Your ambassador for your kind introduction and thank you all for joining this roundtable. This is not roundtable. Sorry, my presentation today This is my first time to visit W. I'm first time in Ireland So it's really honored to be part of the this IIE community And I'm contributing to some of my analysis to the discussion As an ambassador said I'm gonna speak about the rules-based order What challenges what kind of the problems it had in the past 20 years? And I will discuss of what how Japan perceived those challenges and discuss the Japan's free and open the Pacific vision in that context and First of all in terms of rules-based order, I have to define it in some way Role-based order is the order that the old entities including government and then private sectors Abide by the existing rule. So it's based on the principle rule of law Once we agree on the rules, we have to abide by it and why it is necessary It's because it can increase the predictability of any issues Of course for business sectors if we can agree on the rules and everyone thinks that everyone Entity would abide by this and people can expect or predict what's happened or even if the Violation of rules incur some cost for the violators. So there's an incentive for all the participating members to follow the rules and this is actually not in an international arena or International relations. There's no perfect rules-based order Individual state or sovereign state has still has its own autonomy and its policy There's no principle of the non-intervention and a quality of the states in the West Faryon system So I cannot say that there's a perfect international rules-based order in the in the post 1945 But still compared to the pre-war time. There is better system in this world We had the United Nations. We had a Breton system including WTO, IMF and work. Sorry WTO is not in the Breton system, but the World Bank and IMF There's an international arbitration system United Nations Convention of the Law of the Sea, ANCROS, for example, preserves the predictable and free and open maritime order in the world So we had a better system and now another key characteristic of this rules-based order in the post 1945 is that Inclusivity is that that countries any countries can be included when they satisfy with the several conditions Even Japan, which is the loser of the Second World War could join the post-war order and it can be the beneficiary and At the end of the day it became the exemplary student of the rules-based order Despite the some atrocious past So this is I think the my definition of the rules-based order and then in the past 20 years There's a several challenges in this order. First of all, there's a changing balance of power Which can be the foundation of this rules-based order in 1989 to 1991 the Cold War ended and After that, there's a unipolarity over the United States. US is a predominant economic and military power in the world And they preserved the system But it's changed maybe after 28 the Global financial crisis and then China and then this is the second factor the China or the other emerging countries had a more Economic presence in the region in the world. No, it's not just China, but it's also the India and others And finally, there's some challenges within the liberal international sort of rules-based international order or the concept of liberalism There's a of course the some Discussion now in 1990s that History is the history ends the end of the history discussion by Francis Fuguyama the Western idea including liberalism capitalism and democracy Cannot all gonna be challenged by the communism or the competing ideas But now after maybe say global financial crisis the liberalism concept itself incurred some problems and Global of course in the United States. There's a huge economic disparity and you know exactly to receive a huge amount of money compared Whereas the other people who are working in McDonough. I cannot get enough Saudi and democracy also Demonstrates some of the difficulty to manage the populist movement We don't have to refer to Brexit or the president Trump But there's a some conceptual challenge to the democracy as well So this is sort of the three challenges I observed in the last 20 years in terms of the intercontext the rules-based order and Japan from Japanese perspective This challenge is a severely critical for its security Japan is Well, the third largest economy in the world, so I cannot say the small country, but compared military is big and it's the fifth largest, so it's not small, but Japan is not necessarily Independent military power because it doesn't have the nuclear power. It doesn't have the completely normal military so Let me say that Japan is the dis-trained great power and for that state or for Japan's neighboring countries Which is smaller than Japan the rules-based order is the only one guarantee that they can They can face the great powers One by one with the same footing equal footing so say for example the Philippines and China they Have the dispute in the South China Sea but Philippines could blow the issue to the international uncross arbitration and There's a equal there's a quality in this arbitration and I can I can go back to the US Nicaragua case or Bangladesh India case There's the guarantee for small the rules-based order is critical for the smaller states to resolve some issues with a great power Without resulting to military power or economic coercion But this is challenged and I already mentioned South China Sea case But in the East China Sea Japan is facing China's increase in aggression They sent and China sent the ships Well, it sets a coast guard ships to the surrounding area of the Senkaku island in the East China Sea and Japan's coast guard have to take care of them every day almost every day United States was fine under the Well, I shouldn't say anyone fine under anyone. I think we saw the president Bush ignoring Well, taking a unilateral action apart from the United Nations Security Council in Middle East and President Obama was a very vivido person, but when it comes to China He didn't take this tough action at the beginning So Japan Japanese government complained to Obama administration in the beginning that you should be more serious about China Most should more realistic about China and now after 2016 or 2017 January 2017 We got the new president of the United States there. I mean from my perspective the his policies to a China are partially Something Japan asked for the United States doing In putting cost on China's changing status quo in the South China Sea or East China Sea and rejecting the some malicious investment from the region and Reducing the risk of the potential information leaking through Chinese company Which installed the 5g or 4g These are the policy that Japan wanted But at the same time the problem of the current administration for the jet From Japanese perspective is that they the United States again Doesn't respect multi-rotorism Paris Agreement and TPP trans-pacific partnership So this is the challenge behind the current Japanese foreign policy Then what Japan is doing is the free and open Indo-Pacific strategy or free and open the Pacific vision What is Japan doing in this strategy? It sounds like beautiful the free and open Indo-Pacific It's a broader region of free and open. That's good, but Essentially according to the government official. There's a three pillars one is the protecting the maritime security and protecting security Then second is bringing the prosperity through better connectivity and the third one is this Prevailing the universal values including rule of law democracy and freedom of press These are the three pillars according to the government, but it's still not clear enough for me So I would say I would rephrase why Say that this free and open the Pacific strategy has a three Constituencies from my perspective again. One is the diversification of the partnerships Traditionally Japan relies on the United States US Japan alliance for its own security There's no alternative to this yet but After nine after 2016 after the free and open the Pacific vision is released or even a little bit before Japan expanded the security partnership with other like-minded countries starting from Australia India Philippines, Vietnam and South Asian states, I mean, ASEAN as a whole and Doing more with Bangladesh and Sri Lanka and extending to Africa. Oh, well in terms of Africa still there's much work to do So this diversification of policy would be necessary for Japan to have Sort of better bargaining position against the United States This is a some new trend and that can be seen in the economic policy as well Japan agreed on the TPP with the United States So originally there's a 12 members of the TPP But United States withdrew on the first day of the president Trump took office they withdrew from the TPP and I thought That's the end of the TPP Traditionally in the history of Japan's falling policy after 1945 It was very possible or I Cannot expect anything that Japan can do without the United States especially in those policy, which US considered a sensitive But Japan together with Australia Agreed on the TPP 11 the CP TPP comprehensive and progressive TPP without the United States That's again part of the diversification It's diversification of the the alliance in the United States as well as the diversifying our economic reliance on China Japan experienced the economic coercion by China after 2010 that there's a collision incident in Senkaku Island that the China Chinese ship fishing boat Collided with the Japanese coast guard and China stopped the rare ethics boat to Japan at the time It was already planned beforehand, but they implemented at the time So we experienced the economy coercion much before other countries experienced So this the first is a diversification of the partnerships and second is they again protect the multilateralism or regionalism This TPP discussion especially is important in this context Japan's Policy toward a WTO for example is that they have to have the multilateral trading system without this Japan cannot sustain its economic growth and All the potential economic economic potential with Asia Pacific or Indo-Pacific cannot be achieved without the multilateral trading system so I Think even though the Prime Minister Abe has a good relationship with President Trump superficially It has some Complaints about the American policy and Even though Japan supports some of the US policy toward China it doesn't support the unilateral imposition of the tariffs on Chinese product and Recently agreed US China deal seems for me that it's the Resurgence of the Japan US trade deal in 1990s It's weird if we embrace the multilateral trading system. It's quite strange That the two government decide a specific numbers for imports or the export so again, Japan doesn't say this Officially to the American colleagues, but I think if Japan follows the principles, this is a very big problem and Japan Well, although I said Japan is embracing the multilateralism That's also that that's also true that Japan can not necessarily say the right thing every time they need to say So this is maybe the challenge for Japan to do more and they need more people like me in the government It's vocal and sometimes too provocative. So but anyway, and finally self empowerment is the pillar of the free and open to Pacific Self empowerment means that they Japan should have the more autonomous foreign policy and Autonomous military security policy with necessary resources Unfortunately, Japan still spend 1.2% of the GDP on its military expenditure. It's still lower than the 2% average 2% of NATO Japan's Well that amount of military budget is equivalent to 5% of a national budget Whereas we spend 33% of on the social welfare services 25% on the interest of the national debt and we just spend the 3% on the education. So I Cannot say that Japan is doing enough in this self empowerment pillow, but I think Prime Minister Abe is trying to direct Japan to invest more in the not just military, but also new technology There's some news that Japan will promote the development of the 6g without investing in the 5g that's a little bit I hope the dreams comes true, but it's a little bit idealistic, but it's really important to have to explore new area, especially the sophisticated technological area and Government will promote those technological education and investment so I have Of course, I have to I want to touch more upon the Japan-China relations and Japan-US relations and Of course, Japan's effort in the Southeast Asian was specific way But I think I spend almost 20 minutes now So I will stop here and then want to have the more questions. Well, thank you very much for a very comprehensive presentation of how you see Japan in its region as you say Certain aspects of it Could be developed further and no doubt will be in the question and answer session It is striking to us also That as you mentioned the 2008 financial crisis Was after the end of the Soviet Union The main catalyst for the kind of problems we are all faced with now Because it itself gave rise to populism But is also showed as I think you mentioned That China could isolate itself could insulate itself from this kind of development and could develop so far further The diversification of partnership after 2016 is indeed striking Because as you say In my time in Japan there was already talk of Putting out feelers to Australia and India, but it's extended further to the Philippines Bangladesh Sri Lanka and indeed asian which is also always an important partner for Japan Regionalization in the sense of Continuing with the trans-specific partnership without the United States is also a striking development in regard to Japan and self-empowerment Well, I think that Japan has failed The same kind of dilemmas as Germany is when it comes to self-empowerment if Japan now spends 1.2 percent of GDP on defense It has to be put against the background of Japan being What the third biggest economy in the world? 1.2 percent of Japanese GDP is a very big figure indeed And if it were to go up to 2% it would in itself Pause a problem. So this by way of Summarizing what you have said Hannah the Sam I told the floor open to questions and comments on Subjects Build partnerships with countries in and around Japan in light of Things that happened in the 20th century and secondly what sort of strategies has Japan and other nations in the region be Considering in terms of trying to be robust towards economic coercion because to me it seems like Japan and perhaps India Are the most robust this but many nations Many in Asia specifically are incredibly almost that that seems to be a Great questions Well regarding the difficulty of building partnership with the country which had the historical deficit deficit with Japan from Japanese perspective I think There I'd like to compare two cases the Japan's relationship with the Southeast Asia and Japan's relationship with South Korea in terms of Japan's relationship with Southeast Asia it's actually Becomes really substantial after the Fukuda Doctrine was released in 1970s The doctoring means that Japan promised that Japan will never be the military power doesn't Become the economic most monger in Southeast Asia and promote the people to people and the heart-to-heart relationship with South Southeast Asian states and Japan paid a compensation for those states and also Squary faced a history based on the based on the evidence is that all Available in that's basic. I mean all available evidences Now Southeast Asian states including the Lee Kuan Yew who passed away unfortunately Said that we never forget the history, but we will move forward based on you know memory and so Japan What I want to say in this is the two-fold one. Japan Squary faced a history and didn't necessary things and there's a forgiveness by substitution states and In terms of South Korea as you write maybe no as you may know There's a difficulty in Japan's South Korea partnership On the one hand Japan apologized South Korea several times for its atrocities and colonization and I myself think that we should continuously and maybe forever squary faced a history and Use that history for as a lesson for our foreign policy or any policy that that's my own belief and But at some at the same time There's a problem in Japan that some conservative politicians said the denialist statement about history And also and then that statement is picked up by South Korean media and there's a big issue So Japan cannot be innocent in this sense at the same time there's a I don't feel strong sense of the forgiveness from South Korea maybe from their perspective It's because of Japan lack of the apology or the not sincerity But South Korean domestic politics sometimes uses the history issue for just getting support from General public so unless and then I don't know I'm still struggling why they still uses the 70 years ago history for Current general action or a pleasure election and Of course one of the interpretations that South Korea Was unfortunately part of the Japan and at the end of the war so they were the losing side Unfortunately because of the Japan's of course policy, but so they couldn't fight the independence war independent war against Japan Japan was defeated by United States China and the other allied states, so they missed opportunity I hope they would no longer use the history issue for the current station to our current policy We can continue this continue the discussion on the history. I mean as I said forever But we should separate this issue from The current issue and that attitude is still missing I think That's maybe the difference between Japan and South Japan's relation with the SEA and South Korea And in order to be resilient to the economic coercion or any other coercion Actually there should be alternative so I talked with a Cambodian expert several times last year and they said Cambodia doesn't want to rely on China They want to rely or they want to have the other power or other countries joining the Cambodian market or infrastructure project and From their perspective Western country Rejected I mean didn't come or impose their own values universal values on Cambodia And because of their elections way way of doing an election They I mean Western country didn't invest or almost a prohibitive for us to invest in Cambodia Then they just rely have to rely on China because Thailand Vietnam they all enjoyed economic growth Whereas the Cambodia is all isolated so Japan's free and open to Pacific strategy is providing the alternative and Sometimes Japanese government said the free and open the Pacific and Belt and Road initiative are not in competition There they can be in harmony, but it's I think from perspective. It's a competition Because two companies are selling the same product similar product in the market, right? Then the one side it's a cheap and then less tight but a little bit less resilient or environmentally And very degradable and the other one is expensive high quality But something and sometimes there's a political tie So the two come to products two companies are competing in the same market at this moment and I think in order for the In order for Japan to be sorry in order for the Regional countries in the Indo-Pacific be more resilient to China's coercion or even American coercion The Japan's or other countries like-minded countries support for becoming for providing the aid and Then infrastructure project, which is more based on the private sector would be helpful for them to be resilient And of course then second thing is the keeping the rules based order again If there's a rules, I'm sorry if there's in some Area that we don't have rules we have to create the rules according to foreign minister Motegi He made a speech in December at the my Institute The Japan's definition of the rules-based order or Japan's way to protect the rules-based order is first of all keeping preserving the principle rule of law Second abiding by the existing rules and third creating the rules for necessary place and the reforming so if we Challenge this first principle we could be called as a revisionist country But if we just try to change and make this rules better, it's just a reformist It's the constructive attitude toward the rules-based order and that's Japan is doing I think John thank you very much. Thank you for a very interesting presentation You say that Japan is Trying to diversify its security interests by building new Relationships with countries like Australia and India My question is to what extent these new relationships include a security cooperation to mention and What is the attitude if they do what is the attitude of the United States? Happy with this Thank you, I Think you are your question is about the servicetutability also the US perception on the diversification as far as I see Current diversification is designed for complimenting US-led order As I just had a discussion with ambassador before coming here But Japan's what Japan want in terms of international order is a horizontal order That's why the rules-based isn't very important But we are not naive to believe that the rules-based order can be sustained without any balance of power We need balance of power and the favorable balance of power Then Japan still have the faith in the US-led order, especially in the Asia Pacific theater or Indo-Pacific theater Given the increasing influence of China. We think the United States is The presence is indispensable so Japan's diversification is basically trying to complementing this balance of power with principle of the rules-based order and as far as Japan is For example cooperating with Australia together with the United States. I mean, there's a My tri-lateral maritime exercise and there is a tri-lateral investment cooperation agreement between among the three countries US doesn't oppose US welcomes and with India we have the Madabara exercise this maritime exercise Conducted in the Bay of Bengal or Sea of Japan. That's also with the United States. So Maybe the term of diversification is not necessarily true, but it's still it's complementing the alliance with different means or the new means So The question or dilemma that Japan should face in the future is that if the United States doesn't respect this horizontal international order just prefer the America first hierarchical order with the hierarchical balance of power What can Japan do? That's the dilemma and At this moment Even though the supreme leader of the United States or in the executive leader Occasionally a free country this regards the Multilateralism or loose-based order. We have still the strong bureaucracy strong military I mean the military people who have the Who embrace the loose-based order? US-Japan alliance is not fragile to one individual president of the United States can destroy but if this kind of Selection of the leader Continues in the United States that would be really difficult for us and in that situation Real diversification might be necessary Are broken is their consequences because I don't see the point of having view based order without consequences for example America is he has pulled out of many things which he shouldn't have but when it comes to America Violate any Treaty doesn't want and they are consequences For example, it went to Iraq in 2003 when the United Nations has And instead of Holding us You So That's a really good question. I think That's unfortunately the case in the South China Sea We got the uncross arbitration in July 2016 which denies a line-dash line over China's claim over the South China Sea but Whatever the situation now in the South China Sea China still have the artificial island and the militarized them and What's the cost for China? Maybe that's your point. I think it's not maybe you talked about the United States But maybe it could be same for China as well That Mm-hmm, well, I think what you said is the perfect rules-based order, I think if I mean if we can have power to constrain Great powers and make them force them Abiding by the existing rules. I think that's perfect rules-based order That's same as the domestic governance system. We have the code We have the police and if someone made a claims that could be arrested and they be sent to the court That'll be the perfect. I mean ideal rules-based order, but unfortunately in the international system I don't think that we can have it We as I said, it's the limited form. So there's some ignorance by great power Iran case Iraq case and China's South China Sea case That's the two examples that the great power just ignores and doesn't abide by the international law and so Then but that two cases or other cases among Two cases among many cannot be the reason why we shouldn't seek the international rules-based order Say for example the WTO again So I'm studying the international economic rules and the international regional integration and China is very much abiding by the WTO rules and If there's a some panel established and discuss the China's Violation not violation but Subsidies to the domestic state on the enterprises and if the result is even if the result is unfavorable to China As far as I understand they China has abided by this ruling and that's actually increased the China's Creatability in the international economic system and that of course the incentive is that the China can lose Investment from other countries if they don't abide by the WTO So I think I agree with you that we needed some cost we cost imposing strategy on the violation by the great powers And unfortunately no single middle-sized country can do this If even if Japan in trying to impose a cost on the United States That's really limited, but what about the Japan Australia, you know India EU all stand together and that's actually what the Japan US and EU did it against China in the WTO field So coalition building among like-minded country is critically important and that's still I'm not too pessimistic about this and then Great power in the multi-polar system No single great power can decide everything as you rightly said they sometimes ignore the rules But it doesn't mean that they can decide everything so In order to prevent the one country or two great powers like China the United States decide everything The third pillar or the coalition of the states I think it still has a potential to Preserve the limited form of in rules based on it. I think But it's an interesting one It's a trusted more trusted security partner integration with Europe I'm curious what would be the procession from Japan of the current precarious position that you're representing so the way between Two great poles of power between the US and China were sort of vaguely opposed to each other and the choice of providers Just Thank you question in Europe It's the matter of the expectation from Japanese perspective It means that we cannot expect Europe to be standing all issued to the out of a Japan in the Asian Indo-Pacific theater Say for example, Japan has the issue with China in the East China Sea Sankaku Island But we don't expect Europe to be standing with us or even the use in the military means to You know protect Japan's territory. That's over expectation. We don't have it What we I mean I personally think The importance of EU is a normative power normative influence I Cannot count up the all the cases that Europe made a great leadership in making rules in the international arena and they are Maybe one of the my friends in Japan who work on you said that it's because they are always discussing rules within you So they have they can just it's quite easy for them to go international arena and make the rules And then that's actually some weakness of Japan We are trying to improve our capability to be normative leader or rule maker Rather than rule taker, but still unfortunately It's not enough. So we expect EU and Japan to cooperate more in this rulemaking Maybe it's not neutral escaping place it's Even if we have the I mean because of the US-China rivalry as I said in my previous answer the cooperation among the The rest of the countries will be important. So Maybe I'm not necessarily answering to your question, but that's my perception on you Am I answering to your question? Ah In terms of 5G Japan's policy is following the United States rejecting the Huawei from the critical security, sorry, critical digital infrastructure. According to Japanese government official statement, it doesn't name China, it doesn't name Huawei, it says that the companies which may have the relationship with the government shouldn't be the vendor of the 5G network. But at the same time, according to Japan's economic newspaper, actually Japanese companies trading with the Huawei, 70 billion dollars last year, it's huge 70 billion yen, sorry, 70 billion yen, so 700 million dollars. So we had the huge economic interest in keeping the Huawei arrive, or that's really difficult, but if Huawei wants to be trusted by, say for example, many European countries of Japan, there are still things they can do. They still have the data center in China, and China has the national information law which can ask all the entities in China provide information if government asks, if that exists in China, that law is existing in China and Huawei still put the headquarter in China, maybe we cannot trust. So unfortunately it could be seen as intervention from China's perspective, but because of some domestic law that China, PLC has, their companies are losing benefit and opportunities. So maybe we have to continuously encourage the Chinese companies, as well as the Chinese government, to reconsider those authoritative or more controlling type of laws, and that's I think, it's not happening yet, but I think that's maybe necessary. Thank you very much. Thank you for coming. It's great to see Japanese intellectual coming here, and it should happen more often. Anyway, a quick question about the US relationship with North Korea, thinking, current thinking in Japan, and about what is going on there, if you'd like to speak about something. That's a really difficult question. I want to ask help for him, but first point, we should have more visit by Japanese, yes, and that's maybe the good comment for the embassy staff here, so, ita kura san. Regarding North Korea, we, I mean, even at the time 2016 to 2017, when there's a discussion, negotiation between US and North Korea, Japan was not optimistic about the future prospect. American request for North Korea was the dismantlement of the nuclear facilities, nuclear capabilities that North Korea possess, but North Korea just asked the United States to denuclearize the Korean Peninsula. So from the beginning, they're saying the different things and trying to seek the agreement. That's actually difficult. I mean, I thought it's almost impossible. And now, that said, North Korea continues its missile and nuclear development, and still, as Japan, which Japan is very close to North Korea, and we can't even allow North Korea to possess the short or medium-range ballistic missile, which can deliver the nuclear warhead to Japan. Unfortunately, President Trump, at some point last year, I think in summer, said that short or medium-range ballistic missile is not our concern. And that was big shock for Japan, and we are continuously pushing this issue in the Washington D.C. But I can't predict the future scenario. But from Japanese perspective, the ideal scenario is that US and North Korea agree on the dismantlement of all new North Korea's short and medium-sized ballistic missiles together with the nuclear warhead. And the worst-case scenario is that in North Korea, we launch the missile against Japan. And from this spectrum, maybe we are now seeking the freezing the nuclear development and then missile development in North Korea together with the United States. And there are some unpredictable variables with China's policy. And we saw the US-China cooperation before 2016. But now, I'm not quite sure how China deals with North Korea situation. To be very honest, I'm not familiar with the current negotiation or Japan's perception very well. So I can just say basic things. But that's my view. Sorry. I'm not expert on this. Sorry. What is the current state of the Prime Minister Abe's attempt to change the constitution? Yeah. Prime Minister Abe, in his speech in January, this month, still mentioned the constitutional amendment and was one of his agenda until, I mean, by 2021. But I personally think that is difficult. Maybe there's two reasons. One, domestic support is not enough. Half of Japanese people want to have the change of the constitution, but 80% or 70% to 80% still opposing to change in Article 9, which prohibits, sorry, not prohibits, but it renounces the military policies. Of course, the first paragraph is fine. Japan doesn't resolve to war as a means to resolve international dispute. This part is completely fine, but the second paragraph is a problem. But general public, and there's no enough sufficient discussions in public space about this. And second is Abe's political capital, whether he has enough capital to change this. He is now, he's basically busy in terms of international issues. He is busy for Russia, territorial dispute with Russia. And he also said he is ready to negotiate with North Korea for abduction issue. And continuously busy with Trump administration, keeping the relationship, and we have to observe the next presidential election. And domestically, he got a little bit scandal issue recently, but it's not severe enough to change Abe administration, but he has to spend some political capital on this. So I cannot expect the change of the constitution. And even in the post-Abe era, I don't know. And after 2015 peace and security restoration, Japan now enacted the limited form of a collective self-defense with the United States. So in terms of peacetime security cooperation, Japan already reached the necessary point. May the question is how we can deal with wartime scenario? Can we really defend ourselves with this constitution? This is the discussion the security communities are doing, but not necessarily pre-varying. Good. I asked a final question. In relation to the Chinese One Belt, One Road initiative, we had a couple of people from the research community from Japan here a few years ago, and they were very opposed to the idea that Japan might participate in the One Belt, One Road initiative. If I understand correctly, the Japanese position has evolved a little since then. When you describe the diversification of partnership post 2016 that has taken place in Japan, it looks very much to be constructed along the format of the One Belt part of the Chinese initiative, which of course has to do with very sensitive choke points in transport, in maritime transport. But the One Road part of the Chinese initiative, I know many people say that it doesn't have the same impact that it seemed to have five or six years ago, but it's still very important, and it goes across Central Asia to the Middle East. What is the Japanese position in regard to this particular Chinese initiative? The basic position is that Japan free and open the Pacific and Belt and Road has a space for cooperation, and Japan clearly set the four conditions for cooperation, one, transparency, openness and financial sustainability of the recipient country, and economic viability of the project. If the project satisfies with the four conditions, even, well, regardless whether that was developed as a BRI project or not, Japan can cooperate with China. This is the position, and actually this is consistent with Japan's infrastructure investment policy even before the emergence of the BRI, and actually there's a sign of Japanese cooperation in third country at the private level. So I'm a little bit critical that the Japanese government asks the private sector to cooperate with the Chinese contractor in the third country. It's something the private sector would decide based on the cost-benefit analysis. So at this moment Japan opens the opportunity of window opportunity for China to come with us with the satisfying conditions, and then still nothing happened. So does Japan participate in the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank? Not yet, and then I don't think so as far as the United States is out. Well, I'm here to say that Japan is very autonomous and independent country, but as a matter of fact, it many times follows the United States in its decisions. So AIB things are, and also Japan has a significant interest in the ADB. Of course. All the president of the ADB, Agent Development Bank, is a former or the incumbent officer of the Ministry of Finance. So it's the significant benefit interest that Japan has in the ADB. So the benefit of joining the AIB is still not so much and not enough for Japan to take the different policy with the United States. And of course Japan's concern is two-fold in terms of BRI. One is the depth trap, the so-called depth trap. In Hanban Tota of Sri Lanka, that was the particular case that China's BRI wouldn't satisfy with the conditions that Japan wanted. There's a discussion. Of course, Japan was shocked when Japan lost in the high-speed railway in Indonesia from Jakarta to Bandung, and China got the deal actually. That was a shock, but after that Japan's approach is investing the metro system in Jakarta with a high-quality infrastructure. And in Indonesia, high-speed railway, for example, doesn't make any progress because China didn't do the sufficient examination of environmental damage and negotiation with the local communities. So I think we have to be concerned about depth trap, but at the same time, if there's any problems in the project planning, we don't have to do anything. They will just fail, or they don't make the sufficient progress, unfortunately, for the recipient country. From Japan's perspective, quality matters the quantity. Japan doesn't have the sufficient capital to invest in all the regional countries, but based on the selective and very deep analysis by JICA, JICA is the Japan Economic Cooperation Agent, they are always examining the potential risks and then economic viability of the project. So once they started investing, they would make some result, and this quality infrastructure idea is our setting point. And maybe in some cases, if China is getting closer to our principle, maybe there's a potential cooperation area, but at this moment Japan doesn't make any compromise in these conditions, I think, to the VRI. And I hope the other European countries also be requiring China, or encouraging China to be more risk-based, and then promote the high-quality infrastructure through the VRI. Well, we are participants in the infrastructure investment bank, as indeed, I think, are most European countries. Hannah, thank you very much for your presentation. I was struck by your remark on the possibility of a development in Chinese American trade, which would parallel what happened in Japanese American trade some 40 years ago. This is the setting up of quotas on quantitative ceilings for trade. I recall very well the scene where I think representative Patricia Schroeder took an act to a Toshiba radio outside the Capitol building in Washington. This was the stage of Japanese American trade relations some 40 years ago, and thankfully the United States recovered from this feat. But I think you quite rightly say the possibility of their relapsing into such a situation has not disappeared. I thank you for the openness with which you dealt with the questions and the comments. I think because you were open, it has been very enlightening for all of us, and I thank you for coming. Thank you very much.


Cohen Industries and who are you? Yeah, my name is Wang Soo Kim. I come from Korea. The coral industry is lead to the growth in coral, so I'm sorry, the growth revolution. So our team is making to the... What is this? Yeah, this is the coral industry's organic portable tannins. It's called the organic PB. It's a flexible PB and very low cost and we can make the lateral process. This is low-cost flexible solar panel? Yeah, solar panel. The previous solar panel is silicon-based solar cell. It's not flexible, it's leady. So our panel is flexible and semi-transfericy and various colors. And what are we looking at here? What is this? Yeah, it depends on the active materials, so we can change our PB colors. So green, blue, red, and nowadays we develop the gray color. So why is it a different color? For what? Yeah, most of the customers, they need the various colors because the application is various. So we're making the... So, for example, red is for... Why do you need blue? Why do you need red and green? What does it go? What's the difference? Yeah, so our jacket and we... Yeah, yeah, let's check out the green jacket. Yeah, yeah. Jacket is color is... Yeah, it's just style. Yeah, style. It's just for style. Yeah. So then it matches the style and then your jacket is charging. Yeah, someone is like this kind of color. The other one is yellow color. So we can make the various colors and adopt the various applications. All right. So you have a bag, you have a jacket. What else? You can do more. Can you show in the catalog? You have for the tent, you have tent, backpack, jacket. Tumbler. What is a tumbler? What does it do? Yeah, so most of the people enjoy some tea or coffee. They're using the tumbler. It's a tumbler. It's making some electric power. It can light. All right. Just generate power. Does it work? All your products is working already? Are you shipping many or is new? New. New. So how soon it will be big? How soon you will sell many? And in the future, you plan to be a big, big industry? Yeah. Actually, our main product is a solar module. So we wanted to check in with this the crew worker to make the system. So the partner companies do the final products. And all right. So what do you think about ID Tech X? What do you think about this show? I'm pleasure. Actually, we are attending the first time in the ID Tech conference. So it's very interesting. We can meet so many buyers. Thank you.


All right, everybody. How y'all doing today? Good? All right, we are here to talk about writing, which is one of my favorite topics. So we have a few brave souls here in the front. I have a tendency to run on and I've had a lot of coffee. So if y'all find that I'm just talking in circles, just give me a little signal, okay? So the name of this talk has put your best copy forward, winning the internet with your words. I'll just start with a little bit about myself to prove that I am maybe a little qualified to talk about this, not super qualified, but somewhat. I started my career in publishing, back when publishing was still a big thing, before the internet made everything free and accessible, which is awesome. So I had to transition careers and I went to marketing. It made sense. Marketing communications is a lot of writing. I've been doing marketing communications, creating marketing campaigns, basically storytelling for companies for the last 12 years or so. I am currently the senior customer lifecycle manager at Bluehost, where what that means is I just ensure a good customer experience by creating campaigns to guide customers through our products and offer them things in addition to their hosting that might be of use to that particular customer based on what their needs are. My hobbies include poetry slams, coffee consumption and correcting people's grammar. No, I'm just kidding. I'm not obnoxious like that. I just silently judge you. And I put a picture here to reflect one of my hobbies and there's a reason for that. I actually dance and hula hoops. And the reason I am telling you that is because what better example as we move through how to write content than for me to give you examples of writing to people about hoop dance. I was gonna bring a hula hoop but I had a couple of very long flights. I'm sorry, hit me up at another word camp and you'll get a full performance. So just because I'm a type A personality, I like to know what's coming my way before we get started. It won't hurt my feelings if this is not for you but hopefully it is because I think communication is key to any business or any hobby or anything that you wanna put out there in the world. So the way it's gonna work is we're going to talk about taking an idea and in a very methodic way putting it into words. This is a process with a few steps. So I'm gonna guide you through those. And then we're gonna talk about actually putting all your research, everything you wanna convey into actual words that makes sense. Sounds pretty basic I know but it can be a bit of work at times. So then we're gonna do what I like to call slalap and some polish on it. We're gonna revise, we're gonna look at how you can change words to maybe make them more effective and then we'll talk about optimization very briefly. So let's get started. Yeah, that's pretty much what I look like every time I have a new writing assignment. I'm not trying to scare you off, I just take this very seriously and I'm hoping to live the veil on some of those frustrations for you as well. So hopefully with a method and a process, it'll just be easy peasy. So I wanna start, I don't know how many of you know what a positioning document is but in marketing this is our lifeblood, this is our blueprint, this is our everything. I do not ever start any sort of writing project until I have this document completed. This is what's gonna guide everything you write and it's gonna help you to make sure that you're conveying the proper messages to the right people in the right way. So what I'm gonna do now is walk through the different elements of this positioning doc and kind of explain to you how to fill it out. So the first thing you need to do when you have any sort of website project where it involves copywriting is to define what exactly your website is for, right? Are you selling a product? Are you trying to build a community around a shared interest? Are you trying to provide people with information for free? Are you creating a portfolio to promote yourself, right? These are questions on this slide that you need to have clear answers for and I would assume that if you're undertaking the task of creating a full website, you have some idea about all these. So this is not a tough one, I promise you that. You can get to your answers on this pretty quickly. So what is my website offering? What are the features of my offering? What are the capabilities? What are the factual things about my product that I can list out in maybe bullet form or in a paragraph if you're more comfortable with that? Something you can refer back to. What are the benefits of my offering? There is a difference between features and benefits which I'll get to shortly but how does my offer benefit other people? What sets my offering apart? So what's my key differentiator? What's the thing? There's, I don't know if there's anything new that you can offer that hasn't already been offered out there but the way you offer it, that's gonna make all the difference. So how do you position what you're offering to the world in a way that nobody else has done? What makes it special? And is my offering commonly understood? So to this point, I just, I'll get more into this a little later when we talk about audience but I just wanna make sure that you're giving your specific audience the right kind of information. You're starting at the right place. I'll dive into that in a second. That's kind of a segue into what's coming up next. But first, step two, answer this question. What do I wanna accomplish with my website? Revenue? Do I wanna promote my business? Do I wanna have a portfolio? Do I wanna share ideas or create a community? It could be all of these, it could be none of these. It could be something totally different that you're trying to accomplish with your website but you need to set a very specific goal with your website because that is going to help you define how you write the copy for it. So now we're gonna get to audience, right? You've determined the point of your website, what you're gonna be offering on your website, what its features are and what the key differentiators are. So now you've really gotta focus on the audience. This is a key step in communicating what you want to to your audience in the right way. So how does, who is my audience? I mean, you can, this is a step that you can take as deep as you want to. You can create personas, which means you could factor in everything about your key audience target that you want to, including, do they have a commute to work? Do they work from home? Do they have families? Do they have partners, children, dogs? You can get as deep as you want or you could just start at the top and say, my audience is a basic consumer who's in the market for X, Y and Z or my audience is someone who shares the hobby that I have. We'll say hoop dance, right? They like hula hoops. They like to dance and hula hoops. That's who I'm going after. How does my offering benefit them? So like I said, I'll talk more about that in a minute, but think about, think in terms of how your offering will make your audience's life better or richer or more productive. What is the overall benefit to them? Because that is your sweet spot. That's where you're gonna really hit in when you start writing. What goal does my audience have? Are you helping them reach a goal? Or are you, and I'll be clear, every audience has a goal. When you're determining an audience, even if it's, you know, you're writing a blog, a personal blog, a creative writing blog or a memoir, you have a specific audience and that audience has a goal. Maybe that goal is just to be entertained for a few minutes. Maybe that goal is to learn something about the human condition through your creative writing. Every audience has a goal, so you need to determine who you're reaching out to and what their ultimate goal is. And then lastly, what is my audience baseline knowledge of what I'm presenting on my website? This is something I believe I'm being a bit repetitive here because it is so important. You need to understand who your audience is and how much they know. So for instance, if you're selling t-shirts, I would assume that you don't need to have an introduction explaining what a t-shirt is to them, right? I hope, I don't know. But if you're in the textile industry and you're making fabrics for t-shirts, but you're talking to the same audience, they might not understand the importance of your methods for creating polycotton blends, right? So if you're trying to sell them on your specific fabric that you create, you might need to give them a little more info about this is why my fabrics are so special. Make sense? All right. Okay. So, here's a side note on features versus benefits. These are two different things. Some people use them interchangeably. I do not. A feature is a factual statement on what your offer is and a benefit is basically the answer to the question. What's in it for me when your audience asks you that, okay? So, a feature provides a benefit to your audience. Just want to be clear on that. I'm sorry if that's very basic, but I've run into that sometimes where people interchange them. Okay, so now we're getting to it. So that positioning doc, I showed you at the beginning, by this point, you should have filled out the purpose of your website, what the features of your website are, who the audience for your website is, and what the benefits are to them. So now we get into the value prop. This is an overall statement, if you've never heard what a value proposition is, this is an overall statement of purpose and a short, short one to two sentence summary of what it is you're offering, who you're offering it to, and how it benefits them. Think of it as your elevator pitch, right?  You've got a few seconds to succinctly explain to them what you do. That's what this is. So here's the super simple formula to do that. And considering that you've already answered a bunch of questions before you've reached this point, you should be able to fill this out no problem. You have all the information there already. What is my website offer? Oh, God. What is my website offer? Who is my target audience? How does my offer benefit that audience? I know this is all very repetitive, but I really wanna sink it in that these are the important points you have to follow. And I've created just a little one about my hooping company, just to give you an example of how you would fill in that formula. So, all right. So now we get into the website journey. So you may be at a point where you've already laid out a website and the way you want it to be, that's great. You may be just at the beginning, kind of collecting your ideas on how to create a website, that's great too. There's no wrong place to start, writing copy or to even just start thinking about the copy you're gonna write on there. So you wanna answer these questions. What are the possible ways that a visitor will go from homepage to completed action? So if you have a lot of pages on your website, there are infinite number of journeys that a visitor or a customer or audience member will take, right? When you think about the goal of your website, is there a single goal? Do you have a single action that you want someone to take on your website? Or are there 20 different actions they could take? Are you selling products? Do you have one product that you're attempting to sell? Or do you have 20 products? If you have 20 products, you're gonna have a significantly longer journey for a potential customer or visitor when they pop into your homepage, right? They might go look at 10 different products first before they pick something. I'm sure y'all will get this. I'll just kind of speed up through this section, but are you presenting clear and intended options for your visitors? We'll talk about wireframes in a second, but be thinking about this at the get-go, right? How am I gonna have my visitors move through my website? Have a plan in place? And a few other questions. Is it a universal well-understood need or will your customer need extended information before they actually take an action on your site? So that means basically when they come to your homepage is your potential audience gonna be people who need to research something, like in depth before they move forward? Or is this just a one and done, like, oh, yes. I confirm that I've gotten to the place I need to be. Let me just click right through and complete that action. So I've put together a few just example journeys that you can look at. Just focus on the top five, or so you don't wanna have, like, 11 billion journeys listed there, you'll drive yourself insane. So just focus on the most efficient main journeys that will yield the best results in the shortest amount of time, right? And as you go along, you can create more and more and figure out which one works the best for your audience, but just some focus to get started. So now we're actually moving into the writing part. So yeah, I just realized that the images that I'm using in this deck, like, make writing look completely agonizing, and I'm sorry. It can be, but what I'm trying to do here today is to make it not agonizing, to make it very methodical and pragmatic and give you that process to get it done without pulling your hair out, so. So now's the time to start getting the pin out. I've just got a few little things before we start, and I'm saying that figuratively.  So before you start, consider this. Meet your audience where they are. We've kind of talked about this a little. Just start in a place of common knowledge. Start where the average person, where their knowledge level is. If you're in a niche market, you're gonna wanna, maybe in your key audience demographic, has extended knowledge of a very technical thing, then meet them where they are. You're always wanting to write for your intended audience. Cannot stress that enough. Keep it correct, guys. This requires proofreading. This requires, you know, grammar to be proper. Have you ever gone on a website and you think, oh, this is exactly what I'm looking for, and then you start reading the copy and it's riddled with typos? Yeah, I get out of there as quickly as possible. I'm like, this is not legit. Same thing with email, by the way. Be authentic. I know this is a buzzword right now. Authentic, be authentic.  I'm not trying to be inspirational here. I'm just trying to drive home the point that sometimes we get lost in trying to create really good copy, and in doing so, we kind of lose our personality, who we are, or the personality we're trying to convey in our website. I want you to keep that in mind, and that's why I stress, just start writing. We're gonna talk about revising and editing, but for now, just get your ideas down on paper, on tablet, on laptop, wherever you prefer to write. I prefer pen and paper, because I'm, like, 100 years old, but it helps to just get it out there and then worry about style, right? So don't worry about style yet. We will get to that. All right. One more note. The missing content leak, the navigation bar. I don't need to explain what a navigation bar is, but what I will explain is how it is useful when you are writing copy. People get very set on telling specific amounts of information. I need my audience to know X, Y, and Z, and I need them to know it quickly, but they run into the mistake of putting everything out there on the first page, right?  It's way too much information, and people are in a hurry. They wanna confirm quickly that they have reached the right place, and they want to be told which action to take. Don't worry about being pushy. They need to be told where to go. Otherwise, they're gonna get confused and frustrated and leave, right? So your navigation bar's gonna help you determine what content you need based on what your options are. You're gonna categorize everything onto different pages through that navigation bar. What content you need, where you need to put it, and how your visitors can access it.  Again, refer to your positioning doc. You've got your overall goal, you've got your value proposition, right? You've got all the answers you need to build the perfect website for what your purpose is. So I'm not gonna harp too much on that, but basically just understand it gives the audience kind of a table of contents, a way to navigate through. All right, so here's just a few notes on the nav bar. I just pulled one that I really like on a business that I use. The main goal of this website is to create revenue. There's also goals of creating community. There's also goals of getting people to go to live events or conferences. But the main goal is revenue. And so they have highlighted their main CTA. This is ultimately what I want you to do when you visit my website. But I also have other options for people who maybe don't wanna buy anything, who maybe just want a sense of community, or who wanna learn more about my specific products. And the specific products are laid out there. One thing I would note is this is a niche market that this website's from. So be cautious when you talk about your products. If you have products like hers, the names might not be clear unless you're already embedded in that community. So you might want to put categorical product names instead of specific product names so people can navigate quickly to what they need. Okay, now we get to the wireframe. So this is where I create the overall view of a page that I wanna write on. You can do this for your homepage. You can do this for product pages, any page, right? So we're just gonna go through a homepage for now. Cause it's quick and easy, quick and easy. So, I've got a place for a headline, a subhead and a CTA right at the top, above the fold. That is my most important message because I have that one goal, that overall goal. I want people to drive straight toward it. Then I might put something, kinda like my value prop underneath it. So when people see this, they say, okay, this is where I am. This is the action I need to take. And then here's a little more information about my website, just to support you hitting that main CTA that I want you to hit. And everything is very visible, easy, boom. And then I add, below the fold, I'll add a few other benefits if people wanna look into more stuff, right? They wanna, I'm not ready to take that action yet, but I wanna learn more. So I'm just gonna scroll down and see what else you got to offer. But this is where your writing starts. And so I've done a little exercise here for y'all. So y'all can kinda see what I'm talking about. I've put a nav bar. I've decided how I want my website to flow. I just made a, this is a no frills draft. This is a just get it down what you want it to say. I wouldn't use this as my final headline, but it's just something that says, hey, this is where you are and this is what we offer. Here is a clear CTA. Here's a little more information about my website. Oh, and then I've got these additional features and benefits that you might wanna look at. Notice that I'm writing more on the benefit side than the feature side, because I wanna impact the audience. I want it to be about them. More on that in a second.  Before you move on to revising that draft, you should ask yourself the following questions. Does the copy confirm the visitor has reached their intended destination? Is there a way when that page pops up, they know they're in the right place? Have you confirmed that with your copy or with your layout and design? Does the copy clearly define the ultimate action the visitor is expected to take? Is there a way for them to move forward? Have you clearly stated away, hey you, this is what you do next? Does it provide clear direction to further information? Is there another option besides, hey, you have to complete this action now?  I don't wanna be too pushy, you know. Does it tell your website story in logical order? Remember we talked about meeting the audience where they are? Start at the top too. Don't make it too confusing. Don't give them, well there's this information here, but then I wanna tell you about this, but back to this and then, oh yeah, do you remember that we talked about that? Yeah, so just keep it linear. And that's, I find it's easier to keep it linear whenever you have a wire frame and you can kinda place where you want the copy to go. And above all, does it speak to the audience about the audience? Is it confirming their need? Is it confirming their overall goal? So ask yourself about these questions before you move on, but we're about to get into revision, but before we do, I have one more thing, and to reference one of marketing's most well-known pieces of copywriting, but wait, there's more. One more thing to do before you can check it off and say I'm good to go. Slap some polish on it. So here's what you wanna do when we talk about revising your content. Go out and you've got this drafted. It may not be pretty, it may not be ready to go, but at least you've got your ideas organized.  It doesn't have to be in the same industry as you. It could be anything. I know we're all consumers in this room, right? I know a lot of websites I can think of right now that I've drawn inspiration from. And they have close to nothing to do with what I do for a living or the websites that I create. So, and once you find websites you like, that's not really enough. You need to understand why you like it. Do they infuse a lot of humor in it? Is it more traditional and dry and business oriented? And you like that, nothing wrong with that? Do they use a lot of stuff like puns and tricks of words? So these are all things. You need to understand why it is you like them and then you can put those into practice on your own websites. I am not telling you to copy directly from other websites. I just wanna make that clear. I would say use practices that other websites use. So if they use metaphors to explain something technical, maybe look at your own and your own website copy and figure out a metaphor that would make sense to explain something technical in your own website, right? Use a pun now and then. I'm a sucker for puns. I went to a restaurant last night called Vladimir Poutine. That's a good pun. That was enough to get me to a restaurant. Wasn't the highest rated Poutine place on the map but I went there because of the name. Love a pun. All right. And then once you infuse whatever it is you wanna infuse into your copy whether it's to make it very professional and straight-laced, to make it really funny, LOL, make your audience LOL. Whatever it is you're doing, you wanna check back with your positioning document and really make sure that it resonates with the audience that you are targeting. There's certain audience and I struggle with it. I always like a little humor and anything I do I think it's the spice of life. And there are certain audiences that I've written for in the past, usually in a business to business situation that are very straight-laced. I'm originally from Houston, a lot of oil and gas people there, very straight-laced folks. They don't appreciate the humor so much I found out. So I really need to check in with my audience because this is all about the audience. Have I said that, what, seven, eight times yet? Proofread, proofread. I don't think I need to explain that one.  That dude sitting next to you. Like anybody's feedback is gonna be valuable feedback. Yes, it's great to get feedback from people who fit your audience segment, but anybody overall is gonna give you feedback on what you're doing. It's always great to have another set of eyes on it. All right, I'm gonna start talking fast, guys. I'm running out of time here. Okay, and then here's just a few tips for writing effective copy that I've used over the years. Every marketer, or almost every marketer knows these tricks. Oh, I shouldn't call them tricks, I'll call them tips. Connect with your audience on an emotional level. You are gonna have a more efficient communication with your audience. If you can talk to them, connect with them as humans on the emotional side, get an emotional reaction from them. Instead of telling them, oh, my solution's gonna do this or that for you, tell them, no, my solution, or, well, we wanna make it more about them, say this will allow you more free time. It's gonna free up your time so you can spend time with your family and making those wonderful life memories. Really just dig into who they are as a person. Don't write with the eye in mind. We've talked about this a little bit right for them.  Really, you can go sentence by sentence and flip the script on your draft and really make it more about the audience. Use words that mean something. This is a sticking point for me and not all marketers agree with this one, but I'm gonna take a firm stance right here in Montreal and say, use words that have a measure. Don't say, my solution is great. My solution is awesome. My solution is powerful. Do not, just don't. Stick to things that can be measured and that are gonna be impactful.  And you tell them I'm really passionate about that one. And avoid the passive voice. It's weak, it doesn't reflect on you well when things happen to you or happen to your audience rather than your audience getting something, your audience obtaining something. It's a power stance, right? Okay, I'm gonna speed it up a little. Here's a few of my favorite tricks, alliteration, words that start with the same letter. Hello hooping, hello hula hooping. App attack, you know, just words that have the same sound at the beginning obviously. It makes it more memorable.  Rhythm, keep it snappy. Avoid these run on sentences. If you have more than two commas in a sentence, you're doing it wrong. You've gotta keep the rhythm in the pace going. You don't want to lull your readers to sleep. You want them moving forward, taking action. That usually requires shorter sentences, declarative sentences. And pay attention to the amount of syllables in a word. Avoid repetition. Don't start every sentence with the same word. Don't use the same word to describe what you're talking about. I gotta quit moving away from the computer here. All right, metaphors and analogies. We kind of went over this a little bit. It's a great way to convey a technical idea or even a non-technical idea in a way that people can instantly relate to. Right, sunshine in a cup for orange juice, you know, stuff like that. One of my favorite terms of all times, it's called kill your darlings. When you start writing, you're gonna write these sentences that you think are complete and absolute masterpieces, right? You say, God, this is the best sentence I've ever written. But you know what? It doesn't fit and you gotta kill them.  It's not about, you know, winning literary prizes here. It's about conveying your message in the most efficient and impactful way possible. And then grudgingly, I will say if all else fails, break out the thesaurus. I know I said in my talk summary to put that thesaurus down, but sometimes you get stuck. And I will definitely yield to that one. But when we talk about being authentic and authenticity, you really don't wanna lean too heavily on a thesaurus. You want the words to come from you. You want it to sound like you know what you're talking about. And if you're just searching and replacing words throughout, you're gonna lose the overall meaning and tone that you're looking for. And I'm putting here a few references for killer content that I love. One second, please. I'm taking it old school with the elements of style. This is something I've read since I was a kid and it really developed my love of writing and literature. It's a short little book that has some great pointers for effective copy. It's for all kinds of copy. It's not limited to marketing copy or website copy, but it is a great tool that I found. AP Style Guide for checking your grammar, making sure you're writing in the correct way, your commas, do I use double quotes or single quotes? Do I end with a preposition? Is that okay? No, it's not by the way. Grammarly.com is a good Chrome tool that you can use. You can feed your copy into it and it'll come back and it covers a lot of grammar, even the passive voice. They will call you out on that. And then finally, a really good resource is the Content Marketing Institute. If you're writing for marketing purposes, which if you're creating a website that you wanna gain traffic to, you are writing for marketing purposes. So Content Marketing Institute is a great organization that provides free content on writing for marketing. They have live events. They have printed books. They have all kinds of great stuff. I would definitely recommend checking out their website. Okay. So you've polished up your content. Here we are, we're moving into the home stretch. Y'all still with me? All right, yes, thank you. All right, so what do you do once you have some polished content and you're ready to upload it to your website? You can upload it to your website, but you ain't done. You've gotta optimize now. So you've got something you're happy with? Run with it, right? So I'm gonna go through these really briefly because this is not really the purpose of this talk. I know everybody loves SEO and I know everybody's ready to pounce on that, but that's not what we're talking about here. I just wanna make mention of it because I would be remiss not to. When you're writing copy, after you get through that draft, the one where you just get all your ideas down and it's ugly and messy and you gotta revise it, once you start revising at that point, you need to start writing with SEO in mind. The way logic works with Google and other search engines is it's more than just keywords, it's phrases throughout your copy. So you wanna make sure you're hitting that. But again, I would really recommend not worrying about that until that first draft is out. Do some keyword research. See what your competitors are doing. See where they're ranking and then look at the content that they have on their website. This is a great way to add and to optimize your own content. As you, something interesting happens when you start researching SEO, it kind of starts to shape what kind of new content you might put on your website. You might create a blog based on the SEO research that you've completed and see that, well, that would be a really good way to bump up my ranking. Or you might put some alternate content in there and I'll get to alternate content in a second, but there's a lot that can happen as you start researching SEO and I really recommend that you, you know, look at some online tutorials. There's a lot of great information. WordCamps specifically have some really great sessions on SEO that you should definitely check out. But one final thing before we finish up here. AB testing, this is one of my favorite things in the world. Why is that? Because in the past, it's been really difficult to quantify or to qualify the success of content in copywriting. Basically, there is a way to measure how successful your words are. What order you put them in, how you could construct your sentences. And it's called AB testing. So AB testing has taken two versions of something, whether it's a sentence, even a word, how the words are arranged, are they in bullet form or in paragraph form? Taking one variable, two different versions, and splitting them up on viewership. So visitors to your website, 50% of them are gonna see one version and 50% of them are gonna see another version. There are a lot of online tools available for this. I am at the enterprise level in my job so I've only worked with enterprise level tools like Evergauge and Monitate, but do your due diligence to your research. There are ways to implement AB testing on your website. So in my final conversation about hoop dance, I will go over a few examples of what I've done. Oh no. Well, unfortunately, something happened in formatting when I downloaded this to PowerPoint. So we're just gonna skip over that one, but basically the gist of it was that I created two different headlines. One was, you know, custom hoops for you. And then I thought, well, maybe some people don't understand why you would buy a hula hoop that is custom made and not just go to the toy store and get one. So I created a second banner that said, why hoop? And the CTA was to click through to learn more. Now, this test is a little clearer because apparently the pictures came out right. So I tested CTA buttons to see what resonated with people more. I tried shop now and find your hoop. Some people come to your website with the notion of I just wanna research and find out more about this. So shop now might have been too powerful for them. So I tried find your hoop. It's a little more casual. It doesn't have the same commitment that shopping does. And then what I would do was present it to 50% of my audience along, and then the other one to the other 50%. And then I would track click-throughs and see which CTA got the most click-throughs. You can look at percentages and say, okay, well 100 people click this one and there were 200 visitors. And then on this one there were 200 visitors and only 20 people clicked it. So a lot of times you can find a clear winner. And then I would say, go with that. And then you can continue to tweak as well, right? You can continue to optimize and do new tests and that kind of thing. And then you're really quantifying the success of your content that way. And then we're almost done guys, we're almost done. All right. And then a last note about the content is try supplemental content. You can't always say everything you wanna say with words and expect people to read it all. Use your words sparingly, yes, but be sure to use them wisely to fill up the page in a way that works. And you can supplement that with any number of different content. Video is a great way. Some people learn by watching videos better than they do by reading. You know, there's images you could include, diagrams. Diagrams are a great way of showing the value of your features. And then my personal favorite, ratings and testimonials. We talked about hitting your audience on an emotional level. One of the best ways to do that is to get other audience members to tell their stories about how, what you're offering benefits them. This is hugely impactful. In any industry I've ever been in, I have seen this directly relate to completed actions of an audience. It really hits a lot of audience members at home because these are people just like them who are benefiting in the way that they wanna benefit. And then educational content. You know, we talked about when you're researching SEO you might find out that you wanna create some copy around some other things to improve your search rankings. This is where educational content comes in. And just to wrap up, remember to review your docs regularly, look at your website journeys, you might add to it, check your features. These could change over time. The features of what you're offering may change if your product is changing or your offering is changing, whatever that may be. Same with your benefits. New benefits might present themselves to you once you get feedback from customers, right? And keep up the copy. It's always gonna be changing.  And lastly, track everything. Put some numbers behind it. Make sure you are staying on top of your website through the copy and what you are saying to your audience. Woo, all right guys, well that's all I got. Do I have any questions?