Quick – look around you. What do you see? A coffee mug, a book, some papers, a picture on the wall, your calendar, pens… Just a bunch of normal, everyday stuff.
Look again. See how many objects and items have words on them. The ad copy on a box of CDs. The opening sentence of a letter. The month on the calendar. The notes on a scrap of paper.
It’s amazing how many words surround us all the time. Words are nearly omnipresent in our lives, from the features listed on the tube of toothpaste we pick up in the morning to the last sentence of the testimonial on the back of the novel we set down at night.
Words are everywhere.
All these words are there for a reason. They’re trying to reach us in some way, to give us a message. To let you know what this object is. Or which company made it. Or how great it is. Or what it does. Or what we need to do about it.
But we only notice a fraction of these words. We’re not really paying attention. We may not even realize there are words there at all. There’s so much information around us that we filter it out just to keep sane and focused. We just don’t see it.
The words might as well not even exist.
Think about it. When’s the last time you read your tube of toothpaste, or your box of blank CDs, the fine print on a package of paper clips? Someone paid good money to have “excellent performance and reliability” printed on that box of CDs, but unless someone else points the words out to you, there’s a good chance you don’t even notice.
Now imagine the web copy on your site. Not your blog; the part of your website that’s devoted to convincing your readers to buy your services. If you’re not telling your readers to go and look at that copy, it’s getting no more attention than the instructions on your toothpaste box. It might as well not be there.
And that copy is a lot more important than the features on that box of CDs. If you wing burning a playlist and you get great tunes out of it, you’re going to keep buying that product. You needed to burn CDs, grabbed any box, and these worked. End of story. The copy on the box can afford to go unnoticed.
Your web copy can’t afford the same passive indifference.
You can’t wing it. That copy is supposed to get you clients and sales. Your freelancing lifestyle depends on your copy being read. This isn’t about grabbing the first freelancer that catches your eye.
So why are you letting your readers treat your web copy with the same indifference as the copy on that box of CDs on your desk?
Don’t wait until they just happen to notice you. Get people to pay attention. Write words that grab – and hold – their eyes on your page. Market yourself with every sentence. Help your web copy get read by new clients who can’t wait to hand you money for the services you offer.
The most important part of that sentence? Get your sales copy read. You can’t afford not to.
