It’s good to be able to vary your copy style – different styles for different tasks.
Deep level service pages or white papers, for example, are a place where people will be looking for detail, and will expect to find copy that lays out your process or explains the nitty gritty of how your products work.
Your home page and blogs, however, are a different matter. Here you’re after copy that grabs people quickly, and packs a real punch.
So how do you do that?
Address the reader
The quickest way to pack a punch with your copy is to address the reader directly. Putting ‘you’ into whatever you’re writing is your short circuit to making a connection. How do you feel about that? More connected, I’ll bet than if I had written ‘how does the person reading this feel about that?’
Direct from me to you is the shortest way to hit home fast. Imagine your ideal reader, and forget about everything else, just write it to them.
Vary sentence length
Short sentences are another way to keep people moving so quickly through the copy in a way that doesn’t feel like a long hard read. Keep sentences short. That way people won’t drift off. They’ll stick with you.
Of course not every sentence needs to be super short. You want to pack a punch, not make the reader feel under fire. So vary the sentence length sometimes, so it feels conversational, but not like gunfire.
Get active
Active verbs make writing punchier. Seeing, running, jumping are all pacier than saw, ran or jumped. Similarly cutting out unnecessary ‘wills’ and ‘cans’ make your writing more direct. So don’t way ‘We can deliver solutions.’ Say ‘we deliver solutions.’ (Except don’t say ever ‘solutions.’ Find some real words that describe things people can picture instead. )
Add colour
Metaphors and analogies can help pack power into your writing. I could tell you that last night in an Aberdeen hotel surprised me, because there seemed to be no women anywhere, except those working as waitresses, and that all the men seemed to be sizing each other up, and you might get the picture. If I told you it was like the Wild West, you’d get a quicker and sharper image of the place, and that picture will stay with you for longer. Metaphors add colour and vision to whatever you’re writing.
Knock them out!
To summarise, the key to writing copy that packs a punch is to make it resonate with the reader. Put them at the heart of whatever you’re writing, keep the writing pacey and colourful, and get creative with your comparisons. It will knock them out!
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