Pet Peeve: The Forbes.com Interstitial

Kvetching about the petty annoyances of modern life is a tradition at The Hired Pens. With that in mind, let’s shine the spotlight on the website of the global media brand Forbes. Suppose you’re starting a business and need to write a business plan. You Google “how to write a business plan” and review the […]

Case Study: Writing Website Copy for Newfire Partners

Outsourced software development gets a bad rap in many circles, and justifiably so. A big part of the problem is those firms that underpay their talent and don’t care enough about the quality of the code they crank out. Stephen S. Hau, a long-time technology executive and entrepreneur, believes there’s a better way to do […]

Case Study: Refreshing the SynDevRx Website

You could say the same thing about a lot of professions, but I’ll say it anyway: As a copywriter, the most challenging projects are often the most rewarding ones. Yes, it’s satisfying when you nail a tagline or marketing email without breaking a sweat. On the other end of the spectrum are those projects that […]

10 Tips for Creating Effective Landing Pages

Landing pages are a useful tool for getting prospects to do things like subscribe to your e-newsletter, download your white paper or buy your widget. Do you know how to create landing pages that get the job done? Our friends at Copyblogger define a landing page as “any page on a website where traffic is sent specifically […]

Web Writing for Healthcare: Our Guide to Doing It Right

You can find countless articles online about best practices for Web writing. But what about Web writing for healthcare institutions in particular? Not so much. I’d like to fill that gap. But first, a clarification: This article covers consumer-facing copy about clinical service lines and programs that lives on a hospital’s website. Now that we’re […]

The Second Question to Ask When Writing for the Web

Any good writer knows the first question to ask when creating marketing materials: Who’s your audience? Everything you do flows from the answer. When writing for the Web in particular, what’s the second question to ask? I’d advocate for this: What action do you ultimately want site visitors to take? Let’s look at two examples […]

How to Turn Off 75% of Your Readers in an Instant

“It’s possible to blow away three-quarters of our readers simply by choosing the wrong type.” So says Colin Wheildon, author of Type & Layout: Are You Communicating or Just Making Pretty Shapes, in an article by John Wood. That’s a lot of people to lose right out of the gate. Think about what that represents […]