Play Word Association with Your Brand

If you’re writing content for a brand new website and are scratching around, trying to come up with a unique, original voice for the copy, this post might just help.

Recently, I had my first experience of writing copy for a website I-COM is designing for a new business venture – no previous site, a clean record. This is an exciting and challenging prospect, I’m sure you can imagine. As a copywriter, I was being entrusted with the client’s image, and being asked to come up with a unique voice for the firm, helping it stand out amongst its competitors in the home ware industry.

The copy itself is still a work in progress, but along the way I found that a particular technique really aided my understanding of the brand’s core values, as well as proving an excellent reference resource during the writing process.

Give Your Brand a Word Family

Once you have a brief description of the business, for instance:

Small firm trading in wall and floor tiles, bespoke fireplaces and other interior and exterior building materials.

You can start to build up a word family. By this, I mean a collection of adjectives and descriptive phrases that convey what the business is all about (or at least what you want it to sound like it’s all about). For example, I want the business above to appear authentic, trustworthy and so on, so here’s the word family I’ve come up with:

Bespoke, Earthenware, Down to Earth, Genuine, Clear, Traditional, Rich, Craft, Crafts, Art, Generous, Clean, Solid, Stoneware, Granite, Classic, Craftsmanship, Hand Carved, Hand Made

It’s really a basic take on the spider diagram or brainstorm, and could easily be arranged in that manner. The important thing is that you have a resource that has the power, not only to provide you with a descriptive phrase or word at a difficult moment, but also to remind you what your brand is all about.

By limiting yourself to a specific number of words for your family, and ensuring that they are used throughout the website, you should be able to give your copy a clarity of purpose and uniformity of voice that would be very difficult to achieve otherwise.

It’s Not All about Keywords

In SEO Copywriting, keywords can often be seen to dominate the copy, but just because you’re writing for the web doesn’t mean you can sacrifice readability and brand image in the quest for good placements on SERPs.

In many ways, the words that define your brand are just as important, if not more so, than the keywords you choose. Good brand definition makes you memorable, and the tone of your copy is a key factor in achieving that definition.