Entries from March 2010 ↓

If there was a magic formula to guarantee that everyone who came into contact with your copy would read it, I’d be out of a job.

Luckily for me there isn’t one.

There is one aspect of the human race that makes the life of a copywriter rather difficult – we are all different.

What makes one person jump for joy will have another heading for the hills. So when you’re faced with writing some web copy, email content or sales letter, how on earth do you get everyone to read it?

Don’t write for the masses

When writing some sales material you have to bear in mind that not everyone is going to want to read it. So if you try and pitch your writing for everyone you’re going to shoot yourself in the foot.

If you are writing about fishing rods the likelihood is that only a certain percentage of male readers will be interested in it. If you are writing about the latest make-up product, only a certain percentage of women are going to want to read about it.

Therefore it is vital that you write for your ideal reader – the person who is likely to be interested in your product.

This is where the cat comes in

Your headline is the crux of your writing – it is what will either hook your reader or send them running.

There are a number of ways you can write strong headlines but for the purpose of this post I want to look at just one – curiosity.

Most people don’t read adverts. It’s like a newspaper – how many of you actually sit down and read every word printed? You are more likely to skim the headlines and hone in on the ones that look interesting or, more likely, pique your curiosity.

For example if I were to tell you that I knew how to write sales letters that convert at 15% and sales letters were a big part of your business, you’d want to know more – right?

How to introduce curiosity

The best way to get curiosity into your copy is by hinting at a secret – human nature will make us want to know more:

• What everyone one should know about the stock market
• The top ten reasons why you won’t get that job
• How I went from broke to earning 8 figures a year in 6 months

But it’s not just about sales or secrets.

Take George here. He’s running an exhibition and wants to promote it to boost his visitors. One of his exhibits is a painting. It’s nothing particularly famous or anything but the owner paid a small fortune for it – which heading would have the biggest draw?:

• Exhibiting the “Cat and goldfish” by P Brush

or

• Exhibiting the “Cat and goldfish” by P Brush which was recently sold for £850,000

It would be the second one. Because by mentioning the price it immediately makes us curious. We want to see this amazing picture that someone paid a small fortune for.

Curiosity is an itch

It is the itch that you have to scratch.

If you don’t discover the secret you’re going to miss out on something. Everyone else will know something you don’t.

Using curiosity in your headline you’ll make people want to learn more. They’ll be drawn to your copy like a magnet. So next time you are writing a piece of sales copy try it out.

Sally Ormond – freelance copywriter

If you’ve been copywriting for a while you should already be well aware of these secrets.

Every industry has best practices within it that everyone should know and abide by. Of course, if that were true there would be no cowboys out there.

The following 10 secrets are things that every copywriter – whether freelance, in-house or just a dabbler should know and live by.

1. Keep it simple

This is one I have to remind clients of constantly. Once I had a client who insisted my job was to make them sound “more intelligent”. I had to put them right.

The job of a copywriter is to convey a client’s sales message clearly, persuasively and above all, simply.

Yes your readers will be educated but they are also time limited. If you keep your language and structure simple, they will be able to quickly and easily read and absorb your sales message.

Make it complex and full of big words – they won’t bother to read it.

2. Be personal

Whilst we’re on the subject of your audience, make sure your copy is always personal. You are writing and selling to a person. They have feelings so use emotive language to drive your message home.

Some people writing for the B2B market will claim their audience are businesses therefore writing in a personal style won’t work. So how many businesses have you seen wandering down the street or picking up the phone to order something? None – companies can’t buy, people can.

3. Don’t lie

Whatever you do, don’t lie – your copy must be factual if you and your client are to retain your credibility.

4. Selling

When you are copywriting, selling is the name of the game. It doesn’t matter how great and creative your English language skills are – if you can’t sell you’re going to be out of a job pretty quickly.

5. Don’t cause confusion

When you have got people to your order page, don’t confuse them. Keep the process of parting with their cash as simple as possible.

If they are faced with a complex order form they won’t bother and you’d have lost a sale.

6. Don’t be bullied

Bearing in mind that as a copywriter you understand what sells – not only words but also their appearance and that of a web page or brochure – don’t be railroaded by designers.

If you know a font or text size they’ve picked will damage the impact of your sales message, tell them. If their graphics and images don’t gel with the sales message, tell them. It is the whole package that needs to work.

7. Be the headline act

Did you know that four times more people will read your headline than the body of your text?

If your headline doesn’t grab them nothing will. Therefore it makes sense to spend a lot of time crafting your headline.

8. Length really doesn’t matter

There are a lot of debates raging about whether long copy or short copy is better.

Stick your fingers in your ears and don’t listen. Your copy should be as long as it needs to be. So long as its relevant and interesting it will keep your reader interested.

9. Customers only care about themselves

Harsh but true. Customers couldn’t give a toss about the company you are writing for, their product or, for that matter, you.

If a customers reads your copy and thinks “wow, what a great writer this person is”, you’ve failed miserably.

Great sales copy should go unnoticed. There is only one thing your reader wants to know about – what’s in it for them?

Write benefits driven copy. Not sure if you’ve hit it right? Test your benefits by asking “so what?”

10. Read

The only way to improve your copy is to read. Look to your industry experts and read their work. Look at letters than land on your desk or on your doormat – the ones that appear consistently are the ones that work and generate huge amounts of money.

So, there you go. Ten things every copywriter should know. Life by them, work by them and you shall succeed.

Sally Ormond – freelance copywriter

Last week I was asked to make a presentation on Social Media Marketing and how it can help your online business.

Amongst the various issues I talked about, one stood out as far as my audience was concerned – the power of blogging.

I’ve been blogging for quite a while now, normally on the subject of copywriting and marketing. The effect this has had on my business as a freelance copywriter and Google rankings is phenomenal.

Are you sitting comfortably, then I’ll begin

I started out with a homemade website that didn’t really feature on Google. To get my name out there and in front of the right people I used the power of social media marketing – online networking, profile sites, directories etc.

Work began to arrive and I started blogging. I invested in a new website and started getting serious about SEO and driving traffic to my site. Initially my blog was a free one on WordPress. That was all well and good but I realised I wasn’t getting any benefit from the people linking to me. All their link juice (see fig. 1) was being poured into WordPress and not my site.

So, I got my own domain name and set up the blog you are now reading. Low and behold within about 5 or 6 months I was listed by oDesk as one of the top 100 freelance blogs and other listings soon followed.

But because this was now my blog on my domain, I got the benefit of the link juice which was fed directly to my website:

Fig.1 The link juice concept

People linked to my blog – my blog links to my website – the result is greatly improved Google rankings!

It was this simplified explanation of how blogging can positively effect your Google rankings that saw so many jaws drop in the room.

Most of the people present had some idea that blogging would help their rankings but didn’t really understand how.

It’s not all about rankings

By starting up your own blog you will be promoting yourself as a real expert in your field. Giving great information in your posts will help you build relationships with perspective clients. They will grow to trust you and see you as an authority in your field.

So you see, blogging can help any business. If you are not already doing it, give it a go – you will be surprised at the results.

But if you are going to blog make sure you do it regularly.

Good luck with it.

As a copywriter I am normally involved in writing copy for printed or online media. However I and currently working on project that involves creating scripts for podcasts. The series is designed to teach staff how to effectively use an internal piece of software.

I’m writing this post to highlight the differences between writing for spoken word and the written word.

If you are creating a piece of copywriting that is designed to be read (such as website copy, brochure, email etc.) you will write in a completely different style than if you were writing a script.

So why are these two techniques so different?

Written copywriting

Written copy is something physical. It appears before your reader and can be read and re-read as many times as they want. If you have a complex sentence within  the copy and the reader loses their way, they can go back over it again to make sense of it.

Although your written copy should be simple, it has the luxury of being there to be read again and again. It can be passed on to others and referred back to when necessary. It is a form of reference material that is ever present.

Written copy tends to use full words rather than contractions. You tend to see “you will” rather than “you’ll” so it takes one a slightly more formal tone than spoken language.

Spoken copywriting

In contrast, copy for the spoken word utilises contractions, simple words and sentence structures.

The spoken word is transient – once it’s been spoken it’s gone. If you use complex sentences within your copy not only does it make it difficult for the voice-over artist, but if your listener also loses their way, they have no way of returning to the copy to work out what you were trying to say.

Frequently when writing scripts, the script will go before several people before being finally agreed. This can cause a “Chinese Whispers” effect as more and more people have input. Different voices begin to appear; people lose sight of the fact that this is supposed to be spoken and not read.

Therefore it is vital to always ensure everyone involved with the process understands the aim of the script, who will be listening and that they are constantly reminded that this is spoken language.

You should actively use informal language (within reason so it fits within the company’s brand and image) – write as you would speak. When you’ve completed an initial draft of your script read it out loud. Are there any sections that sound ungainly? Is it easy to follow? Do you run our of breath reading long sentences? These are all questions that should be constantly in your mind as you review your work.

Golden rules to remember

So next time you are involved in script writing remember:

1. Keep your sentence form simple
2. Use simple language
3. Use contractions as you would when speaking naturally
4. Make sure the information is imparted simply
5. Read it out loud – if you run out of breath or lose your way, so will your listener

If you bear these 5 points in mind when you write the spoken word, your copywriting will flow, be easy to understand and accessible to your listeners.

Sally Ormond – freelance copywriter