Tag: copywrite

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Magazine, Freelance, and Copywriting

Taking Care of Your Mental Health in the Editing Process

No matter how long you’ve been writing, you know that your “finished” copy is really nowhere near complete. Once you’ve completed your work, the editing process begins. This can be a painstaking process for writers. Not only do you have to pick apart all of the hard work you put in, but you’re probably putting a lot of pressure on yourself to ensure your story is nothing short of perfection.

Editing is often a long process, filled with self-doubt. You might start to question your abilities, be more critical of your work and your intelligence, and start to feel down about life, in general.

Needless to say, it can all take a toll on your mental health. So, it’s essential to take care of your mental well-being throughout the editing process. If you don’t, you could be at risk of burning out and losing your desire to write and be creative. You might even end up resenting your work.

So, what can you do to take care of your mental health in the editing process, and how can you mitigate burnout?

Establish a Routine

Maybe you have a strict deadline that you need to make, and it’s putting extra weight on your shoulders. Or, maybe you don’t have a timeline in place, causing you to procrastinate and be even more critical of your work. In either situation, a healthy routine can help.

Even if you’re working from home and you don’t have any tight deadlines ahead, a routine can help with:

  • Reducing stress
  • Boosting productivity
  • Reducing anxiety
  • Giving you more time to relax
  • Encouraging healthy habits

Having a regular routine will make it easier to get the sleep your mind and body need. A lack of sleep is often linked with stress and depression. Prioritizing a good night’s rest can boost your mental well-being. You’ll also have more time to cook healthy meals, exercise, and socialize with friends and family. These are all things that are fantastic for your mental health and can help you achieve a better work-life balance.

Your daily routine should also include taking frequent breaks. While that might sound counterproductive to the editing process, sometimes stepping away from your work for a short time can make you feel more refreshed and creative when you get back to it. Clear your head by stepping outside for a few minutes, or try some deep breathing techniques to reduce your stress and boost your creativity during your break time.

Be Kind to Yourself

Self-compassion isn’t usually the top priority when a writer is editing. As you start to see more things you want to add or take away from your work, it’s easy to feel down about yourself and your abilities.

However, it’s important to lead with self-compassion when it comes to editing your own work. Self-compassion lets you acknowledge that you’re feeling down, but allows you to be patient and warm with yourself as you work through the difficult parts of the process. It can also improve your health. The more compassionate you are with yourself, the more likely you’ll be to make healthier lifestyle choices that benefit your mind and body.

Finally, be kind to yourself by reaching out for help when you need it. Chances are, you have a great support system out there. Whether it’s family members or friends, people are on your side and they want you to feel good about yourself. Socialize often, spend time in nature with people you love, and don’t hesitate to talk to a mental health professional if you’re really struggling.

When writing is your passion, the last thing you want is for it to become an obligation or something that causes stress. Keep these tips in mind to mitigate the effects of writer burnout during editing, and to enjoy the experience once again.

Amanda Winstead is a writer from the Portland area with a background in communications and a passion for telling stories. Along with writing she enjoys traveling, reading, working out, and going to concerts. If you want to follow her writing journey, or even just say hi you can find her on Twitter.

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Guest Posts

How to Build a Career in Marketing Copywriting

Guest posts

To put it simply, a marketing copywriter is a person who creates texts to sell products. It can be email messages texts to send them to probable customers, materials for advertising, articles for company websites, or short slogans for TV or radio. In other words, it does not matter what kind of text marketing copywriter delivers, but it does matter how it impacts the company sales volume.

The need for marketing copywriting specialists is huge: there are 3,406 Marketing Copywriter jobs on the Glassdoor site with an average salary of $25-200K per year.

Where to Start

The main must-have skill for a marketing copywriter is the competence to create in readers the desire to act. For instance, to click the Buy button right after reading the text in the company blog, or to visit the company website after hearing the advertising slogan on TV. Therefore, a proficient marketing copywriter knows how to make entertaining content and understands how it will impact readers.

So, if you are interested in a marketing copywriting career, you should find out more about marketing strategies and PR. It will be not enough just to catch the main trends or tricks for marketing copy. Still, since selling is very connected with human emotions and behavior, it will be incredibly useful to study a bit of psychology.

Also, you must not forget about writing skills themselves. Although a marketing copywriter sells products, his or her tool for doing so is words. That means, your materials must be easy to read, informative, catchy, and entice customers first read till the end and then react in accordance with your marketing intentions, whether it is purchasing, checking the website, or something else.

Additional knowledge can enhance your copywriting CV. For instance, if you want to get a marketing copywriter job in an IT company, a degree in Computer Science will look like a strong advantage.

Steps to Become a Marketing Copywriter

Step 1. Defining your current skills

Now, when you know where you want to be, you need to define where you are at this moment. Maybe you are an experienced freelance writer; then you have to improve your skills in marketing. Or maybe you have just started your way, but you have already successfully participated in some volunteering projects. Explore your potential: sometimes, it is not apparent what heights you can reach.

Step 2. Boosting your skills if needed

Once you have defined where you have a gap in knowledge or experience, fill it with training or practice.

Step 3. Create a portfolio (you can get some freelance orders for that at low price)

It is essential for the copywriter to tell potential employees about the quantity of your experience and showcase the examples of what you can do. So, your portfolio becomes as important as your CV or even has more weight.

How to create a marketing copywriter portfolio:

●      Find a task at the freelance exchange, from your friends in the field, or even create it on your own. But the first two options are preferable. Why? The explanation is below.

●      Fulfill the task and measure its results. The master in marketing copywriting creates not just grammatically correct and interesting copy, but copy that helps to achieve some marketing goals. So you need to show this to potential employees. That is why it is much better to take a real task than to come up with it on your own. This is not always easy without experience, so just do the best you can.

Step 4. Finding an internship or full-time jobs

The path really begins on this step. Many newbies think that the hardest part is getting a job, but actually, you have to work even harder once you get it.

How to Make Progress at Work

While working as a marketing copywriter, you need to continue improving your writing and marketing skills. To do it effectively, you must learn to take an example from other people’s work, ask the right questions, and critically evaluate yourself. Specific marketing metrics will significantly help you with this last point: checking whether the copy achieved its goal with conversions, a percentage that shows how many customers read the text and how many of them did desirable action (buy, click, etc.).

You will also find the following tips helpful:

●      Read more. The more you read examples of other people’s good work, the more you understand what to strive for, and the faster you notice your own mistakes. For writing skills, any text is fine, but only marketing samples are useful for mastering your selling techniques.

●      Determine for whom and for what you write. It’s essential to do this every time before you start working on a new piece. Always keep in mind that your text must accomplish the task. Draw in your head a portrait of your potential reader and answer the questions: what he or she wants, what he or she is interested in, and, most importantly, how to hook them.

●      Follow the trends. Marketing is a very changeable area, so it’s important to know what is essential and relevant now or you will be hopelessly outdated. You can find out what’s trending on Medium from the blogs of the top experts.

How to Grow

A specialist in marketing copywriting can work on enhancing one’s skills in the niche or move into related areas. The first option might involve career growth to becoming the head of the department. The position will require writing articles, building strategies for development, and giving subordinates tasks. The second option is possible due to the fact that marketing copywriting already combines two specialties. So you can grow in the direction of pure marketing, up to the creation of your own agency.

Marie Barnes is a Marketing Communication Manager at Adsy, where you can write as a guest blogger. She is an enthusiastic blogger interested in writing about technology, social media, work, travel, lifestyle, and current affairs.

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Copywrite/Advertising

5 Elements of Storytelling

Once Upon a Time: Trade Secrets of Copywriting from Ancient Near Eastern Storytellers

The internet is abuzz with storytelling. Novelists, filmmakers, and playwrights have been churning out narratives for years, but now copywriters stake their claims to the elements of story. We’re no longer selling products; we’re now telling a brand’s story.

Donald Miller, CEO of Storyline and New York Times bestselling author, says, “Telling a good story is the key to being understood.”

We moderns are not the first people to discover story’s power to connect, of course. Humans have told stories since pre-historic times. Who was it but the ancient storytellers who gave us the towering tales of Homer, Beowulf, Canterbury, and Genesis?

What’s the first story you remember reading? Or writing? Or hearing? I remember reading Charlotte’s Web and crying for hours afterward. That’s how I knew I loved story.

According to Persian legend, Scheherazade told the greatest stories of all time. She, perhaps, was the first content marketer. Certainly, she had more riding on her success than most of us do. After the king of Persia’s first wife proved faithless, he married a string of women. Each subsequent wife spent one night with him before he had her executed. Scheherazade chose to end the massacre by marrying the king herself. She cleverly spent her one night telling the king a story. She stopped at the climax and refused to continue until the following night. The king spared her in order to hear the end of the story.

The next night, Scheherazade finished the story and began another, stopping again at the climax. This continued for 1,000 stories over 1,001 nights until the king relented his decree of death and made Scheherazade his queen. Her stories became The Arabian Nights.

What about Jesus? Nearly all his teachings contain a story. Jesus, though, didn’t tell stories for their own value. He typically left the characters unnamed and the endings open—as if he intended his hearers to see themselves in the story and then finish it in their own lives. Sort of like a good content marketer would do, only Jesus also redeemed the world while he was at it.

Drawing from these examples, how can we use the power of story to sell products through great copywriting? Let’s take a quick look at the 5 elements of story and how they influence writing for business.

Turn to Donald Miller again. “A story is a character who wants something and has to overcome conflict to get it.”

Character – In story theory, a main character is “the player through whom the audience experiences the story firsthand.”[1] Who is the main character in a business’ content? The reader is a popular answer, and it’s often true. Sometimes, however, another character stands in for the customer. Think about Flo from Progressive, the Geico Gecko, the “Dude, you’re getting’ a Dell” guy, and the old lady who asked “Where’s the beef?”

Have an identifiable main character in your business’ story.

Setting – What’s the time and location in which the character faces conflict? Fiction and narrative non-fiction require a setting to ground the story in the reader’s imagination. Why does setting matter for content marketing? Because the setting in your story needs to be the one your reader wishes he or she were in.

Set your story where the reader or customer wants to see himself go, not where he already is (‘cause that’s boring).

Conflict – All stories need conflict.* Without it, you have a series of events, not a story. I’m reading Crossing the Line, a great novel by Bibi Belford. I want to keep going because I have to resolve the conflict. But I can’t stand to keep going because I know the conflict’s going to get worse before it gets better. That means, of course, that the author did her job with the conflict element of her story.

If you sell diet products, your reader’s conflict is between fatty food and health food, between the gym and the sofa. Stoke that conflict until the readers have to see it resolved in their own lives. (For examples, see Jesus’ parables.)

Plot – Is your brand’s or business’ plot emotionally engaging? Think a story about a business can’t stir your emotions? Check out this ad for Kleenex, this one for life insurance, and this one for a brand of automobiles. I’ll wait while you collect yourself.

Don’t let your brand’s story appeal to people’s greed. Stay true to the better side of human nature. We could all use a little grace, after all.

Theme – Flannery O’Connor, the South’s greatest storyteller, said, “People talk about the theme of a story as if the theme were like the string that a sack of chicken feed is tied with. They think that if you can pick out the theme, the way you pick the right thread in the chicken-feed sack, you can rip the story open and feed the chickens. But this is not the way meaning works.”

Theme flows naturally from the other four elements. Don’t try to shove it in there.

If you write fiction, tell me what I missed. Are there other elements of the story? Other links between writing novels and writing for business? Anything else that would make the links between storytelling and copywriting clearer?

The internet’s abuzz with storytelling. Why not add your voice to the conversation?

*All novelists who are able, please stand and shout your agreement. Thank you.

[1] http://dramatica.com/theory/book/characters

Holland Webb: I love telling the stories that people put down so they go take action. I’m an advertising copywriter by day, an aspiring novelist by night, a parent, a dog-lover, a prison volunteer and a follower of Jesus.

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Copywrite/Advertising

A Guide to Starting Your Copywriting Career Or 5 Ways to Make 6 Figures on the Beach (maybe)

 

Have you heard the online buzz about copywriting? Make $100,000 a year writing! A laptop and an Internet connection are all you need! Work on a beach in Costa Rica!

They’re clickbait, but they can reel me in. And you know what? Those headlines aren’t entirely misleading. If you love writing and it’s been your long-time dream to be a full-time writer, then copywriting is the simplest and most straightforward way to make that dream come true.

You really can write copy from anywhere, and you can earn a living doing it. Sound good? Then, let’s get you started.

What is copywriting?

          Copywriting is crafting words in such a way that you cause people to take action. Usually, action means buying a product or service. Copywriters work for companies, marketing agencies, non-profits, and sometimes government agencies. It’s one of the highest-paid writing jobs available, and it’s a fast-growing field.

Some copywriters work in offices, and others work from home or their favorite coffeeshop. Can you make $100,000 a year working from a beach in Costa Rica?

[bctt tweet=”Can you make $100,000 a year working from a beach in Costa Rica? ” username=”@WebbJohnpaul @A3forme”]

Actually, yes. Probably not your first year, but you can eventually make a living and work from anywhere you like with an Internet connection.

          How do I get started?

You do not need a degree or a certificate. Please don’t spend money taking an expensive online course or earning a certificate from a college. For pity’s sake, don’t get your master’s degree in order to become a copywriter. You may find that one of those things is right for you later, but to start with, just write.

Few marketing teams care what degree you have, anyway. They want to see your portfolio, instead.

“But I don’t have a portfolio!” you say.

Make one. You can write for your church, a local non-profit, a friend’s business, or even publish on your own LinkedIn page. Here’s a secret – your pieces can even be unpublished. Just make sure they’re good. There’s a website called www.journoportfolio.com that lets you put a small selection of your own articles online for free. Attach that link to your resume. Voila! Portfolio. You’re in the game.

          Where can I find jobs?

Online. From friends. At local advertising agencies. With non-profits.

Sign up for freelance sites such as Upwork, Hubstaff and LinkedIn Profinder. Upwork can be a race to the bottom so I recommend you don’t bid on the lowest-dollar jobs even if you are totally green. Most of those jobs will accept second-language copywriters in India or the Philippines who can afford to underbid you. Bid on the mid-level jobs to start with – $15 to $25 an hour range. Once you have more experience, bid on the higher paying jobs. On Hubstaff, you don’t have to bid. You can apply to job posts, or a company can approach you if they like what they see.  You set your own hourly rate on Hubstaff before applying to anything.

Another effective strategy is to send a brief introductory email with a link to your portfolio to every advertising agency in your area. You can find them all online. Tell them you’d like to be added to their stable of freelance writers. They’ll probably have a process for hiring freelancers. Usually, that’s a phone interview and a writing assignment. If you sound sane and do a good job on the assignment, you’re in. Sometimes, you just have to do a good job on the assignment. Sanity is optional.

Be careful with non-profits. The small ones often do not see the value of your service or have the money to pay you. But larger ones with ongoing programs and paid staff are always communicating with their donors. Your best-known local non-profit just might need some copywriting skill in the marketing department. Send them an email and ask.

          How much do I charge?

          Have you seen those headlines claiming copywriters can make $75 or $100 an hour? Well, some can. They have thick portfolios with samples they’ve written for household brand names. Years of experience. Connections. You’ll have those things one day, too.

For now, I suggest starting in the $15 to $25 an hour range. Alternatively, you could charge by the project, such as 5-10 cents per word or $30 for a blog post. Once you’ve built a solid portfolio, move to the $25 – $45 an hour range. Many agencies have a set fee they offer for a project or as an hourly rate. You can accept their offer or pass on it as you like.

Do not write for peanuts, or because someone begged you. If you are good enough to be asked, you are good enough to be paid for your work.

[bctt tweet=” Do not write for peanuts, or because someone begged you. If you are good enough to be asked, you are good enough to be paid for your work. ” username=”@WebbJohnpaul “]

          How do I grow as a copywriter?

Write. A lot. Get yourself a fierce copywriting editor. There are several websites with plenty of free educational content about copywriting. Some of my favorites are Kopywriting Kourse, Copyblogger, and Freelance Hustler.

Bid on new kinds of jobs. Have you been writing blog posts? Bid on a video script. Have you written long form content? Bid on writing a series of short e-blasts.

What about searching out a different kind of client? I’ve written for an international development agency, an urban charter school, a genetic research facility, four hotel chains, a high-end cat litter box company, a Bible college, a construction and engineering software solutions retailer, and a land development company.

So, what are you waiting for? Get started making that portfolio. And when you deposit your first check, look me up on LinkedIn and drop me a line to tell me about it. I’ll celebrate with you from my beach house in Costa Rica.

About Holland Webb

I love telling the stories that people put down so they go take action. I’m an advertising copywriter by day, an aspiring novelist by night, a parent, a dog-lover, a prison volunteer and a follower of Jesus.

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Copywrite/Advertising

SEO? SEM? PPC? I need an LOA.-Holland Webb

Nothing freezes your brain faster than a series of meetings on the minutiae of government grant management. Trust me. In 2009, I had to attend a lengthy conference in Uganda where they taught us exactly what snacks and beverages could be funded with federal dollars and how to apply U.S. government accounting standards for hotel stays in parts of the world that don’t have hotels.

The unkindest cut of all, though, was the acronyms.

Hundreds of acronyms were tossed at us by serious, gray-suited government bureaucrats with the power to take away the funds they had just generously awarded us.

Finally, one woman, far braver than I, raised her hand. “All these acronyms are hard to keep track of.”

“Oh, we know they are,” the speaker replied. “That’s why we created an LOA.”

“An LOA?”

The speaker laughed. “It’s an acronym that stands for List of Acronyms.”

Trust the government to create an acronym for an acronym. I’ll admit, though, that the LOA was a big HELP.

Starting out in copywriting, especially writing for the web, you may feel the same way. Job descriptions toss around a bunch of acronyms like SEO, SEM, PPC and more. They’re hard to keep track of, so here’s a brief LOA for new copywriters.

  • SEO – Search Engine Optimization
    SEO draws the right traffic to your site. Search engines like Google, Yahoo!, and Bing have bots that crawl through a site, reading it in order to index it properly. Once the bot knows what your site is about, the search engine can pull up your site when a web user types in a related string of keywords.Let’s say your site gives advice to aspiring writers. Someone at home types, “advice for new writers” into a search engine. SEO makes it easy for the search engine bots to know that your site is about that very same thing and to rank it highly in its returns.What does SEO mean for you as the writer? Before you write for a website, do some keyword research. Find what keywords people are using to search for your topic. Be specific. Long keywords rank better than short ones, and they are more likely to get you in front of people who are interested in what you have to say, sell, or do.

    You can try searching some different keywords yourself to see what ranks best, and you can use tools like Google Keyword Planner or Moz to identify high-ranking keywords.

    Once you have pinpointed some helpful keywords, use them strategically throughout your text. Try to fit them in the title, your metadescription, your images’ alt tags, and the body of your text. Old SEO models required keywords to appear a minimum number of times in exactly the same order. Today’s search engine bots are sophisticated, thank goodness, so we don’t have to stuff our text with keywords to get it to rank. Write naturally, focusing on the message.

    Voice search is increasingly popular. At least 20% of Google’s mobile searches are voice searches. That means people are asking questions of search engines instead of typing strings of words. Why don’t you ask those same questions in your text? The bots will recognize the match and put your page near the top of the search results.

    So how does a copywriter use SEO to write great content? Simple. Imagine you’re a robot charged with reading and indexing web sites. Ask yourself what searchable terms and phrases would get your site indexed accurately. Use those terms in prominent places in your text while still sounding like a human being.

  • SEM – Search Engine Marketing
    SEM is the whole bunch of bananas – SEO, paid search, social media marketing, you name it.

    • Paid search is when a company pays a search engine to rank their site.
      Have you done a Google search and noticed the top ranked sites have a box with the word Ad in it next to them? These sites have paid Google to rank them near the top.
    • PPC (Pay Per Click) is how those sites pay Google for ranking them at the top or bottom of page one.
    • SMM stands for Social Media Marketing. SMM uses Twitter, Facebook, and other social media sites to market products and services.

Why do copywriters care about SEM? Because it affects how you write.

Companies test their keywords and calls to action using PPC. You may have to write several of these for a company to test before they discover what works best. Social media marketing may have you writing Tweets, Facebook posts, and Instagram messages that match your web site, blog post, eblast content, and the video script you wrote for the new YouTube video.

  • CRO – Conversion Rate Optimization
    Now that SEO and SEM have helped prospective buyers or donors find your site, CRO is what encourages them make a purchase or donation while they’re there. Copywriting, as we discussed in my article last month, is all about conversion. We don’t just want readers; we want buyers. CRO increases the percentage of web site viewers who take action.Why does CRO matter to copywriters? Because if our CRO numbers are not good, we’ll get fired. The company that hired you to write for them exists to sell a product or service. Keep CRO in mind as you craft your prose, and you’ll be in business for a long time.

So there you have it, folks, a brief LOA for newbie copywriters. Let me know your adventures in copywriting acronyms in the comment section below.

Holland Webb: I love telling the stories that people put down so they go take action. I’m an advertising copywriter by day, an aspiring novelist by night, a parent, a dog-lover, a prison volunteer and a follower of Jesus.

Categories
Copywrite/Advertising

I’m in This Thing for Converts

 

You’re a copywriter. Not a novelist (okay, maybe at night). Not a screenwriter. Not a poet. A copywriter.

What does that mean?

Unlike those other writers, you’re not seeking readers. Not really. At the root of things, you’re seeking buyers.

It’s sort of like a preacher on Sunday. (I’ve been a preacher so I can use this example with impunity.) What does the preacher look for when gazing out across the sanctuary? A bunch of rear ends warming seats? That’s just the start.

One enthusiastic minister blurted it out to me once. “I’m in this thing for converts!”

As a copywriter, so are you.

Our readers aren’t perusing our prose for chuckles and entertainment. They’re after information that will inspire them to buy the right product or give to the right charity. What you want is for your reader to take action.

Whether you are sitting at your keyboard crafting an email campaign for a Christian organization or climbing the town water tower with a can of spray paint and your ex-girlfriend’s number in your jacket pocket, you are writing for the same purpose–results.

Your prose is successful when your reader responds. Sign up for an email list. Follow the company on Twitter. Add a name to the petition. Ultimately, buy the product.

When a web visitor takes action on a site, that’s called conversion. And that’s what you want your prose to do—convert people. If you write for a Christian organization, conversions may be literal conversions. If you write for a company, maybe not.

How does writing for conversion differ from other kinds of writing? Here are three ways:

  1. Essay writers say, “Your writing needs an airtight argument with a beginning that includes a clear thesis sentence followed by three supporting statements and winding up with a defined conclusion that closes the argument’s circle.”

Ad copy editors say, “Your writing is part of a sprawling global conversation that has no beginning and no end. Don’t close the loop.”

If you close the loop, you give away the end of the story. What’s left for your reader to do?

Effective ad copy takes your reader right up to the crisis moment and stops. An irksome feeling that something remains unfinished nudges readers to become buyers. Resist the urge to conclude. Instead, let the reader finish the story by making a purchase or donation.

  1. Traditional writers say, “Good writing is grammatically correct, spell-checked, and proofread.”

Ad copy editors say, “Good writing is interesting.”

The need for written content to be interesting is almost universally acknowledged. But we don’t teach how to be interesting in print. We teach the rules of grammar.

Want evidence that the best writers don’t need to follow the rules? Look at some of today’s most effective advertising copywriters, the Chick-fil-a cows. Those guys are horrible spellers! But nobody cares that the cows can’t spell. They’re interesting. They’re funny. They keep you eating chicken.

Note that most ad copywriting also requires correct grammar and spelling. But those things alone aren’t going to get results.

  1. English teachers say, “I’m assigning you a paper that will be between seven and ten pages long.” And you write ten, even twelve, to prove that you are doing the most work possible.

Ad copy editors say, “Be brief.”

Brief writing is difficult to do, but brevity collects readers. Penelope Trunk says she takes 30 minutes to craft a single tweet. Mind you, a tweet is 140 characters or less. I could pound out 140 characters in no time flat. Perhaps that’s partly why Trunk has 134,000 Twitter followers, and I don’t. It’s hard to pack interesting, quality content into a tiny space, but it often works.

One caveat: there’s some evidence that long-form content gets readership and response better than short-form content does. Fundraising appeals, for instance, often generate more income when they are two or more pages long. The only way to know for sure is to test your readership.

Be brief doesn’t always mean be short. It just means stop talking once your piece concludes the first time.

For copywriters, conversion is key.  How do you convert your readers into buyers? Brief, interesting copy that leaves the reader with unfinished business on his hands is a great start. An inspiring call to action—in which you encourage the reader to convert with a direct statement—can transform some readers into buyers.

What are some things you’ve discovered about writing that converts? Do you have any war stories about web site content, email blasts or fundraising letters that finally pulled those readers off their pews and down front to join the congregation, either literally or metaphorically?

Did someone else’s brilliant copy snag you?

Tell me about it in the comments.

Holland Webb: I love telling the stories that people put down so they go take action. I’m an advertising copywriter by day, an aspiring novelist by night, a parent, a dog-lover, a prison volunteer and a follower of Jesus.

[1] Read more:http://www.touchstonemag.com/archives/article.php?id=26-02-018-v#ixzz4WJX3Txy8

Categories
Copywrite/Advertising

Say It Like Sayers- How the Queen of Copywriting Introduced the King of Kings to a Nation at War

December 1941. London. The worst of the blitz just ended. A nation at war faced Christmas. The BBC’s charge? Uplift the spirits and strengthen the spines of Britain with a radio drama about Jesus. The whole nation will tune in. Needed: One writer who can tell history’s most powerful story to a people facing unprecedented evil.

Who did the BBC choose to write the play The Man Born to Be King?

A genius.

Was it C.S. Lewis? Nope. It was Dorothy Sayers. And you know how Sayers got her start as a wordsmith?  If you guessed “advertising copywriter,” you nailed it in one. Give yourself a chocolate.

Sayers spent the years 1922-1931 writing ad copy. Her clients included a mustard company and the producers of Guinness beer. She is credited with coining the phrase, “It pays to advertise.”

Dorothy Sayers wasn’t just any old copy hack, and I don’t mean to give the impression that she was. She was one of the first women to attend Oxford University. Her scholarship of Dante is legendary. She was an acclaimed novelist and poet. Her works on theology, feminism, and creativity are cited regularly by writers today. But with all that talent, she spent nine years writing about such riveting topics as mustard and beer. In fact, her first novel was entitled Murder Must Advertise and is about the death of a copywriter in his office at an ad agency.

Some folks might argue that it was Sayers’ theological scholarship or skill as a novelist that earned her the privilege of writing The Man Born to Be King. She was a heavyweight theologian and novelist, for sure, but I believe Sayers alone could write the BBC’s most important religious and political work because she was an ad copywriter at heart. That means everything she wrote, she wrote with her audience in mind. She wrote with a creative eye on those people who would turn on their radios, shush their children and enter into a story world that lit their homes with hope in a time of deep darkness.

            The radio drama, The Man Born to Be King, proved to be among the BBC’s most controversial productions ever. One religious group even claimed the fall of Singapore was proof of God’s disapproval of the program.

Why such a fuss? A passion play is pretty dry fare for church folks these days. Not in 1940s England though! The BBC even had to garner special governmental permission to include Jesus as a character in the production. And what a Jesus he was!

Sayers made her characters speak in the everyday slang, jargon and accents of 1940s Britain. The Biblical characters were just like the hearers’ neighbors, full of conflicting motivations and common human feelings. It was dramatic. Thrilling. Immediate.

Mailboxes at the BBC soon swelled with letters from people telling how the drama had indeed uplifted their spirits, strengthened their resolve, and in many cases, reintroduced them to a life lived in the Spirit of the Man born to be king. C.S. Lewis read the play every Holy Week. In his letter to Sayers, Lewis wrote, “I shed real tears (hot ones) in places.”

Dear Aspiring Novelist, do you want to write a narrative that can bring tears to the eyes of C.S. Lewis and inspire a nation to live its faith in the face of evil’s onslaught?

Start by writing advertising copy.

All the time that Dorothy Sayers wrote about beer and mustard, she was learning how to communicate with the average British buyer of her day. She knew what he spent his money on, so she knew his heart and imagination. Better than any other scholar or novelist, she knew those folks had no time or emotional space for a scholarly, erudite, and high-sounding Jesus. If He was to matter to them, He had to talk like them. His friends and neighbors had to sound like their friends and neighbors.

Where did Sayers learn that? At Oxford? Hardly. She learned it staring at a blank piece of paper, wracking her brain for a way to make mustard meaningful.

I write ad copy for hotel chains, and we call that “guest-centered copy.” When I worked in non-profit communications, we called it “donor-centered copy.”

What does it mean to write with your audience in mind? Three quick things:

  1. Tell them exactly what they want to know. Avoid pure marketing speak. Since the time readers spend on websites can now be measured in nanoseconds, every word has to be informative as well as interesting. As my editor told me, “Don’t just say the hotel is an oasis of comfort. Say what makes it an oasis of comfort.”
  2. Use everyday language. Unless you are writing advertising copy for a swanky brand, stick with plain language. Someone recently said to me, “It’s Dollywood, not Hollywood.”
  3. Imagine the scene from the reader’s or buyer’s perspective. What feeling do they get when they imagine themselves swimming in your hotel’s pool, spreading your mustard on their sandwich, or pouring out a glass of your brand of beverage? Evoke that feeling.

Of Jesus’s passion, Sayers’ wrote, “God was executed by people painfully like us, in a society very similar to our own.”[1] Because she was an advertising copywriter, Sayers got – really got – people “painfully like us.”

Want to write a write a story that’s powerful enough to bring C.S. Lewis to tears? Learn to write buyer-centered ad copy first. You’ll be amazed what it does for your storytelling prowess. Oh, and did I mention that writing ad copy pays?  Yep, it pays to advertise.

About Holland Webb

I love telling the stories that people put down so they go take action. I’m an advertising copywriter by day, an aspiring novelist by night, a parent, a dog-lover, a prison volunteer and a follower of Jesus.

[1] Read more:http://www.touchstonemag.com/archives/article.php?id=26-02-018-v#ixzz4WJX3Txy8