for people who write

If you’ve read my post on the number one reason you find writing difficult, you’ll know it’s because you adopt a different, more formal tone when you sit down at a keyboard or pick up a pen. Now here’s three more reasons:

1) You haven’t thought through what you want to say

That’s bound to make things difficult. Take a spin around the room and talk it through with yourself (silently in your head is best. Doing this out loud gets you funny looks from the rest of the family / neighbours).

2) You haven’t done your research

You’ll need the facts to hand, and ideally uploaded into your mind, before you start. I find this is the most important part of a writing task. I get everything sorted in my mind, with the facts assembled, and then the words flow out once they are ready.

3) You’re trying to make it perfect.

Write a draft, a rough version, a sketch. You’ll be surprise how often it actually turns out really good anyhow, when you’re not trying too hard. And remember, there’s usually time to edit it later.

To get the writing juices flowing, you need to really know who you are writing for. But not just in an intellectual way. You need to picture them, know them.

Don’t try to write for the general public, or anyone who might be out there. Write for one person. Just one. Continue reading →

(Note: this article now comes with a health warning and partial retraction from the author).

One of the main reasons people find it difficult to write is because they adopt a more formal tone of voice as soon as there are words on paper (or the screen). It’s the fault of our education systems.

When people sit down to write, they suddenly come over all formal, or tongue-tied, or pompous. They start using a learnt tone of voice: Learnt from school, college, university, maybe the workplace. They start worrying about sounding important, and the structure of their sentences. They also start to waffle a lot - perhaps because they learnt to write by filling up word quotas for school essays.

Write how you talk.

What you need to do is write how you talk. With a little more care, clearly. You have the chance to think it through first and apply some structure. You have the chance to edit and improve. You should do these things.

But the tone of voice should be informal. Write how you talk. It sounds easy, but it often takes years to learn. Continue reading →

What are you offering your customers? Is it value? Stop. Think again.

Whether you are creating a marketing campaign for a major company or just trying to sell some information products off your blog, it’s too tempting to reach for the easy offer - ‘value.’ Continue reading →

Copywriting advice on the web tends to focus on direct selling. But that’s only one part of copywriting.

It’s understandable why this should be the case. The web is a place where a lot of direct selling takes place. It’s a technique that a lot or people are interested in because they have products they want to sell on websites.

But a lot of copywriting isn’t about getting people to click on a buy button. It isn’t just about getting people to ‘buy now.’ Continue reading →

If you’re paying a copywriter to do a job, you may not care about keeping them happy. On the other hand, if they are happy, they’ll do a better job and work more efficiently, which will help keep the price down.

So how can you help your copywriter to produce excellent work and keep them happy into the bargain?

Continue reading →

Relax, I’m not going to try to sell you an e-book. Or anything else for that matter.

Yes, wouldn’t it be amazing if you could get some real information about hypnotic writing, without all the hype and brouhaha?

You probably know that there’s such a thing as hypnotic writing, and you’re intelligent enough to know….

OK, I’ll stop it now. Above are just a few words and phrases which are important in the technique of hypnotic writing. But, I promise you, the rest of this post is going to be written in something approaching normal language (or as close as I can get, at any rate).

Hypnotic writing does exist. Hypnosis does exist. Can you use hypnosis to get anything you want in life? I doubt it. Can you sell ice to eskimos with hypnotic writing? Nah, I don’t think so.

But can a knowledge of these ideas help your writing? Yes, I think it can. Continue reading →

It’s a truism of the web that people read ‘differently.’ It’s a new type of media and because reading habits appear to be different to books or magazines, a lot of people seem to think that makes the web a special case. Uniquely different.

They’re wrong.

People think marketing speak is garbage. Do you think the web generation was the first to notice?

Do people read books the same ways they read newspapers? Or letters the same way they read magazines? Do they read cereal packets the same way as travel guides? Do they read neon signs the same way as post-it notes? Is the Internet uniquely different in the way people read ? No it isn’t. Continue reading →

Writing copy that concentrates on keywords too much can become very bad marketing. Why? because it tends to focus on the features of the product or service too much, and not the benefits to the user. That’s bad marketing.

The customer may be searching for “lawn mowers”‘ but what he wants is short grass

It’s something you have to be aware of whenever creating copy for your website. You have to achieve a balance between writing for people or writing for search engine robots. Continue reading →

Journalists summarise the whole story in the first paragraph, and expand on the detail as they go along. So the most important and interesting stuff is at the top, and the fluff that is less useful or intriguing goes towards the end.

“The second paragraph? Who reads the second paragraph?”

There, I’ve gone and done it myself and now you don’t need to read the rest of this post. But wait… don’t go. There’s more you need to know first.

Until I decided to demonstrate this technique, with the first paragraph of this post, I was intending to start with a little reminiscence about a great movie from 1974 called The Front Page. It stars Walter Matthau and Jack Lemon as the editor and reporter in a 1920s Chicago newspaper.

At one point, Lemmon, the intrepid reporter, is filing copy about a notoriously dangerous criminal who has broken out of jail and stolen a gun. He’s on the loose, on the prison roof.

“Where’s the bit about the gun?”

Reading the copy, Matthau asks something along the lines of: “Where’s the bit about the gun?”

(I’m doing this from memory, as I don’t have a copy of the film to hand).

Lemmon replies: “It’s in the second paragraph.”

To which Matthau, the editor, says: “The second paragraph? Who reads the second paragraph?”

And it’s all there, in that one-liner - just about everything you need to know about writing in the newspaper style. It’s an education in journalism, all by itself.

Continue reading →

If you publish on the web, it pays to analyse who’s visiting your site and how they get there. It can produce some startling results - and can really help improve your marketing and your interaction with customers. Continue reading →

Glad you asked. SEO is short for search engine optimisation. What follows is a brief introduction to SEO, especially as it relates to keywords and copywriting. Continue reading →

I’m sure there are hundreds of different ways of defining the ‘golden rules of copywriting’ - but here’s one ways, for starters:

1. What’s your proposition? You need to know the key messages.

2. Who are you talking to? You need to understand your audience, what they’re interested in, and what motivates them.

3. How are you communicating? You need to know the media. Is it print, the web, TV etc. The messages and execution will need to be adapted to suit the media.

4. Marshall your thoughts, make notes, have a plan. Structure your story or argument.

5. Create a hook. This is a theme or concept that brings the message alive.

6. Write clearly, so people understand and want to read on. Get to the point, and stick to the point. Use short sentences with active language and a conversational tone.

7. Don’t forget to sell.

OK, that last one is a bit of a tease. It’s a subject of its own. Hey, it’s probably a lifetime’s study. But it’s something some copywriters seem to forget. Everyone’s selling something, even if you just want people to subscribe to your RSS feed (mine’s up the top there, by the way), or come back to your website for another look sometime.

A great headline needs to do four keys things:

• Attract attention – you clearly need to get noticed – but you also to need to…
• Select the right audience – by telling the reader who should be interested. This way you get the right people reading – potential customers. Otherwise, you could just try shock tactics to get everyone reading - but you are unlikely to win their trust having attempted a “bait and switch”.
• Deliver a compelling sales message – and ideally encapsulate the whole story
• Drag the reader, kicking and screaming if necessary, into the body copy.

There’s a plague of these kinds of headlines on website articles.

These are some techniques that have been shown to work. There are many other around, but this may help you when you get stuck:

1) Tell it like is. Just say what needs to be said, simply and clearly:
• Half price booze
• 30% off print supplies
• Save money on accountancy fees

2) Make it newsy. Find a news angle for your headline
• Revealed: the truth behind poor dentures
• 70% of business pay too much for legal insurance, says survey
• Breakthrough in paper feed design, say researchers

3) Use the ‘How to’ promise. Using the ‘How to…’ headline should instantly highlight the main benefit:
• How to save money on your car insurance
• How to cut operation waiting times
• How to earn a living from home

4) Ask questions which go to the heart of the matter, such as:
• Are you ashamed of your English?
• Can’t get into your jeans?
• Do you want to be more confident?

5) Urge action. Be immediate and direct, by urging the reader to achieve their goal:
• Write for a living
• Be an astronaut
• Get the lifestyle you’ve dreamed of

6) Offer information. There’s a plague of these kinds of headlines on website articles. Nonetheless, the technique is still valuable:
• The ten secrets to killer copywriting
• Seven sure fire ways to get a pay rise
• The six instinctive techniques used by successful people
• Make yourself more effective in a week

7) Use testimonials, if you have them:
“I lost weight with the tapeworm diet”
“This is the best software I’ve ever used.”
“I saved £200 on my car insurance.”

Photo by Paul.

If you are working as a copywriter, or in any creative field, you need to be able to have ideas to order, to meet deadlines.

The good news is that having ideas is something that can be learnt. There are proven techniques that can be followed. The most famous, certainly in the copywriting world, was outlined in a book(let) called A Technique for Producing Ideas by James Webb Young, first published in the 1940s.

It’s well worth getting a copy and reading in full. The essence of the book, however,is to break the technique for having ideas down into five steps.

Step 1 - Gather raw materials
The mind gathers its raw material. The material needs to be of two kinds: specific and general. For advertising the specific information is about the product and the target audience. General information includes anything and everything and is a lifelong exercise.

Step 2 - Working over
Step 2 is to chew over the facts, bring them together and see how they fit. Sometimes the facts reveal their meaning more quickly if you don’t look at them too directly. You almost need to “listen for meaning instead of looking for it.” As small, partial ideas come to you, write them down, now matter how crazy or incomplete.

Step 3 - Incubation
Walk away. Put the whole problem out of your mind for a while. Let your unconscious mind work on it for a while. Do something else, something which stimulates your imagination and emotions. It could be reading a novel, going to a concert, listening to some music. You are giving yourself time to digest the facts.

Step 4 - Eureka!
If you’ve done the first three steps successfully, then an idea should appear ‘from nowhere.’ It could come at any time and probably when you least expect it. The answer to your problem may appear to leap into your mind for no apparent reason.

Step 5 - Shaping and development
The idea has to be turned into reality, into something that can be used in the real world. You need to show your ideas to others and see what they think. They may be able to add to it and make it better. It may spark whole new ideas.