Having trouble developing your message? Suffering from a case of what some people call writer’s block? There’s a very simple technique that can help you get started.
All you have to do is identify the main message you want to convey to your audience. Don’t worry about finding the exact words or the best way to say it — just type that main message that’s at the heart of what you want to get across.
“So what’s the best trick for making copy work well?” she asked. I didn’t hesitate for a second, because the answer was obvious.
Effective copy is conversational. No matter whether you’re writing a web page, a white paper, a print ad, an email, or a letter, copy that’s conversational will invariably do a better job of connecting with the reader and convincing him (or her) to do or think whatever it is you want.
A study from market researchers Ipsos MediaCT released this week found that fewer than half of Indiana’s small businesses (companies with fewer than 250 employees) have a website. The state’s percentage was 47 percent, surprisingly ahead of the national average of 42 percent.
If that alone doesn’t sound like a big deal to you, consider that coverage of the study also noted that 97 percent of consumers will search for local businesses online. A business that doesn’t have an online presence essentially doesn’t exist anymore.
In a recent blog entry, I mentioned a pet peeve regarding the non-word “alot.” And I mentioned that I have many pet peeves. One that many businesses make involves a homophone that carries three different spellings and three entirely different meanings.
The biggest misuses of it these days show up when companies establish a presence on the Internet. Those presences are what are known as “websites,” and yes, that’s one word, no hyphen, and no space, thank you. People who should know better (and don’t) will often use “web cites” or “web sights.” Those are bad, bad things, and if I were emperor, they would carry lengthy prison sentences and perhaps just a smidge of torture. (I’ll ignore the fact that some readers are thinking that a lecture from me on the subject would qualify as both.)
I admit it: writers can be picky creatures. We see language in much the same way a carpenter sees his or her prized circular saw: a tool we wield to accomplish challenging tasks with a certain level of quality.
That’s why writers cringe … or even scream … when they encounter misuses of words. Every writer I know has his or her pet peeves. I have a collection of several pets, but one that really gets me riled up is the non-word, alot. Yes, I said non-word, because the ever-growing English language still does not recognize “alot” as a word. Nor should it.
An online editor recently rejected an article I wrote, accusing me of the heinous crime of “keyword stuffing.”
Writers grow accustomed to rejection (or they quickly find other careers), but this was a good story that would be of interest to many readers. So I fought back.
One of the most common questions I hear from non-writers is “How do you get started?” They have something that they want to put down on paper, or something they have to write for a job, and they sit and stare at that unfriendly cursor, unable to type the first word. They assume that someone who writes for a living would know some sort of magic trigger to get that first sentence underway.
I don’t, but I’ll let you in on a secret: I don’t usually start at the beginning. No matter what I’m writing — whether it’s an article, a website, an ad, or a blog post — I usually start somewhere in the middle.
Busy, busy, busy. We’re going this way and that way, and it seems that we have less time for everything. That effort to cram more into every day has had a pronounced effect on the way people read. A generation ago, people tended to read at a more leisurely pace. They’d start at the beginning, finish at the end, and savor everything in between.
The shortage of time and the speed of finding information on the internet has fundamentally changed the way people read nearly everything. Instead of savoring, readers are skimming; breezing through articles, books, and documents at a pace that would have been considered speed-reading in the past. They look for what matters in a document, and zero in only on those points that seem to be most important.
Worried that what you’ve written sounds a little too light and fluffy? Concerned that your words seem to be traveling all over the place instead of delivering a clear message? Thanks to a handy tool within Microsoft Word and most other word processors, and with a little bit of self-discipline, you can easily make your writing tighter and more powerful.
That handy tool is the Word Count indicator. In my current version of Word, it’s located at the lower left-hand side of the screen, right next to the page number. And here’s how you can use it to improve your writing: highlight whatever it is that you’re writing, whether that’s a page or a paragraph. The word count indicator gives you the total number of words.
Sometimes marketers can be their own worst enemies. Take the writing practice that invested in Google pay-per-click (PPC) ads.
I won’t mention their name, but their headline promises “Fast, affordable and professional written copy by experienced copywriters.”