We already seen the importance of surface and it is role in altering the properties of materials, especially at the nano scale. Now, we will take up a formal definition of what is surface energy, what is surface stress, how should we differentiate between these concepts when it comes to liquids, vis-a-vis the concepts when solid, crystalline solids and further how can I go about classifying what are known as clusters which are small, which are large and then nano crystals and how the shape and other aspects come out naturally when we are talking about clusters and nano crystals. Now, I may want to assemble a solid or a liquid starting with the gaseous state. In the gaseous state the atoms are far apart of course, the need not be atoms these entities could also be molecules, but for simplicity here we consider atoms and we assume that in the gaseous state since the atoms are far apart there is essentially no interaction. Of course, there will be collisions as these atoms move about, but the kind of interaction we are talking about is an attractive or repulsive interaction which continuously exist between a set of atoms. And when you want to assemble a solid or liquid what we do is that we take the gaseous state and put it together in the form of a solid or liquid which has been scorned schematically here. If it is of course, a solid as you can see on the example here it would be an ordered state where you can see that there is a certain periodicity and order. Of course, I could always assemble an amorphous solid also, but for simplicity we will consider an crystalline solid to start with. In the solid or liquid state the atoms are typically very close to each other and this formation of the liquid and assuming now that I am below my melting point or below the freezing point respectively for the liquid and the solid then the system would like to lower its Gibbs free energy by being in a state which is the state of a liquid or a solid. Therefore, below the melting or boiling points I have an increasing energy and therefore, the gaseous state represents a state of high energy and the solid or liquid state represents a state of low energy. Now, when we assemble a solid for instance from the gaseous state and now this is first what you might call a conceptual experiment we are doing. Then we see that of course, the atoms have come close to each other in the solid state and more importantly this central atom for instance is bonded to its neighbors and in this process of bonding the energy of the system is lower and I am specifically referring to the Gibbs free energy assuming we are working at constant temperature and pressure. Now, but the atoms on the surface as you can clearly see for suppose I take an atom here is only bonded partially compared to its full potential and therefore, these represents a state of higher energy. Now, when we do a calculation for lowering of energy of the system on the formation of a condensed state we assume that all the atoms are fully bonded and you can see that in this process we have done an over counting because now we assumed all the atoms are fully bonded while the atoms on the surface are only partially bonded. Therefore, atoms in the surface represent an higher energy with respect to the bulk and more importantly to keep in mind the reference state now is the bulk for instance in this example the crystalline state and this higher energy state is not with respect to the gaseous or the non interacting state. Therefore, when I say my surface is an higher energy what I really imply it is got an higher energy with respect to the bulk atom and not with respect to the gaseous state from which of course, I started my thought experiment. This is a very important point often not emphasized on, but it is important to keep it in mind because now when I say the surface is higher energy state I should not think that it is an higher energy state with respect to the gaseous state and I am assuming that I am below the freezing point now and it is a purely a coincidence of the fact that I did not over counting that I have even have to talk about something known as the surface energy. Suppose I were to do an accurate calculation in other words I only count those atoms in the bulk when I try to lower find find out how much energy they are lowering and separately treat my surface atoms and find out how many how much energy they were lowered then I do not even have to consider a concept like a surface energy. But typically this is not how it is done it is done by assuming that all atoms are bonded well and then I do a correction with respect to the fully bonded state which I call the surface energy term hence the reference state for the surface energy is the bulk and not the gaseous state. Now, this automatically implies that it cause energy to put an atom on the surface and when I say put an atom I put I take a bulk atom and move it to the surface then it is going to cost me energy as compared to the bulk this is the origin of the surface energy which is typically given a symbol gamma. Now, the surface since the atoms on the surface have an higher energy this is to wants to minimize the surface area the atoms want to go closer to each other or in fact into the solid and this minimum tendency for minimization of area or the tendency to shrink is origin of what is known as surface tension. We shall see now there is an important caution will be kept in mind that often surface energy and surface tension are sometimes interchangeably used but this is not to be done. Now, the origin or the what you call the seed for this kind of a misconception or a equivalence comes on the fact that suppose I track my dimension the surface stress or surface tension it is force per unit length then it is f by l and the units turn out to be Newton per meter. The units of gamma my surface energy is energy per unit area which is e by a energy being in joules area being meter square and joules is Newton meter by meter square. Therefore, units of gamma is Newton per meter which is exactly identical to the units of surface tension just because they are dimensionally identical we should not think they are identical quantities physically these represent very different type of quantities. Gamma is a scalar that means surface energy as we know is a scalar while surface tension is a second order tensor. Further we will see very soon that how these two quantities are different or how we should differentiate liquids and solids these are with respect to these quantities what additional quantities and parameters do I need to consider when I am talking about solids and liquids and more importantly what is the true origin of this surface tension. So, these are things we will consider next just to summarize this slide we have two important quantities when we deal with surfaces one is surface energy other is surface tension dimensionally they are very similar or they are identical. But, we should note that they are physically very different kind of quantities gamma is a scalar and surface tension is a second order tensor liquids in liquids when I am talking surface energy and surface tension are equivalent concepts and sometimes they can be interchangeably used. But, in the case of solids it is important to note that surface energy is not equivalent to surface tension of course, in very under very special circumstances they may become equivalent. But, for now we will assume that surface energy and surface tension represent different concepts when it comes to solids additionally surface energy is could be anisotropic when it comes to solids. So, this is something which is not present in liquids liquids we assume that the surface energy is isotropic that means it is not direction dependent. Therefore, I need to differentiate between liquid and solid surfaces when it comes to these quantities like surface energy and surface tension and let us do that next. So, we have a comparison of the solid and liquid surfaces now when I want to characterize a liquid surface I have a few parameters which I need to specify I need to specify the two quantities we just now dealt with the surface energy which we have given a symbol gamma the surface tension which had given a symbol sigma. And essentially you are characterizing the surface structure itself the liquid surface structure it characterizes by one number which is the surface density. In other words number of atoms per unit area which sits on the surface. So, essentially it is very easy for me to characterize a liquid surface because surface energy and surface tension represent equivalent concepts. And I just need one parameter which is my surface density to characterize my surface. And this is coming from the fact that liquid surfaces cannot support shear stresses. Suppose, I apply shear on a surface then the material will flow and therefore, liquids cannot support shear stresses. So, therefore, we have a term like surface tension now I want to compare this liquid surface with the surface of a solid. Then I would note that I could talk about something known as a surface energy. And instead of talking about the term surface tension I may have to talk about the true quantity which is surface stress which is a second order tensor. And in two dimensions it has got four numbers or four values which need to be specified additionally a surface is also associated with surface torque. The origin of surface torque is related to the fact that the surface energy could be anisotropic that means that it depends on my crystallographic plane. Suppose, I am talking about a crystalline surface the energy is going to depend on that. And therefore, suppose I am talking about two kinds of surfaces in two dimensions let me call this the one one kind of a surface vis-a-vis this zero one kind of a surface. The energy of this is expected to be different from the energy of this surface. Therefore, if an additionally these are of course, two important surfaces which are called low index plane surfaces. But I could also have a surface which is close to the gamma zero one surface or this is normally zero one surface which I can call a viscinal surface. Now, suppose this is my zero one surface I could visualize as surface which is inclined to this zero one surface at a small angle. So, I am considering an angle which is small. So, let me redraw this. So, this is my zero one surface and I am talking about a small angle with respect to this one surface which I call a viscinal surface. Now, since these low index planes are expected to have higher density and they are also typically associated with lower energy while these kind of high index planes would have higher energy the tendency for this plane to rotate into this orientation. Of course, it really does not rotate and typically you would find actually break up into steps and terraces, but that is a detail we will not consider now. For now I will note that this tendency for rotation to a low index direction or a low energy direction is the origin of what we may call the surface torque. Therefore, when I am trying to characterize a solid surface I need to specify more quantities as compared and I have to go into little more detail as compared to liquid surfaces. Now, the first of which we noted was that the surface energy and surface stress are not equivalent concepts anymore in a solid. The solid surface also associated with the surface torque and we clearly know that the surface the crystalline the surface of a crystalline material has structure and has more numbers need to be specified to characterize a solid surface. Macroscopically suppose I want to construct a surface from an infinite material then I need to perform a cut this cut itself will require 5 numbers to specify. So, for now I will simplify the problem and say suppose I want to make a surface then I need a certain orientation which I need to make this cut and this orientation can be given by 2 numbers or 2 independent miller indices in 3 dimensions and additionally I need to note where is this cut inside a crystallographic cell. Therefore, when I make a cut like this for instance in a sodium chloride crystal then I would notice that I would actually produce a polar surface and depending on where I make the cut I may have a set of negative charges sitting on the surface or negatively charged ions sitting on the surface or a set of positively ions sitting on the surface. Therefore, when I am making a surface in a solid I need to specify more numbers than I need to specify for the case of a liquid surface and in a crystalline surface I need to know all the lattice constants. In amorphous if I am not talking about a crystalline substance I am talking about amorphous surface then I need to know the density and a short range order parameter. So, in a sense a solid surface is very much unlike a liquid surface and that is when I am just even trying to create the surface for instance that is what the parameter I was mentioning when you try to make a cut. But additionally after the surface has been created it will be associated with quantities like surface stress and surface torque and as we had noted before a surface in a crystalline solid may undergo relaxation and reconstruction. Therefore, there are possibilities which do not exist in the case of liquid surfaces there in the case of solids the term surface tension which is actually should be avoided refers to surface stresses. Now, we will see what is the connection between the term surface stress and the term surface tension. The surface energy can be understood gamma which we have been dealing with can be understood as the reversible work required to create a unit area of surface. So, this can be understood for instance by using a soap film for instance between two sliders. So, I can take two sliders and create a soap film and assuming this one of these sliders is fixed and this is a soap film and I can pull this surface pull this slider here. So, this is my another slider which I can pull and then see how much work I need to do to create an unit additional area. Suppose, I am starting with this area A and after pulling I may create an area which is now this new area is A plus delta A then I would need to track how much work is required to create an additional unit area of surface and of course, I will be working at constant volume temperature and chemical potential with respect to all the species. So, this is an alternate way of looking at what is meant by surface energy. Now, I would like to connect my term surface tension in the case of solids with the term surface stress. Surface tension is the average of the surface stresses in two perpendicular directions that means that I take my sigma x x component and I take my sigma y y component and average them that is the term sigma which I have been referring to as surface tension. So, in some sense you can think of surface tension as the 2 D analogous term to the definition of hydrostatic pressure in three dimensions. So, in three dimensions we have the concept of hydrostatic pressure and we know that if you apply hydrostatic stresses on any volume of body then this body cannot undergo plastic deformation it can only undergo volume changes. So, we have a two dimensional analog of that which is now my surface tension which is the average of the two orthogonal stresses. An additional factor comes into play when I am talking about a surface which is the concept of surface entropy. Now, I am talking about surface energy I could just be talking about the just the internal surface energy or I could be talking about the enthalpy of the surface or I could be talking about the Gibbs free energy of the surface. Now, when I am talking about the Gibbs free energy of the surface I need to involve the concept of surface entropy and as the surface atoms have higher degree of freedom to move and hence they have a higher entropy. Though they may have a higher energy which is tending to I mean called destabilize the surface or put a surface at a lower stability level than the bulk. But, entropically a surface is more stable as compared to the bulk atom and the competition of the two is going to decide at what temperature I am going to have a stable surface with respect to a bulk. Surface stress at any point on the surface is the force acting across any line on the surface which passes through this point and in the limit that the length length of the line goes to 0. So, this is a way of determining surface stresses, but as we have seen that surface stress can be thought of as the two dimensional analog of the hydrostatic pressure which is a term used in three dimensions. So, let me summarize some of the concepts so far. Surface energy is not an energy in itself it is an energy which comes because of over counting and when I am talking about surface energy I am actually talking about the reference state being the fully bonded state or the bulk crystalline state. Of course, it may not be crystalline state it can be an amorphous state or liquid, but for simplicity we consider a bulk crystalline state. When we are talking about quantities associated with the surface I need to talk about quantities like surface energy, surface tension which are dimensionally identical and additionally I need to involve concepts like surface torque and surface stress. Surface tension itself can be thought of as an average of the two orthogonal stresses the sigma x plus sigma y by 2 and therefore, it is a 2 d analog of the hydrostatic pressure. When I am talking about solid surfaces I can no longer call the surface energy and surface stress to be representing equivalent concepts and additionally solid surfaces have a surface torque and when I am talking about solid surfaces I may note that the surface might have undergone relaxation or reconstruction and therefore, the crystallography of the surface could be very different from the crystallography of the bulk. So, some of these points I will just summarize which you already noted that liquid surfaces are characterized by a single number which is surface density. The short range order in liquids is spatio temporally varying hence no structure can be assigned to the surface. So, if at all we are going to assign any kind of structure to the surface in a liquid it is going to be a frozen snapshot of what is happening over a period of time. Crystalline solids have a definite 3 d and hence structure in 3 d and hence additional parameters are required to characterize them. The order of this at the surface of a crystal can be very different from the bulk and this is arising from surface relaxation and surface reconstruction and even in absence of these quantities you would expect that the surface is going to be somewhat different from just the bulk termination. Amorphous solids have short range order, but no long range order under low temperature conditions in short times. That means, we are talking about low atomic mobility regimes the atomic entity positions are temporarily fixed. So, I may have short range order on a amorphous surface, but no long range order and under typically at low temperatures I will assume that this short range order persist over long times. Now, we are already noted that crystals tend to have a certain phase stud shape and how can we obtain this shape of a crystal is the next question and this question is very very closely related to the fact that we are considering surface energy. So, we are already pointed out that surface energy depends on the direction that means it is an anisotropic quantity. For instance suppose I am talking about a 3D crystal then my 0 1 0 surface may have a different energy as compared to a 1 1 1 surface which is expected to have a different energy compared to a 1 1 2 surface which will again be different from every other surface which I can think of in a crystal. Depending on the crystallography or the symmetry obviously a suppose I am talking about a cubic crystal then the 0 1 0 surface energy is will be identical to the 1 0 0 surface energy which will be identical to the 0 0 1 plane surface energy. So, this is coming from the crystal symmetry. Now, if I grow a crystal then typically it ends up in a certain polyhedral shape which is called the growth shape of a crystal. And suppose I now anneal this crystal for long times then the system will tend to go it is to into its low lowest energy shape state which is an equilibrium shaped state in which case the crystal will put out those phases which gives the system overall low energy state. And how do we determine this low energy state of the crystal in other words how do I determine the equilibrium shape of a crystal this is done by a construction known as the wolf construction. And to a reiterate the wolf construction is going to give us the long time stable state of the crystal and not the growth shape of the crystal. Because crystals may grow in shapes which are slightly bit depend on the kinetics and kinetics of attachment etcetera. And those phases which grow very fast will exhaust themselves unlike that when you talk about equilibrium shape it is actually in unique shape which gives a system the low energy state. The way it is done is that we start with the variation of the surface energy with respect to theta. So, we have a polar plot of the surface energy with respect to theta. And you can see that suppose I am considering a 4 fold direction in a cubic crystal then this gamma plot will also have a 4 fold symmetry. Another important point to notice that this gamma plot would have certain cusps here as you can see which represent low energy surface orientations. Then we draw a radius vector from the origin to intersect the wolf plot like for instance O A in the plot I take my O origin and I draw a tangent and allow it to intersect. Now the figure formed by the inner envelope of all the perpendiculars is the equilibrium shape. So, you can see if I keep on drawing inner perpendiculars then I get a shape which is now for instance given by this blue box and this is my equilibrium shape of the crystal. Of course, this is schematic here and various crystals would have different kind of equilibrium shapes which may have 111 surfaces 100 surfaces. But typically these are low index surfaces which are thrown out by a crystal. A point to be noted is that those low energy orientations obviously or the cusp orientations are the more preferred ones and typically will show up in the what you might call the wolf construction. So, essential message from this is that because of anisotropine surface energy crystals will tend to have polyhedral shapes. And in the case of nano crystals because it is surface dominant system the system would or the crystal will tend to go towards its equilibrium polyhedral shape in much shorter time scales as compared to a bulk crystal. And of course, we know that most of the bulk crystals we deal with typically could be a polycrystalline material which means that we are not actually going to get a single kind of a wolf construction which we are talking about here. So, wolf plot gives us the equilibrium shape from the equilibrium shape it is of course, not uniquely possible to go in the reverse direction make on wolf plot. Wolf plots with sharp cusp represent the equilibrium shape which is typically a polyhedral. If of course, the anisotropy is small then you may not get a nicely faceted crystal as you can see here with very low number of planes representing the outer surface. The width of the crystal facets is was proportional as one by the surface energy. That means that the largest facets are the ones with the lowest energy over the crystal. Obviously, we put out those surfaces which have the lowest energy. Now, we move on to a equivalent, but in some sense distinct concepts that how do I classify my nano crystals or clusters based on certain kind of a property. Now, we have seen that we can go to the nano scale from two possibilities. One I can make a bottom up approach. That means I start with a few atoms or a few molecules and try to make larger and larger clusters and at some point of time if these cluster of atoms or molecules arrange themselves in what you may call crystalline order then I am I can be actually talking about a nano crystal. So, we will introduce three terms here with respect to properties. One I will call the small cluster regime. One will be the large cluster regime and of course, I will go into a region which is called the nano particle regime. And in as we shall see now that one of the special class of interesting nano particles are the nano crystals or the crystalline nano particles. And for now, we will assume that this nano particle is a single crystal. That means it is does not have further grains into it. In reality of course, when I am making a top down approach you might notice that some of the particles could actually be polycrystalline. Now, why do I want to differentiate these three classes and how is it how is it meaningful in understanding their properties is what we will address next. Later on we will also take up an alternate way of classifying some of these because in literature often you would find not only classifications of the kind just now I mentioned, but there are other size regimes which are defined like people define molecules, people define micro clusters, small particles and micro crystals. Some of the regimes and what you may call the property regimes and the definitions would tend to overlap, but depending on the literature you are reading and with respect to certain specific properties one of these two may be used by an author to actually describe what you may call a cluster of atoms. Now, how can I differentiate my three regimes the small cluster regime, the large cluster regime in the nano particle regime and why do I want to do that is what we are considering. In the small cluster regime which could now be in the sub nanometer regime the structure and properties do not vary in a monotonic way and we shall soon see that in this regime we will have certain numbers called the magic numbers when you are talking about clusters. The important point note suppose I am changing a property here which could be a property related like magnetization it could be some other property I am talking about and there is the dotted line here which talks about the bulk value of this property. That means if I take a bulk material and I measure its magnetization it will have a certain value. Now, the three regimes which are approximate of course here drawn here are these three regimes the regimes of the small clusters the regime of the large clusters and the regime of the nano crystals. In the small cluster regime if you notice that just by a mere addition of one atom a property could actually change very very drastically. Now, this could be for instance a stable configuration this could be an unstable configuration and hence the property could change very drastically by mere addition of one atom or the removal of an atom. So, if you track the property in the small cluster regime you will see that actually it is going undergoing large fluctuations. The nature of these fluctuations and the range of these fluctuations obviously depend on the property and when we get down to some of the properties you will be able to see that how actually these properties could vary. But the essential thing here is that I cannot talk about an average property in this case I have to take each cluster for instance a cluster of 12 atoms a cluster of 9 atoms separately and study its properties. And of course this as you can visualize would be a challenging task I need to first of all separate out these clusters of the same size then make a measurement on the properties. And any presence of any other size clusters would contaminate my results. In the case of the large clusters which is basically intermediate between the cluster and the particle or the nano crystal there is still fluctuation in the properties. And here we are talking about a size regime for instance in the nanometer size regime there are still fluctuations. But these fluctuations are much more gradual and typically if you add for instance a few atoms or one or two atoms you do not expect that these properties is going to change in a very drastic way as it would happen in the case of the small cluster regime. So, here also there is some fluctuations in the properties here also you would notice that there are some possibilities of certain sharp minima and maxima. But the overall trend line is not fluctuating that large when you actually add one or a few of the atoms or molecules to the cluster. On the other hand we expect that somewhere all these fluctuations have to die down and I have to approach the bulk value of my property. Where in now I can I do not have to no longer deal with individual clusters like a 30 atom cluster or 32 atom cluster separately. But I can talk about an average property which of course does not change with size and that is my bulk limit. But somewhere in the large nano crystal regime I would expect that this limit is obtained. And this is of course easy to understand because this is now my what you may call the more monotonic kind of a variation in property. So, here I am not observing fluctuations the system is slowly tending towards the bulk limit in a monotonic fashion. How many atoms actually constitute a small cluster? How many atoms would I put together to form a large cluster or nano crystal? Of course depends on the kind of property I am studying and the kind of system I am considering. So, for instance suppose I am talking about as we can study the magnetic property ferromagnetic property and I am talking about nickel atoms this variation could be different vis-a-vis for instance suppose I am talking about some totally different property like for instance the corrosion resistance or oxidation or adsorption of as foreign molecule vis-a-vis some other particle like a ion particle. The intermediate regime is a regime where I would presume that the crystalline order has not yet been established. In small clusters they are not even sufficient number of atoms to even talk about for instance a long range crystalline order. Because when I am talking about a crystal I am assuming that at least there are few tens of unit cells or a few hundreds of unit cells in each dimension and this long range order which I call a crystalline order has been established. But in the case of small clusters it is meaningless to talk about it. In the case of nano particles which is now also as we can consider an example of nano particles the crystalline state there it is clear that I have enough number of unit cells to classify that as the nano crystal. In the large cluster regime this is a some sort of a gray area where I perhaps do not have enough number of atoms or unit cells to classify that as a nano crystal. These large clusters may be crystalline in some sense that they may not represent just a polyhedral shell but in this toward this end they may actually have a few unit cells. But along the way you would notice that the structure might change from that of some kind of a cluster behavior where I have no kind of unit cell formation to a regime where you actually have a crystalline structure. Here though we are not explicitly talking about the structure we are actually talking about the property. But it is very clear that this property would be a sensitive function of the structure and therefore it is meaningful for us to correlate the structure with the property we are talking specifically. So, to summarize this slide there are three regimes which we can talk about which is a small cluster regime, the large cluster regime and the nano particle regime. And the specific examples of nano particles we are talking about here are nano crystals and took for something to qualify as a crystal we should have sufficient number of unit cells. So, that a long range order has been established in the small cluster regime which is in some sense a very interesting regime. A mere addition of one particle or one atom or one molecule can actually lead to a drastic change in the properties. And these fluctuations with respect to size would die down in the large cluster regime where in the oscillations become smaller and of course in the bulk in the nano crystal regime it becomes monotonic. So, let us now talk about going from clusters to nano crystals a little further. Clusters are aggregates of atoms of course they could be aggregates of molecules or ions also usually less than a few thousand atoms. So, when I am talking about clusters typically I am dealing with a less than about few thousand atoms. Typically when the term cluster is applied to a collection of small number of atoms. So, we do not use the term cluster for large collection for instance in the case of a nano crystal. The structure and properties of clusters are often very different from the constitutive atoms and their bulk counterparts. So, this is something to be kept in mind for instance suppose I could be talking about a material which is anti ferromagnetic in the bulk, but which could turn ferromagnetic in the small cluster regime. Therefore, there is a drastic change in properties which are possible when I go to the cluster regime as compared to the bulk counterpart. If the cluster is made up of molecules the individual molecules themselves could have a certain kind of a property, but the property of the cluster could be very different from the property of the individual molecule or the constituent atoms. At this level of the cluster there is not sufficient atoms to classify as a crystal as we saw because which there are insufficient atoms to establish this long range periodic order. If an atom is added to a small cluster of atoms reconstruction usually takes place I mean reconstruction with respect to the structure which is the rearrangement of the atoms. And we have seen that this implies that the properties of two clusters which are close to each other in terms of number of atoms could be very different. And this is what makes the study of these clusters very exciting. At a certain larger size the critical size the bulk structure will be established when I am when we mean a bulk structure we already seen we are referring to the bulk structure not only in terms of the tangible kind of a definition, but here we are actually referring to it in terms of the property based definition. Small metal clusters for example, on substrate assume icosahedral bipyramidal etcetera kind of shapes and obviously these icosahedral bipyramidal shapes do not represent crystals. In many cases the size it is about 150 nanometer the crystalline structure is obtained. That means that now in the small cluster regime there are certain polyhedral shapes which are not crystalline or we just they are just clusters. When you reach about 150 nanometers you obtain the large bulk crystalline limit and in between the two you could actually be stabilizing for instance different kind of crystal structures which are not the bulk crystal structure. So, let us summarize some of the aspects we have seen with respect to clusters and nano crystals. The shape of nano clusters and also nano crystals can be very different from their bulk counterparts. And now we are talking about the shape of the external polyhedral which forms in the equilibrated shape which we have seen that how we can obtain from a wolf construction, but wolf construction typically applies to large crystalline macroscopic tangible bulk kind of a crystal to rather than to these small clusters. And therefore, I may have wolf construction for the nano crystal or the bulk crystal and I may have these clusters and these two shapes typically are very different. Large crystals may adopt large clusters and of course, small clusters may adopt a crystal structure. Now, we are talking about large clusters because in the case of small clusters we cannot even talk about the crystal structure. The large clusters may adopt a different crystal structure as compared to the stable bulk crystal structure. So, this we have noted already and we will also see examples of phase transformations later on wherein when we reduce the crystal size we see that new phases are stabilized. We already seen couple of those examples in the case of Fe 2 or 3 etcetera. Given the large surface to volume ratio the equilibrated shape can be attained quickly in nano crystals and also in large clusters. So, if I have a shape which is in when I am synthesizing a solid or it is produced by certain method and it is not the equilibrium shape it can reach the equilibrium shape very very quickly. Now, we will see next that a certain magic number of atoms may be stabilized in clusters and we will also see what is the origin of these magic number of atoms. In other words when I am talking about a cluster the cluster instead of behaving like a collection of individual atoms tends to start to behave like something like a super atom. That means, the entire cluster itself can be visualized as an entity in itself which can be thought of as a super atom and not only that these nano crystals themselves may serve as motifs in higher order hierarchical construction of crystals. And we will take up some examples wherein of course, in many cases you have what is called self assembly wherein I start with a nano crystal and then make use this as a motif in making a larger unit crystal wherein of course, I am not worried about the ordering of atoms within this nano crystal. But, I am talking about ordering of the nano crystal themselves in a periodic fashion to give rise to a what you might call a crystal of an higher order. So, I can have an hierarchical construction of crystals and this is a very interesting concept which we will explore further. One interesting example we talked about shapes of crystals and when you are talking about a shape of a crystal we are typically assuming that is arising naturally from some kind of a polyhedral arrangement. But, if you look at some of the examples like for instance I am here showing a multiply twin gold nano particle a schematic of that which is about 35 nanometers. And we have talked about this kind of a structure with respect to what we may call a rotational twin. So, we had given this as an example of a rotational twin. Suppose, I have twinning occurring in the enable crystal. So, typically some of these twin boundaries would exist go in a for instance in a copper crystal would extend from one green boundary to another. So, let me draw that schematically here suppose I am talking about a copper poly crystal. So, I have a green structure like this and I may notice that within a single green you may have one twin boundary and of course, another twin boundary extending from one green boundary to another. So, suppose I have crystallographic planes here these crystallographic planes would be reflected here by this and this other twin would actually restore my orientation. So, this is of course, twinning in a polycrystalline material, but many a times this kind of twinning would lead to internal stresses in the material. But, in the case of a nano particle because of the way these arise and the fact that they are not embedded in a matrix they actually these stresses could not be large and you could actually stabilize an nano particle which is having for instance in this case a 5 fold rotational twin. Now, of course, we had noted in that context of this rotational twins that if I had to put a selected area diffraction aperture here I would mimic a system of higher symmetry. In fact, I would think as if there is some 5 fold symmetry arising from this kind of a twin particle. The two variants in an ideal circumstance in such a crystal would could be related to a 72 degree rotation. A 72 degree of course, is an ideal kind of a rotation I am talking about and if you refer to some of the publications you would notice that the actual angles involved could be close to 72 degree, but they are may not be exactly 72 degree for instance they could be 71.2 etcetera. So, they are close to 72 degrees giving this some sort of a close to a 5 fold rotation. In twinning of a diamond film for instance the angles have been found to be again close to about 72 degrees, but the interesting thing here is that in systems wherein I am talking about twin as a defect in a perfect crystalline order they could be much more easily stabilized in the case of nano particles. In fact, in many nano particles we will see that the deformation mode will switch from that of what you may call a dislocation plasticity to a twinning kind of a plastic much more easily. And this is some good feature that we have in nano particles and nano crystals that certain defects are much more easily formed and some of these defects may actually may not be found in their bulk counter parts. And additionally of course, you may have gold nano particles about 20 nanometer which can form within icosahedral shape. So, we know that icosahedral symmetry is not compatible with translation, but still you find nano particles which can have these kind of a shape which is otherwise not seen for bulk crystals. So, with respect to crystal structure with respect to properties with respect to defect structures within the material we may note that nano particles and nano crystals and nano clusters could be very very different from their bulk counter parts and this is something which is very very important for us to note. We had stated initially when we consider the classification of nano clusters visa or small clusters visa we large cluster visa we nano particles or nano crystals that there are alternate classifications used in literature. And we had even noted when we try to make the assembly called a cluster that we may not need not start with an atom we could actually start with an ion or we could even start with the molecule. And therefore, it is for us good to revise certain other classifications which are typically found in literature one of them is shown here, where in a slightly different terminology as compared to what we have just considered is introduced. In some sense the micro crystal which is mentioned here is very very similar to our nano crystal in some sense, but the size regimes could be overlapping with these, but may not be identical with what we are classifying here. So, we could be starting with molecules and here we are talking about individual molecules like CO 2 it could be O 2 etcetera. Then we go to the regime known as the micro clusters regime, then we have the small particle regime and you may notice that the micro cluster regime is similar to our what you may call the small cluster regime. And the small particle regime can again be somewhat coincidence with the large cluster regime and micro crystals as you can see are much larger, where in you have about 10 power 6 number of entities. So, you said atoms here, but we should again note once again that if the constituent entities need not be atoms they could be ions or molecules. So, for molecules it is about 1 for micro clusters it is about 10 power 2 to 10 power 3 entities for small particles it is about 10 power 4 to 10 power 5 and larger than 10 power 6 can be thought as micro crystals. The radius in nanometers for micro clusters is about 1 nanometer or it could be sub 1 nanometer and small particles are about 10 nanometers and micro crystals are larger than 15 nanometers. When you are talking about bonding characteristics or the atomic arrangement molecules of course, you have the usual rule of bonding. In other words they could be covalently bonded or the bonding could be polar covalent etcetera. In micro crystals micro clusters the surface and interior atoms have behavior very different from bulk atoms. Now, I am comparing the surface atoms sitting in a micro cluster and the interior atom in a micro cluster with what you might call a bulk atom in a bulk crystal. And I am talking about a bulk crystal I am considering something having more than about 10 power 6 may be 10 power 8, 10 power 10 kind of an atoms or even larger number of atoms. So, here the surface is different from the surface which we can think of in a bulk material. The interior atoms are also going to be different compared to that what we see in the case of a bulk crystal or a bulk particle. In small particle regime the interior atoms are similar to bulk that means they have already grown so large that their overall what you might call environment and configuration is somewhat similar to the bulk interior atom, but definitely not identical. But the surface atoms still behave very differently because still suppose I am considering a small particle still I cannot ignore the curvature effects. And sooner during these course of these lectures we will see that how surface effects can alter the equilibrium between a matrix and a small particle. And this is the origin of what you might call the Gibbs Thomson effect, but essentially the surface atoms still are very very different from the surface atoms in a bulk crystal where in of course curvature effects can be ignored. In micro crystal surface is still an active site, but this can be approximated to the surface of a bulk crystal. When I am talking about electronic properties for instance and of course I can go on in the list of properties which I am going to consider, but for just now for now I am going to just talk about this as an example electronic properties. The energy levels are discrete of course for a molecule we know how a molecular energy levels are they are similar to an atomic energy level. In the case of micro clusters the valence electrons exhibit shell structure with magic numbers. So, we will return to this concept very soon where in I am talking about certain magic numbers and certain kind of a stable electronic configuration, but nevertheless here too I do not expect any kind of a continuous band formation and still the energy levels are discrete. In small particles still quantum size effects are going to dominate and in the micro crystal level you would expect that you can now talk about more like continuous bands which you talk for a bulk crystal. And therefore, you could talk about conduction properties for instance which is very similar to that of a bulk crystals, but here too you would expect the surface plasmon are playing a dominant role and similarly other surface effects coming from electrons on the surface is expected to play a dominant role in determining the properties of the material.


Good afternoon everybody and a very warm welcome to our Marketing Club webinar series. I've got a great session for you today on a fundamental skill to have if you're a marketer. That's copywriting. You see I am his very own content marketing manager, Stuart Thomas. If you've watched any of our Marketing Club webinars before, then you'll know how this works, but for those joining us for the first time today, welcome. And before I pass things over to Stuart, I'll very quickly give you some info about the session and how you can get involved in the Q&A. So I'll be hearing from Stuart for around 45 minutes. We'll then move into a 10 to 15 minute Q&A to answer some of your questions. You can post your questions at any time during the session by clicking on the question mark you'll see on your screen. So don't be shy, pop in your questions and we'll look forward to hopefully answering some of those a little bit later on. Stuart's presentation deck is available to download whilst we're on air. All you'll need to do is pop into the handout section and you'll be able to download it from there. And remember, you'll be able to watch the session again, along with all our previous webinars on the CIM YouTube channel. Just head into playlists, find the Marketing Club folder and you'll find them all there to watch whenever you want with sessions on personal branding, digital trends, marketing strategy and CSR among others. And if you would like to share any thoughts about today's webinar or indeed any of our webinars or events on socials, you can use the hashtag CIM Events. We'd love to see your comments on socials, so please do get involved and do let us know what you think of today's session. So before I hand over to Stuart, I'll quickly explain what the Marketing Club is. It was created primarily to help students get the most from their CIM accredited degree and prepare them for a career in marketing. The accredited degree program enables students to gain a professional marketing qualification by taking advantage of the exemptions the degree provides. Throughout the academic year, we run a series of webinars tailored to meet your needs, sharing the latest thinking, trends and techniques in real-world marketing delivered by industry experts. We have a dedicated page on our website where you'll be able to watch previous Marketing Club webinars and access articles and insights from podcasts and our content hub. Although the Marketing Club is designed for students, CIM members and other marketing practitioners are also welcome to attend the webinars. So if you're a university student, you can sign up now to receive the Marketing Club newsletter. All you need to do is take a photo of QR code on screen. Alternatively, you can hop onto our website to find the Marketing Club webpage within the qualifications drop down menu. Each edition of the newsletter will provide you with content designed to support your studies and actively manage your professional development by keeping you up to date with the latest trends, innovations and concepts in the marketing industry. So it really is worth signing up. We'll pop the QR code up again a little later when we head into the Q&A if you want to find out further information or sign up. Okay, so that's enough from me. I'd now like to hand you over to our guest speaker. Stuart Thomas, CIM's Content Marketing Manager. If you want to turn on your webcam, Stuart, I'll pass things over to you and the floor is yours when you're ready. Hello everyone, thank you Phil for that lovely introduction. Yes, welcome to the Copywriting Marketing Club webinar, the basics of a marketing cornerstone. So as we go into it, I thought I'd start by explaining why I'm the one speaking to you right now. So Stuart Thomas, Content Marketing Manager for CIM and my copywriting path, which is about sort of 11 years and counting so far is starting with English at university, Coventry University, I recommend it. On to Com's Assistant at England Hockey Board where I was doing things like match reports and emails and talking about the fixtures that were coming up and the things that had happened in the hockey world over the previous week. After that, then moved on to be a copywriter both for products and blog posts, emails at a couple of Virgin companies where I then also became a marketing executive on the B2B side. So some experience in B2B blogs and emails again, some social work as well. On to e-commerce copywriting again for Online Gardening Centre Primrose which involved blog writing, all of the emails which are sent by someone else but written by me and also a little bit of web development as well because it's surprising that copywriting does actually have some involvement in web development until I got to where I am now, which is a Content Marketing Manager where I now pass on a lot of the copywriting skills and tips onto my team for the sort of fabulous blog posts that they produce as well. So getting into it, what are we going to cover today? We're going to start with the importance of copywriting and why words matter, which then flows nicely into the weight of words and sometimes you've got to be careful about what you say. Speaking for a brand, it's talking about a tone of voice or TOV. The copywriting process, which sometimes isn't as straightforward as you might like it to be, consider the audience, so remember who you're writing for, not just the customer but also your line manager, your director, everybody that the brand represents. Tools to up your game, so things that can help you just become that slightly little bit better copywriter or indeed just a basic copywriter, so things that I have used myself or also that I've heard being used or tested a little bit. Privacy is the soul of wit, which is all about keeping it short and it's a well-known phrase, so remember it well. The point of punctuation. So talking a little bit about what various pieces of punctuation are for and chiefly try and avoid semicolons. Write for your friends, so less about using slang but more about getting to the point and using contractions. Credits for novelists, so you're not going to become a sort of Don Draper with your name in lights and everyone knowing who you are. Sometimes when you're doing copywriting it's more about just the words, not who you are and don't take it to heart. And then last but not least, of course, have fun with it. His language is a thing to be played with even when you're writing for business. So take it seriously but not always too seriously. One word. So the importance of copywriting. It's where most marketing starts. So whether you're planning to become a social media executive or whether you are planning to get into content writing or you may not be planning to do PPC advertising, just those little snippets that go on Google. It's all copywriting ultimately even if the people that do those things wouldn't necessarily write copywriting on their CV. Because it's all about communication and you can barely communicate without using words unless you're sort of working for Intel inside and you can just use that little bit of noise to tell people that it's an Intel piece of content that you're doing. As you can see in sort of like the top left there, it's not just for business writing as well. You can also use it on your CV. So get better at copywriting and you can write yourself a better little intro at the top of your CV explaining who you are and what you do. And you can also use it to write better cover letters and those little bits that you send off to the company to say, please consider me for hiring me for this role. Using your keywords and everything that makes good copywriting can also get your foot in the door. Of course, it's not always roses. Sometimes you'll draw the ire of the advertising standards as authority complaints and sometimes you'll have just regular people complaining. So you've got a crown painting sample at the bottom there and also an example from Duolingo where they were referring to something that was happening in the news that perhaps Duolingo shouldn't have been referring to, whether it negatively impacted the brand as a whole, unlikely, but they would have drawn sort of like a little bit of ire and flak at the time. So think about the words that you're using, which leads into the weight of words.  Example there from I think it's the 1950s at 60 miles an hour. The loudest noise in this new Rolls Royce comes from the electric clock, which is patent lies. They might have been able to argue at the time and they probably didn't have to argue to anyone because it was the Halcyon days of the 50s, but by putting it in speech marks, they might claim that it was a customer quote and thus they're not beholden to keeping it to the truth. But then just underneath you'll see says an eminent Rolls Royce engineer, so packed full of bias and the sort of thing that wouldn't fly today. An example from today or a couple of years ago, Shell had to take down an ad which featured the slogan make the difference, drive carbon neutral because it's very much putting on the customer sort of you can stop climate change when of course Shell are pumping out all of the gases and stuff that are leading towards climate change. So naturally it got pulled. Typos can impact sales whilst more often than not if you were to see a typo on a particular product that you wanted to buy, it probably wouldn't stop you. It would lead you to sending out a pithy tweet saying ha ha, look at what this company did but you might buy it anyway. But when it comes to Google and e-commerce, typos can be impactful because in the example here, a website called tightsplease.co.uk had misspelled the word tights on their page which obviously Google is then not surfacing it as a result when people are searching for tights. They corrected it and lo and behold, sales shot up. There's also the million dollar Oxford comma which if you download these slides you'll be able to follow the link and read all about it. That's in a piece of, it was contract. It was a contract that was, they'd not separated two things between packing and delivering. So people were able to claim over time because they were just delivering, not delivering and packing. So as you can see it cost them $5 million. The likelihood of you causing a million dollar Oxford comma problem is slim but at some point over the course of your career you may well have to read over a contract. So it's good to be able to think how language can be interpreted. And in the modern day and age it is keywords which are king. The example at the bottom there is if you search the buyer's journey as you can see in those results the buyer's journey is in bold because that is the thing that people have searched for. Google understands that and it's Google that's bolded those words. They might be bold on the blog posts themselves but whether they are or not Google would do it and it just means that you've got to make sure if you're writing about a particular topic or something of interest that you want people to be able to find make sure to use the keyword and use it high up as well. All of those examples will be somewhere near the top of the page I'd wager. So yes, remember the weight of words. Speaking for a brand something that's part of copywriting is that you're kind of being a face of the company or in a faceless way that your words are what people are seeing and you've got to be careful with the way that you write them. You've got to usually you'll be given guidelines when working for a company as to what that tone of voice is and it'll give you a couple of examples of whether you've got to use a particular word or maybe do or don't use exclamation marks things like that because you're kind of embodying the brand when you're copywriting. So there's an example there from Innocent in the top left hand corner. I think it's on the back of a bottle. Life's pretty strange. Here we are in an unfathomably infinite universe. It's a lot of waffle but it's how Innocent likes to do it and it's playful waffle at that so you can identify the fact that it is innocent and you can look at that bit at the bottom where it's about that singing otter. Last year we made a TV advert with a singing otter less silly than it sounds and even though there's not a logo on there you might be able to guess as to who it is and that is Innocent again. And that goes on to the sound without sigils. That should probably be signs and you know that's all part of copywriting it's thinking about it afterwards and how the words could be different but you won't always be able to rely on the logo being next to the words that you're writing in order to identify that it's your company that you're writing for or about or from. So an example there is does exactly what it says on the tin. Some of you will know that brand but some of you won't but it is Ronseal and it was their famous slogan that they used for a long time and if you write does exactly what it says on the tin everyone would think of Ronseal regardless of whether the logo was in there. You won't always be able to get to that level of salience and you might not even necessarily be able to write I mean that tagline was almost certainly come up with by a team but you can use tone of voice in order to make people think of a brand without using the logo and remember that you're representing the brand when you're speaking. The copywriting process everywhere I've worked that's involved copywriting has followed this broad process which is draft, review, edit, review, publish, review because even after it's published and it's out there if it's a blog post in particular you can always review it, tweak it and improve it if it's something like a press release you're not going to be able to review it or fix it after it's out in the world so depending on how out of your hands it becomes after you publish it depends on how carefully you have to read over it before it goes out because usually with blog posts it'll do a little circle like this so it's review then it's back to edit then it's review again then it might be edit again but be careful that you don't go through too many edit review steps more for your own sanity and not annoying your line manager because if they have to review it over and over again they'll think that you're not listening or thinking more broadly about the suggestions that they're making so if they've suggested that you should use a contraction, change that into that look through the rest of the copy to see other places that you might be able to use contractions and also think why are they telling me to use a contraction is to make it more friendly more readable those kinds of things so yeah, just always be reviewing you don't want to be in an endless cycle though of going through your line manager whether it's published, do the reviews yourself don't necessarily send it to other people unless the edit that you're then going to make after the fact is a fundamental change to that and along with sending it over to into review stage is the phrase kill your darlings that comes up a lot with novel writing usually or maybe your own personal blogs but it's the fact that sometimes those amazing puns that you've written or awesome pieces of alliteration aren't actually selling the product or convincing the customer to do a particular action so just if you think they're particularly amazing feel free to make a kind of a written note of them in order to tell your friends about afterwards or your significant other because you're so proud of the thing that you've written but if you're writing it purely for the fact that it made you smile then take it out because it's the customer that you want to make smile and also probably your line manager's going to make you get rid of it anyway so don't try and hold on to it for the sake of it so that is the copywriting process broadly consider the audience so like that last point where the fact that you're writing for the customer you're also writing for everyone so you're writing for your line manager potentially your area director anybody that's going to read it before it goes out there as well as all the people that are going to read it once it's out there so you've got to think about who's signing it off if you write something that you think is definitely 100% going to resonate with the customer but your line manager takes issue with it be prepared to fight for it a little bit and say look the customer feels this way these words follow with that way but every now and then you will have to just get rid of it but don't take it personally but just know that you don't automatically have to get rid of it just because your line manager suggested it but if they're really forceful about it then you do so yeah the customer is king and the other part of that is that you are not the customer so even if you buy the product of the company that you're working for or pitching for anything like that you have bias that you're bringing to the table you might know more about the product than is actually communicated to the customer or you might get a staff discount something along those lines so you shouldn't be writing thinking this would make me buy it you want to be writing in the sense that it would make them buy it but even after you've followed all of that sometimes the wider world will complain about it you might have I don't know used a word that's a little bit wrong or in this particular example so bringing up crown paints again is that it triggered complaints of misogyny and sexism you may remember the ads it was a crown paints ad where a nursery had been painted a lovely mustard yellow and a chorus of singers were singing about why they painted it that particularly yellow and it's how they decided to have a baby but it was decided to have a baby after having previously chosen not to have children or at least from the mother's perspective and from the father's perspective it was they hope that it's his which obviously caused a great deal of complaints because it's kind of talking about people being unfaithful or people suddenly deciding to go from childless to having children when you know that might be a life choice but it's also the flip side of the complaints was that that is how some people live so whilst there were a lot of complaints I don't think the complaint was upheld by the advertising standards authority because it wasn't lies and you know whilst it was a little bit insulting to a certain group it wasn't insulting to the broad public and it almost certainly resulted in a lifting sales for crown paints so on one side it worked on the other side it didn't so there are two sides to it but always think about who's going to be reading it after the fact I don't think there's a copywriter out there that hasn't at some point had to apologise or go back on the words that they've put out because it's unintentionally caused offence but the main thing is to accept those mistakes apologise for them sometimes you might be tempted to feel like oh no I've been backed into a corner I've got to justify all of these words and decisions I made but the main thing is that on the front face of it that you are apologising and that you just change it because you know your words are not so valuable that they are immutable and can't be changed right the nice easy bit possibly what brought a lot of you here is the tools to up your game the things that you can use to make your copywriting just a little bit smoother the one that I use the most probably every single day I use this one is the Grammarly Plugin for Chrome it's a simple little extension that you can get from the Chrome extension store but it's free there is a premium option which you can use to look at entire sentences as opposed to just single words but I just use it as a bit of a spellchecker because if you're writing directly into your content management system or CMS you're going to need some sort of spellchecker because I don't think anyone writes everything perfectly the first time it comes out even me so you need something that just kind of checks over your work without you doing it I don't think it's got an auto correct so don't rely too much on that lowercase is automatically become capital I when you talk about yourself things like that but it will underline it in a nice red so that after you finish you check back through and see all of those places that the red is underlined another one that I know some of my colleagues have used in the past is Hemingway I don't think it's an app it's just a website that you go to copy your content into it and as you can see there it then highlights it in various useful colours shows you the slightly long sentences shows you the two long sentences so that example there is almost three lines long don't do sentences that are three lines long and if you see something like that just look for places that you can spit it in half don't think too much about using punctuation to slow it down don't be using commas and semicolons just find a place to slap a full stop in there and use a full stop it's also marked in green passive phrase or passive voice which sometimes you will have to use passive voice is not automatically bad voice because there it's talking about phrases in green have been marked to show passive voice and of course they have you didn't mark them the active voice there would be mark phrases in green you haven't taken an action you wouldn't use active voice to do it whilst we got there we've got the words helpfully and perhaps highlighted in blue helpfully is a word that should be there but the word perhaps you could probably get rid of so again it's just highlighting how you might want to study your language if you're writing for SEO SEO purposes Yoast is a really useful resource for just SEO content tips if it's your entire job you probably want to do a little bit of SEO CIM training in order to for a good few hours in a day or a couple of days just be immersed in everything SEO and it also gives you a greater understanding of why you do those things because it's all well and good saying use a keyword in a heading but you want to understand why you're supposed to use a keyword in a heading if you're writing in WordPress there's a Yoast plugin and it gives you a nice helpful traffic light system as to how well your post is likely to perform from an SEO perspective but don't chase the green light just aim for an amber at the very least if it's coming up in red you've probably got some problems but sometimes it'll highlight things like overuse of passive voice or you haven't used your keyword enough and sometimes over a sort of 1500 word blog post you definitely won't have used the keyword enough you never will it would just end up seeming repetitive so don't worry too much about chasing that green and then last but not least but at the very least you have there's no excuse in this day and age for letting a spelling mistake get through the cracks and the best way to avoid those is drafting everything that you write in either Microsoft Word or Google Docs because both of them have built-in spell checkers and grammar checkers so the screenshot of the editor that I've used there is from the notes that I took for this specific webinar and that one spelling mistake is tights and it just picks up straight away same again for Google Docs I just copied the whole thing in there and it pulled out tight straight away so in Word it is you go to the review panel and then select editor it's on the left hand side, big and blue whereas on Google Docs it is in the tools panel and then it's just spelling and grammar but super easy to use and they're particularly useful for picking up spelling mistakes however what they won't do is pick up spelling errors that are wrong in context so in something I wrote the other day I'd use the word flowing when I meant following when talking about influences and naturally it didn't pick it up in actual fact I think it auto-corrected to flowing after I'd written it as following so you will still have to use your eyes and brain unfortunately and with Hemingway and Grammarly in fact don't take everything that they suggest when it comes to grammar as gospel because sometimes your own or the company's tone of voice or the way that you write isn't considered perfect by their standards but if you are convinced that it's still legible and understandable ignore their suggestion more often than not they'll tell me to take out Oxford Commerce which I absolutely love and if they'd done that with that contract it would have caused an issue from the very beginning so don't do everything they tell you because otherwise also you'll just sound like Grammarly and Hemingway and you want to sound like you slash the brand and if you download all of those slides there are some links to the various ones of those and actually looking at my little nose there I've realised the little secret one that I use myself and that's the Chrome dictionary extension so it won't help you as you're writing but as you're reading someone else's content to consume your content if there's a word that comes up that you don't know what it means or how it's supposed to be used just double click it and it pops a little dictionary definition and then slowly but surely you'll improve your own vocabulary as well bit of fun Brevity is the soul of wit so this is use as few words as possible McDonald's I'm loving it, three words Nike just do it, three words get straight to the point it doesn't just apply to taglines as you can see there it also applies to CTAs, read more, learn more book now, download you don't even have to say that it's now because buttons imply immediacy anyway and buy now which is the one that's usually just fallen back to particularly in e-commerce just buy now the customer knows exactly what's going to happen when they click that button it also applies to your blog content as well, short sentences short paragraphs don't necessarily go so far as me think why waste time say a lot word when few word do trick you still want it to be grammatically correct and have a nice little flow to it but take out the waffle you know, you're not writing an essay, you're not padding the word count if by the time that you're finished the blog post that you've written is 500 words instead of 800 maybe that's a good thing maybe you have in fact said everything that you need to have a little double checked check that you have said everything but generally keeping it short is nice and simple there's a B2B one there which I think is talking about setting up websites build your brand 3 words, sell more stuff 3 words, sign up free 3 words and within those I couldn't even necessarily tell you the brand that it is but you know what they're going to do for you I mean we're trying to be brevity so let's go straight on to the next one the point of punctuation this one has come up several times over the course of my career but just avoid semicolons that search from the University of Sussex says the semicolon has only one major use I'm not sure how true that is I think I can think of two but if it's only got one use how often are you really going to need it and that one use that it calls out is that it's separating two clauses which could be separate sentences to which you automatically think well why aren't they separate sentences and there is no good reason so just make them separate sentences hyphens can replace commas example there because sadly no marketer gets it if you've found that a sentence you've written has got I don't know four commas maybe even just three or more think about where you might be able to use a hyphen instead you can use it at the end of sentence as well to sort of separate your final point like because it is you can use a hyphen before that it implies a pause and that is way that pretty much everyone will read it so there again too many clauses full stop so separate your sentences out it lowers the like readability reading level of what you're writing it's less about making it simplified or maybe it is more about making it simplified but not everybody that's reading what you've put out there has a really high reading level can read to the level of say if you're an English graduate and also they have short attention spans not because they are simple but because they've time is money time is important so just short simple sentences to keep people paying attention to what you've written and also you want to have nice white space which is the lots of line breaks it is essentially punctuation but if you've got two sentences to each other that are just that little bit further apart in meaning or sense you can put in a line break and just separate it into a new paragraph and then that way when you're sort of zoomed out as we are on that blog post there there's lots of white space and it's just pleasing to the eye and it also means that people can skim read more easily and get down to that sweet cta that you should have at the bottom of every single blog post so if you remember anything from this webinar avoid semicolons right for your friends this is less about using slang you can still use colloquialisms particularly if you're trying to sell to a local market so you know if there's a colloquialism from your particular county feel free to throw it in there but use contractions there's this belief that if you're writing for a business you have to write in a sort of that is the way it is done when really you can say that is the way it's done and it gets to the point a lot faster as you can see from these Google snippets you want to get to the point as quickly as possible more often than not answer it in the first paragraph if you were telling a story to your friends you would say something along the lines of oh I fell out of a tree the other day then go into some of the details to how you ended up doing that and then you end it with so I fell out of a tree if you were to start it with something funny happened to me the other day then go through all this description and then end with I fell out of a tree people are going to be bored of what you were saying and that goes just as well for blog posts it might lead to a high bounce rate but if the website that you're writing for has a particularly good retargeting strategy if someone just clicks into a blog post for just a couple of seconds or to get the answer that they're looking for they'll then be followed by retargeting ads so you don't have to worry too much about the fact that they're not necessarily clicking a cta and also it leads to more brand recognition if someone's clicked in and read a blog post that you did they might come back to you for other blog content in the future or they will just think of your brand the next time they're looking for that particular product so what we got here for our examples how to tell the difference between Lamborghinis the side air intakes are the big giveaway and then goes into what those differences are I did write this and the other one there is in short the five stages of your customers buying journey are and then it says all five of them it only goes into the detail of the first one but then that might draw people in to read the rest although as you can tell from the ellipses there the rest of the information is contained within so you just click on it and then you find out everything and then it also pulls through that nice image so yeah don't bury the lead that's a principle from journalism where if you've got like a headline you want to explain what the headline is quite quickly and lastly that B2B doesn't equal boring there's also this idea that if you're writing for a business that's for a business let's say software as a service that you have to write in a really stuffy dull way but the important thing to remember is that you are a person and you're writing to another person someone within that decision making unit the other business that wants to be engaged with they don't want to read a really stuffy thing maybe if you're working for a legal firm that might be approached a little bit differently but still you want the main side of it to be the front side of it to be super approachable, particularly high up the funnel a little bit further down when you're getting into the real nitty gritty as to why someone should buy your product or it's a sales person with that direct relationship you can start to get a little bit more boring and go really deep into the details but at the higher up level that most copywriting is, you can be fun with it that example at the bottom there I think is from Slack hooray, your campaign is officially live and people are responding delight customers with your carefully crafted well timed responses and that's Slack it's selling a communication tool to other businesses but they've used an exclamation mark they don't necessarily have to be just the copywriter's crutch that can be used well in other circumstances so yeah writes as though you want other people to read it write for your friends, not for your professor don't pad the word count don't hide what you're trying to just get to the point credits for novelists this is something that's actually come up recently but it's the fact that when you're doing copywriting you won't always get your name on it and that's okay the main point is that you sold a product or got someone to sign up to a webinar or anything along those lines it's not about it's not making a name for yourself it takes usually a long time for your name to kind of get out there as any kind of expert and just don't take it apart when your name doesn't go on it one of the examples that I pulled out there is from my own career a version of incentives the sort of greatest social response that I ever got from anything that I've ever put out and my name is nowhere to be seen and it started with sending a message out as version of incentives saying congratulations you've won a prize please let us know when it comes through that was also followed with some messages sent as my line manager sort of like setting up a little kind of relationship there a little bit of ghostwriting and then the person responded by taking a picture and tagging Richard Branson and loads of social responses the followers of version incentives went up I think sort of tenfold and the only reason you'd know it was me is because that's my handwriting on that little handwritten note aside from that you'd never know it was me and that's just the way it goes so you know when you're writing it's on the social media for a particular company it's unlikely you're going to be signing it off with your own name you'll get that a little bit in customer service when there are different agents they'll sign it off with their name but usually it's just their first name so they're not getting any huge amount of credit for it and with that comes a note on portfolios so both for students and the sort of career marketers alike if you've written a particularly good piece or done something that worked particularly well for your company take some screenshots or print it as a pdf and save it somewhere that isn't on your work computer email it to yourself and that way you keep a record of it because after you've left the company isn't beholden to keeping your author credit or even keeping those posts version incentive could have deleted those posts or like in that 404 example there in career but you might see a 404 when you go looking for that what was that great blog post I wrote three years ago and it's just been deleted because the company feels it doesn't serve a purpose or it's taking up service space any number of reasons that you can't possibly fathom or guess they might delete your work so if you think it's great at the time keep it, keep a copy of it and then that goes on to ghost writing which is the more fun part I would say of credit being removed because your name is not on it maybe someone else's name is on it you get to embody that person you get to imagine how that person would write it can be a lot of responsibility but it's also fun and it's a nice little thing to put on the CV ghost writing experience it makes it very, it's difficult to prove after you've done a little bit of ghost writing but it is a fun part of writing where you can just embody someone else for a brief spell you're not always going to get credit and then lastly have fun with it a lot of grammar rules can be broken for almost every rule in English the English language there's an example of it being broken I'm not going to embarrass myself by trying to come up with any of those examples now but that little screen shot there which I've taken from someone else's blog post stand on the shoulders of giants I believe I've put the credit in the notes of the slideshow anyway so what examples have we got here avoid alliteration, always I love a bit of alliteration if you can think of a good way of doing it put it in prepositions are not words to end sentences with yep you can play around with that and there's something about splitting infinitives supposedly you're not supposed to do that but if we didn't have that you wouldn't get the fabulous star trek that we've gone before it's a weighty phrase and it's achieved by splitting an infinitive which you're not meant to do avoid cliches like the plague their old hat cliches are all over the place feel free to use them don't use too many issue ampersands and abbreviations not sure about the use of the word issue there you could have just always said avoid but I guess they wanted to not copy avoid from the previous one but don't use it well you can actually use it to cheat a word count character count rather if you use an ampersand you've saved yourself two characters though one should never generalize you can do that cliches again be more or less specific I'm not entirely sure what that one's all about but you can play around with sort of getting straight to it sentence fragments eliminates I use an example of that just the other day in the smart objective blog post which you can find over on the CIM content hub one of the sentences is literally just the word smart because it follows on where it explains what the SMART stands for smart exaggeration is a billion times worse than understatement you can use hyperbole hyperbole you can use it more in blog posts I would say than like printed ads you don't want to get pulled up by the ASA although broadly they will understand the difference between hyperbole and a lie parenthetical remarks however relevant are unnecessary I use brackets, parentheses all of the time so I wouldn't worry about that one you might want to worry about overuse if you're constantly using little sort of side notes and things like that maybe think if they could be just a separate sentence afterwards or how they might be expanded so as to not be in brackets but feel free to use them and who needs rhetorical questions you'll use questions in blog post titles all of the time so don't worry too much about rhetorical questions because you'll then answer it anyway and it doesn't always have to be straightforward so this example here from a slack bug fix often you'll see on bug fix things like fixed text bleeding out of a window or fixed button not visible when using iOS 15 those kinds of things and then the example here you've got is fixed when viewing a conversation on iPad people notice that there was sometimes a back button that would be visible but which did nothing when tapped upon this was meant as a reminder of the linear nature of time and that no matter how much we may yearn for certain elements of the past we must press on, ever forward undeterred, unyielding can you imagine if that were true it was absolutely a bug, all bad it's a lot more worse than it needs to be but it's just a little bit of entertainment and slack is great at that think about the micro copy it's really fun things with it so here are the rules words matter think about the words that you're using and don't draw the eye of either your audience or the advertising standards authority internalise the TOV, embody that tone of voice and the brand that you are writing for think if the brand were a person how would they speak always be reviewing, very simple write for the customer the customer is king but also write for your blind manager reading it, but the customer matters most Grammarly is not a genius but you can use it to fix those spelling mistakes keep it clear short sentences that describe exactly what the point is be hyphen happy, hyphens are probably my favourite piece of punctuation so use them all the time get to the point, don't bury the lead copywriting is not equal to authoring what was expected to get your name on it and then of course have fun with it an example there from a little juggling man there so that brings us to the end of that copywriting webinar and now I think it's time for a Q&A so I'll pass it back over to Phil it is indeed Stuart thank you very much those are really great some fantastic tips throughout the entire presentation as Stuart said we're going to move into the Q&A we've already received some great questions to get us underway but please do continue first of questions and we'll try and get through as many as we can in the next 10 minutes or so just look, remind us if you want to comment on the socials about today's webinar then you can use the hashtag see our events which we've popped up on screen again along with the QR code to find out further information about marketing ok let's head off to our first question we've got loads here Stuart I'm just going to go swimming in chronological order I think top tip for avoiding writer's block the sort of thing that I use to get over writer's block is to just start scribbling things out on a notepad say that it's a a topic that you've got to write a blog post about write the keyword of the topic and then just write things that are associated with that word and just that simple process of getting words on a page can help you get past it sometimes it's simply a case of writing is writing that first sentence I mean admittedly that might even be the point of writer's block is that you can't write that first sentence so think about the 10th sentence just go a bit further down from those words that you've taken off those topic which one of those things can you write about and start with that and then you might be able to skip back to you know what the main topic is about and yeah it's all about just getting things on a page that aren't necessarily the blog itself just getting in the practice of just getting words out of your brain okay great thanks to it here's one which you're going to love hyphens or dashes that can be a big issue yeah so within Microsoft Word if you're using hyphen to kind of separate two points once you start typing and then hit space it becomes a I think it's called an M dash really those are the ones that you should be using but when you're writing directly into a CMS it's not going to do that automatic change most people aren't going to notice those couple of pixels difference between a hyphen and a dash so you don't have to worry so much about how it looks once you've written it in I consider the two synonymous but I will sometimes if I notice that it hasn't done that automatic lengthening within Microsoft Word I will copy it from somewhere else and put it in but if it ends up being left as a hyphen that short version don't worry too much about it unless you're doing something where you're writing in Excel and then turning it into page code sometimes the dash can be shown a little bit different but as long as you know to look out for it it's easy to fix after the fact okay thank you should any potential insult or controversy be avoided or is some provocation acceptable it depends on the brand that you're writing for so take Brudog for example they have a very strong brand tone of voice and it is or can be sometimes a little bit insulting or like provoking like I think do they use the swear I don't think they used the swear word but I think they did use like F Asterix hashtag K which everyone knows what that really means if it fits your brand yes but be absolutely sure that it fits your brand if you do it for a brand or an audience that isn't receptive to it the negative effects massively outweigh the positive ones so be very very careful with provocation this one's a hot topic what are your thoughts on copyrighters being replaced by chat GPT do you think copyrighters have a future I'm not hugely worried about being replaced by chat GPT or at least not in its current state it has a tendency to be mistaken which is surprising really considering this computer program but because the way AI works is what goes in is what comes out so if it's trained on bad data or questionable or bias data it will kick out bias whereas and it won't realise that it's doing it whereas a person can usually think on their bias and think how they can avoid it and also something that's happened recently is between chat GPT and I think it might be Bings AI the two of them now refer to each other because their results are being put on the web and so they're ending up in this sort of cycle spiral of just making up references because the other one said it rather again a copyrighter can avoid that and so far I think I've been broadly able to identify when something is written by chat GPT because it has a certain style and you can tell when it doesn't match the copywriter's previous output so I think there is still a future for copywriters at the very least if it ends up being that copywriters don't write huge blog pieces anymore they will still be checking them over for facts and inserting references and making sure that it follows a particular tone so yes I think there's still a future for copywriters and I'm not worried yet Emoji's in copy for social media yes or no I mean that's just yes but again it does depend on the brand they shouldn't always be used to replace words because not everyone's kind of emoji dictionary is advanced as you know your average social media executive but you can absolutely use it to kind of like emphasize a point or give across emotion sometimes that can be a little bit difficult with just words but I feel like they're slightly replacing the exclamation mark as the new copywriter's crutch so they should be used with thought and with care not just slam-dash wherever okay so there's a couple of questions around entry level jobs really the first one is copywriting the right start from entry level digital marketing job and similar question what's the best way to get your job in copywriting or digital marketing with 80 degree or experience mm-hmm so my bias would be that copywriting and studying English is a good start to your kind of like marketing career but it's by no means requirements just having a good understanding of English language is useful so you can start as like a copywriter or you can be like a proofreader if you're good at reading over other people's stuff that can take you surprisingly far social media I I haven't gone for any social media roles myself and I think most people probably have a good sort of like social media ability and provided you're good on your sort of like LinkedIn Twitter wherever it's easy to prove mm-hmm but entry level you know copyright and roles do exist if you don't see like copywriter as the specific role at a company you may well just see marketing executive or marketing coordinator and then you'll see sort of like copywriting first and foremost mm-hmm things to study any language I think will probably give you a good basis so you know if you've studied French or German they give you a good understanding of kind of like grammar and how things flow mm-hmm and probably any marketing degree really will give you a good fundamental understanding of any copywriting role okay thanks to it I think we may have lost you part way through that but I think we've got the general gist of the answers I don't know I just think it's just a connection okay do you have any tips for reviewing copy balancing changing wording to how you'd write it with not rewriting someone's work mm-hmm I think the a good way of sort of not rewriting someone's work is to have a draft sent to you in Microsoft Word or Google Docs at reviewing level not editing level so people can make suggestions but then you the person submitting the copy can go through and either accept or reject the things that people have said sometimes it will be a super obvious thing like a spelling mistake that's pretty straightforward sometimes it will be that you're reading it and it just it doesn't feel quite right mm-hmm because the person that wrote it has a clear understanding of what it is they're trying to get across but if you're not completely convinced as to what you've read either makes sense or gets the point across or says what the person was trying to say you can just kind of put a little comment on it saying what's the point you're trying to make here mm-hmm and also you can do things as comments rather than direct suggestions of edits so you can say things like you might want to think about shortening this sentence or could you add a line break here and if you put them in as comment suggestions rather than direct edits the writer is more likely to think about what it is they've written rather than just like yeah fine I'll accept all of these changes and move on thank you where can I find the best cases and learning resources stroke insights on copyright well on the CIM content hub you'll find a great deal of articles about copywriting if you just go on there and search copywriting you'll find every article that has copywriting I think in the title but it might go into the copy itself um what sort of resources have I used um at the earlier on in my slides I showed the book each shoots and leaves by Lynn Truss a little resource for me that just kind of helped with you know how to use punctuation and sort of little grammar rules and stuff like that reading other companies blogs will give you a sense of what good copywriting looks like even if they aren't themselves copywriting tips so you just look at how they've written a particular thing some blogs better than others I think where I learned a lot of the short sentences short paragraphs frequent subheadings HubSpot they do a really good job of the way that they lay their blogs out okay um I think we've run out of time for questions now I think Stuart you've already mentioned the CIM's content hub there's loads and loads of articles and blogs content on there around the whole subject of copywriting and the content hub is fully searchable so let's do a suggestion that's a very good place to start if you want to sort of hone up on the subject but anyway thank you again Stuart some really great questions and some really great answers there unfortunately that's all the time we've got for our webinar today I'd just like to thanks Stuart once again for delivering an absolutely fantastic presentation and we do hope you've enjoyed the session and been able to gain some handy tips to take forward and apply to your next piece of content thank you Stuart we'll be back with our final marketing club webinar on Wednesday the 26th of April with George Honnibal and some practical advice on how to unlock the power of LinkedIn to boost your online presence you'll find further details listed on the events and marketing club pages on our website where you can also register for the session so that just leaves me to say a final thank you to you for joining us today and we hope you've enjoyed the webinar take care everyone and we look forward to seeing you again soon