Guest Post: Work as a Copywriter
Note: I hope you enjoy this new series where The Conservative Job Board features advice from conservative professionals.
Loyal Soles is a conservative copywriter for the conservative organization, Convention of States, which is currently hiring multiple roles here.
He also recently launched his own Substack called “Ground Game Politics”
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HOW DO YOU WRITE?
By Loyal Soles
Do you doubt your own writing?
I sure did.?
In fact, when I first started email marketing, I was the worst writer at my company, but I didn't know it.?
I was just finishing college and had received an A on my senior thesis, so surely my good academic writing would transfer over to good email writing, right??
Wrong.?
What college had not taught me was how to speak conversationally in my writing, and this is foundational to making your writing resonate with people.
Most people do not care for the robotic-sounding "Sale!" emails or precisely-worded essays that drone on and on before getting to the point.
Rather, they prefer to be spoken to as if they are a regular human being, like you and I do.?
Luckily, there is only one principle you need to learn in order to be great at copywriting in any industry.
Know your audience.
And while this principle is taught to junior copywriters at every marketing firm across the U.S., for the sake of this article, I’m only going to focus on political copywriting.
I can hear your complaints now.
“Ok that’s fine and dandy. I know where to apply, but how exactly do I learn how to copywrite?”
Learning copywriting is simply learning to say what you mean and putting it on paper.
This comes from knowing your audience.
Once you know who your audience is, you can speak to them in the way that best fits THEIR personality.?
Be personal with them.
For example, if you’re trying to get your audience to contact their legislators over restrictions to water usage in the state of Idaho, your audience is likely going to be farmers, who are most affected by this rule.
In this scenario, your copy would ideally be conversational, frank, and full of facts which take no more than 2 lines to say.
You would not be writing a letter to the Chamber of Commerce in the style of “Dear Sir or Madam…” You would be speaking to Bill who cannot water a third of his potato and grain crops this year due to the government overregulating the water supply.
The MISE formula, which stands for Mad, Inform, Sell, Explain, became the gold standard for helping me put personality into my writing.?
On average, your reader spends 9-15 seconds reading an email, which means you need to grab their attention quickly – that’s the “Mad.”
Urgency and personalization are your best tools to getting attention.
After you’ve caught your reader’s attention, then you “Inform” them about the details of the situation.
For example, “this evil bill just passed somewhere,” “our organization is in dire financial straits,” “this person plans on voting for X,” are quick ways of explaining what the problem entails.
Next comes the “Sell”, which is the solution to the woes you’ve just finished outlining.
This is a low-barrier ask of your reader to do something for your organization, whether that’s donating, making a phone call, or signing a pledge.?
Most importantly though, your sell should be the best solution to the problems you’ve outlined.
Thus, you need to “Explain” why your solution is the best solution.?
Your audience is smart, and they will be skeptical of giving you their time (to read an article), their effort (to volunteer/make a phone call/sign a pledge), or their money.
That’s why it’s best to explain the features (the specific details) of your solution and the benefits (what happens) if it gets implemented – but remember to keep both tailored to your audience.
Mastering the use of the MISE formula grants you the ability to go between businesses and industries as a marketing guru.
Personally, I’m always looking for new ways to improve my political copy, so I subscribe to a variety of political organizations and receive their emails.
Whatever style of copy they repeat, I take note of, because if a style of message is repeated, that means it’s working for them.
If you’re interested, you can browse through the archive of political emails to see how different organizations target their audiences.
An additional resource for learning how to be personal in your copy is Ogilvy on Advertising by David Ogilvy.?
One final point I’d like to make about a growing concern for copywriters in the industry – AI.
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Without a doubt, you’ve heard or seen the marvels of AI with regards to content creation, and I feel the need to address this question.?
“Should you use AI to write email copy or should you refrain from using it?”
At its core, AI is still in its infancy, and on a national marketing level, it does not have the capabilities to sound personal, which is quintessential to good copywriting.
We see this in basic copy generation on ChatGPT, for example.?
In this prompt, ChatGPT laid out a short email that looks fairly generic and acceptable for a sale.
However, the main flaw with this kind of email is that it falls into a pattern with content generation that breaks the principle of sounding personal.
Three main flaws stick out:
1. The opening does not grab your attention. "Show off your patriotic pride..." vs. "Have you received your mug yet?"
2. Many of the sell points start with commands ("Show off," “Grab,” "Don't miss out," "Order now," "Raise"). If you imagine speaking this to someone, it comes across as extremely pushy and awkward.?
3. The explanation of the sell points is usually vague and meaningless. "Raise your mug and cheers to great savings" does not make the mug more desirable. You can create better sell points by asking these questions (just substitute the mug for X product that you want to sell):?
Is the mug collectable??
Is the mug extremely discounted??
Is the mug new?
Does the mug confer something onto you that other mugs do not??
Do you accomplish a secondary goal with having the mug (does it make a statement)?
Spotting the flaws in AI content generation is fairly easy, but to the untrained eye, that copy it just generated looks pretty good.?
It should come as a point then that from an administrative standpoint, the alternative to you is "free copy."?
Therefore, you need to make yourself stand out.
For this reason, I would caution away from using AI for copy generation so you can grow in your writing and personalization skills.
The time and effort it would take to produce a good piece of copy from AI that sounded personal and in tune with your specific audience at that moment would be better spent learning your audience.
However, it can be used to help you if you get stuck in writer’s block or if you need help with sentence flow.
Again, personalization is 100% key to email marketing. No one knows your audience better than you, and no machine learning can change that.
If you can make yourself sound like someone your audience likes, respects, or relates to, you will produce stellar copy.
-Loyal Soles
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WHERE DO YOU LOOK ?
By Titus Folks
Where do you even begin to look for a job in political copywriting?
First, you’re looking for a place that has a need to regularly raise money, command large grassroots armies, and/or publish news.
The majority of jobs that fall into these categories are in conservative, policy-based organizations.
These organizations are laser-focused on pushing an agenda and need to market to their target audiences accordingly.?
I regularly curate jobs like this from websites like ConservativeJobs.com, RedBalloon.work, GOPJobs.com, and RepublicanJobs.gop. Start there.
You should also look for conservative marketing firms that offer social media, email, or direct mail services.
American Target Advertising & HSP Direct are probably the two biggest firms like this, and they are both hiring currently.
Several others may not have openings public, but you can always reach out to them with your resume and see how it goes. Here are some to include in your search:
Even if these organizations don’t currently have openings, you can reach out to them and express interest directly to let them know you’re on the market for work.
Need help researching these opportunities?
Each week, I sort through these websites and employers to build my job database of 700+ jobs.?
You can access a free trial with this coupon here.
Titus Folks
Recruiter, The Conservative Job Board
Want to work for liberty? Contact Me ↙↙↙
2 个月Awesome new resource! Thanks for sharing Titus Folks
Freelance Writer & Editor | Insurance | Travel | Content Marketing Writer
2 个月Great series idea!