5 Steps To writing Online Copy Like A Pro

Do you struggle with writing online copy?  Particularly the kind of copy that compels, persuades and captures attention?

Don’t worry, most of us do   but if you’re trying to make money online, you have to write online copy that is persuasive and creates a desire to buy.

You don’t have to be a copywriting professional but you do need to write like one.  I’ve been studying online copywriting since I first started on the web and to be honest, it’s not that hard, in many ways it’s easier than a lot of other writing I’ve had to do.

The basic basic concepts and the strategies for writing great content are simple to grasp, it’s just a matter of using them correctly.   So let’s review them…  

1. Know Your Audience

I just recently listened to Karon Thackston’s Copywriting Summit and one of the things Karon stresses in everything she teaches is to first know and understand your audience.

For example, what are the emotions your readers feel and are you connecting those emotions?

That’s powerful for getting your reader’s attention.  If they can nod their heads when they read your content and say to themselves, “Yes, that’s me“, you’ve made a connection!

Effectively connecting with your audience starts with having a clear picture of who that person is and what their specific concerns, problems and emotions are.

If you can’t relate to how your audience feels and what their needs and desires are, you won’t be successful with your promotional efforts.

2. Writing Online Copy Starts with Good Research

When writing online copy, your content and keyword research will be the difference between getting traffic or getting no traffic at all.

Writing effective content starts with finding popular topics and content ideas.  You can get these ideas simply by visiting topic related online forums.  Forums are typically where people hang out to find unbiased information, so it’s a perfect place for finding what people want to know and the issues they are having.

If you can’t find what you need in forums, use your favorite keyword research tool. Simply type in your main topic and see what turns up.  For example, if I type in the word ‘diabetes’ into my keyword research tool, one of the first top ten terms is ‘diabetes diet’, that term alone gets over 110,000 searches meaning it’s a popular topic of interest and would be a good choice to write about.

The next step will be to use effective keyword research.  Knowing what keywords to use and how to effectively use them within your content is your key to developing copy that people want to read and the search engines want to rank.

3. Write for Both Your Readers and the Search Engines

Sounds almost impossible, but it’s not.  In fact if you can write content that your readers find interesting and useful, the search engines will too.

Your copy should also be unique.  Repeating what everyone else on the web is saying isn’t what your readers or the search engines are looking for.  In fact writing conversationally is much more appealing to your readers than stuffy text that is hard to read and boring.

Writing as if you are speaking to someone directly almost guarantees you’ll be creating unique content, after all no one can say it like you can.  It’s about creating the written word in your own style while offering useful information at the same time. That’s what will hold the attention of your reader and the search engines will recognize.

Combining your own style with powerful search engine copywriting techniques and you’ll be satisfying both your readers as well as the search engines.

4. Don’t Over think It

Did you know there are two parts to your brain?

There’s the creative side and the critical side.  But you don’t want to let your critical brain can get in the way of your creative brain when you are trying to write.

It’s the job of your critical brain to tell you to fix your sentences or that your paragraph isn’t quite good enough but your writing will go a lot quicker if you can put your critic on the shelf and just simply write.

When ideas come into your head just write them down and keep writing until you can’t write any more.  I simply put myself if a frame of mind that tells my critical brain that I’m just going to write as creatively as I can first and think about being critical later.

It’s a conscious effort but if you can just write, mistakes and all, and put your critic to work after you’ve got it all down, it makes writing a lot easier.

5. Read Your Content Out Loud

Editing is my least favorite thing, but it’s important. Nothing turns people off more than poor grammar and confusing content.  So my strategy is to read my work out loud, I just close the door and start reading. This helps me to hear my mistakes. Sometimes it takes a few pass throughs, but it’s worth it in order to get my content to sound the way I want it to sound. If you get too wordy or confuse ideas, you’ll lose and confuse your reader.

Another strategy I sometimes use is to read and record my content and then go back and listen to it.  I use audacity.com, which is free.  I simply record my content into audacity and go back and listen with an objective mind, works great.  By the way, Audacity is a handy tool for including an audio along with your content.  People sometimes prefer listening to an audio over reading.

In Summary…

If your online copy fails to connect with your target market, if it’s stuffy and formal or the search engines toss it aside, your efforts are wasted.  Additionally if your copy can rank well in the search engines your  sales will increase, it’s like free advertising!

Tagged as: Writing/Copywriting