10 Do’s and Don’ts of Copywriting
Welcome to my blog! If you would like to keep updated on new posts, please subscribe.
And consider following me on Facebook and Twitter. Thanks for visiting!
There are a lot of things to know about effective copywriting. Here are 10 do’s and don’ts to help you create better copy. If you put this list into practice, you’ll improve your copy exponentially.
Five Do’s
1. Know your audience – Are you sick of hearing this yet? Well, it’s arguably the most important part of writing. You must know your audience so well that you can create audience personas and write your copy directly to them. Don’t make assumptions that you know your audience without study. Even if you are part of the demographic, study your audience anyway.
2. Have a clear call-to-action – All content you write needs to have a clear call-to-action located in a place where people will see it. It must jump off the page and compel the reader to act. If your call-to-action is not clear and noticeable, no one is going to do anything as a result of reading your content.
3. Use graphics and color to highlight points – Graphics are your friend when it comes to effective copywriting. If you can use an arrow, a red circle, or something else to highlight words you don’t want your audience to miss, then you should. Don’t go nuts – be sure you maintain a clean design while pointing out important words and phrases with graphics and color.
4. Write for scanners – When people read content online they read vertically, not horizontally. It’s important that you use different fonts, bold, italics, and bullets along with colors and graphics to create a trail for the eye to follow. If your bulleted words, headline words, and subheadline words are well thought out, someone can get the point of your content simply by scanning it.
5. Explain benefits over features – No one cares about the features of your product. What they care about is what your product does for them. What problem does it solve, and what solution does it provide to them? If you can’t explain it clearly, give it more thought.
Five Don’ts
6. Don’t write for everyone – This goes back to our first point. Content is most effective when you write for a small subset of your entire audience. Just like you had to niche down your audience, you need to niche down your subscribers and write for just the portion of your audience that is active.
7. Don’t leave things unsaid – Say what you mean and mean what you say. Your audience is not going to read between the lines. If your product or service has a particular benefit, say so. If you don’t say so, your audience won’t know.
8. Don’t welcome everyone – Not only should you stop welcoming everyone to your website, please ditch the flash entry points, too. People do not want to look at one page loading for five minutes, then click a door to enter to full website.
9. Don’t use just one kind of content – The days of using only text on your website, blog, or sales pages are over. You need to use multiple types of content such as videos, podcasts, graphics, and text to get your point across more clearly and effectively.
10. Don’t lie and exaggerate – If you haven’t made a million dollars in sales yet, please don’t tell people you have or imply that you have. Be honest. Be who you are. If no one has a clue who you are, don’t claim otherwise. The fact is, no one can be you. You are special, and you simply need to be yourself. No one else can be you quite like you can.
Following this list of do’s and don’ts will help you create better and more effective content. Writing copy is a skill that can be learned.
Previous Post
Next Post