Copywriting

Monday Spark: Sit down and do the best you can each day [VIDEO]

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creative inspirationYour job is to sit at your desk each day and do the best you can.

This applies to managing your time, being productive and, above all, doing your best work, whether that be writing, designing, coding or anything else.

Will the “muse” be with you every single day? In other words, will you be at your most creative every day? Almost certainly not.

But as Elizabeth Gilbert, author of Eat, Pray, Love, says in this video, “I would like the record to reflect that today I turned up for my part of the job.”

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The power of the human touch in web copy and content.

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the human touchSome copywriters know that adding a human touch to their copy can help their readers relate to the product or service they are trying to sell.

Some consultants and coaches insert elements from their personal lives in their business writing, because it helps prospective clients get to know them as real people.

Some hard-core business-to-business writers know that interviews and case studies can help humanize the “corporation”.

But only some.

Most of the time, when I read content online, in the form or articles or posts, that human touch is missing.

Why? My guess is there are a couple of reasons.

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Monday Spark: Start your day with a smile and a light heart.

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dog and deer as friendsToo often we start our days with the weight of the world on our shoulders.

We have work worries. We have family worries. We have money worries. And all that is overlaid by the bad news we have just read on cnn.com or foxnews.com.

In other words, we are buried under a mountain of stress, anxiety and bad news.

So how is it possible to start the day with a smile and a light heart? And what good would it do anyway?

Well, to address the first question, watch this short video.

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The fewer the choices you offer, the more you will sell.

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paradox of choice in supermarketWe like choices.

In fact, one of the cornerstones of a democracy is our right and our freedom to make choices. We vote for the leaders we want. We choose where to live. We choose the church we go to. Or we choose not to go to church at all.

We also like all the choices we have as consumers.

We like to be able to go to a 16-screen movie theatre, so we can choose the movie we want to see. We like to have hundreds of TV channels to choose form, instead of just three or four.

As marketers and copywriters, we could be forgiven for believing that our prospects and customers will respond positively if we offer them as many choices as possible.

And up to a certain point, people do like choices when they decide to buy something.

But all is not as it seems. More choice doesn’t actually lead to increased sales. In fact, we can easily become confused and even irritated when faced with too many choices.

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The difference between an authentic voice and a paid-for voice.

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authentic voice
Photo courtesy: CBC

Last week, during the fight against SOPA, I was listening to a radio show on CBC, hosted by Mike Finnerty.

He had two guests – Rob Beschizza, Managing Editor of BoingBoing, which went dark to protest SOPA, and Steve Tepp, Chief Intellectual Property Counsel of the Global Intellectual Property Center.

(Yes, this post is about copywriting. Keep reading…)

Finnerty reached them both by phone and gave them more or less equal time to present their points of view.

Both Beschizza and Tepp are smart guys, and both shared very different views on the value of SOPA. Beschizza said it was bad legislation that would result in a lot of unintended consequences for thousands of websites. Tepp said it was excellent legislation that would put a stop to piracy by “foreign criminals”.

Who won the debate?

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To really understand social media, you first need to know its 30-year history.

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speakers corner conversationsHere’s a timely quote for you:

“…a place for conversation or publication, like a giant coffee-shop with a thousand rooms; it is also a worldwide digital version of the Speaker’s Corner in London’s Hyde Park, an unedited collection of letters to the editor, a floating flea market, a huge vanity publisher, and a collection of every odd special-interest group in the world.”

That’s not a bad description of social media.

But it wasn’t written about social media.

It was written by Howard Rheingold in his book, The Virtual Community. His book was first published in 1993, before the web even existed.

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