6. Finding Information

Being able to dig out information and present it succinctly is a valuable skill, as a successful copywriter often has to do a lot of research – frequently without many of the resources available to those working in large organisations.

Areas where you might need specialist information can range from material for particular client projects to your own plans for your business. If most of your work is within a particular sector, it is likely you will pick up a lot of background knowledge by a process of osmosis. In other cases, though, you will need to resort to desk research.

Nowadays the internet is a first port of call in any fact-finding mission and if you are not already familiar with the way different search engines work, it is worth spending some time getting to know them and learning the basics, such as how to narrow down searches by putting phrases in inverted comas. The services that I use most often are:

• Google – probably the quickest and easiest to use. The image search is very useful for pictures if you are presenting rough creative ideas.
• Yahoo! – use its directories for hunting down territory-specific information, such as the Yellow Pages in Paris.
• UKPlus – for UK-based sites only.
• Ask – for information that cannot be found by a simple keyword search, such as ‘What is the cost of living in different countries around the world?’

The addresses for all these sites are listed at the back of this book. Other useful websites include (in no particular order):

• Companies House – for basic information on UK companies.
• BT.com – for online directory enquiries.
• Whatis.com – an online dictionary of technical abbreviations, essential for technology writers.
• Altavista translations – for help with foreign language source material.
• BBC.co.uk – for breaking news.
• Dictionary.com – for word definitions.

In addition, every industry has key information sources you will want to tap into if they relate to your clients. If you work on a lot of technology projects, for example, you will probably want to subscribe to Silicon.com and TheRegister.co.uk; in accounting, Accounting Web.co.uk and AccountancyAge.co.uk; and so on.