Archive for Writing Copy

Mar
9

Writing Killer Web Copy – 4 Questions You Should Answer

by Contributing Author: Connie Spruill, Content Management & Making the Customer Connection Expert

If you were preparing a speech and came to me for advice on where to start, I would ask you four questions?

Who is your audience?
Do you want to entertain, inform, teach or solve a problem?
What do you want your audience to take away from your content?
What do you want to take away from the interaction with your audience?

When writing copy for your site or your blog post, I would ask you the same four questions.

1. Who is your audience?

The more you know about the audience for whom you are writing, the better idea you have for talking their language. Convincing them to buy your product or service becomes much easier. For example: Let’s say you are selling a book about increasing a person’s metabolism. You wouldn’t be targeting an audience of runners now would you? Probably, you would have more success in targeting individuals whose jobs revolve around computer work and have no time to work out.

2. Do you want to entertain, inform or educate?

If you want to entertain, then very inter-active web content inter-laced with keywords that trigger the reader to play along and have some fun works wonders by keeping them on your site.

If you goal is to inform, then your web copy perhaps, should contain research and reference to links that will take them to other articles you have written about this subject in earlier blog posts.

Educating your readers requires you to take them from point “A” to point “B”. Provide them with a mini quiz or something that would offer an interaction for choosing, for example: one product/service over another.

Give your post or web copy title a theme by identifying a problem that your target audience is having. You then show by video, picture or words, how it can be solved by your product or service.

Many of us who write content use a format of identifying the pain, problem or predicament. In other words, you diagnose the problem that your audience didn’t realize they had and help your readers recognize it. Your next step is to let your audience know that you understand their problem and that you-your product or your service is the solution.

3. What do you want your audience to take away from your content?

What action do you want your target audience to do when they read your copy? Do you want them to sign up for your informative newsletter/blog or e-book? Do you want them to buy a product? If you have your strategy down before you write, the hard part is done. Now spin the sale.

4. What do you want to take away from the interaction with your audience?

Part of your strategy is to know what you want to take away from your message you target audience. Just like in keeping track in your check book, writing down what you deposit and spend, you must also guide your goals for ROI, (return on investment). For example, you’ve been writing copy for a year now. Steer your readers to landing pages with dynamic sales copy that entices them to buy your product or service. Set a goal as to how many you estimate will buy based on past experience.

Please share with us how you write your copy..what do you do to assist you in your writing?

We would love to hear from by you leaving a comment below and if you enjoyed this post please share and don’t forget to sign up for our blog posts to be delivered to your inbox!

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Connie Spruill – Content Management & Making the Customer Connection Expert, has over 30 years’ experience directing businesses in powerful ways of connecting with their customers. The last 10 years has been focused on transferring that concept to internet-based businesses. Writing content for your websites becomes easy as Connie reveals keywords that sell, words that hypnotize and connect with your prospective customers. If you need help or assist please email us at info@kickstartwebsites.com or visit http://website-clarity.com

Categories : Content Management, Writing Copy

Feb
10

Web Site Titles are the Handshakes of Your Web Site

by Contributing Author: Connie Spruill, Content Management & Making the Customer Connection Expert

How to Create Web Site Titles

Captivate, excite and lure visitors with hypnotic keyword rich titles. You want the printed word to transform your visitor’s thought process into the probability of their problem being solved. I like to begin with questions that a visitor might ask.

Keep in mind that people are busy. They don’t care about you specifically. Visitors to your site just want their problem solved. Your page has to trip them. It has to interrupt them. A great headline and a great opening line can grab their attention.

Spend a LOT of time crafting your post title, home page or landing page message. Write and re-write, trimming unnecessary words. Remember, use active verbs. Get rid of the “to be’s”, “have to’s” etc.

Hypnotic writing takes time. You must study your audience, test your landing page responses,

Build desire by knowing their hot buttons. Use the language they use when describing their concerns.

When you know this, then weave your copy around a solution to your prospect’s problem.

Practice, practice, practice! Eventually you will get the hang of it.

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Categories : Content Management, Wordpress, WordPress Training, Writing Copy

Jan
27

Writing for the Web is Like Playing Football & Spring Cleaning

by Contributing Author: Connie Spruill, Content Management & Making the Customer Connection Expert

When I do my spring cleaning, I work diligently thinning out all the clutter I accumulated throughout the winter months. Underneath all the clutter I find clarity of mind and lightness of attitude. When I’m dusting all the spaces I ignored during the winter, I find myself dusting off my brain cells and creativity returning. I vow never to let anything get by me again that would create the clutter I just purged.

When writing for the web, you have to be like “Mean Joe Green” a former all-pro American football defensive tackle who, in the early 1970’s, played in the NFL for the Pittsburg Steelers. He got his nickname because no quarterback or other opposing team member rarely got by him in the game.

That’s how you have to be with your web site. You have to be a defensive tackler and let no one get by you until you have converted them to an email client or a tangible sell. Don’t let the clutter pile up. If you do, you will get ignored by those who attempt navigation of your web site! Writing as if you are a lean green machine, like Mean Joe Green. Write with purpose and for your targeted audience.

Here are some points I want to make:

I know many of you will be “do-it-yourselfers.” It’s hard starting a business without bunches of money to set things up and the more you do yourself, the less you have to payout. I have been there. Just remember, however, you need feedback and you need to know your customer inside and out. Test your copy on select clients and take their feedback seriously.

Every copy writer starts from a different point and is bound by different experiences. You might find yourself paralyzed by the thought that you are competing with everybody who writes copy and presumably doing it better. This is definitely not the case.

Remember, hypnotic writing is about communicating in a way that elicits an emotional response. You do this all the time in day-to-day life when you get excited about something and want your friends and family to experience the same. Start there and describe in your own words what turned you on to your product or service.

Your subconscious mind does more writing than you can imagine. If you are serious about being a success in your business then you are probably out there looking for resolutions to your prospective customers’ problems.

Pay attention to the words your target audience chooses to use. Which words evoke enthusiasm or fires them up when spoken by them? Think about words, absorb them, and sleep on them. Listen to your subconscious as it speaks to you in your dreams. Steal these words and the solutions you dreamed about. Translate them into your hypnotic copy.

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Categories : Content Management, Writing Copy

Jan
13

5 Tips For Writing Compelling-Hypnotic Copy Around Your Key Words

by Contributing Author: Connie Spruill, Content Management & Making the Customer Connection Expert

How to Write Hypnotic Copy for Your Web Site

You’re getting visitors to your site! How exciting! Your SEO and keywords must be working. So, what do you do now to keep them there long enough to get a conversion? You hypnotize them!

Expert copywriters in the advertising business spend long, tedious hours perfecting the rhythm and movement of words in advertising. Hypnotizing the prospective customer is the goal. Attracting customers using hypnotic language permeates throughout our world’s commerce history. In the last 10 years having this “must have” skill is like being the Dalai Lama and everybody wants what you know! When adding keywords to your content, wrap them with exciting descriptive adjectives and drive your copy with action verbs. Keep the following tips in mind. You may very well come off looking like a pro.

1. Writing in the active voice is the first lesson you learn. Pay attention to two types of words: Verbs and Adjectives. When writing your copy, always use active verbs.

What are active verbs? They are words with power. Here is an example of a passive verb: “To achieve” things you want in life you must believe in yourself.” “To achieve” is passive and definitely has no power implication.

Instead say it this way: “Achieving” things you want in life requires you to believe in yourself. If hypnotizing your client is your wish, then it is important to use words that mildly imply command just like a hypnotist would do. It helps keep the rhythmic, hypnotic pace moving in your copy. Writing this way moves the web visitor to a conversion.

Be creative and artistic when adding adjectives to your web copy. Remember the “Dark & Gloomy Night” phrase? Don’t use boring descriptive words.

For example, describing a lighted candle as a “burning” candle is really showing laziness in your writing. A “flickering” candle instead draws a better picture in the mind of your reader. Another example: “See the flag blowing in the wind.” How about: “See the flag waltzing in the wind.”

2. Copy writing is an art. Research your words thoroughly. Keep a notebook full of lists that are power verbs and creative adjectives. You can pull from these lists as you need them when you are writing. There are also many books on the market today that help you identify these keywords for your web copy writing.

3. Rhythm in your writing ties it all together. Visit any website and read the content. Don’t try to analyze it, just read it and let it talk to you. Pay attention to the cadence of the words and sentence structure. If the copy leads you to an end result, then most likely action verbs and creative adjectives are present.

4. Become a word smith. Expand your vocabulary. Words fascinated me all my life. I turned into an avid story teller as a result. I could spin the best tales and draw everyone into the story. I learned at an early age how descriptive adjectives and action oriented words could hypnotize a person.

I loved it when our copy of Readers Digest came in the mail. I would grab it and jump right to the section of word definitions and try to guess the meanings. I got most of them wrong. Before long I expanded my list of known words, getting more and more correct as I guessed their meanings.

Successfully written web content has a pattern to it. As you hone your skill at writing web content, it will become obvious to you that everyone is writing the same stuff, they are just using different verbs and adjectives. Being a wordsmith becomes very important then. Be unique. Out-spin your competition. Have those snazzy adjectives dancing with your keywords making happy rhythms to the timing of the beat.

5. Last but not least, get rid of the “garbage up front!” Check the third sentence in number four above. This is an active verb sentence. If I wrote it like this: “I have been fascinated by words all my life.” The rhythm is missing. It reads boringly and your mind waits to find out “WHAT”! Put the “WHAT” up front in your sentence. Your reader may never get to your point if you don’t.