It would seem, to the casual observer, that writing is easy. It’s true, I suppose. Anyone can sit down and plunk away at a typewriter. Eventually they’ll produce either the completed works of William Shakespeare or hopefully (and more immediately) some well crafted copy that will draw your readers into doing whatever it is you want them to do.
So the bad news is that writing well is kinda tough. The good news is that writing well is something you can learn. More good news? I can help, here we go – seven steps to writing more effective copy.
1. Thesaurus’ rule.
Use a thesaurus. Seriously, I know there’s this trend to use several instances of your keywords in your copy, but it starts to look boring if I use the same words again, and again, and again, and (See what I did there? Dull, right? See what I did there? I used another word for ‘boring’ . That’s WRITING).
2. Punctuation is important.
Learn things like the appropriate use of a semi-colon, using punctuation to avoid run on sentences and positioning of apostrophes. I’m currently struggling with serial commas, though I don’t expect you to be that serious.
3. Spell check doesn’t catch everything.
Spell check won’t tell you if you’ve used the wrong instance of ‘your’, or ‘its’ or a million other silly little english flubs that will always find their way past a spell checker. Also, most spell checkers are American made so they try and correct Canadian spellings. Fine if you sell to Americans, not so fine if your market is Canadian and you’re talking about the ‘flavor’ of your tasty smoked meats.
4. Use contractions or don’t use contractions.
Use them or don’t. If you’re going to say you’re then you should also say you’ll, we’ll, we’re, they’re, etc. The trickier ones are you’ve, they’d and other more obscure contractions. There’s a simple way to pick out any words that may need contracting and it’s coming up in #5
5. Say it out loud.
I can’t recommend this enough. Copy will often look great, until you read it aloud. I’ve had moments where I thought my copy could win a Pulitzer right up until I heard myself say it, at which point other words beginning with ‘p’ came to mind.
6. Alliteration is your friend.
And mine. You know why I picked Seven Steps? Because the double ‘S’ resonates with people. It can be overused, I’m sure I overuse it at times, but I love it and will stick with it. I find the most wonderful pairings when I use alliteration. Scintillating scenery. Stunning sights. I also like things that rhyme.
7. Write for the people reading your content, write how you want them to perceive you.
It’s called tone of voice. If you write in a casual tone, people think you’re casual. If you write formally, people perceive a certain formality. I, for example, write more casually for the blog than I would for my site, because this is the time and place for my voice.
There are more, many more. Enough to add another seven, or seventeen. Until then, practice makes perfect!
This entry was written by Sean Enns, posted on August 31, 2010 at 8:23 pm, filed under Copywriting. Bookmark the permalink. Follow any comments here with the RSS feed for this post.