How to be a copywriter

focus-customers-needs-copywriter-collective

How to focus on your customers’ needs, inspire their devotion and make the world a better place

Because why not have it all? ;-) The first rule of writing marketing copy and content is to speak to your customers’ or clients’ needs instead of your own. Instead of focusing your copy on your product or service – what it does,…

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Win Your Buyer’s Trust: How to Use Honesty in Marketing

Content & Strategy

Years ago, legendary American advertising executive James Webb Young started “Old Jim Young’s Mountain Grown Apples,” which sold fruit by mail. In the book How I Learned The Secrets Of Success In Advertising by Guy Lynn Sumner, a story…

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How I Reintroduced Creative Alchemy Into My Life Again

In October, I had the opportunity to attend two events that gave me a fresh perspective on my business. One was a writing retreat that only had twelve other writers attending. The other was a larger copywriting conference that had around 400…

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What My Italian Family Taught Me About Food, Marketing and Copywriting

Content & Strategy Copywriting Skills

I blame my fascination with food and food metaphors on my upbringing. Growing up with a full-blooded Italian mother, grandmother, and great-grandmother (who came from Italy as a young girl “on a boat”), my fixation on food was inevitable. Food…

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Writing Content for the Web – Basics

Content & Strategy Copywriting Skills

When I’ve coached customers on building their own content for websites or blogs, there is a very straight forward approach I take. It works with beginner writers who are just trying for the first time, or experienced product experts who are…

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How I Write: My Copywriting Process

Content & Strategy

Whether I’m writing a campaign for Art.com’s homepage or brainstorming a creative name for one of my partner’s sushi dinner parties, I always take the same steps. Let’s take this email copy (below) for example. The Goals Write…

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Writing for How People Read Online

Content & Strategy

There always seems to be confusion about what makes good content for the web. The audience is more fickle, quicker to move on when something doesn’t jump out - but they’re also cunning, knowing when something has misled them. So what…

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6 Tips to Improve Eyesight for Freelance Writers Read

Copywriting Skills Freelancing

Writing for a living means, by necessity, keeping your eyes constantly glued on your monitor, laptop or tablet for many hours each day. Given the implied risks of having strained eyes, taking the time to treat them nicely can only help you to…

Dealing with Delays – The Project Horizon

Content & Strategy

Marketing, and in particular content writing, always seems like an unpredictable path. Customer’s change their minds, people go on holidays, unexpected additions creep in; and before you know it you’re a month past due and people are screaming. It’s…