Copywriters need to learn the difference between a 'product's features' and a 'product's story'.
Instead of harping about the features, try and understand the transformation curve of the customer buying your product. How does your product help them? How do your features make them a real life hero? Write your copy around the product story. Talk about what your client's life will be like once he buys and consumes the product.
Sell them the story and not the product.
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Submitted by Parthiva Mewawala
While writing copy, imagine that you're writing a newspaper advertisement where every character is chargeable.
You'll write only what is necessary and end up with brilliant, snappy copy.
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Submitted by Kanishka Agarwal
Start with paper, not a computer.
Write by hand, then type it. You'll edit as you go.
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Submitted by Josh Spilker
Ditch stuffy formalities by swapping nouns for verbs, e.g. 'Submit your application' becomes 'Apply'.
Shorter, snappier, and more human — hurrah!
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Submitted by Katie Palmer
When editing, change the font of your work.
It helps you look at your writing with “fresh” eyes and is especially handy when you don’t have time to take a break between writing and editing.
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Submitted by Elizabeth McCumber
Grammarly and Yoast are great tools.
They'll highlight any passive voice so you can change it. Best of all, they've "trained" me to write in the active voice.
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Submitted by Jennifer Phillips April
Ctrl + F, search for 'that.' Delete when possible. Sometimes you can't delete 'that' but it usually is a filler word.
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Submitted by Scott McKinney
Find out your buyers' main channel of communication (visual, auditory, or kinesthetic). Look beyond the words they're saying, even how they consume information. You'll build rapport more easily if you can mirror their most dominant communication channel in your marketing.
For instance, for more auditory people, reach out to them with a personalized audio, podcast, etc.
For more visual learners, videos are a must-have.
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Submitted by Noelina Rissman
To "passive-proof" your writing, there’s also this free tool called Hemingway Editor, which will automatically spot adverbs, complex sentences, and every instance of passive voice.
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Submitted by David Schokkaert
There's an interesting explanation I read recently about why one shouldn't use passive voice. It's not because of how it sounds, which can be subjective, but because of how we (humans) process words.
The moment we start hearing words, images appear in our head. So, when you hear "Sasha drove the car", in your head, you "see" a person first, and then that he's in the car. But when you hear "the car was driven by Sasha", you first see a car that's driving on its own, and only then place a person into that image. In which case, it will take your brain longer to make sense of what's being said.
This is, of course, a simple example. But the principles alway remain the same: the words we hear create images. The faster those images make sense, the easier we can understand the words. And active voice will create those images faster than passive.
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Submitted by Gill Andrews
