3 Power Words for More Persuasive Copy

        

When was the last time you thought about the impact of your words on your online copy?
If you’ve been reading this blog or some of the others focused on conversion, you’re probably already keyed in. Individual words and phrases can make the difference between someone clicking a button or bouncing off a page.
It seems amazing that by simply changing a word or two you can affect such a big change. 
But… you can. It has everything to do with persuasion and using a few power words.
So, let’s cut to the chase and go over 3 of the most powerful.

#1: “You” and the case for “What’s in it for me?”

Such a little word that packs an enormous punch, everything in your copy should come back to the word “you.” If you’ve been writing your copy all from your perspective, it’s time to make a shift.
Why?
Because your visitors are coming to your site or landing page looking to find answers to their questions… solutions for their needs. The reality is that their main concern is themselves – not you.
Harsh. I know.
As I’ve talked about in this post about getting people to respond to your email surveys, customers are frustrated when they encounter messaging that doesn’t resonate with them. Beyond addressing what’s most important to your prospects, centering your copy on them will go a long way to making them feel that there may just be something in it for them.
Practical tip: Replace “we” and “I” with “you” whenever possible
If you’ve got a headline with the word “I” or “we” either change it around so that “you” can be substituted. Or, simply get rid of the pronoun.
A headline like this…

I Help Small Businesses Build Better Widgets

… would be so much better simply by changing it to this…

Helping Small Businesses Build Better Widgets

Just by taking yourself out of it, you’ve shifted the focus to your customer.

#2: “Because” or giving people a reason to believe

Because is an amazing word. It’s power comes from the fact that it triggers people to expect a reason behind a request or an argument.
Dr. Ellen Langer’s experiment – that has been written about multiple times around the web in this context – shows just how effective using because can be.
In it, she asked study participants to cut to the front of the line where people were waiting to make copies at a Xerox machine. When the participants gave no reason to cut in line, the compliance rate was 60%. When a reason was given (no matter how silly or meaningless such as “I’m in a hurry”), the rate went up to 95%.
It seems that we’ve been programmed to accept a request when it’s part of a larger statement – where the why has been spelled out.
Practical tip: Use because to make an impact with your argument
With all of your sales copy (website copy included), you’re developing an argument as to why someone should hire you, buy from you, opt-in to your newsletter, etc.
You’re setting up a problem your customer is having and then telling them why your solution is the one to solve it.
Go back to the top of this blog post. Notice how I used the word “because” to start a sentence.

See how effective because can be?

I’m asking you to buy into my argument then asking you to believe in it with the one word that triggers acceptance.

Be careful. If your claim is too outrageous or request too large, even the word “because” won’t help you.

Langer’s experiments were primarily about how people will mindlessly react in certain situations. The copy machine example worked so well because the why behind the request was so minimal. As soon as the participants in the study told people they needed to cut in line to make 20 copies, they weren’t nearly so successful.

Use your persuasive language thoughtfully, even if your readers don’t always respond mindfully.

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#3: “Get” a word that provides value

With all the talk about A/B testing these days, “get” has become the conversion community’s “it girl.”
Between button copy and various call to action tests, the word “get” is the one to beat.
Check out Michael Aagaard’s split test where he changed the button copy from “Order information and prices” to “Get information and prices.”

From ContentVerve.com

As he notes in this test:

The word “Order” emphasizes what you have to do – instead of what you’re going to get. Whereas, “Get” conveys value as it emphasizes what you’re going to get – rather than what you have to do to get it. Michael Aagaard

The last thing we want to do is give people the impression that they will have to work for something when interacting with our websites.
Practical tip: Give all your “Submit” buttons the heave ho
No one likes to be told to submit to anything – especially on a website. So unless you’ve got a website for people into bondage, focus your button copy on the value added.
Think opt-in email button copy like this…

Get your regular copy tips now

You may be surprised at how much more effective your calls to action become.

Because, You, Get…

Take a look through your website, landing pages, and even emails to see where you can change up your copy.
Your headlines, sub-headlines, and buttons are ideal places to start. Then, test it out.
http://makementionmedia.com/3-power-words/

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4 Must-Know Writing Tips You Aren’t Using

 

 

I get it. No, really. I do.

We’ve all been at that point where you work super hard at putting out each and every blog post … but even when it goes live, you don’t see any real results from it. So you look over your blog post once again, looking for mistakes you think you might have missed in the first rounds of editing.

But there are none to be found … or so you think. The simple truth is that each and every piece of writing – no matter the quality, length, or current success – can be made better. There is always room for improvement. The sooner you realize that, the better.

To help you maximize that potential for growth, here are 4 must-know writing tips you should definitely add to your arsenal.

1. Don’t Be Afraid To Break “Conventional” Writing Rules

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The neat thing about blogging is that it’s all about innovation and creativity. The very idea of a “web-log” is, when you think about it, revolutionary. It only came about because of outside-the-box thinking.

You’ll never be a great blogger if you’re always trying to conform to all the different rules that have been thought up. True – there is a set of simple best practices of which some are good to adhere to, but creativity should definitely take preeminence in your posts.

2. Write More Authoritatively

If you’re a typically timid person, then this mistake will be harder to pick up for you (particularly if you’ve written before for print publications that demanded more objective, “crowd-pleasing” writing with no real voice). Authoritative writing beats lethargic, weak writing any and every day.

Whenever you state what you believe to be a fact, state it strongly. State everything strongly. You’re the expert in your niche, which is why people are reading your blog. So start acting, writing, and talking like an expert! Be ready and willing to stand by everything you say.

Write succinctly, use statistics, facts, and figures wherever they will add most value to the post, and write in a self-assured manner.

3. Stay True To Your Audience’s Reading Level

One of the biggest mistakes in writing is using language that doesn’t fit the reading level of your target audience. Under one set of circumstances, that could mean using language that’s simply too high for your audience. Anybody who reads your blog post has to labor through ten dollar words and five syllable jumbo-terms.

In another case, that could also mean using language that is too babyish for your average reader. Particularly if your blog is meant to appeal to a more professional audience (e.g. one that has been college-educated and is on its way to getting a Ph.D.), then you have to make sure that your blog post reads right for them.

Research shows that the typical blog should target a writing level suited to a 7th-8th grade educated audience. Again, much of this will depend on your particular blog and the niche it’s in, but if you’re unsure what you should be aiming for, 7th-8th grade is the norm.

4. Edit A Day Later

We’ve all heard of this tip before, but I doubt that most of us really take advantage of it.

After you write your first draft of a blog post, try setting it aside for a day and then coming back to it the next day with fresh eyes and a red pen, ready to edit it into a masterpiece.

If you choose the alternate route and edit your blog post right after you finish writing it, bad things can happen (not that they always do happen, but they can).

When you’ve just written the first draft of something, your mind is probably still spinning from everything you’ve just put down on that paper. And since everything is still so fresh in your mind, you won’t be able to pick out the minor mistakes and intricate inaccuracies that you would if you came back to it a day later.

Read more at http://www.business2community.com/blogging/4-must-know-writing-tips-arent-using-01028883#RHu5Q33REJaPpOSv.99

The 7 Keys to List Posts that Are Worth Writing (and Reading)

 

A lot of smart writers can’t stand list posts.

What’s a list post? It’s also known as a numbered list post, or a (shudder) listicle, and it’s a post whose headline features a numbered collection of things. This post, for example, is a list post.

There are an awful lot of crummy ones out there. The celebrity sites make frequent use of them (These 17 Celebrities Used to Be Hot, etc.). In fact, all of the CRaP blogs use them liberally.

So it’s natural that a quality-focused content writer (like you) might try to avoid them. But that would be silly. And here’s why:

Smart marketers have always focused on underlying human psychological drivers. And those drivers change very little, if at all.

One of them, for whatever reason, is that we get a tiny bit mesmerized by numbers. When we see a number in a headline, part of our brains gets activated (what persuasion scholar Robert Cialdini calls a Click, Whirr response), and we’re that much more likely to take an action — like, say, clicking on that headline to check out the whole piece.

Take a look at the Popular Posts section to the right of this article. You’ll see lots of numbers.

Now did those posts become popular because they had a number in the headline? No. A number is a nice booster, but it’s not a substitute for strong writing, solid content strategy, or effective promotion.

And that’s the problem with how most people look at list posts. They start with the number in the headline — but that’s not the right place to start. Which leads to my first tip:

# 1. Don’t start with a numbered list

You may have received an assignment from an editor, supervisor, or client to “Write a Listicle on 10 Ways to Do Our Thing.”

Your very first order of business is to go to your favorite writing forum and bemoan the fact that the word listicle is now part of your life. I’m sorry. If we can figure out a way to burn this out of the English language, we will.

But let’s move forward.

Even if this is technically your assignment, the worst way to create a list post is to open your writing tool of choice and put the numbers one through 10 in there, then look for ways to fill them in.

It’s probably the fastest way. But it is not the right way.

You must begin with the itch that needs scratching. There needs to be a seed of a problem, an unanswered question, a fascination to know more.

Those seeds can only come from your audience. The seed of a killer list post for electrical engineers won’t work at all on an audience of Hello Kitty cosplay enthusiasts. (Although there may well be some overlap.)

Pro tip: Some of your best-performing list posts can come from strong, interesting, problem-solving content that you realize, after it’s mostly written, can be lightly re-organized into a numbered list.

#2. Understand what problem you’re solving

All good content starts with the same impulse: to solve a reader problem. (Even if the reader’s problem is boredom, which is the case for pure entertainment sites.)

As the content creator, it’s your job to understand those “itches” of your audience. You have to know what’s worrying them. You have to know what excites them. You have to understand what they’re afraid of, and what they cherish, and what they are unwilling to lose.

Human existence is full of problems to solve. Some of them are simple and some are so complex that they take a lifetime to untangle. Every collection of humans (in other words, every audience) has its own set of problems.

If you want a list of what kind of content to create, build a list of your audience’s problems. Answer those problems in your content, using numbered lists (and any other persuasion technique you learn) when they make sense.

Keep listening for problems, and keep researching more effective ways to resolve those problems. That, more than anything else, is what creates your authority in a topic.

#3. What makes it fascinating?

The cornerstone of good content is usefulness. But usefulness without interest is Wikipedia, and that’s already covered.

Boring content — even if it’s useful, and even if it’s “optimized” by whatever measure you choose — doesn’t succeed. It doesn’t get shared and it doesn’t get read. (Or listened to, or viewed.)

If you consistently put fantastic headlines on mediocre or boring content, all you do is train people that much more quickly to avoid your site.

Luckily for us, relevant problems are inherently interesting. If your target audience is people with celiac disease and you put a recipe for really good gluten-free baguettes in front of them, they’ll find you.

But a good content creator doesn’t stop there. We look for angles. Fascination elements. (You can learn more about fascination in Brian’s podcast interview with Sally Hogshead, published earlier today.)

A strong writing voice will elevate content from “moderately useful” to “must-read.” So will a compelling metaphor that makes the content easier to understand. And storytelling is the big gun — the one that makes your content unforgettable.

This is where the art comes in — and why writers who have the combination of killer and poet are the ones who enjoy the most success. The killer knows what kinds of content to create to move toward certain outcomes. But it’s the poet who creates something worth the audience’s time and attention.

Pro tip: Make time to write purely for pleasure. Screenplays, poetry, fiction — whatever way you like to play with words. Writers who know how to play with language also know how to fascinate.

#4. What’s the strategic goal?

Creating content just to get traffic and make advertisers happy is the hardest way to make a living on the web — and one you should get away from as quickly as you can.

Content marketing is a different game. It doesn’t just attract eyeballs; it exists to support a business — to attract new prospects, and educate and nurture them until they’re ready to buy.

Different types of content serve different purposes. Some content exists to find people who don’t know you yet. Others, to strengthen your relationship with your audience. And some content addresses objections and educates prospects on why you’re the best choice to solve their problem.

Even good writers can have a tendency to throw a bunch of content against the wall and see what sticks. That’s not a smart use of your time. Understand content strategy and why you’re creating every piece of content you write or record.

Pro tip: Take advantage of the excellent free resources that are available on content strategy. We happen to be pretty proud of ours — why not swing by and scoop up our free marketing course and library. Two books by Brian Clark — A Content Marketing Strategy that Works and How to Create Content that Converts — will be especially helpful to you as you work through your content strategy.

You can get the complete marketing library here.

#5. Make it scannable

Once you have something worth reading — that solves a worthwhile problem, is expressed in an interesting way, and has the spark of poetry to make it memorable — you’ll want to wrap it up in a way that’s pleasurable to consume.

Long walls of gray, tiny type are not pleasurable to consume. Neither are videos or audio with awful sound quality.

Sleek presentation and formatting won’t save mediocre content — nothing can do that. (Not even a terrific headline.) But they’ll make good content much more enjoyable for the audience.

Pro tip: Pamela Wilson wrote up an excellent, succinct guide to presenting text content in a way that’s more appealing to your audience — without dumbing it down in any way.

#6. Promotion still matters

Once you have something worth your audience’s time, it’s time to think about promoting it. Content promotion is a big topic — I wrote a whole ebook on it.

In the brief space we have here, I’ll just encourage you to take content promotion seriously. Develop a network of publishers in your topic, cultivate a reputation as someone who creates epic material, and remember that nothing sells itself. Even great content benefits from a bit of a push.

Pro tip: You actually should read my ebook on this; it will help you. It’s called Effective Content Promotion, and it’s also in that free members-only marketing library.

7. What’s the next step for the reader?

The tough part about content is, you’re only as good as your last great post.

So if you do the first six steps perfectly, and end up with a nice audience of fascinated readers who want to know more, you need to have thought through precisely what you want them to do next.

Usually, the right answer is to send them to even more smart, worthwhile content in the form of an email autoresponder.

But your call to action might be different. Your desired action might be to subscribe to a page, to register to vote, to get out and take a walk, to give our kids a hug, or just to click through to some more great content.

The important thing is to decide, before you publish and promote, what that next step for the audience is.

Pro tip: Clear, straightforward calls to action are a hallmark of the professional copywriter. Get very good at them.

 

http://www.copyblogger.com/better-list-posts/