Brian Basilico: Your Text Is Calling … And It Wants to be Copy-RIGHT!

Image courtesy of Stuart Miles at FreeDigitalPhotos.net

I’m sure you have heard the phrase “A picture is worth a thousand words”, however, I am also sure, that if you just describe each picture with 1000 words, you will bore people to tears.

Pictures and words work hand in glove … especially on the Internet. Ultimately, it’s the words that will convince people to buy or not to buy!

We all have to write many times per day, whether we like it or not, and even if we are not good at it! Every time you send an email, a proposal, post on social media, etc., you are a writer. A Twitter tweet only allows you 144 characters to get your message across. Blogs need at least 300 words to get found by Google, but if you post more than 700 words, you run the risk of not getting read or boring people. Your website and sales pages need to have a certain kind of flow to be successful.

Text Is Everywhere

There is not a business on this planet that is devoid of having to communicate by text. Even if your audience is blind and reads by braille, there is still text involved with it. Think of all the places you have to have text: websites, email, sales pages, flyers, brochures, LinkedIn bios, blog posts and the list goes on. Text is everywhere. If you are like me, you are functional, but not great at getting your messages across.

“If you try to write 1,000 words a day, as I do, after 100 days you’ll look up and have a book. It may be a mess, and you may have to revise it 50 times, but you can’t revise it if you haven’t written it.”  Justin Cronin

Text Writing Tips

There are certain things you can do to ensure that your text is getting the right message across to your audience. First, you have to know who your audience is and what they want to hear. Next, you have to understand what it is that you would expect them to do. And then finally, you have to engage your audience and get them to take action.

• Start By Telling Your Story – the one thing I’ve learned from public speaking is that your personal stories help people to connect with you and your message. No matter what you’re writing, whether it’s a blog post, a brochure, or just a simple email or social media post, when you inject your personal story into it, you create an opportunity for an emotional connection. That is the main thing that draws people into your messages versus the posts or messages that are just constantly selling.
• Always Talk Benefits … Never Features – benefits are the emotional connection. If you just say that ‘My widget has blue and red buttons’, that is all people are going hear. If you tell them, ‘This Blue Button has completely changed my life and it has converted my business and grown my income, because of how smooth and flawless it feels’, you’ll make people stand up and take notice.
• Making It Conversational – always act as if you’re talking to your friend. If you’re having a conversation with somebody, you approach it vastly different than if you’re trying to sell to a big broad audience. Narrow down the scope of what you’re trying to say, as if you’re trying to tell your best friend how this will make a difference in his life and why he needs to learn more.

“I’ve always believed the words that came out of my mouth were most comfortable when I’d written them.”  Bob Ehrlich

If you’ve listened to my podcasts or read my blogs, you know I have talked about having multiple Virtual Assistants. I believe the same thing is true when it comes to having your writing done. You need to find people who specialize in the tasks that you need done.

There are people who are great at writing website copy. Other people are really great at reading, editing, and improving blogs. While others are really good at writing sales page copy. You may need to have more than one person help you out if writing is not your strength. Even if it is your strength, it can’t hurt to have a second set of eyes to proof your writing to help improve it.

One Final Tip

If you’re on a Mac, you can talk in your text, just like I’ve done on this blog. You can do this by going to: Edit, Start Dictation. By talking in your text, you actually get a much more conversational way of communicating.

It’s not without flaws and it does take at bit of practice, but give it a try and see how it works for you. If you’re on a PC or something else, then maybe you need to look at a program like Dragon Naturally Speaking to help you make that happen.