williamscopywriting

If you are just starting your blog and would like to have some basic advice on which key rules to follow to be effective, there is a lot of advice to follow.

You should be aware that there is no “standard” blog approach and that what really counts is how effective you are at communicating to your selected audiences the messages or news you want to get across. From personal diary to magazine-style there are a lot of approaches that can be effectively used to make blog-software become a powerful PR, marketing, or online publishing tool.

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For some internet marketers it’s become a cutting edge strategy to offer multi lingual navigation and promo material on their sites in the hope of expanding their client base. While it is true that international users whose mother tongue is anything but English are beginning to hit the web in hefty numbers, catering to them in their own linguistic format is an art in itself which doesn’t lend itself to the cheap and easy “no brainer” pseudo solutions currently being hawked on the net. If you offer them one of those, chances are you’ll fend them off forever. Count it as a well-meaning blunder as much as you will, fact is these clients-to-be can be quite relentless if you convey the impression that you couldn’t care less about offering first class services. Don’t forget that very many people actually love their mother tongue and don’t enjoy seeing it massacred. Read the rest of this entry »

A desire to buy something often involves a subconscious decision. In fact, I claim that 95% of buying decisions are indeed subconscious.

Knowing the subconscious reasons why people buy, and using this information in a fair and constructive way, will trigger greater sales response — often far beyond what you could imagine. Read the rest of this entry »

The Guinness Book of World Records listed Joe Girard as the “World’s Greatest Retail Salesman” for 12 consecutive years.

He holds the singular distinction of having sold an average of six cars a day over his career. Recently, Joe Girard told me:

“Joe, I can sell in person to individuals in a personal way - in fact, I can sell more cars per day than anyone else. Yet, I can’t do what you do — you sell millions of products to masses of people through the sheer power of print.”
Salesmanship in Print

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Given to you by leading copywriter Bill Fryer:

1 Review your copywriting. Do it over and over. Six or seven times or more.

2 Do not use long Latin words like “information” - use short Anglo-Saxon words like “facts”. These words have more punch.

3 Avoid being clever and cryptic. Sometimes I see ads that take me weeks to work out what they mean. We are all too busy to be bothering with the clever stuff. If it can be understood by a half-wit with a two second attention span you probably have a winner.

4 Do not be handicapped by thinking that everything has to be “grammatically correct”. When you are copywriting all that stuff goes out the window. Say it in the simplest way possible.

5 Use short sentences. And only contain one idea in every paragraph. Do not spend ages constructing enormously complex sentences with millions of clauses and sub-clauses. Also, be specific, state real figures, avoid things like “up to 5%” or “over 1,000″. Avoid percentages and state real sums of money instead

6 State the facts and focus on the benefits the customer will get when he buys the product. Do not waffle. Every word needs to be earning its place in your copy. Do not be worried by length of copywriting. Testing shows that long copywriting sells more than short, and long headlines sell more than short. Your copywriting should be as long or as short as it needs to be to sell the product.

7 Speak the reader’s language. Do what a salesman would do. Think about how you would sell the product to someone. The best copywriting often has a kind of speech type “you-and-me-talking” quality about it.

8 Visualise a person and write to them. Better still write as if you are writing to someone you already know who fits the target audience: Your Mum, a friend, whoever.

9 Use simple words that everyone understands then everyone will understand. Good copywriting is often criticised for having a childlike quality. This is deliberate; if a simple person can understand it, everyone can understand it.

10 And finally: read books on the subject. Study the work of the great men of advertising. Write, write and re-write. The way to get effective advertising is to test everything. Do not use full stops in headlines. And remember: good copywriting is like a river; you should be able to jump in at any point and be carried along by the flow.

©Bill Fryer 2005

Article Brought to you by Williams Copywriting Services UK
http://www.williamscopywriting.co.uk