“Show Don’t Tell” & The Power of Wordsmithing
As a kid I used to write poetry, enjoying the symphony of words to express unspoken feelings and thoughts.
Playing with cadence, creating clever analogies, and concluding with a meaningful message with a touch of humor.
Copywriting allows all the above with one particular addition: “considering what people think”.
Poetry is personal, I was focusing within, but when it comes to writing a long-form sales copy the focus is the audience.
It’s an entirely new process coming with some responsibilities – as you are now influencing others.
My most successful landing pages were to get people booking discovery calls – whether it was for business consultants or property advisors.
Now, the most important element was to believe in what I was selling – and if I stopped believing, I stopped selling it.
To me, the most interesting part of copywriting is wordsmithing – where I am using a useful formula: familiar term + unfamiliar term + hot term.
Finally, some of the most valuable copywriting practices/rules are:
Show don’t tell: testimonials are great for that.
Do your best to create curiosity.
Specificity is power.
Let it breath.
Good stories need depth and uniqueness.
David Ogilvy: “When you have written your headline, you have spent eighty cents out of your dollar”. Knowing that more often than not the best material come towards the end of the copy – so I move it up and use some of it to finalise the headline and sub-headline.
