Practical copywriting advice and tips from a Content Expert.

Having spent over twenty years immersed in the world of digital content, I've gained a wealth of experience as a creator, editor, content manager and Content Strategist. Throughout my journey, I've discovered practical strategies and time-tested techniques that have supported my writing process and improved my copywriting.

In this article, I'll share what I have learned during my career and provide actionable insights and insider tips to help you tackle your writing tasks more efficiently and create better copy.??

Whether you love writing or must write for your business, whether you love it or not, these tips will equip you with the tools you need to create better digital copy.

Craft Copy That Connects:

Crafting copy that connects with your audience is essential for driving engagement and awareness. Here are some key strategies to ensure your copy resonates with your target audience:

• Understand Your Audience: The more you know about your customers, the better. Gain an understanding of their preferences, needs, and pain points. Detailed personas representing your target markets are a great way to determine what information your personas need.
• Highlight Benefits and Solutions: Show that you understand your customers by clearly communicating the benefits and solutions your products or services offer and how they address your customers' pain points and challenges.
• Use Customer-Centric Language: Use the words and phrases your customers use when referring to your business, products, or services. Consider how they would talk about your business when talking to a friend or whether they would know what the words you are using mean.
• Avoid Jargon: Industry jargon and internal language and alienate or confuse your audience. Write a list of the jargon used in your business so everyone knows what words to avoid when copywriting.
• Keep it Simple: Get to the point, remove unnecessary words, and use short sentences to enhance readability.
• Aim for Readability: To reduce cognitive load and ensure comprehension, aim for a reading level around 10-11 years old. A higher reading age is acceptable depending on your audience or there is no alternative to industry terminology.
• Use Online Readability Tools: Readable , Hemingway and Grammarly can help you write copy that meets readability standards. Both Hemingway and Grammarly offer IA writing features that can help improve readability..
• Learn about writing Plain English: Regularly using tools like Hemmingway and Grammarly is a great way to learn how to write easy-to-read copy. Consider enrolling in Plain English courses to improve your ability to write easy-to-understand copy. Write.co.nz offers excellent online plain English courses.

Boost Writing Productivity:

Getting started and maintaining momentum when writing can sometimes be a real challenge. Here are some effective strategies to help your writing productivity:

• Create an Outline: Before writing any copy, outline the main points you want to cover. Then, you can write in chunks rather than trying the whole thing once.
• Capture Ideas Anywhere: Use dictation apps or functions on your phone to capture ideas and create draft copy anytime, anywhere. Dictating copy is excellent for people who think better while talking or have ideas while waiting in traffic or sitting in an airport.
• Break it Down: If you have a big writing task or lots of little writing tasks to complete by a specific time, breaking down writing into smaller, manageable tasks will help you get started and make steady progress.
• Warm-Up Your Writing: If you're tired or uninspired, try a writing warm-up exercise to stimulate creativity and prime your mind for writing. You can find warm-up exercises online. Complete the exercise with pen and paper to get into the creative zone.
• Set Focused Sessions: Set a timer if you struggle to start writing. Whether for an hour or just 15 minutes, it's incredible how much you can get done when you set a timeframe and how often you'll want to keep writing.
• Prepare Your Workspace: Preparing your workspace will help signal to your brain that you will be writing. Fire up your laptop, open the documents you need, get a glass of water, plug into your favourite playlist, and most importantly, remove any potential distractions like notifications and phone calls.
• Use Online Writing Tools: Writing tools like Grammarly and ChatGPT are powerful tools that can help you at almost every stage of the writing process. Grammarly can support you with sentence structure, spelling, and grammar while you focus on getting your ideas down in writing. ChatGPT offers heaps of writing support, but learning how to prompt and use ChatGPT correctly is essential to get the most out of it.
• Stay Flexible: Remain open to writing at any time, even when you're tired or unmotivated. Writing when you're tired can work to your advantage because you have less bandwidth to fuss over your writing or second guess yourself.
• Create Deadlines: Deadlines are very motivating and can help our productivity. Usually, there will be a deadline for your draft and final copy. However, if there is no delivery date, make one up and hold yourself accountable.

Stay in the Writing Flow:

Staying in the writing flow can be challenging, but it's essential for maintaining productivity and creativity. Here are some helpful tips to stay in the writing flow:

• Take Regular Breaks: Take regular breaks and move around to reduce mental fatigue and keep creativity flowing.
• Address Clarity Issues: If you're struggling to explain your ideas clearly in your copy, imagine explaining to one person rather than thinking of a whole audience. Alternatively, start a sentence with 'What I really mean is' and explain what you were trying to write.
• Don't Battle with Grammar: If you can't figure out the correct grammar in a sentence, try rewriting the sentence so the grammar isn't needed. Alternatively, check the Grammar Girl website for grammar tips or use Grammarly to edit the sentence.
• Minimise Distractions: Figure out what your distraction weak points are and find ways to manage them. Turn off notifications on your phone and computer so you're not constantly interrupted.
• Focus on Main Copy: Don't waste time trying to write titles and introductions before you have written the body copy. Do this last. The copy you have written will contain the ideas needed to create the title, introduction and conclusion.
• Flip the Sentence: If you're struggling to make a sentence flow, try cutting the end off and putting it at the beginning.

Reviewing and Editing Your Copy:

Reviewing and editing your copy is essential for ensuring clarity, accuracy, and consistency. Here are some valuable tips for effective reviewing and editing:

• Conduct Peer Reviews: Get the people creating content to peer review one another's work before publishing. It is much easier to see mistakes in other people's copy than in our own. Seek out the grammar enthusiasts you know and enlist their help
• Read Aloud: Read your copy aloud to see how it flows. Reading aloud is the best way to find sentences that are too long. When you pause for a breath, the copy should have a comma or full stop.
• Use Online Writing Tools: Grammarly is a fantastic editing tool that can help you structure sentences correctly, keep spelling and grammar on track, and fine-tune copy. ChatGPT can also offer editing support, provided you prompt correctly.?
• Allow Time Before Publishing: Allow at least a day before publishing so you can re-read it with fresh eyes before releasing it to the world.
• Review Post-Publishing: Always review your copy after it has gone live. Content looks different when published on a digital platform. Despite all the review cycles before going live, it is incredible how often mistakes are found.
• When reviewing your copy and consider the following:
• Is it clear and concise?
• Has any jargon slipped through the cracks?
• Is your copy consistent - think tone of voice, language, formatting, terminology
• Wider business reviews: Have all relevant subject matter experts and stakeholders and Legal Team reviewed the copy.?

Gain Inspiration and Improve Your Writing Skills:

Continuous learning and seeking inspiration are essential for improving your writing skills and staying ahead in the ever-evolving landscape of copywriting. Here are some effective strategies to gain inspiration and enhance your writing skills:

• Analyse Successful Copy: Analyse copy from successful businesses and competitors to gain valuable insights and inspiration.
• Sign up for Some Training: Online courses are a great way to learn about writing and how to get the best from ChatGPT. Some fantastic writing and ChatGPT Prompt Engineering courses are available on LinkedIn Learning and Udemy .
• Pay Attention to Feedback: Pay attention to customer feedback and experiment with different writing styles and approaches.
• Iterate Based on Feedback: Listen to customer feedback and update regularly to ensure your copy evolves with your audience's needs.
• Stay Informed: Keep up to date with industry trends and best practices in copywriting, AI tool use and marketing.

I hope you find these insights and practical tips valuable and that you're inspired to test them in your next writing task. If you have any questions or want to discuss content creation in more detail, please get in touch with me on LinkedIn.

Disclaimer:

This article has been created with the support of ChatGPT3.5. All the ideas and information have been generated by me based on my personal experience of working with digital content for over 20 years.