Recently in Copywriting Category
People overlook the value of a good copywriter because they think what we do is easy. It is sometimes fun. It is not easy. I’ve spent my entire career brainstorming taglines, crafting blog posts, and proofing paragraph after paragraph. Every marketing office needs an Ogilvy, a Leo Burnett, a Peggy Olson (ok, she’s fictional, but you get the idea). One college creative writing class does not a wordsmith make. Do not attempt to run your business and write your own website copy. And please don’t delegate your content writing needs to some Joyce-worshiping intern who thinks writing is glamorous and
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Continue reading 11 Copywriting Catastrophes You Have to See to Believe
Keep your titles short, simple and obvious. Look at the image below. It’s a partial screenshot of my RSS reader. This is your space to hook me. If you don’t, I’m not opening your story. I have 241 unread items. I don’t have time to read them all so I’ll pick and choose based on my interest. If you think I am an outlier, you’re right. Most people don’t use feed readers. Outside of search engines, people learn about stories on sites like Twitter. Twitter has a 140 character limit, including the link. Consider who the people posting stories onto
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Continue reading Write Short Simple Obvious Story Titles
As Mad Men’s Don Draper so eloquently puts it, "You are the product. You feeling something. That’s what sells. Not them. Not sex. They can’t do what we do and they hate us for it." To sell, you must evoke emotion. Make your customers feel. Stoke their desire to buy. But, how can you get a customer to feel anything when you cannot see them? You have no idea if you’re trying to reach a 75-year-old woman in Alabama or a salsa-dancing single in New York City. You’re waving your hands like a five-year-old child trying to capture everyone’s attention.
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Continue reading Write Compelling Messages - Think Greeting Cards
Any reputable Internet marketing company will tell you that you need product descriptions. That’s the bad news. The good news is, they aren’t difficult to write and they not only help sell the product, they can improve your Search Engine Optimization efforts. Who knew? Trouble is, most copywriters would rather write toilet plunger ads than tackle a thousand product descriptions. I can say this, because in my copy writing career I have written hundreds, maybe even thousands of them. You start the day with the wind behind your creative sales and by the time you finish product number 15, you
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Continue reading 5 Tips To Better Product Descriptions
Become an internet marketing creature unlike any other Times are tense, and now more than ever, you feel the burden of needing that ever-elusive advantage over the competition. If you’ve overdosed on tipping points, purple cows, and cheese-moving, it’s time to turn to the true treasure-trove of internet marketing secrets: the dating bible “The Rules” by Ellen Fein and Sherrie Schneider. Read on to see how these guerilla dating tactics brilliantly translate into internet marketing maxims to live by. The Rules for Internet Marketing Be a creature unlike any other. This is probably the single most famous line from this
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One of the most common misconceptions about a copywriting career is that all you need is good writing skills. This is hardly the case. There are many great writers in the world who would either not enjoy copywriting, or who would not excel at it. But there are definitely certain qualities that predispose people to a successful copywriting career. Some of them might surprise you, so read on! The Four Characteristics of a Good Copywriter Curiosity. Without a surplus of this cat-killing quality, you will neither enjoy nor be successful at copywriting. As an Internet marketing agency copywriter, you may
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If you were a creative writing or English major, you may think your job prospects include pouring coffee in a cafe while scrawling poems on napkins, burying yourself in manuscripts as an editorial assistant in a publishing house, working as a journalist for a local publication, or of course writing the Great American Novel. But there is one wee writing career that doesn’t really cross the average English major radar (and least it didn’t cross mine) and that’s copywriting. If the muse hasn’t been in lately, why not give marketing writing, aka copywriting, a try? Below, I cover the
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Continue reading Copywriting is better than other writing careers
It’s the tiredest of icebreakers. And yet, at lease once a month, someone asks me what I do. After I say I’m a copywriter, I am usually treated to one of three sparkling remarks: “So, you just copy what other people write?” “So, you make copies of other people’s writing?” “So, you make copyrights?” Har, har. While these comments get a little tedious, I don’t blame people for not knowing much about copywriting. It isn’t a well-known career, really. In fact, even spellchecker doesn’t seem to know what copywriting is, since it keeps underlining it like a misspelling as
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Continue reading Part 1: What is copywriting
The economy is rocky. Resources are tight. It's the perfect time to run out and hire a creative services firm to do your Internet marketing, right? Right! While resources must be considered carefully in a rocky economy, I am here to explain why investing in professional creative development is one of the soundest business decisions you can make. You have it forever. Unlike other maintenance-driven services like PPC and SEO, which require constant upkeep, a bells-and-whistles web site design or some truly keen copywriting have endless charms that don't depreciate. A timelessly great design or some especially astute written
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Continue reading Why You Need Creative Services
All soccer moms are not created equal. Copyblogger makes this point in a recent post, and I totally agree. Until we go beyond perfunctory profiling and start creating vivid, charismatic, three-dimensional characters, personas will be of no use except to perpetuate stereotypes. Marketers need to go further in their persona development if they are actually going to enrich our ad campaigns. PI Pearl of Wisdom: Write personas like personal ads, not police reports. Let’s consider the difference between the two persona possibilities. Here’s an example: Exhibit A: Target Audience: 48-year-old Man, Drives Chevy, Some College. Exhibit B: Lila, the
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