Quick tips for writing great copy
Write like you are speaking to a specific friend
Beginners often write in a stiff, formal way. To avoid this, imagine a specific person (hopefully they are close to your target persona) that you know and write your copy just for them.
Identify the action you want them to take
Before you start writing, make sure you know the goal of what you’re writing. Is it an email with a landing page you want them to visit? Is it a product page and you want them to sign up for a free trial? Is it a Slideshare and you want them to schedule a sales demo? Whatever your goal, make sure you know what it is before you start writing.
Include what, why, where, who, and how
What is the offer?
Why does it matter?
Where is it being offered?
Who is it being offered to?
How does it work?
Clarity > cleverness
Clarity beats cleverness everytime. It’s also way easier to make clear copy more clever, but it’s really hard to edit a messy message. Once you’re clear and succinct, then you can go back through and work on being clever.
It’s not about you
No one actually cares how hard something was to build or how long it took. They only want to know what you’re going to do for them.
Active voice
Active voice means that a sentence has a subject that acts upon its verb. Passive voice means that a subject is a recipient of a verb’s action.
Active: Monkeys (subject) love (verb) bananas (object)
Passive: Bananas (object) are loved (verb) by monkeys (subject)
This video is great for understanding active vs. passive voice.
Verbs beat adjectives
Adjectives: John Smith is intelligent, hard-working, and insightful.
Verbs: John Smith founded a successful company, he created a popular blog, and he leads a talented team.
Go word by word
Many great writers will tell you they aren’t great writers at all—they are great editors. Know that for even people who write for a living, the magic happens in the edit. You will likely have many versions. An easy way to start is to consider each individual word to see if you can come up with a clearer, more compelling synonym.
Proofread
Read it multiple settings on multiple devices. If you wrote it at your desk on desktop, proofread it from the couch on mobile. It’s amazing what errors you can find when you read something on mobile vs. desktop. Another trick I find helpful is reading backwards—it forces your brain to work really hard to comprehend rather than glossing over and filling in the blanks.
Sweat the details
Make sure you have impeccable grammar and consistency in capitalization/punctuation (ie subheads might have a period at the end of sentences but bullet points do not).
