Michel Fortin, one of the best copywriters out there, believes copy is everywhere. That even your casual blog post is, essentially, copy. Most people think copywriting is used only to sell. They are right. Because every time we write just about anything, we are selling something.
If you are excited about something and you blog about it, and it is a pretty new idea or a new take on an old idea, you are selling your take on it to your readers. Bloggers aren’t personal journal keepers anymore. No one would be crazy enough to put online what they’d write in a real personal journal. At least most people wouldn’t.
Blogging is for getting attention.
Many bloggers want the attention to turn into money so they can keep blogging instead of working at Ben and Jerry’s.
Lots of people are good at getting attention for their ideas, but fewer are good at writing up their ideas to cause specific actions to take place for the highest conversion possible.
What specific actions?
- Getting people to sign up for your RSS feed or newsletter or autoresponder series.
- Getting people to click on ads.
- Getting followers to click on links to your products, services, or affiliate products.
- Getting people to follow you on Twitter or Facebook.
There are people who are naturally good at this. They have raw talent for making others trust and respect them which leads to sales and clicks. But almost everyone who is naturally good at this could improve their conversions by studying copywriting, even in a daily blog post, drastically by being better copywriters.
Do You Need More Traffic? Or Do You Just Need To Convert More Of The Traffic You Already Get?
Most people will say they need more traffic to their sites to hit a specific income goal for their blog each month. Sometimes they are right. Most of the time though, they could be doing much better at converting the traffic they are already getting.
This is where a good, strong focus on your copywriting comes into play. Without bringing a single new visitor to your site above what you already get, if you could increase the desired outcome for more of the visitors you have, you’d make a lot more money.
Going from 5 desired outcomes (subscribers, buyers, clients, ad clicks) per day to 10 is doubling your effect. Most people can do this wth the traffic they already have by simply being better at toying with the emotions of their readers. i.e. writing better copy (blog posts that are more designed for the outcome desired rather than just thrown together.)
How To Bone Up On Your Copywriting Skills
Many A-List bloggers recommend you keep a copy of Strunk’s “Elements of Style” by your computer. I’d add a good copywriting manual to that as well. A new one came out today. Not that they don’t come out everyday, but this one is different. It is by the guy who owns Copywriting.com.
Download it and become less wasteful of the traffic you already get!
{ 5 comments… read them below or add one }
Copywriting is absolutely the best thing I have ever learned. It is responsible in large part to my success. I would suggest learning about page designs that convert is essential, too. Goes beautifully with great copy.
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It is definitely one of most important things. Some people do not even realize the importance of it yet.
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Good copywriting is hard. I’ve yet to pick up Strunk’s book, but since it keeps coming up so often, I’m going to check it out. Copyblogger has some really great articles that have helped me immensely.
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Those who develop strong copywriting skills tend to see a lot of transfer into other forms of writing.
There are distinctions between writing sales copy and blogging, but there’s a lot of overlap, too. If you’re good at one, it can’t hurt the other.
I see so many blogs that show the bloggers lack of writing skill. Also how hard is it to use spellchecker?! Anyway we all have room to improve.