Copywriting

An easy way to improve every page of copy you write.

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easy copywriting secretWouldn’t it be nice if there was just one easy way to improve every single page of copy you wrote, regardless of the product or service you were trying to sell?

It turns out there is.

It works for homepages and sales pages. It also works for emails and newsletters. Product pages. Shopping carts. White Papers. Radio. TV. Direct mail. Whatever.

It works whether you are selling weight-loss products or industrial fasteners. It works whether you are selling vacations or dental services.

Best of all, it’s incredibly easy to include this “secret” in everything you write.

I’m not saying this little trick is all you need to know about copywriting. Nor am I saying its use will cure bad copy.

But it will help.

Here it is…

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Monday Spark: Share your gift and prosper.

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the gift of copywritingA while back I wrote a post about how copywriters are the rock stars of online business.

Put simply, ecommerce is driven by words. Without good copywriting, there are no sales.

If you have talent as an online copywriter or content writer, you are fortunate. These skills are a true gift.

Now let’s look at two very different ways in which you can use that gift.

First, you can focus on making as much money as possible. You know you have a skill companies need, and you can look for ways to maximize your fees and revenues. When you have something of great value, you can sell it at a premium price.

You trade your gift for cash.

But there is another way of looking at this, taking the meaning of the word “gift” a little more literally.

Look at your gift as something to be shared and passed on.

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My secret resource as an online copywriter – social media.

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social media copywritingOn the face of it, this may sound counter-intuitive.

Why would an online copywriter be interested in social media? These two areas of expertise and interest seem worlds apart.

There is a very simple reason.

Smart copywriters focus on the wants and needs of their readers. Smart copywriters try to see the world through the eyes of their prospects and customers. Smart copywriters walk a mile in the shoes of their prospects and customers before they type the first word.

Back in the days before the web we did this mainly through focus groups.

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Integrated social media: The next opportunity for online writers and copywriters.

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social media integrationSocial media marketing is, thankfully, coming out of its trendy phase and moving into its business phase.

For those of us who have been online for a while, the trendiness of social media has been somewhat irritating. The web was social before the web even existed. In other words, the Internet was social before the first web browsers appeared. Back then we connected with one another through Listservs and the like. It was 100% social.

Services like MySpace, LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook didn’t invent social media. They simply made it more popular and improved its functionality.

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Why copywriters are the rock stars of online business.

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rock star copywriterIf you go back 15 years, when I started writing online, the rock stars of pretty much every website were the coders and the designers.

Writers? Not so much. Copywriters? Not at all.

Back then it was all about the technology and the look. I went to startup meetings where the coders and designers had been working on the site for weeks, or maybe months, and then came to me, almost as an afterthought, and asked me to add some words.

Sounds crazy, but it’s true.

And as you may recall, the internet crash of 2001 was caused in large part by hugely inflated values being attached to online businesses that really weren’t businesses at all. In other words, they didn’t make money. They just worked reasonable well, and looked good.

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The more skills you have in your online copywriting toolbox, the greater your value to your clients.

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online copywriter toolboxWay back when I wrote copy offline, I was pretty much a one-trick pony.

I wrote direct mail. That was my thing. I have never written a radio spot. I have never written a TV commercial.

Back then, it was fine to focus on a single copywriting skill, because there was no connection between what I wrote for a client as a direct response writer, and what their agency copywriter wrote for TV.

Sure, we all worked to the same brief, keeping within the same campaign idea.

But the key point to understand is that the quality of my direct mail piece didn’t depend on my knowing anything about writing for TV, radio or any other medium. Why? Because each medium was separate from the other.

All that changed with the arrival of the web.

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