Content marketing tools and training.
Copywriters love to tell clients they can create compelling copy.
Few of them ever mention whom they think they’re compelling.
That’s because too few of them have ever given it the thought it deserves.
One of the first rules of copywriting is to know your audience, and many copywriters are fairly skilled at creating copy designed to appeal to, say, a 60-year-old female retiree who’s confused about her insurance options.
The problem is that that’s not how Dorothea in Florida thinks of herself.
Like a lot of people, every year my husband and I watch Miracle on 34th Street during the holiday season.
One of my favorite scenes in the movie is right at the end when Natalie Wood is riding in the car with her mom and Fred Gailey.
The camera focuses in on Natalie sitting in the back seat of the car staring out the window looking bored and kind of annoyed, mumbling “I believe, I believe …”
Welcome to The Lede.
Every week I’ll be digging up and linking to stories, news, and opinion relevant to online marketing and copywriting.
Email, social media, innovation, SEO, productivity, mobile, conversion, publishing, and everything in between.
No commentary, just a fast, single page of headlines that you can grab, scan, and squeeze for all they may (or may not) be worth.
All right then, on with it …
Every writer who has ever lived has lusted after ideas.
Where are they, how do I get them, and how do I keep them coming?
If you’ve been writing long enough, you know that — like Solomon — there is nothing new under the sun.
Try as you might to sweat them out of your head or pull them gently from the stars above, there are no new ideas.
So, relax.
But the page is not going to write itself, is it? Where then do we turn for ideas that work, ideas that move, ideas that persuade?
In short, we steal them.
Imagine you’re having a discussion with a talkative, hyperactive teenager.
The conversation goes something like this …
We went to the mall, and like, there was this fire in the mall. And we went from there to the movies, but we didn’t have any money and anyway the popcorn machine was broken, and so we didn’t really want to go to the movies without popcorn. But right after that we went to have some pizza and there was this creepy guy outside the store. But listen to this — because that’s not the best part. The best part is that Sylvie dumped Josh, and like, they ran into each other in the street …
Annoying right? Then why do we so often write our web copy just like that teenager talks?
Sure, you want comments.
And subscribers, and shares, and likes.
But you don’t really care about any of these things. You want what they will eventually lead to …
Money.
Yes, traffic is good, and so is reader engagement. But if you’re reading this, chances are you’re running a blog with the intention of marketing a business and making some money.
Now, that could be a bit distressing, because most bloggers are broke.
