Copywriting cheat sheet
Be honest.
Have you ever used a cheat sheet or looked over the shoulder of a classmate while take a test? I have to admit… I have.
I’m not too proud of that now but it helped me pass some mid-terms and helped save me from possibly repeating my freshman year. But, we’re not talking about me… we’re talking about you. More specifically how I can help you cheat. I know. I know. I just said I wasn’t too proud of my brushes with cheaterville in school. But, I’m not talking about school. I’m talking about copywriting.
Copywriting cheat sheet.
For the most part, when the word copywriting is brought up to someone wanting to advertise their website a panic begins to set in. “You mean I will have to write a webpage?” “I don’t think I can write a landing page!” “You can’t possibly mean that I will have to write my own ad!” The breathing gets faster, the pitch of the voice gets higher… suddenly chaos erupts and you are no longer dealing with a rational person. I’ve seen it a hundred times.
Ok. Seriously. Copywriting tends to get people a little freaked out. Maybe not to such extents as above (although I have had some clients who went into semi-panic attacks and the mere thought of writing anything) but there is some hesitancy with some people about writing. Maybe even you.
What is needed is a copywriting cheat sheet of sorts. A simple five step plan to writing anything from an ad to an article to a complete web site sales letter. Something that won’t send people into frightful fits where they have to be sedated in order to bring them back to earth. Maybe something like…
Five amazingly simple copywriting tips to make any writing task easy and fun!
In fact that sounds so good I think I’ll do just that. So, here’s my list of five amazingly simple copywriting tips to make any writing task easy and fun!
1. Just start writing. It took me a long time to figure this one out, but once I realized it my writing got much easier, quicker, and less stressful. I would sit and stare at the screen for hours before typing one word. Why? Because I had to have an amazing first line.
I was wrong. I didn’t need an amazing first line that would capture and mesmerize every reader who comes close to it. (That comes later, but it’s not the first step.) The first step to online copywriting success is to just start writing.
2. Fine tune but don’t stress over it. The biggest time consumer for copywriting anything is the fine tuning process. The part where you go over everything and “fix” what you have already written. The good thing about this is that when you are in a “writing” frame of mind you actually have to do very little of this. So you don’t have to stress over it.
What I mean is when you are doing step 1, just writing what comes to mind, you are in fact involved in a conversation of sorts. It’s a conversation between your thoughts and your hand. This conversation is usually exactly what you want to say anyway, so why change it?
Yes, you will have fix a few mistakes. But it’s nothing to really stress about.
3. Develop an eye grabbing-mind blowing-intensely creative headline. Don’t be scared yet. Chances are as you were involved in your writing process something came out of it anyway. But, if not… then take some time… not a few minutes… to choose your ad’s, article’s, or webpage’s, title or headline.
A headline is the most important part of the copywriting. Wait… don’t be scared yet. Take a breath and relax. You are going to want to take a little bit of time with this step. A few days even if you’re not that experienced with writing or writing for persuasion, as you will do in writing mostly anything online.
Think about the writing you did already. What is the overall theme? What got you excited the most? What do you think will get people excited about what you wrote? What words jump off the screen, or page, at you? Your headline is in there. Somewhere. Take some time to bring it out and… then it appears. The more you fight it, try to think about it, force some sort of headline together, the more you struggle with it. But, when you let it develop naturally during your writing process it’s much easier.
4. Stories of personal or other factual events are emotional pulls. People love stories. But they have to be real. It’s so much easier re-telling a factual story, either about yourself or someone else, than making one up. And it’s much more engaging.
Copywriting is really about telling a story. Of course it’s a story with a purpose of getting someone to do what you want, but it’s a story. Why not make it more personal?
One of the true rules of copywriting is to engage the reader. One of my personal rules of copywriting is to engage the reader personally. I want the reader to know either about me or the situation surrounding whatever is being written. I want them to be drawn into it and feel like they are a part of it or watching it happen in their mind. I want them to feel comfortable… or uncomfortable, depending on the situation.
Let this develop naturally in your writing process of step 1. Whenever you can naturally, not forcibly, retell a story, do it.
5. End it with something to do. Copywriting wouldn’t be copywriting with out a “call to action”. Or in regular speak… give ‘em something to do.
Your heading drew them in, your natural writing kept them interested, your story telling engaged them, now you have to give a direction. In the online world that usually ends with a “buy now” or “sign up today” type of direction. But it could be whatever your goal is for that piece of marketing. Just give something to do.
Copywriting doesn’t have to be scary. So far the scariest thing that you probably had to do was develop a headline as it can make or break the rest of what you wrote. But, when you take it naturally it isn’t that bad.
Of course there are several other “rules” of copywriting that you can begin to implement when you have a little more experience and are more comfortable with the writing process.
Things like;
and a ton of other stuff. That’s where people get scared though. They jump into the full process without being totally comfortable with the writing of it yet. Take the first step and just start writing. You’ll see for yourself that copywriting can be easy and even fun!
