Anita Siek is the founder and director of Wordfetti – a human-centered brand strategy copywriting studio in Australia, which is dedicated to helping brands stand out through strategic thinking, consumer psychology, and brilliant words. In this episode, she helps us to further understand the importance of language when it comes to communicating value for your business or brand.

What is the biggest mistake that you see brands make in terms of their content?

The first one that comes to mind is not staying in their own lane. An example is from one of our clients. He emailed us and asked us to create a 100-page ebook because he saw another brand do it. He’s in the financial advisory industry, and he services Millennials.

And I told him we could create that. But that’s probably not how your audience will want to consume that content. Because A) they’re Millennials and B) they’re already overwhelmed by numbers and C) they’re coming to you to outsource that element – they don’t want all the details. If we really want to deliver value to them, we need to meet them in a way that’s going to be how THEY want to consume content.

I told him if we really want our content to be read and serve its purpose, perhaps we could explore doing it by cutting it into daily tips, or something like that’s sent to them through email. So that’s a prime example of looking at what others are doing in the industry, and just wanting to do it too. What many don’t realise at the end of the day, it’s all about what’s gonna work best for our audience. And that’s why it’s so important.

The next mistake is not getting to the core of what our audience wants and taking the time to listen and ask them. You need to get under the skin of who your audience is. I’m talking about the psychological emotions, the intangibles.

What is the importance of words to a brand?

I am a firm believer that each and every single one of us, as business owners, needs to realise that copywriting is such a big skill to learn. It’s not just about your website and marketing material – it’s all the little things like emails, email sequences, onboarding, offboarding, and so much more. Learning the basics is critical for any small business owner.

What’s the difference between good and great copy?

The main difference between good and great copy, using a product-based business as an example, would be the following. Good copy is when you focus on the features and the benefits of that product and don’t get me wrong, I think that’s important.

But great copy is about literally painting an image of how it feels, how it looks, how it smells. What it’s like to literally have it in your hands. That is what great copy versus good copy looks like.

And then for services, so often we focus on the ease of experience and the personalised service. But I personally feel to create great copy for service-based businesses, is firstly about finding the value of all your services. For example, you’ve got 10 years of experience doing XYZ. What’s the value of that? What does that mean for your clients? What does all of your wealth of experience actually mean for your audience? What’s the value?

What are your best tips for creating social media content?

One of my biggest tips for writing really powerful social media posts is that you’ve got to treat it as though you’re writing a headline. Whether it’s Instagram or Facebook, the first sentence or two is so important. If you really want your audience to stop their scroll or pay attention to what you have to say, you have to do it in the first sentence of your social caption, whether it’s an ad or not.

It needs to grab attention, it needs to potentially spark curiosity, it needs to potentially get them being like, holy crap, of course, I want to read more!

So what type of content should businesses or personal brands be gravitating towards?

At the end of the day, it comes down to asking yourself how your audience likes to consume content. So really, ask yourself, how does your audience best consume content. It could be a mixture of short-form video content, like TikTok, or it could be long-form blog articles, or infographics and visuals.

You can listen to the full episode on the player below: