Today’s post is a first for The Copywriter’s Soapbox: a guest post by Princess Jones of P.S. Jones Communication. What I love about Princess is that she tells it like it is–even when it’s something we don’t want to (but desperately need to) hear. Read on and you’ll get an idea of what I’m talking about.

Copy is like the outfit your marketing materials wear. You don’t want anything that doesn’t flatter your brand and project the image you want associated with it. You know how every year half the people who watch the Oscars are only watching so they can talk about what people are wearing? Well the pressure those celebrities  feel when picking out their dresses is nothing compared to the pressure of creating the perfect copy for your brand. Those celebrities only wear those dresses for one night, but branding can last a lifetime. Whether it’s Joan Rivers or your target audience, there are certain things you never want anyone to say about your copy. Here are four of them:

It’s Riddled With Typos

No one takes you seriously if your copy is full typos and grammatical errors. It makes it look rushed, cheap and unprofessional. Mistakes happen to us all. I write for a living and often edit my clients’ work, and even I have problems self-editing my writing. However, whatever you have to do to make your work error-free, do it. The only other option is to have readers focusing on your comma splices instead of your method.

How to Tell: Make the editing process a priority. Schedule it into the timeline. Read the copy aloud in a different setting than you wrote it. And whether you wrote it yourself or you hired someone else to do it, let a fresh pair of eyes look at it. Ask a partner, a colleague or just about  anyone who can read to look it over. You get bonus points if you can get someone representative the target audience to give you her thoughts.

It’s Predictable or Generic

“Blah, blah, blah, blah.”If your copy reads like that, it’s probably because it looks just like everyone else’s.  Time worn cliches and buzz words don’t do anything for your message. I’m not saying you have to reinvent the wheel every time you send out a new brochure, but you should try to at least put on a new set of tires.

How to Tell: Ask yourself whether what you’ve written could be about any other company or product than the one in question. If you could swap out the brand name with anyone else’s, it’s not good enough to represent any brand.

The Wrong Perspective

Regardless of who your audience is, they care more about themselves than you. That’s not narcissism or selfishness. That’s called being a human being. So when someone reads your copy, she doesn’t want to hear about what the product does or who the company is. Instead, she wants to hear about what those things can do for her problem. Make it all about the reader and why she should care.

How to Tell: Go through the copy and count how many times you said something about what the company or product does versus what the customer gains. If it’s not decidedly more about the customer than the company, go back and make it so.

It’s Confusing

Everybody loves clever copy. When done right, clever copy makes an impression by surprising us or making us laugh. When done badly, clever copy leaves the audience wondering what is the point of the whole thing. The first job of your copy is to inform the reader and the second is to persuade them to take the next step. Confusing copy accomplishes neither of these things. If it’s a choice between clever and clear, choose clear every time.

How to Tell: Look at your finished copy and ask yourself a few questions: Does it incorporate the key concepts that define the brand? Can you actually pinpoint the words that ask the reader to do what you want her to do? If not, it’s back to the drawing board for you.

What would you hate to hear about your copy? How do you decide it needs more work?

Princess Jones is the owner of P.S. Jones Communications, providing copywriting, consulting and speaking services to small businesses and solopreneurs. She writes about freelance writing on Diary of a Mad Freelancer and entrepreneurship on She’s Self-Employed. To connect with Princess, visit her LinkedIn and Twitter profiles.

I can’t help but pay attention to word choice, whether it’s in casual conversations or in ads (I know…big surprise!). Lately I’ve been noticing a disturbing choice of words when it comes to people looking for a copywriter. They’ll say things like:

We’re looking for someone who can make us sound good.

Like to write? We’re looking for a copywriter.

Can you string words together and make them sound lovely?

Which really makes me pause for a moment and think, “Wow. None of those things describe a great copywriter.” It’s kind of like the “every square is a rectangle, but not every rectangle is a square” principle.

Because yes, every copywriter should possess those qualities, but having them doesn’t automatically make you a great copywriter.

What to Really Look For in a Copywriter

A lovely string of words won’t do any business much good if they’re not clearly delivering a message and persuading the reader. So maybe the ad that asks a writer to “make them sound good” should really be asking them to 1) speak to their intended audience and 2) show that audience how their business will make their lives easier.

Beyond looking for a writer who loves what she does, look for one who likes solving problems, too. A writer who doesn’t take things at face value will analyze your message, your goals and your product to make sure that they all add up to sales for you and satisfaction for the customer.

They’ll even “string lovely words together,” but the words will do much more than sound nice. They’ll move your audience to action, whether it’s a purchase, an email sign-up, or a simple call they make to find out more about your business.

If you were writing an ad for a great copywriter, what qualities would you look for?

photo credit: brotherM

Every once in a while I go through my spammed comments to make sure any real comments don’t accidentally get filtered out. And let me tell you, these spambots, they’re trying REALLY HARD to sound like real people.

Too bad the majority of us have half a brain and can see right through it. I mean, it’s easy, right? Huge blocks of text with mostly links: spam. Generic statements paired with a username like “SellGoldWatchesforCash”: spam. Comments that call me “man” when it’s clear I’m not: spam.

You can recognize spam in half a second when someone else is schlepping it onto you. Can you recognize it that easily in your own copy?

4 signs that your copy is reading like a spambot wrote it

1. Huge blocks of text that just go on and on. Readers will take one glance and that will be their last. Break it up into small, more digestible and relevant pieces to ensure you grab visitors instead of scare them off.

2. Cheesy domain names, headlines and slogans. Domain names like “BestCoatHangersForYou.com” are the online equivalent of a sleazy used car dealership. And even when they say “For You,” I’m guessing my needs will be the last thing on these sellers’ minds.

3. Clearly not knowing your audience. Spambots have an excuse because they’re not real. When they call me man or dude I delete them, but at least they had a 50/50 chance of being right. Real people, real businesses, have no excuses not to know their customers.

4. A whole lot of words that say nothing at all. Here’s a new little trick I’ve noticed the bots are trying to pull. They’re trying to sound intelligent and genuine by leaving comments that are flattering, but could apply to ANYTHING. Here’s one from my spam queue (typos included):

This is a smart blog. I mean it. You have so much knowledge about this issue, and so much passion. You also know how to make people rally behind it, obviously from the responses. Youve got a design here thats not too flashy, but makes a statement as big as what youre saying. Great job, indeed.

Could you be guilty of this same tactic? Does your copy go on and on about how passionate you are, or how innovative your company is? Could someone pluck that copy from your website, paste it on someone else’s, and the same would still apply?

What other spam traits do you think we should watch out for?

Remember that novel I talked about a few months back? I recently completed the final draft (insert huge sigh of relief here). I’m lucky to have had an amazing group of writers who critiqued the manuscript throughout its numerous versions and offered some solid feedback that helped me improve it along the way.

When you’ve been in writing groups long enough, you start to notice recurring questions that readers ask to determine the strength of the work. Some are questions we ask subconsciously as we read, others are questions we ask out loud to get a discussion going. And while my book is a work of fiction, I’ve found these questions also apply to copywriting.

Next time you’re getting ready to edit your own copy, take a cue from my writer’s groups and ask yourself these questions:

Do the characters feel real? Before you say, “My copy doesn’t have a character,” think again. Your company’s persona and brand are the main characters in the story you’re telling. They’re essential to making your message something people will connect with. Take a moment to study the impressions you’re putting out into the world. If you want customers to trust your brand, it absolutely has to be authentic and sincere.

Do the characters have a distinctive voice? In fiction, one of the signs of great dialogue is that you know who’s speaking even if the writer doesn’t tell you. A writer who pulls this off is creating a bond between the reader and the character—the reader feels like they really know this person (similar to how they know a close friend). Does your copy have a unique voice? Is it true to your company culture and what it stands for?

Is this action justified? Characters in novels do crazy things. Sometimes they’re justified because they seem like something the person would do. Sometimes they’re so out of left field that readers start thinking, “That doesn’t sound like her at all.”

What ends up happening is that this disconnect chips away at the authenticity of the character. To make sure this doesn’thappen to your brand, it’s important to be consistent. Your brand should align with your message, but so should your actions. So let’s say you have a product that’s meant to help simplify people’s lives. But your copy makes it difficult for them to find the information they’re looking for, check-out is an eight-step process, and returning the product is an even bigger hassle. If the experience doesn’t live up to the promise, people will simply stop buying into it.

Think about the things that draw you into a good book. How can these elements be translated to help your copy?

photo credit: doctor paradox

Copywriting is so important because it basically boils down to this:

Words carry your message.

How can you be sure you’re doing it right? Today I’m guest blogging (and also venting a little) for Brass Knuckles Media about the six most common copywriting mistakes and how to avoid them.

Check it out and leave your thoughts in the comments.

Are there other copywriting mistakes that should be on the list? Are there any (uh-oh) that you might be guilty of?

I have a walk-in closet with a motion sensor light. When I first moved into my apartment, I thought this was the coolest thing ever. No more forgetting to turn the lights off and wasting energy. No more having to get up after I’m super comfy in bed just to flip the switch.

The way it’s supposed to work is simple. I walk in. Lights turn on.

The Way It Usually Works Is This:

I walk in. Lights stay off. I try finding my favorite pair of jeans in the dark hoping the lights will eventually detect my motion. Lights stay off. I wave my arms in the air like a crazy person and sometimes the lights turn on. Sometimes I give up on this entirely and just as I leave…voila! Lights turn on.

Ideas Are Not Light Bulbs

This was supposed to be a post about how we can’t afford to be like this in our business. We can’t have the light bulbs go off in our minds just as the client’s leaving.

But in the real world, the one that exists outside of my dark, shoe-and-purse-filled closet, working with clients for creative projects isn’t always as simple as flipping a switch (or hoping it lights up on its own).

True, it doesn’t help anyone if the lights turn on just when no one needs them anymore. But it’s also unrealistic to expect a great “A-ha!” moment if we don’t get enough direction. It’s not as if the second a client pops up on our radar we’re going to know exactly what they need. We are not mind readers (it’d be nice, though).

Rescuing Ideas from Obscurity

The realistic scenario is that more often than not, both the creative and the client start out a little bit in the dark. The client doesn’t always know exactly what he wants until he sees it, or he thinks he wants one thing but it turns out another approach might work better. Likewise, I, as a copywriter, won’t know exactly what my client needs until I’ve asked a lot of questions to pry it out of obscurity. Even then, ideas aren’t always solid, definable creatures. They’re vague and mischievous little things, and they need someone to help them shine.

This isn’t to say the process should be as frustrating as my closet situation. No one should feel as helpless as I do when I’m waving directly at the motion sensor and nothing happens.

But there’s a sweet spot* somewhere in that obscurity, where, given enough feedback, we can find a way to shed light on a problem in a way that the client might never have imagined. It takes a good amount of communication from both sides, and it means we can’t expect instant gratification, but lasting gratification. When that light does turn on, you’ll know that it’s on for good.

*Turns out the light in my closet has a sweet spot as well. My dog, Maggie, has figured it out, but she’s not telling.

What do you think? Do your ideas come to you in a flash? If so, how do you develop them from there?

photo credit: thomas mies

If you’re obsessed enough with something, you’ll find yourself learning about it in the most unexpected places. Ever since I met my husband seven years ago, this unexpected place has been DVD commentaries.

My husband’s quite the film enthusiast. Anytime we finish watching a movie on DVD, he’ll check the special features and see what he can find about how it was made. And, because of marital osmosis, I end up learning a thing or two about the craft of storytelling.

Take Disney’s Aladdin. Those Disney guys did some serious reworking to the script.

– Initially, Jasmine and Aladdin met in the palace, after Aladdin tries to hide from guards that are after him. There’s a whole scene where Abu hangs from a tree, and Aladdin talks to Jasmine

– Aladdin had a mother whom he wanted to make proud. This, in addition to his love for Jasmine, is an important motivator for him wanting to be a prince. There was actually a whole song dedicated to this, and many subsequent scenes

– In addition to Abu the monkey, Aladdin had three other friends who help him with his antics of stealing food to get by

– Jafar’s character was initially the loud, panicky one, while Iago the parrot was cool and collected

If you’ve seen the movie, you know that the end product hardly resembles the initial vision. This means characters were cut, songs were reworked or omitted, roles were switched and it probably felt like they were starting over from scratch every time the creators made these tough calls.

Moving back to move forward

In any type of writing, whether it’s a novel or a company’s web copy, you don’t always get it right the first time. Actually, you’ll rarely get it right the first time.

For example, when I’m writing copy for a client, I don’t just write and send it to them. I’ll write something, step away from it, then write it again with an entirely new approach to see what works best. Sure, the client thinks they’re seeing my first draft when I turn something in, but what they’re really seeing is my first working draft. It’s the one that works because it’s been revised and polished and fine-tuned.

It’s the same with fiction. When I realized the major revisions I’d have to make to my novel’s rough draft, it felt like I might end up pulling the one piece from the Jenga puzzle that would make everything come falling down.

I rewrote it from a new perspective, then completely changed the setting, and then realized that it was actually another character’s story. These edits have only made the story stronger.

The Fluidity of a Story

The commentary for Aladdin isn’t the first to demonstrate the fluidity of a story. Nearly every single one I’ve watched (and I’ve watched tons) prove this point: You rarely start out with the end result.

That doesn’t just go for writing. It goes for business plans, and marketing plans, and product launches that end up evolving into something no one ever imagined (um…Twitter, anyone?). It goes for brands that realize that they need to change their messaging, and businesses that notice untapped markets. The real progress lies in revision.

What part of your life, your business, or your writing could use some revision?

photo credit: Loren Javier

Last week I went to the doctor for this terrible soreness I was having in my jaw. The pain was so bad I couldn’t even chew, and my jaw bone was clicking and snapping out of place to the point that my bottom teeth were no longer aligning with my top. This wasn’t something my dentist could fix—I had to see a specialist.

I got to the office with two main concerns in mind: what’s going on with my mouth and when will I be able eat more than just milkshakes and soup (not that I minded the milkshakes).

photo credit: Mister Sprock
The doctor must’ve spent maybe one minute examining my jaw, and another fifteen explaining to me, in detail, what was going on with it. And he did it with pictures–little scribbles that he drew on the back of a recycled sheet of paper. He compared the joints and tendons in my jaw to an overused hammock that’d been stretched too far and was now swollen from the effort.

He knew I hadn’t gone to medical school, so there was no point in him getting all technical with me. He didn’t bother using anatomical terms, and when he did, he took the time to explain them to me.

And because of that, I left his office completely satisfied with the consultation and trusting that I was in good hands.

All because he tried to speak my language.

More often times than not, we are not at all like our target audience. We’re specialists in one thing, and clients need us precisely because they don’t know much about that one thing. A teacher might look for a nutritionist to advise her on eating better. A doctor might hire a dog trainer to help her get through to her new pup. A writer might try to find a blog template designer because she doesn’t know the first thing about coding.

None of these people use the same terminology in their work. So if you’re the person being hired, it’s up to you to cross that language barrier and get your message across to the potential customer. It’s up to you to make them understand how you can help them.

The thing is, it’s not always easy to set aside the years of training and education it took to make you an expert on a topic, and put yourself in someone else’s frame of reference. What you think is common knowledge about positive reinforcement in dog training is not at all common to someone who’s memorized what types of bacteria can cause certain symptoms in infants. That’s when it helps to bring in a copywriter.

Oftentimes when I’m talking to a potential client they’ll ask me: Have you written about [neurosurgery, feng shui, printing presses, parenting] before? Sometimes I have. Sometimes I haven’t. It doesn’t matter because my specialty is writing. It’s asking the right questions so that I can understand all sorts of specialists. It’s writing about it in a way that people who aren’t specialists—those who are coming to someone with a need, and with not nearly as much knowledge about the topic—will understand how they can benefit from their service.

Now if you’ll excuse me, it’s time for my lunchtime milkshake.

Have you ever encountered language barriers with customers? How do you overcome them?

Two months ago, starting an email newsletter had, quite frankly, not even entered my mind. I know how ridiculous that sounds considering I write email newsletters for my clients, but for me it was always one of those things I’d decided I’d do…eventually.

So you can imagine my surprise when I signed up for a Personalized Twitter Strategy session with Marian Schembari and she basically said: You really should start a newsletter. I’m not one to argue with Marian (the girl knows her stuff), so I agreed to start a newsletter…eventually. I procrastinated by implementing every other suggestion she’d made about how I could engage more people on Twitter until finally the inevitable was staring me in the face. I’d resisted because I’d thought starting a newsletter would be a huge time-suck. There was the question of what to focus it on, what to call it, how often to send it out, what software to manage it with.

The not-so-simple process of getting started

When I finally got around to the newsletter, I took what I thought would be baby steps. I signed up for MailChimp and started poking my nose around. Then I dove (or maybe fell) head-first into what became quite the branding endeavor.

When MailChimp said, “Hey! You can create your own header for your newsletter” I went and got my logo and the newsletter name (Wordy Goodness) and meshed them into a pretty little graphic that would be on top of each newsletter.

When they said, “Here’s the link to your signup form!” I rewrote the copy they’d provided in each template. I could have just stuck with “To confirm your subscription, please click the link we just sent to your email” but that just didn’t sound like me. I rewrote (as much as they’d let me) of the copy on the unsubscribe form, even though I’m hoping not many people will click on that. I made sure the fonts and colors on each form matched the ones I’d been using on my site.

The YOU Filter

I was feeling pretty happy with myself. Getting started with my email newsletter even gave me an idea for a blog post about how we should seize every little opportunity to brand our business. If the signup form for your email newsletter supplies you with some generic copy, don’t settle for it. If you have to write a “Please do not disturb” sign outside your office, who says you have to use those words? And if someone stumbles upon a page that no longer exists on your site, why not find a way to tell them that other than “This page no longer exists”?

Let your voice pop up and charm customers with your unique personality in the most unexpected places—they’ll remember you for it. Before you do or say anything, pass it through the “You Filter.” Let your brand filter out all the generic gunk that’s floating about. Serve up a cup full of freshly brewed, customized goodness that says you know who you are and can’t help but show it.

So that’s what this blog post was supposed to be about. Until I pulled up my blog on my browser to start writing it.

Every last drop counts

You see, if you’ve ever been to the Inky Clean website, you’ll realize it doesn’t even look like a distant relative of this blog. *Update: The blog has since been redesigned (yay!), but here’s what it used to look like:

That’s because at the time I designed my website, I didn’t know enough about WordPress to make this blog match. So I picked the most unoffensive-looking free template I could find and left it at that. The result is that when you go from my site to this blog there is no brand continuity whatsoever. It basically goes from bubbly and fun to blah. Meh. Eh.

Not very memorable at all.

So there I was with this newsletter coming up in September, ready to send writing tips, special offers, links to this blog and Inky Clean’s latest news to subscribers. And I thought, if I worked so hard to brand the newsletter, why would I send people to this blog where the branding falls flat?

It was clearly time to keep filtering until every last drop had passed through my “You Filter” (or my Me Filter, or my Inky Clean filter, or…you get the point). So I went and hired someone to create a custom WordPress template for this blog that’ll match the Inky Clean site. I couldn’t be more excited about it, and I’m hoping that in the next few days the makeover will be complete.

I’ll make sure to let you know when it is (though hopefully, it’ll be pretty obvious). In the meantime, you can always sign up for my newsletter. Let me know what you think about the forms

Last week, it took me two hours to find the right facial sunblock online. A year ago, it would’ve taken me ten minutes—just a quick drive to my neighborhood pharmacy, picking up the same brand I’d used for years.

Why the big change?

About a year ago, I started copywriting for a new skin care line as they prepared to launch. I’ve written their web copy, bottle labels, product descriptions, brochures. Their goal was to make people rethink how they shop for beauty products and take a closer look at the ingredients. There are all sorts of potentially harmful chemicals in skin care products we see on shelves every day, in brands that many people trust (this video sums it up beautifully). Recently I also started writing for another beauty line that has a similar mission and because of this, sticks to natural ingredients.

There’s a point to all this, I swear.

Just yesterday, as I was explaining to my sister that many popular fragrances contain potentially harmful chemicals that are not listed on the label, I realized that I was the perfect example of a marketer’s dream consumer. I heard their message. I believed in it and made it part of my life. What’s more, I even passed the message on to others.

Clients often come to me with the concern that they don’t want to sound too pushy in their marketing copy (or sales-y, which has become a common term). When I initially sat down with the first skin care client, listening to how her products were different and how she was trying to improve her customers’ lives, it was enlightening. She didn’t need to be pushy because she knew exactly what problem she was solving for people. She had a genuine concern for their well-being and wanted to help.

The word “sales-y” has gotten a bad rap. We assume that to sell someone, we have to convince them, possibly even trick them, into thinking that they need what we’re offering. There’s a connotation of deception there, of sleaziness, of having to keep a person’s attention because they’d rather be doing something else. Those are clear signs of two things:

1) you’re targeting the wrong audience

2) you’re focusing on how they can help you instead of how you can help them

When people are truly loyal to a brand, it’s because they consider them a friend. That brand looks out for them, that brand helps them out every time. Instead of being pushy, the best thing we can do is listen to our audience’s needs and be that friend. Only then will they listen to your message and look for more of it. And, when they realize it’s not just talk, that your product can really follow through on the promise you’ve made, they’ll take it in and pass it on to their friends.

As I got my new sunblock in the mail today, I was actually grateful that there are companies out there looking out for their customers’ well-being. I changed my shopping habits and switched brands because I wanted a healthier alternative. Nobody had to convince me to make that decision. It was a matter of me wanting something, and of someone else having exactly what I was looking for.

How about you? What brands are you most loyal to, and why?