By Kate Bo
No matter your field, you undoubtedly have a home-base somewhere on the Internet where you describe your products or services, be they under the umbrella of your personal brand, your company, or an organization you work for. Whether it’s a website, blog, e-newsletter, or Twitter feed, there’s surely some corner of the web in which you’re trying to sell something, even if it’s just your resume.
In all those cases, writing strong online copy is key. You can’t convince a reader of anything (buying your e-book, reaching out with a job interview, or sharing your article on social media) without effective, compelling writing. Writer and graphic designer James Greig has some interesting insight into the mental shift required to write great online copy. Namely, stop making it about you. Rather, focus the lens on your “customer,” whatever that means in your work.
What superpowers does your product give people? Have a read of this opening paragraph from the description of a new cycling jacket:
“We’ve gone all out to produce the finest waterproof in cycling. We’ve re-thought how to keep you comfortable. When the rain comes and doesn’t stop, this is the jacket. We have spent the greatest amount of R&D time ever on the Gills Jacket, and we’re hugely proud of it.”
Count them: four mentions of “we”… and only one of “you”. This is the copywriting equivalent of shouting “Me! Me! Me!” Yes, it’s reassuring to know how much R&D time has been put into the jacket. But the reader is more interested in how the jacket will make him feel, not how the company who made it feels about it. I see this problem with a lot of copy on the web… It’s back-to-front. So how do we fix it?
Basecamp’s Jason Fried nailed it with this 3-sentence blog post: ”Most copywriting on the web sucks because it’s written for the writer, not for the reader. Write for the reader. That is all.” Improving your copywriting really is this simple: construct your sentences with the emphasis on “you” rather than “I” or “we”. Make it about your reader, not yourself.
This isn’t just about being selfless (“the customer’s always right,” and all that). When you keep the reader firmly fixed in your mind, whether that’s your site visitor, Twitter follower, client, buyer, or whomever, you start thinking about the implicit reasons for people to engage with your work, rather than the explicit ones. That makes for a much stronger sell. As Greig writes,
The first iPod wasn’t marketed as “a 5GB MP3 player” (boring/techy) but as “1,000 songs in your pocket” (wow/that’s cool).
Whenever you’re writing something online that you want to have some sort of actionable effect, engage with the problems and desires of the people who you’d like to be reading what you’re writing. Selling a WordPress template targeted at lifestyle bloggers who don’t know how to code? Think, and write, about how simple the template is to install and how it’ll showcase their photography and juice their traffic stats. Marketing your services as a social media consultant for small businesses? Focus your pitch on how much time you’ll save your clients so they can focus on their sales strategy. You’ll give yourself an instant advantage over “me”-focused competitors.
Your awesome work deserves eyeballs online. You just have to sprinkle it with a little copywriting gold dust.
[via]