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What Makes a Good Copywriter?

A copywriter is someone who creates copy (advertising, marketing, website content, etc.) but doesn’t necessarily write the adverts or articles themselves. The job of a copywriter is to come up with the words and sentences that the advertiser or brand owner wants to use in their ads and articles. This person is responsible for creating compelling headings and sub-headings, shaping the overall message of an advert or article, and making it more approachable and relevant to the intended audience.

To become a good copywriter, you need to understand certain principles, strategies, and approaches. If you follow these guidelines, you will produce the most effective copy for your clients.

Know Your Audience

In writing, as in life, you need to know your audience. Who is the recipient of your words? What do they need or want? What are their values, dreams, fears, and concerns? Don’t aimlessly toss words and phrases at the page; put yourself in your audience’s shoes and think about what they need.

If you don’t know your audience, it’s almost impossible to write effective copy. Every advertisement and marketing campaign should have a clear target audience defined within it. This should be the person the advertiser is trying to reach; the group of people most likely to buy the product or service in question. If you don’t know who these people are, how can you write the right words to convince them to buy the product or service?

Find The Hook

The hook is something that will draw the reader in and keep them interested enough to read the whole article or ad. In an article, it’s often the introductory paragraphs that hold the hook. These are the first things the reader will see and are generally the most crucial. The hook should make the reader curious enough to continue reading but not so much that they’re bored.

An advertiser or brand owner will give you the objective and the target audience for their ad or article. Within that, they will often give you the main hook (the one thing that will make the reader interested in the piece) along with some supporting details. It’s your job to find the supporting details that make this particular ad or article special. Think about the theme the advertiser is trying to drive home and come up with a few solid supporting details that will make your copy interesting and memorable. When writing the introduction, use the main point as a springboard for interesting, engaging copy.

For example, Hewlett-Packard’s 2016 Summer Promotion offered a writing challenge. One of the assignments was to find a hook that would make their press release, website article, or social media campaign stand out. The result of this writing exercise went live on one of their websites with the following hook: “We need your help. And not just to write something cool, though that would be awesome too. We need you to take a stand, speak out, and be heard.”

This kind of opening draws the reader into the article with their own interest piqued. Most importantly, it makes them curious about the news story that follows. The advertiser is essentially asking the reader to become an active participant in the information gathering process. To put it differently, the ad or article provides the reader with both the invitation and the ammunition they need to participate in the conversation.

As an SEO (search engine optimization) specialist, you will regularly need to choose keywords to use within your content to ensure that your site is showing up when potential customers search for your favorite brands and products. Knowing the right keywords to use and including them appropriately can boost your SEO rankings and make your content more discoverable. When writing for an audience of one (i.e. yourself), you should pick keywords that are likely to get a reaction. If you write for an audience of two or more (i.e. your reader), you should pick keywords that will make your content more useful and relevant to their needs.

Craft The Perfect Length

The perfect length for an article, web content, or social media campaign is around 700 words. Most writers prefer to split their content into several shorter articles rather than try to cram everything into one long piece.

If you’re writing for the web, the length of your piece determines the size of the text box you’ll be putting it into. In other words, you have a certain number of characters to work with. With that in mind, you can determine how many articles or web content pieces you can fit into your site before having to split them into two (or more) parts. This is to ensure that the reader doesn’t get bored.

Usually, when an advertiser or brand owner gives you a short deadline and an unlimited budget, they mean just that. There is no set length for an advertisement; it can be as short as two minutes or as long as a minute and a half. The important thing is that you come up with compelling content that will bring in the clicks. The key to this is to ensure that the content is of a good length; just over a minute and you’ll start losing the attention of your audience.

Make It Actionable

People love to be given advice, especially when it comes to something they’re not familiar with. If you can provide valuable information that makes a difference in people’s lives, you’ll find that they are much more likely to be receptive to your words of wisdom. To put it differently, people want to be helped. And if you can help them, they will be much more likely to appreciate it.

For example, say you’re a personal trainer and you’ve been assigned to coach a friend who is also looking to lose weight. In that case, you can help them by giving tips on how to improve their diet and exercise routine. Or, you could help them decide what type of shoes to wear based on the climate they’re traveling to (warm climates require thick, cozy footwear, while cool environments call for thin, lightweight shoes).

As a copywriter, your job is to take whatever the client provides (which is usually a brief) and turn it into a compelling piece of content.

When you’ve done that, you will have created an indispensable marketing tool that will inspire many more ideas. Furthermore, your talent will have been recognized and rewarded with a solid raise or bonus.