10 TIPS FOR COPYWRITING SUCCESS
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Latest Breaking News - Internet - Viewing: 10 Tips For Copywriting Success Thursday, November 19, 2009 While video and multimedia technologies are rapidly expanding, the Web remains a largely a text-oriented system. Text utilizes far less space than video or audio, and remains the go-to medium for the majority of the web's public content. This means that there is a lot of copy on the web, so a savvy copywriter should be on the lookout for any technique that will improve the material he puts forward. Tip 1 - Know Yourself This piece of advice has been kicking around for several thousand years, and it has persisted for a reason - people make better decisions when they know their strengths and limits. If your writing lends itself to narrative structures, find ways to tell stories about the product, perhaps in the form of a testimonial or an interview. If you aren't capable of writing technical articles, don't try to bluff it. Tip 2 - Improve Yourself The web changes, language changes, people change, products change... in short, everything changes. This is a good thing. Improvement and training are important changes that everyone must go through in some degree if they want to remain relevant. You may want to consider enrolling in a writing course, study new SEO and copywriting tips, pick up a highly rated style manual, or continue refining your skills in some other way. Tip 3 - Target Your Language to the Audience There is always an audience. Whether writing a letter specifically to one individual or composing for a website to be viewed by international customers, take the time to find out who your audience is and tailor the writing accordingly. Academics will have different writing standards than a DIY auto repair services, and neither will appreciate receiving articles targeted to the other. Tip 4 - Write Coherently Compare the following two statements: b - CERN intends to use the Large Hadron Collider to locate and study the Higgs-Boson particle in an attempt to gain insight into the origin of the universe. The first sentence is full of asides and parenthetical statements while the second conveys the information more fluidly. There are times when asides and references are important, but as a general rule, take any opportunity you can to simplify your writing. Your message will be stronger and clearer for the effort. Tip 5 - Write Specifically Again, consider this ambiguous sentence; "Anti-nuclear protestors released live cockroaches inside the White House Friday, and these were arrested when they left and blocked a security gate." While it seems innocuous enough on the surface, this statement does illustrate the problem with ambiguous grammar. Good copywriting is precise and unambiguous. Here it comes across as funny, but if your customers aren't coming to your site to laugh, go with a clearer example. Tip 6 - Write Concisely Strunk and White's 'The Elements of Style' sums this up as 'Omit needless words.' Stick to short, clear paragraphs and sentences. Elaborate where needed, but focus on efficient writing that gets the message across without pointless extras. Tip 7 - Start Strong Journalism focuses on a technique known as the lede. In short, this is all the relevant detail of the story conveyed in one sentence, and it always comes at the start of the article. "A local man was arrested today in connection with the recent kidnapping of a foreign exchange student." Notice it doesn't give names or quotes, just the hard-core facts. While online copywriting rarely needs to emulate this exact approach, it still illustrates a key point; good articles present their best facts quickly while hooking the reader. Tip 8 - End Strong There are countless examples of writing that start out with the proverbial 'bang,' only to wander off pointlessly. Focus your writing on its key message and make sure the final statement is as strong as the first. Write your beginning statement and ending statement at the same time and make sure the article is always leading toward that killer end sentence that ties the article up in a powerful way. Tip 9 - Read While this partially falls under the idea of improving yourself, it's also a specific example that deserves its own mention. Read constantly. Read good articles and bad, seeing what works and what does not. People who are widely read write better than comparable writers who don't read as much. Tip 10 - Write Constantly. Copywriting is a talent like any other. Daily practice with writing will expand your ability to try new ideas and reinforce good habits. Even if you have no copywriting assignment at the moment, browse the web looking for websites in your area of expertise, and see if you can't improve their copy. Then you can either consider it free practice, or perhaps give the authors a call to see if they're interested.
Enzo F. Cesario is a digital brand engagement specialist and co-founder of Brandsplat which employs Brandcasting, informative content and state-of-the-art Internet distribution and optimization, to build links and drive the right kind of traffic to e-commerce websites. To get the free Brandcasting Report go to www.Brandsplat.com or visit the blog at www.ibrandcasting.com Note: You are free to reprint this article as long as the text links remain intact. Article Views: 122 Related Articles List Building Secrets - Best Practices For Conducting Adswaps For List Buiding Ad-swapping is definitely not as easy as it appears on the outside. There are many things that both parties should consider first before sealing the deal, especially with regards to the benefits that this process will bring to them versus the possible fallout. And please understand that anytime to send an ad to a prospect for any reason, you are running the risk of fallout. 5 Simple Steps To Creating A Professional Looking Website Website designing can be a daunting obstacle if you are technically challenged. If your goal is to create a professional looking website, then you may wish to enlist the help of web design specialists. What Is Email Append And How Is It Useful? Email append is a very useful marketing tool, as it allows companies to reach potential clients or prospects with ever-increasing accuracy and cost effectiveness. An email append is the process of taking any business or consumer physical mailing address and appending an e-mail address to it. Choosing The Right Isp For Your Business - A Checklist If you're thinking of choosing an ISP for your business, have already done your research and found a list of prospective ISP companies, it's now time to think about what questions you have to ask them concerning your business' online presence. Online Brand Management- Optimizing Facebook We've previously discussed the Web's amazing tendency to take very good ideas and adapt them to techniques largely unrelated to their original intent. Search engines rate all websites based on their internal criteria, and this increasingly includes Social Media pages such as Facebook. With that in mind, let's consider five key ways you can apply SEO techniques to Facebook in order to drive interest. Learn All About Seo From Webmaster Forum Setting up a website is easy enough. But you must also learn how to promote the site. Otherwise, it's just a great looking site sitting there with no visitors. Without web visitors, you are definitely not going to make any sales. Getting Organic Traffic From Articles Article marketing is simple to understand. You just need to write articles and submit them to well established article directories. However, many Internet marketers shun this method because the process is tedious. How To Write Articles That Attract Traffic Article marketing can be a great way to promote a website. But you must learn how to do it properly. Otherwise, it's just a waste of valuable time and effort. For instance, you can be writing 5 articles a day but only pulling in 1 or 2 visitors per day for every article that you write. Revealed- Successful Link Building Through Article Marketing One of the strategies in Search Engine Optimization is link building. Basically, link building is building and establishing links to a website. There are a lot of strategies used in successful link building. One of these is article submission and marketing. Building Back Links Through Social Bookmarking One way of establishing back links is through social bookmarking. Social bookmarking is a method of sharing, searching, and managing bookmarks of web resources. These web resources contain various contents and topics that are classified according to categories. |
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