Oct

11 Rules of a Copywriter

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11 Rules of a Copywriter

Life experience and common sense tell me that a diligent and capable apprentice of a car mechanic will master all the details of the profession in two or three month time. And he will work not worse than his teacher. Besides his further experience is not likely to influence seriously the efficiency and quality of his work. Unfortunately, the same does not concern the profession of a copywriter. Copywriter’s experience refers to the category of the most difficult to be conveyed. I mean that it is hard to formalize and transform it into a sort of effective technology. That is why very often we do our work intuitively.

Yet the work of a copywriter requires specific accuracy and precision. And so I decided to develop some code of rules, standards, techniques and methods to help us write professional advertising texts. Basically I collected the information from my friends, colleagues, world experience and even from my own reflections. As a motto to my code of copywriter rules I took words of Jeff Stark, the editor at “Saatchi and Saatchi”: “No one has a monopoly for truth”. So, let’s think and create together. I am doing my best to follow the next eleven copywriter rules in my work. Surely, they don’t make a complete list, but I hope they will be as useful to you as they are to me. 1. Stick to the point. Advertising text is written not to get you Pulitzer Prize. As a rule you have definite marketing aims to be achieved and your writing should serve them. You are to pursue them even if you have to break one of the following rules. 2. Before you start, make sure you know where to go. Your advertising text should run smooth like a quiet stream, flowing from sentence into sentence, from paragraph into paragraph. Including some fresh ideas into a prepared version often shatters its smooth course. And you have to rewrite again. That is why it is better to determine from the very start what are you going to say and who is your audience. Before writing, jot down the next points: the aims of the advert, the audience of the advert, the key message, supporting arguments. 3. Don’t overdo it. We know what it takes to make the reader pay attention, then read and get the idea of the most primitive advertising text. When we write complicated texts with more than one key message, we do nothing but muddle the reader. And then as doctors would say we lose him. 4. Be honest. If a reader suspects you of a slightest lie, he will doubt every word you address to him. 5. Stop underestimating the reader. He gets irritated by haughty air of the message. You would feel the same. 6. Don’t rely on reader’s intellect and his quick wits. He does not want to go into the details of what he does not understand from the first time. Moreover, he will not buy your product if he does not get the main idea of the text. 7. Spelling and grammar do matter, but there is just one snag to it… Spelling and grammar mistakes annoy the readers. But sometimes rules have to be broken to achieve the desirable result. For example, to make a long and thoughtful pause a copywriter may use elliptical sentences. Structures as “Stop, Think” make the reader reflect on what he has just read. 8. Be brief. 9. Make sure the reader understands and memorizes your ad. The reader can remember a text if he understands it. But what is clear for one person may be absolutely imperceptible for the other.

That is why occasionally it is a good practice to repeat the key messages. Interpreting the same idea with different words, you reduce the risk of misunderstanding and drum the key point of your message into the reader’s head. 10. Write for the reader .It is one of the main principles of SEO copywriting. The target audience of your text is not you, but your readers. Write in their language. Write about things they want to discover. You may need to do a market research for that. 11. Read your texts aloud. When you read to yourself, you see what you want to. Reading aloud you will spot all the mistakes. For me the most difficult is to observe rule 8. What can be easier than to write a lot on a well known topic? To concentrate on the main idea and present it in a few words is much more challenging and takes so much time. I often recollect the phrase by wise Pascal “This letter turned out to be longer than usual as I had no time to cut it down”. But we are to find this time, anyhow.