Monday, 5 May 2008
Just as a follow up to my last post, after I’d went on and on about how you should write copy for SEO a few people came back to me and said “But I can’t write at all? What’ll I Do? Should I Give Up on Affiliate Marketing If SEO Copy Is So Important?”
There Is Another Way…
For the last week I’ve been getting Duncan to help me out with copy. He has never been able to express himself in the written format as he has some quite serious issues with managing to get it all to “make sense” on paper. However, Duncan is a very articulate person in terms of being able to discuss things verbally. Given that I’m currently completely stacked out with mountains of copy waiting to be written, and don’t need much in terms of the technical work and graphics Dunc usually does for me, we decided something had to be done!
We’d heard mixed reports about speaking software (the stuff that writes down what you say), but decided… “what the hell, we’ll give it a go!”
So We Took The Plunge And…
We tried Dragon Naturally Speaking - And although it’s far from perfect (I was going to do a tally of how many times Duncan has said the word “F*ck” as a result of trying to train it to understand him but totally lost count!). It has given him the ability to come up with articles that are nicely structured and only need a small amount of editing to remove a small number of “funnies” that the software seems to put in there.
It has gotten better all the time mind you, so we’re expecting that he will get quicker and quicker using it as the software “gets used” to the way he speaks.
Phew…
It’s a huge relief to have him contributing in this way as the need for content surrounding every new brand and merchant was becoming a bit of a bottleneck in our operation, despite us having the help of one or two people with some copy. It’s one of the reasons I’m not able to blog as much at the moment, and I’m really, really missing writing in this blog as it helps me wind down in the evenings. Hopefully Dunc’s new role as a copywriter will help me get back to posting more often.
The Verdict - It’s Worth A Go If You’re Having Bother…
All in all, I have to say if you can talk about something but you have bother writing about it, you can probably use this software as a way to create your own copy. At £110, it’s not cheap but then you’d use that amount for 2 or 3 articles from a copywriter.
We bought our copy from Amazon.co.uk for £110 which was £40 off the RRP (nb, that’s not an affiliate link!)
Duncan Says….
That he feels the system resources the product description says you require are actually underestimated. This software is quite resource heavy and we had to upgrade the RAM in his computer to make it work properly. Therefore he thinks you’d need at least a 2 GHZ processor and at least 1000MB RAM to actually make the software function as it was intended.
If you use this software, let us know how you get on. Like I say, it’s not perfect but its really helped us out!
May 5th, 2008 at 10:03 am
Hi Kirsty,
I used this a while back and wrote up my first experiences on my blog.
It does need a bit of patience to set up, and I gave up completely on trying to dictate anything with punctuation in, but as a rough draft to get your ideas down on paper it’s pretty good.
I have about a half hour walk to the office and using a digital dictaphone, uploading into Dragon, then editing, is a lot easier than trying to type on a busy footpath. That might be worth trying, I found the results are a lot better if you can get completely away from the computer and just jabber away, the edit it later.
*Note from Kirsty, for some reason the above comment won’t publish with a URL it! I’ve added Stephen’s link to his blog post about this software to a separate comment below*
May 5th, 2008 at 10:16 am
http://www.stephenpratley.com/dont-like-writing-try-hands-free-blogging/
May 5th, 2008 at 2:07 pm
Bloody hell! A piece of software that undstands a kiwi and a jock? Now if thats not a selling point then I don’t know what its!
Great idea though! May give it a go, failing that I’ll come to Oz with a spy-microphone and start asking you both random questions on a wide variety of subjects.
Don’t be freaked out!
May 8th, 2008 at 1:21 am
Hi Kirsty
I fully agree with your comments. I bought DNS earlier this year and yes, it takes a little time to set up. But the more you use it the friendlier it becomes. I particularly like using it for brain dumping when thinking about ideas and bullet pointing ‘key’ thoughts.
Two tips I can pass on is that my success rate shot up when I replaced my ‘old’ (freebie microphone) with a decent setup. Finally remember to turn off your mic’ when answering the ‘phone !!!!
May 8th, 2008 at 4:13 pm
I’ve been using DNS for about 7 years now, and think it is certainly the way to go if you value your fingers. Still, it needs a bit of “warming up”, so I tend to dictate in chunks, and then paste across - so this comment is typed, but if I’m writing a longer article, I get DNS out.