Ten Commandments of Copywriting

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By Jack Forde

If there were Ten Commandments of Copywriting, what would they be? I found myself asking the almighty "Big G" (Google) that very thing.

And wouldn’t you know it?

It turns out their ARE Ten Commandments of Copywriting. Or so say the half-dozen or so sites that listed different versions, for a total of sixty plus "commandments" when I stopped counting.

Wow.

Still, I couldn't resist handing down my own tablet of commands. Naturally I expect you to accept them as gospel truth. Or at the very least, as very strongly worded suggestions.

See what ye thinketh …

MY TEN STRONGLY WORDED SUGGESTIONS

I. THOU SHALT TOTALLY IDOLIZE THY CUSTOMER.

Here's a no-brainer and one you surely saw coming.

Without your customer, you're a zero. So it only makes sense that you think of your customer first.

II. THOU SHALT NOT MAKE THY BIG, FAT, LIFE-CHANGING PROMISES IN VAIN.

Promise, direct or implied, is the soul of selling.

But be careful, in your copy life, not to treat promise-making like the perfunctory exercise it might seem to be for most other marketers.

III. THOU SHALT WORK WEEKENDS.

… the copywriting life IS a writing life. Which means that no matter where you go, there you are … followed by the writing ideas you've been germinating all week.

If you're doing this right, you can’t escape it. You’ll be writing down ideas on napkins … spotting and hungrily reading clips related to your pitch, even off hours … starting one-sided conversations about your idea with strangers … and, no doubt, working on weekends, Sabbaths included.

IV. THOU SHALT HONOR THY MENTORS AND GREATS.

There IS a chance that you could be a natural-born persuader, with a brilliant ability to write sales copy that could make a dead dog drool for more.

More likely though is that your copywriting talent will grow by leaps and bounds thanks to the input of other great and more experienced writers.

V. THOU SHALT KILL, KILL, KILL … THY DARLINGS.

All writing, sales copy or otherwise, gets better with editing.

And often that means going back and cutting the parts you loved the first time around … and pulling them out where they don’t fit the rest of the sales piece.

Even if they’re clever or cool.

VI. THOU SHALT LUST IN YOUR HEART … FOR ANSWERS.

If there's one common trait among creatives of all kinds, say lots of people who say lots of things on this subject, it’s that they’re hopelessly, almost helplessly curious.

About everything.

VII. THOU SHALT STEAL (JUDICIOUSLY).

[This] does NOT mean, of course, literally stealing the work or credit of others.

But what about "stealing" where it means studying what others are doing and finding ways to do it well yourself?

VIII. THOU SHALT NOT BEAR FALSE WITNESSES.

In a copy context, I'm saying don’t try to fake your way through proofs for your claims.

Not with home-crafted testimonials. Not with stock photos of customers. Nor with nebulous studies, survey results, or chart information.

IX. THOU SHALT COVET THY NEIGHBOR’S WIFE … AND COUSINS, FRIENDS, ETC.

Before anybody whacks me with a rolling pin, there’s a contextual meaning here you might miss.

Very simply, what I mean is this: You want as many good people on your "list" as you can get.

For the newbies, the "list" is simply the group of people that you’ll mail your sales message to.

X. THOU SHALT COVET (THE QUALITY) OF THEY NEIGHBOR'S GOODS.

This might be the commandment supreme in all copywriting, marketing, product-making or service offering … though you'll see it forgotten all over the place.

Nothing is easier to sell than something worth selling.

Period.

Okay, that's enough — this proclamation biz is thirsty work. Now take this message, which you just might be reading on your tablet computer, and spread the word.

© 2012 by John Forde
You can get $78 worth of free gifts from John at:
http://copywritersroundtable.com/signup

All Aboard the (Clue) Train

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That’s right … as in, the “get-a-clue” train.

It’s easy (and sometimes fun) to bash companies that don’t seem to have a clue. You have to feel sorry for them on one level. I mean, it’s very hard to keep up. How does a slow-moving company adapt to a rapidly changing business environment? It must be terribly frightening for the muckety-mucks in these organisations. How do I know I’m not going to miss the big trends and suddenly be viewed as a dinosaur or worse—as irrelevant?

If you’re one of those people and you’re fretting about your relevance, let me give you a place to start. You’re not alone—nearly every company of any size that’s been around for any length of time suffers from the same malady. Hint: It has to do with the way you speak to your market; your voice.

You see, there’s a time-honoured tradition having to do with the way companies communicate to their constituents. I’m not sure where it came from—probably from academics training legions of corporate-bound college students in “business communications”. You know what I’m talking about – it’s the sort of cold, detached voice that gives you the feeling you’re talking to a machine. (Is it any wonder big companies like the idea of machines that talk to people?)

Well, the times they are a changin’ and it’s time for those of us who care about our markets to wake up and work on our “voice”. The reason is very simple: our markets are talking amongst themselves like never before.

I really like the way this is expressed in the 95 Thesis at Cluetrain.com. If you did nothing else you couldn’t go wrong by internalising just the first 5 points in the thesis:

  1. Markets are conversations.
  2. Markets consist of human beings, not demographic sectors.
  3. Conversations among human beings sound human. They are conducted in a human voice.
  4. Whether delivering information, opinions, perspectives, dissenting arguments or humorous asides, the human voice is typically open, natural, uncontrived.
  5. People recognize each other as such from the sound of this voice.

So there you have it – one of the most effective ways to avoid becoming irrelevant is to work on your voice. Go tooth-and-comb through every aspect of your communication strategy and ask yourself, “Am I talking TO people or having a conversation? Is this a human voice? Is this the way humans talk to each other? Or is it contrived, strained and unnatural?”

If you don’t, you may wake up one day to the cold, hard reality of the 95th point in the Thesis:

“We are waking up and linking to each other. We are watching. But we are not waiting.”

Death of the Corporate Monolith

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I’m often asked, "What’s your business strategy?" and thought I would answer it briefly here. I’ll take the problem/solution approach in the hopes of simplifying the answer.

The Problem is that most businesses (small and large) have failed to grasp the imperative of establishing and maintaining a relationship with individuals. This is important because the days are gone when you can present yourself as a corporate monolith and expect people to be attracted to you. Perhaps you’ve heard the age-old and oft-repeated notion that, “People don’t do business with companies, they do business with people.” That seems obvious but judging from the way most companies present themselves, you wouldn’t think it’s widely recognized.

Not only do people do business with people, they do business with people they know, like and trust (hat tip: Bob Burg). If that’s true (and I think it is) then the goal of your web presence should be to give people the opportunity to know you (as a person), and reasons to like and trust you. Continue reading →

Traffic Rockstars

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Imagine a cross between a world-class Internet Marketing seminar and a virtual world like Second Life.
That’s Traffic Rockstars.

Some friends of mine brought together 20 of the top names in traffic strategies and put them all in one place online where you can soak-up hours of free teaching without leaving home — and for no money!

This is the very first time this technology has ever been used, so I’ll be watching it very closely. Hint: Who’da thought Facebook would catch on?

With 20 of the biggest names in the business, all in one place and one weekend, teaching some of their best stuff… if you need more traffic, attendance is a must!

P.S. Without leaving home and without spending a single dime, you will get a couple dozen hours of presentations from 20+ traffic experts plus a few offers of even more stuff they are not offering anywhere else. Register now and I’ll see you there!

Register Here

See you there.
Robert

WizMouse to the Rescue!

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Every once in awhile I have to pass along nifty software I find.

It was driving me nuts having to always click before I could scroll in a window. A simple example is when you open Windows File Explore and you navigate to a directory. You then have to click (argh) in the file list to enable scrolling down to find the file you want.

Never fear, my friends, there is a simple and elegant solution. And, as with all the best solutions, this one is free!

WizMouse from Antibody Software provides a quick and easy fix. Download the software, install and watch your productivity soar! What you get is basically the automatic activation of scrolling on a hover event. It doesn’t even require that the window have focus (be active) – so you can scroll through a window that is sitting behind your active window. Nice!

Enjoy!

Why Be an Expert?

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Why does it matter if I’m perceived as an expert?

The best answers to this question is found in a great training series by Rich Schefren that teaches you how to: Become an Instant Expert.

The short answer to the question is that, by establishing yourself as an expert, you are building your personal brand. If you had to list what’s important about a brand, what would you say? Perhaps your list would include some of these benefits:

  • differentiate yourself
  • develop a reputation as trustworthy
  • seen as a reliable source of information
  • obtain a status among peers

While all those things are important, the primary purpose or benefit of a strong brand is that it reduces your selling costs. You don’t have to work nearly as hard to get your message out and persuading people to buy becomes much easier.

Rich covers the topic in much greater depth and I highly recommend the program. And, oh-by-the-way, he’s one of those people with a strong personal brand. It’s worth the 47 bucks just to watch how he cultivates his brand.

Don’t Say That

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7 words you should never say to your client – iMediaConnection.com

The Seven Words are:

  1. Wait – better to get going
  2. Safe – make fearless creative choices
  3. 360-degree – gag me (enough said)
  4. Viral – uh … maybe – but not a key strategy
  5. Free – nothing really is
  6. Everything – you can’t do it all
  7. Yes – sometimes No is better

Go here for more

Can You Handle Endless?

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I’ve been chowing on a book called Endless Referrals and I think it holds the key to “sales” for many entrepreneurs. Sales is a misunderstood concept by many people; it has negative connotations in large part due to the unfortunate behavior of many sales practitioners.

This book turns the notion of sales on its head. It’s a refreshing look at commerce as an exercise in giving. In fact the author (Bob Burg) wrote another little jewel called “The Go Giver” which is a modern-day parable of a salesman hopelessly lost in his self-absorption. The essence of Endless is that people buy from people they know, like and trust. According Burg, the way to generate this kind of goodwill is by sacrificing your own ends and dedicating a good portion of your time to giving.

This may sound trite (and perhaps obvious) but precious few salespeople and even fewer entrepreneurs have learned this little secret of business success (and endless referrals). It may very well be that most of us are not prepared to handle “endless”. We haven’t structured our business so that we have the excess capacity to handle the deluge that would surely come if we had the business development function properly sorted. But that’s a topic for another post.

Switched-On

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One of the great things about running your own business is that you get to be a bit more choosy about the people you work with. I’m working with some really great people at VCLi and I’m enjoying them a great deal. They are passionate about what they do and they like to think big. In Australia, we refer to people like that as “switched-on”. I always liked that term. Isn’t that the way we should all be — switched-on?