Guide to Good Copywriting

Do-It-Yourself Business Owners, please write the way you talk!

I can get turned off by (and abandon) a website faster than you can turn off a faucet. How?  When whoever wrote it thinks they need to impress me with their extensive vocabulary and A+ Schoolmarm grammar and English composition writing chops.

And I’m a professional wordsmith with a vocabulary that rivals the vocabularies of 98% of the people I know. So imagine what you’re doing to MOST of the people you want to keep on your site long enough to convince them to decide to make you their trusted provider or home-away-from-home!

If you aren’t writing your own stuff but the copywriter you hired is behaving like a Grammar Nazi instead of a relational human being, fire them and hire someone who isn’t — someone who “gets it”.

Now, I’m not suggesting that if you talk like Jed Clampett of the Beverly Hillbillies or like a drunken sailor, you should write like them. That simply won’t work unless your target audience is Jed Clampett types or drunken sailors.

But, come on! Drop back down to earth here with the rest of us mortals who don’t want to have to work so hard to understand what it is you’re getting at. Write your copy the way you talk when you’re talking to much-loved friends.

Do you need a few hints or examples? You’ve come to the right place.

WRITE THIS:                  NOT THIS:

Don’t                                 Do not

Can’t                                 Cannot

Won’t                                Will not

Buy                                   Purchase

So                                     Therefore

But                                    However

Agreement                        Contract

Look                                  Search

Find                                  Locate, Discover

Appreciate                        Like, Enjoy

Let’s Talk!                         Contact,  Email,  Phone

You know the websites I’m talking about. You’ve seen them. (Please send me links to your favorite “OMG Copywriting Website FAILS” ! I might post them here to use as bad examples!) You get the impression they were written by high school seniors hoping to get an A+ on their “do it by the book” essay-writing test.

Because I don’t want to point directly to any of the current miscreants (but go ahead and check out any ten sites at random and I’ll lay you odds that at least half of them are indicative of what I’m talking about), I’ll conjure up some similar sentences and their do-overs so you can transfer what you learn below to your own sites.

“With whom do you wish to do business, a professional or an amateur? You reap what you sow.”   (ACK!!!)

“Do you want to do business with a professional or an amateur? You’ll get what you pay for.”