Content marketing tools and training.
Are you one of them?
One of the thousands — maybe millions — of faceless web writers toiling away on content that immediately slips into obscurity?
Are you doing what you love for something you hate? Feeling used — even abused — because you are not getting credit for your work?
It’s like a page out of a science fiction novel where people aren’t known by a name, but merely a number.
Writing effective copy is both an art and a science.
It’s an art because it requires creativity, a sense of beauty and style — a certain aptitude, mastery and special knowledge. Artistic advertising allows you to create content marketing that’s not just practical and persuasive, but awe-inspiring and breathtaking.
Writing effective copy is also a science, because it exists in the world of tests, trial and failure, improvement, breakthroughs, education and predictability. Scientific advertising allows you to develop an idea, and then test that idea. It’s how you know if your content marketing is working.
Picture the set of a late night talk show, circa 1983.
Allen Ginsberg is fat, bearded, and sitting in the interview chair. Long hair grows in unruly patches from the side of his otherwise bald head. His eyebrows sprout from his brow like wild hawthorn in bloom. He’s wearing a tie-dyed t-shirt with a hole in it. His fingers are stained from nicotine resin.
Ginsberg wanted to talk about the generation gap, and what he was saying about the challenges youth had to face actually made a lot of sense.
But nobody could take him seriously. He simply didn’t appear to be a credible expert.
This post is for anyone who knows they’ve got what it takes to be a content superstar — but just can’t find that tipping point.
You are relentless. Thorough. Creative. Curious. You can write most people under the table. You read like mad and aren’t afraid to catch hell.
You are a self-starter, and you work hard. In fact, that hard work has paid off.
You’ve built up a nice little audience for your blog. You get a steady stream of visitors to your site every day, some meaningful comments with each post you publish, and occasionally someone emails to tell you how much they love your writing.
I’ve spent the last four years mentoring about seven writers.
In that time I’ve also evaluated dozens of other writers, without choosing to mentor them. I saw something in those seven that I didn’t see in the rest.
That “something” I saw was a set of qualities that I think are unique to remarkable writers. And I wanted to start documenting those qualities — those things that make writers stand out from the rest of the population.
Now a typical list on writers usually revolves around habits common to a lot of professions (obsession, perseverance, getting up early, reading a ton, and so on).
That’s too easy.
Allow me to tell you two stories.
One is about a person who — through tragic accident — had part of his brain destroyed, leading to revelatory advances in psychology and brain research.
The other, about a stout, whiskered man who thinks sound decisions can come only from a cool head.
Do emotions affect our decisions? Do cool heads truly prevail when faced with choices?
And who cares? What does all this have to do the art and craft of copywriting and content creation?
