Unlucky for some, but we’ve pulled together our top 13 copywriting tips to help your content appeal to your target audience:
- Write to inform, not to impress. So many people write in a fancy style or using officious phrases to make themselves sound more important. It simply doesn’t work.
- Use a conversational tone to engage your audience.
- Avoid jargon and three letter acronyms – unless it’s necessary to prove your credibility in a specialist market, or if you’re writing a technical document, with the intended readers being fully conversant in the jargon.
- Use the active voice (‘we are excited to announce our latest product’ rather than ‘A new product is to be launched’).
- Write your first draft, refine, then improve. Sleep on it (or go and do something else) and come back to it. Look at it again to see if it needs any further development.
- Always have someone else read your copy – they will spot things that you don’t as you’re too close to it.
- For every mention of your company / we / us ensure you have four you / your.
- Long copy has its place, but make sure that every word earns its right to be there. Avoid superfluous content.
- Keep words, sentences and paragraphs short. Use bullet points where relevant. Remember to follow a short sentence with a slightly longer one as it can help with the copy ‘rhythm’.
- Grammar is critical, but don’t be put off when it comes to good communication. Think about your audience – it’s okay to start a sentence with ‘and’ or ‘but’ if it works in the context.
- Test. Measure. Amend. Continuous review and improvement is important.
- Read your copy out loud. Change it if it sounds wrong or simply clumsy.
- If you’re writing a numbered list (like a blogpost), avoid finishing on a round number, like 10 or 20. People either think you’ve missed something, or you’ve padded it out to make it a nice round number!
Need help with your copywriting? Talk to us.
