Copybot

Essential web writing + content marketing advice

Deathbed Advice for Your Landing Page Copy

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Lamplight

Last Friday I participated in Page Fights: Copy Edition.

Covered a lot of material critiquing ten landing pages in under 40 minutes. And would sum everything I said in this simple statement:

Your landing page copy is nothing more than a conversation with your ideal prospect.”

Your landing page copy is not some random facts about you or your product. It’s a conversation that begins with an understanding of what is in your prospect’s mind.

And you enter that conversation by saying, “Hey, you’re not alone.” The four most powerful words in our language (sans “hey”).

Once you have her attention, then you make her feel like you care. Like you really understand. That it doesn’t have to be this way. That there is hope.

So you paint a picture of what her life will be like if she takes you up on your offer. You show her a better version of herself.

Then you prove you can deliver on your promise. That you are someone she can trust.

Finally, tell her what to do. Push her in the right direction.

Every single word should support and advance that conversation. If it doesn’t, cut it.

By the way, can anyone name the formula I used to frame this conversation? Share your answer in the comments.

Writing Improves Everything (Absurd Claim 2 of 3)

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Window Wood

You are the hack who butchers your ideas. It’s okay. That’s true for everyone. We butcher our ideas when we commit them to paper or hit publish.

But it must be done.

Otherwise we freeze. And never write. We fear the botched performance. The corruption of sublime ideas once they hit the atmosphere.

Corruption, however, is essential to creation.

See, there are two modes to creation. First, there is the birth of the idea, which happens in your head. Second, you turn that idea into reality (hit publish), which usually confirms your suspicion: the idea wasn’t that great.

But here’s the thing.

Rough drafts will almost never reflect your original idea. A rough draft reflects sloppy thinking. And the older the writer you are the better you understand that principle.

See, rewriting — an arduous task — helps you to think clearly. So the more you write not only the better writer you become — but the better your thoughts become, too.

In other words, as your writing improves so do your ideas. But that’s not all.

Writing Improves Everything

Over time the opinion of your ideas decreases. Which should encourage you.

Since your ideas are not as great as you think they are the damage done by publishing them is diminished. So, you publish frequently. And frequent publishing forces you to come up with new ideas faster.

Which means more opportunity to stumble across a truly great idea. Just like any numbers game.

Image source: Leon Ephraïm

Absurd claims one and three.

How Safe Is Your Copy from the Curse of Knowledge?

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Three Mile Island

At 4:00 a.m. Wednesday, March 28, 1979, plant operators at the Three Mile Island facility set into motion the worst nuclear accident in U.S. history. And it all started with a minor malfunction exacerbated by human error.

Here’s how the Wikipedia entry on Three Mile Island accident describes the human error:

… such as human-computer interaction design oversights relating to ambiguous control room indicators in the power plant’s user interface. In particular, a hidden indicator light led to an operator manually overriding the automatic emergency cooling system of the reactor because the operator mistakenly believed that there was too much coolant water present in the reactor and causing the steam pressure release.”

Did you catch that? The operator misinterpreted the label of a warning light. Why? The curse of knowledge. [Read more…]

Pulitzer-Winning Journo’s Creative Trick to Writing Clearly

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Warhol Bus Sunglasses

Speaking is a natural act. Every single human being has the ability to do it. And at a very young age. The reason why says cognitive scientist and linguist Stephen Pinker is because we have a language instinct.

We master this instinct as we imitate sounds made by mom and dad, brother and sister, nana and popo. Soon we are forming one word sentences, then two and three words sentences, and, at around age two, we are demanding to put our seat belts on ourselves while “you worry about yourself.”

Writing, however, is another story. [Read more…]

The Devil-May-Care Method to Finding the Perfect Article Opening

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Collection - Sheldon

As a writer you should be curating ideas nonstop. That is the essential mindset for exceptional ideas. Your life should be one about observation. Your senses always on.

You should be running your hands over the texture of a strange wall. You should cock your ear to a heated conversation between two German chess players. You should be chewing your arugula and feta slowly, thinking about how and why they work so well together.

This also means you should go on a Netflix TV show binge. Watch ten of the best anti-war movies. You should attend live lectures, listen to podcasts about astronomy, subscribe to a free college course at Yale through iTunes, and watch documentaries.

Whatever your heart desires.

Over four years ago I watched a documentary called It Might Get Loud. There is a scene in which Jack White is talking to the younger Jack White. He tells him, “You must fight the guitar. And you must win.”

I totally knew I needed to use that. Somewhere. Somehow. So I tucked it away, until two years later, when it fit perfectly with the opening of this article.

That’s passive curation at its best. And it works whether you are looking for the perfect opening, metaphor, or conclusion. It works for headlines, blog post images, or warm-blooded verbs.

The mistake you want to avoid, however, is being passive and reactive. Which I’ll explain in the next blog post.

Do This to Break Your Weakness for Word Slaw

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Warhol Limo Window

A lifestyle of curating ideas is one where you purposefully choose to read books and articles that will fill a commonplace book. Which means you should be reading like a mad man (or woman).

Even if it means reading the same thing over and over again.

William Faulkner wrote a short story called “Pantaloon in Black” that I cannot stop reading. It is in his collection Go Down, Moses. I’ve only read three other stories in that collection — “Pantaloon in Black” is that seductive.

The main character, sprawling in grief after his young wife dies, is in constant, self-destructive motion. Always striding, lifting, drinking. Thus, the plot is a fluid, manic current.

Unstoppable and fatal.

It is a wonder to read. And I want to write like that. But better.

As Steven Pinker says and research suggests, studying the classic style will break you of your weakness for corporatese, academese, bureaucratese, and legalese — in other words, wordslaw.

The question is: how far are you willing to go for the right word?

You’ll Be Surprised to Learn the Source of Your Best Writing

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Airplane Down-001

Ideas also emerge through interaction with the world.

Jeff Goins says the discipline of traveling to another country disrupts our comfort, educates us in other cultures, and can help us find new ways to solve old problems. That’s curation we can control. Then there are curation opportunities we can’t control.

Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn says of his time in Stalin’s corrective labor camps, “Bless you, prison!” An experience that nearly broke this man granted him a knowledge of how “a human being becomes good or evil.”

His years of forced imprisonment became fields ripe for harvest.

Own only what you can always carry with you: know languages, know countries, know people. Let your memory be your travel bag.” ― Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

Chances are you’ll never rot for a decade in a gulag. And most of your experiences won’t kill you or anyone close to you. But if you’ve at least made it to your twenty-first birthday, as Flannery O’Connor was fond of saying, then you’ll have a lifetime of material.

Don’t be afraid of the world. Or the people or circumstances you can’t control. Odd as it seems now, that junk will one day become your creative cache.

My Absurd Claim about Writing (1 of 3)

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whatever 22

Some astronomers and philosophers make the grand, if not absurd, claim that we are ten thousand things, but one substance.

Perhaps ancient stardust.

I have my own absurd claim: behind one single article by a seasoned writer is the weight of one thousand books, one hundreds movies, hours of lectures, a litany of song lyrics, countless days of conversations, dozens of poems, and so on.

And it’s this sort of commitment to working, learning, and playing hard that separates the good writer from the great.

How far are you willing to go to be absurd?

Absurd claims two and three.