grow: Launching a successful PR campaign
Popularity doesn’t come easily, but if you want customers to invest in your product or service, you have to build a credible reputation with the public.

A small startup technology company isn’t likely to be an overnight success by shoveling thousands of dollars into an advertising campaign, nor is a mid-level organization going to overthrow its competition by doing the same. Just as David beat Goliath with a small stone, successful underdogs overcome their adversaries the smart way: by launching a cost-effective public relations (PR) campaign.

Public relations delivers major advantages to growing organizations by building a positive reputation with the public. Unlike advertisements, which cost thousands, a news feature about your organization gives it free and instant credibility with readers. For instance, a small barbecue shack in rural Ohio becomes an overnight sensation when a national magazine hails it as “The Best Ribs in the Midwest,” while investors suddenly pour millions into a recent invention featured in the New York Times as “The Most Innovative Technology since the CPU.” Such is the subtle yet cathartic means through which legends are bought, not with dollars, but with words.

In many ways, public relations isn’t much different from advertising. But because the public knows that an advertisement is a direct attempt to manipulate it into buying your product or service, it’s not likely to respond unless your organization is already well known.

To be effective, a public relations campaign must be continuous and long term. You must know skilled PR professionals with contacts in the media who can pitch stories about your organization to reporters on a weekly to monthly basis. Otherwise, you can have a great deal of difficulty receiving coverage.

A good pitch to the media might be an innovative product your business has just unveiled, an event your organization is sponsoring, or ways your company is contributing to the community and helping to solve a known crisis like global warming. But whatever topic you decide to pitch, it has to be new and different - the perfect ingredients for creating buzz about your organization.

A successful public relations campaign is a great way to pit your business against more popular brands that have a lot to lose from newer, more innovative competitors. But if you happen to be one of the popular goliaths, a public relations campaign won’t be enough to maintain your popularity among customers.

When tall oaks are grown: Maintaining popularity through advertising
While advertising is viewed by customers as a deliberate attempt to persuade them to spend their money, an ad campaign allows you to stay ahead of competitors by creating mainstream awareness about your organization.

Take Coca-Cola, Starbucks, and Amazon, as examples. Despite growing circles of competitors, these companies have consistently remained some of the most popular brands in their industries by building sophisticated advertising campaigns that have convinced consumers their services and products are unrivaled. Often emulated but never equaled, they’ve become industry standards, seeping deeper and deeper into mainstream culture.

Keep in mind that advertising, while costly, has many advantages. Unlike a public relations campaign, which is generally aimed at a broader audience, an ad campaign gives you almost total control over the perceptions of your audience and allows you to direct your message specifically to that audience. Advertising is usually only successful once your popularity has been successfully built through a public relations campaign, as the goal of advertising isn’t to become well known, but to stay well known.

There are several ways to create a cost-effective advertising campaign. Many magazines and newspapers will negotiate standard ad rates for first-time buyers since they’re competing with other publications for your business and want to develop a long-term relationship with you. Also, you can save big on long-term contracts with particular publications because prices go down with frequency. In other words, a one-time ad that costs $3,000 may cost only $2,500 to publish each month in a certain publication of a period of several months. Frequency campaigns are recommended anyway because they are more effective at building public awareness than one-time ads. Also, since the goal of an ad campaign is simply to increase awareness about your organization, product, or service, don’t be disappointed if the first ad campaign you run doesn’t rake in sales. Ad campaigns take time to result in huge profit increases, but, as companies like McDonalds and Nike have seen, the investment is well worth the wait.

When tall oaks multiply: Expanding your organization through branding
By identifying and anticipating the needs and interests of your customers, you can create a brand experience that can be expressed in ways they’ll understand and remember.

Express your brand throughout all aspects of your communications, be it public relations, advertising, or any other outlet. Doing so will provide customers with the feeling they are part of a singular, irreplaceable community.

Take Harley Davidson as an example: a business that has built its entire brand around the concept of non-conformity. The grit-and-leather persona conveyed through its logo on a helmet or jacket is priceless to many a biker. That’s because Harley Davidson isn’t just a motorcycle manufacturer - it’s a unique culture embraced throughout all facets of the organization, which its customers internalize as a part of their own identities. If the company treated its clientele as anything less than fearless road warriors - be they Hell’s Angels or Wall Street executives - it wouldn’t be the most coveted motorcycle dealer on the world’s highways.

An eye-catching logo, memorable tag line, interactive website, or fun store design are just some of the ways your brand can shape customer experience. The important thing to remember is that no matter how you choose to express your brand, it must be done in a way that is consistent throughout all channels of your communications campaign.

The first ingredient: A call to action. Get your reader to act now. While Akinci demonstrates this with the examples he uses, he doesn’t mention it specifically. For example:

Copywriting without a call to action
Mystic soap leaves your skin looking younger and healthier.

Copywriting with a call to action
Use mystic soap for younger, healthier skin. Buy it today!

Technical writing without a call to action
The voltage knob is located under the X panel next to the converter switch. It allows you to increase and decrease voltage by turning the knob clockwise and counterclockwise.

Technical writing with a call to action
To access the voltage knob: Remove the X panel next to the converter switch. Turn the knob clockwise to increase voltage; turn it counterclockwise to decrease voltage.

The second ingredient: Make it memorable. While this is especially the case with copywriting (you want your customers to remember your ad so they keep buying your product), it’s also true of technical writing in that you don’t want your customers to have to keep going back to their product manuals to figure out how to use your device.

Readers are more likely to remember what you write when it’s short and to the point. For instance:

Non-memorable copywriting
Mystic soap is a chemical-free, 100-percent organic soap that will leave your skin looking shiny and new.

Memorable copywriting
Get organically clean, naturally shiny skin with Mystic Soap!

Non-memorable technical writing
Produce maximum voltage by turning the voltage knob clockwise, increasing voltage 10 points for every notch increase. Minimize voltage by turning the voltage knob counter clockwise, decreasing voltage 10 points with every notch decrease.

Memorable technical writing
Increase voltage: turn the voltage knob clockwise one notch for 10 points of more voltage.

Decrease voltage: turn the voltage knob counterclockwise one notch for 10 points less voltage.

Whether you’re writing software documentation or product labels, adding these ingredients to those Akinci discusses will make a perfect recipe for effective writing.

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