Let’s deal with one myth first. Copywriters don’t just write copy. Admittedly, that’s the bulk of their daily routine, but copywriting is far more than just stringing a coherent sentence together.

Copywriting is a complex, multi-layered process of combining SEO (Search Engine Optimisation), marketing, strategy development, social media, advertising and good quality writing into snappy, informative and engaging content. Content that will grab the attention of both human visitors and the search engine ‘bots’ and give your website the exposure it needs. But if you want your copywriter to do all that and more, you need to give them an overview of the bigger picture.

• Briefing your copywriter

A brief doesn’t just consist of ‘give me 300 words on how great we are’. To be able to deliver effective, worthwhile copy, a writer needs to see the whole picture, and to know how you want your copy to fit into your overall business strategy. So for a really effective brief, you should be telling your copywriter:

• Your strategy – give them a general overview of how you plan to market your company online. Who are your major competitors, why are they doing better business than you and how you intend to compete are all vital components that help a copywriter plan their content.

• Your current audience – tell them about your current marketplace. What kind of image do you want to present – high end or cheap and cheerful?

• Your target audience –the primary function of web content is to bring in new customers. So who makes up your preferred ‘demographic’? Do you want to bring a particular section of the public to your business or do you want to build on an existing market?

• What you like – giving your copywriter examples of websites you like helps them to understand the ‘tone’ that you are trying to achieve. Whether that’s a light-hearted, chatty and informal style or a more business-like, direct approach, an understanding of what you like and don’t like will ensure that rewrites are kept to a minimum.

• Social media – a new market

Social media is booming. In 2006, it was estimated that there were over 50 million blogs, with two new blogs being created every second of every day. However, before you write off blogging as a pointless exercise of trying to be heard above the noise, many of those blogs are never updated, are completely irrelevant and vanish into obscurity after a short while. But effective blogging has become recognised as an important business tool that can demonstrate your expertise on a particular subject and, if people start linking to your blog, even boost your Google page ranking. Good, well written and informative blogs that demonstrate a sound understanding of a subject can be a powerful business tool and can introduce you to a new marketplace.

The same goes for Twitter. Limited to 140 characters, your tweets need to be punchy, to the point and ideally link to a more detailed blog or your website. But with a projected 24 million users per month for 2010, that’s a lot of potential customers. Many businesses who have taken the plunge and admit to using Twitter as part of their business marketing strategy have reported that website traffic has increased as a result.

Social media has to be part of your overall strategy for an online marketing campaign – it is simply too big a marketplace to ignore. By talking to your copywriter (who is almost guaranteed to have a Twitter, Facebook and Blog account of their own), you can find out how social networking and the vast social media arena could benefit you.

• Content, content, content…

In the bad old days, content consisted of text stuffed with keywords, some decidedly shady methods of boosting page rankings on Google by using ‘black hat’ techniques such as hidden text, and poorly written content designed to do nothing other than push the page up the Google listings. Things have changed dramatically over the past couple of years, and now content that is relevant, fresh and unique is what counts. Not only does it grab the attention of your human visitors, but the search engines now place far greater emphasis on quality rather than quantity. Again, you can thank social media for that. Without its influence, we would still be wading through list after list of irrelevant sites, badly constructed copy and links that lead nowhere.

Copywriters thrive on challenge. But to work effectively, they need your input, your guidance and your help to see the bigger picture. Writing 300 words on ‘how great we are’ is do-able, but if you want those 300 words to reach the right audience and convert into sales, you need to give your copywriter a bit of a road-map. The results could send your online business profile through the roof.