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.

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?

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?

I’ve never mentioned this before, but I’ve been writing a novel for a few years now and am finally at the final draft stage. It’s been a crazy ride (I’ve changed characters, entire plot points, and settings, so much that it’s almost as if I’ve written three books) and as overwhelming and close to me as this book is, I never mentioned it on this blog because I thought I had to keep my copywriting and my fiction separate.

And then it dawned on me: that’s just silly. Good copy tells a story, just like a great book does. Why should I keep my copywriting and fiction separate when the skills I use for both are so closely related?

In fiction, one of the most important skills a writer has to develop is that of building believable characters. Readers need to feel like they know these people, they need to believe that they’re real, that they have motivations, virtues, vices, issues, opinions and hot buttons just like any other person. Most of all, the writer needs to create a character that readers care about. Why else would a reader follow someone’s journey for 300 pages if they’re not loyal to them?

It’s the same in copywriting. A company’s brand is like the characters in a book. If it’s bland, forgettable, doesn’t feel genuine, or fails to set itself apart from the thousands of other brands/characters in the marketplace, then people aren’t going to connect with it enough to go on a journey with them. Just like in creative writing, your character needs to be fleshed out. It needs to come alive. To do this through copywriting, it’s all about the voice and the word choice and the messages you put out there.

So…quick question for all of you. If your brand were a character in a book, who would it be, and why?

You can’t take the journalist out of the copywriter—at least not this one, anyways. You could say my journalism background extends as far back as that time I was eight and checked out a “So You Want to Be a Journalist?” book. But for the purposes of this blog, I guess I’ll stick mainly to college and beyond.

In Journalism 101, we all learn the importance of the 5 Ws and one H: Who, What, When, Where, Why and How. These are the key components of a story, the main elements that will give us the overall picture. Recently, I was writing web copy for a client when I realized that these factors apply equally well in copywriting.

As I was looking through their original drafts of copy, the one thing that kept tipping me off was that there was no H. There was lots of talk about what the product did, but not how it would do it. There was a good emphasis on benefits rather than features, but not a whole lot of context as to how those benefits would come about. Without the “How”, the copy lacked a complete picture. It wasn’t doing a good job of conveying the user experience. And if it wasn’t selling an experience, how would people be sold?

I guess I shouldn’t be too surprised that the “How” gets left out so often. When you’ve got 5 Ws that fit so nicely together, the lonely H might wander off occasionally. So maybe the 5 Ws and One H should be rewritten and adapted to copywriting. Rather than applying them to a particular incident, as in journalism, these would apply to a product or service:

Who is this product helping?

What problem is it solving for them?

Where will they be using it?

When will they need or want it?

Why should they choose this one over another one?

and of course, don’t forget:

How will it do this?

What about you? In what ways do parts of your background inform what you’re doing now?

Feeling rebellious? It’s okay to break the rules when you know what you’re doing (or writing). Here are three writing rules that you don’t always have to follow. Breaking them might even make for better writing, as long as you know how and when to do it.

1. Starting sentences with a conjunction. Whenever I start a sentence with and, but, or or, I think of my seventh grade writing teacher who taught me never, ever, to do this. But when you’re writing a blog post, or email, or anything else that’s rather informal, it’s best to mimic the way we talk. And we talk a lot like this.

2. Ending a sentence with a preposition. Winston Churchill said it best when an editor rearranged his words so they wouldn’t break this rule. Churchill responded with a note that said “This is the sort of English up with which I will not put.” His point was that the rules don’t always work, like in this case, where following them actually made the sentence clumsy, difficult to read and just plain ugly to look at.

3. Don’t use fragments. I’m actually a fan of fragments when they’re short, punchy and used for emphasis. They have to be intentional, because long fragments tend to sound like the author just forgot his way around a sentence. Think of a fragment as a puppy in a squirrel-filled park. You gotta keep it on a short leash or else you don’t know where it’ll end up. Maybe on another thought completely. Or at another park. Or something like that, anyways.

See? Breaking those rules wasn’t so bad after all. But I should add one rule to make this list of breakable rules work:

Know your audience. All three of these rules can be broken when the tone of the writing is meant to be informal and conversational. But that cover letter for the job you’ve been eyeing? Best to stick with formalities. You never know when the person in charge of hiring really took those seventh-grade English lessons to heart.

What about you? Can you think of any other writing rules you occasionally throw out the window?

Ah, word play. For many copywriters it’s one of the funnest parts of the job. Combining words, making puns or innuendos, misspelling words on purpose–it takes creativity to do it right. But there’s also something really dangerous about word play:

It’s easy to fall into the trap of “it’s so creative, it must be good writing.”

Now, I’m not trying to say that it doesn’t take creativity to be a good writer. Quite the contrary. It takes creativity to take very technical instructions and rewrite them in a way that a specific audience will understand them. It takes creativity to capture a company’s purpose, persona, and/or benefits into a six-word slogan. It takes creativity to simplify a long, drawn-out product description into a few sentences that are not only informative but will spark interest.

But to write these things well it doesn’t always take word play. Not every bit of copy needs to have poetry in it, or a joke, or a double meaning. It can, and it’s always fun when it does. But a good copywriter knows that the message comes first, and that sometimes, the best way to say something is also the simplest way to say it. (Notice I said simplest, not easiest. Two very different things.)

Wordplay works when it’s helping clarify a message, not when it’s hiding it.

Wordplay works when it’s helping show a company’s voice and personality, not when it’s being cute just for the sake of it.

Wordplay works when it’s catchy at the same time that it’s informative, not when it’s only trying to draw someone in.

The writing needs to deliver a message first; wordplay should serve as a mode of delivering it.

You know the Wingdings font, the one that turns your letters into tiny symbols like diamonds, squares, ampersands and mailboxes? Can you imagine if websites, government forms, and instruction manuals were written in Wingdings? No one would ever understand them. The text would simply take up space but tell us nothing in return.

The good news is that no one really uses Wingdings. The bad news is that there’s writing all around us that might as well be written in Zodiac signs instead of letters. A couple of examples that come to mind include a web page written in “corporatese” and a bank letter written in “legalese.” We’ve all seen the kind of writing I’m talking about. It’s packed full of jargon and loses us with needlessly long, confusing sentence structure. Instead of getting to the point, it tries to impress readers with buzz words. At its worst, it obscures the truth.

I like to call this kind of writing text. Sure, there are letters there, and most times complete sentences, but as a whole the words fail to say something for one of two reasons. 1)No one will actually read it. They may start to, but upon realizing the message is hidden somewhere under all those letters they’ll put their attention and efforts elsewhere. 2) The few people who do read it won’t absorb the message (this is not in any way an insult to the reader’s intelligence, by the way).

If you’re worried that your writing is turning into text, it may be time to hire a copywriter. Nathaniel Hawthorne once said, “Easy reading is damn hard writing,” and he was right.

Our world is full of complexities–a doctor’s world and realm of knowledge is completely different from that of a botanist or an engineer. The biggest challenge we face when trying to communicate is that everyone is coming from a different place.

There needs to be a common language, a point of reference that everyone can understand. With the right words and a good amount of research, a writer can build a bridge between a complex message and the audience it needs to reach.