When it comes to ideas, sometimes the one you like the best isn’t the best one to go with…
He works in a shed. A copywriter who works in a shed. What other reason do you need to listen to what he has to say?
Before you write any piece of copy, you need to figure out if the idea you’re writing about is any good. If your idea sucks ass, your copy will suck ass…
It’s an objection often raised, especially when it comes to longer pieces of copy. If handled badly, it can ruin your work. But get it right and it could be one of the most important tools you employ. I’m talking about repetition. A reader asks an interesting question on this very subject: “Is there a good technical reason why so many of these sales letters go on for ages and repeat themselves endlessly?” Put simply:…
You may know him as Kento. Or you may know him by his Spanish name: Pedro. For a short while, I knew him as Hector. Before a fellow writer and marketer, Thomas Goosey, enlightened me. In case you don’t recognise his name, he looks like this: He’s a children’s television character that’s become a meme. He’s usually used as a GIF to express shock. I like him. He’s funny. But why the freaking lobster am…
My mind is a mess. I mean, literally, a mess. There are too many ideas in there. Bits and bobs lying about all over the joint. Send help. Send a cleaner. Send a shrink. It’s like someone ran into a library with a barrel of explosives and let rip… There are pages everywhere. Ideas strewn across collapsed shelves. Quiet librarians shivering in corners, desperate to speak up but too shaken to speak clearly. I doubt…
Working in the world of direct response is great. Why? Because it’s cold, hard and emotionless. Wait. That doesn’t sound good. But it is. Trust me. Of course, we copywriters spend the majority of our time desperately trying to inject emotion into our writing and into our readers… But in the true light of day, the market is truly cold and emotionless. It doesn’t care about your feelings. It doesn’t care about the work you’ve…
After spending an evening with social media expert and general ‘smart guy’, Gary Vaynerchuk (@garyvee), I decided to check out SlideShare. Have you come across this yet? It’s basically a social network based around sharing slideshows. Sounds weird, I know. But I kind of like it and spent some time designing my own presentation. I think it’s worked out quite nicely. And it’s about a subject that’s important to any copywriter, marketer or business owner -…
The first here in a new series of ‘quotes about copywriting’. Every now and again I’ll be posting a new snippet of copywriting advice that you’ll hopefully want to share with the world. (Frankly, I’m so fed up with the wealth of meaningless inspirational quotes circulating the web that I thought it was about time we spread some mildly useful ones about our subject too.) Best of all, by taking advantage of the design skills…
I wrote a new article for a fellow copywriter, Alastair Allday, that is currently featured on his website, Allday Creative. You can read the piece here. In it I reveal five things that could help you improve your writing. But these aren’t regular copy tips and it isn’t a list of typical ‘how to’ textbooks. In fact, these five things are totally unrelated to copywriting and actually involve Ernest Hemingway, Bill Hicks and Bob Dylan.…