Photo credit Gualtierro Boffi I have the secret. The never-fail secret to making sure your client is thrilled with the web copy you write 99.999% of the time. Gather round me, children, for I am about to speak a word of power. Contained within this word is the secret to web copywriting that knows the heart and mind of your client – yea! Knows even their hopes and dreams and deepest desires for their online presence. Come closer. I shall whisper the word in your ear. Questionnaire. That was rather anticlimactic, wasn’t it? Yeah, okay,
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Taylor
Taylor Lindstrom (fondly known as Tei) is a twenty-something copywriter and journalist from Boulder, CO. She’s the team’s rogue woman who wowed us until our desire for her talents exceeded our desire for a good ol’ boys club. She loves the color green, micro-point Uniball pens, and medieval weaponry.
What To Do When You’ve Been Insulted
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The other day, I got an email from a client whom I like very much. He’s a cool guy, profitable business, generally fun to work with, pays on time, all the good stuff. His emails are usually brief, casual, and mention something like, “Have a nice weekend,” or “Hope everything’s good with you.” So it was weird to get an email that was so stilted and formal that it sounded like it was written by the Queen of England’s chamberlain to someone she was too polite to outright call a waste of space. I sat
> Read MoreImperfection is a Good Thing
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Do yourself a favor and look around the blogosphere. Look at the people who have almost obsessive cult-followings. The people who have started their own movements and revolutions. The people whose fans would knife you if you said an ill word against their favorite blogger. Realize something with me: We are not looking for perfection. If anything, perfection kind of pisses us off. The high and mighty are not our favorite people. We like people who can acknowledge their imperfections, people who admit they screw it up not just sometimes, but often, and the people
> Read MoreAre You Becoming a Lazy Blogger?
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As your readership grows, it’s easy to think you’ve got this blogging thing down pat. Everyone likes you, you have lots of subscribers, and your posts are Tweeted and Dugg and Stumbled all over the place. You can kick back and relax, right? Afraid not. There’s a growing trend around longtime bloggers: newbie mistakes. Producing Lackluster Content This is perhaps the most common problem among longtime bloggers. If you’ve been around for a few years and you enjoy even moderate popularity, it’s almost a guarantee that newbies show up, all wide-eyed and open-mouthed, to gape
> Read MoreDo You Ask for Permission or Forgiveness?
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You’ve heard the old saying, “It’s easier to ask forgiveness than to get permission,” right? It may be easier. But it’s still not a good idea. I’ve been seeing a lot of this sort of thing lately. I’m on a bunch of lists I never signed up for. I have people following me on Twitter who say things like, “Hey, if you’re looking for new writing markets, you should try this website.” I get snail mail from credit card companies who could not possibly have my new mailing address unless they scammed it off some
> Read MoreShould You Go Back to School?
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Don’t fret, good people. I’m not here to tell you that you should consider going back to school for a second degree. Most freelancers have enough trouble scrapping together money for the rent without having to worry about paying another couple of tens of thousands. Especially since no one cares about your degree. That’s right. No one cares what degree you have. You’re a freelancer. People want to see your portfolio, your testimonials, and your professional-looking website. But maybe you should go back to school. And what kind of school gets you more of what
> Read MoreHow to Write Sales Copy When the Standards Don’t Apply
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Recently, we did some work for a couple of folks with a product marketed to rock fans. Specifically, fans of one particular band. These folks needed a sales page to sell their product, and since James is a ridiculous rock freak, he was falling all over himself to oblige. I came along for the ride. Passive observer here, people. I am just reporting the facts. Usually, in a sales page, you want to make sure the benefits of purchasing this product are obvious to your audience. Your two go-tos are as follows: This product will
> Read MoreWhat To Do When Your Client is Boring
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Clients often contact us hoping we can jazz up their current copy. They’re looking for something a little funnier, a little more out-of-the-box, a little less like the next guy. No problem, we say. Why don’t you answer a couple of questions for us about who you really are, and we’ll use that information to make your web copy sound more like you? Because we’re sure you’re a really awesome person with an interesting take on your industry and lots of good reasons your business is way better than the competition’s. We say to our
> Read MoreWhat Would You Do If You Only Had Two Hours?
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I’ve only taken to using Twitter as a regular thing fairly recently, so it’s entirely possible that Dave Navarro (@rockyourday) has been doing this for years and I never knew about it, but I’ve been kind of taken with the way he often starts off a morning: “What would you work on if you only had 2 hours today? Okay, do that first.” Combine that with a T-shirt from Woot.com that I love called Procrastinate. The shirt reads, “Because if the world ends tomorrow, you don’t have to do it.” It’s official, you guys: I
> Read MoreHow to Organize Huge Copywriting Projects
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We often get requests to write ebooks, and most of them are a fairly moderate 5-10 pages in length. Little ebooks. About the amount of information you’d get in five decent-lengthed blog posts. But we also get requests for huge ebooks – upwards of 50 pages. We’ve also had requests for manifestos, white papers, and from one particularly memorable client, three books. Actual books. For publication. These are all extremely lengthy projects. In an online world, such projects are not exactly commonplace. Usually copy comes in nice bite-sized chunks: a webpage, a blog post, an
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