Copywriter beware: When you write for non-profit organizations, it’s all too easy to bludgeon your audience with your cause-focused copy. Non-profit marketers tend to structure content as if it were an internal communication: They emphasize features and benefits important to ... [Read More] [Leave a comment]
Archives for 2010
9 Tips on Writing Content for Worthy Causes and Non-profit Orgs
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When you write content for non-profit organizations, there's no doubt your work is worthy: Your words support services that feed children, lower maternal death rates, end factory farming and do so many other good things. You care passionately about your mission. So writing ... [Read More] [8 Comments. Please leave another.]
25 Must-Read Best Copywriting and Content Marketing Books
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With a gazillion copywriting and marketing blogs, articles, and eBooks available online, is there any reason to read real books these days? My dead giveaway headline tells you where I stand. What's not to like about digital content? Digital content is unmatched for ... [Read More] [16 Comments. Please leave another.]
Copywriters: Nail Down Creative Briefs—and Copy Payment—With These 10 Questions
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Tweak. Such a harmless little word. Problem is, “tweak” can mean one thing to you, the copywriter—and something completely different to your client. You probably think of tweaks as small cuts, text tightening or perhaps rephrasing of a paragraph or two. But your client ... [Read More] [7 Comments. Please leave another.]
This is This: The Deer Hunter Guide to Social Media
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You remember the scene From The Deer Hunter: Autumn in rural Pennsylvania, 1966. Group of guys go deer hunting. Stan, played to pain-in-the-arse perfection by John Cazale, is hung-over. He’s forgotten his thermal socks. And his boots. Again. Stan asks to borrow Michael’s spare ... [Read More] [5 Comments. Please leave another.]
Who Do You Write Like?
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I write like Cory Doctorow. No, wait: I write like David Foster Wallace. Actually, I write like Stephen King. And I have the badges to prove it. In case you missed the meme ricocheting through social communities last week, here’s the story: A ... [Read More] [4 Comments. Please leave another.]
The Art and Craft of Feature Writing by William E. Blundell Reviewed by MarketCopywriterBlog
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Writers: William E. Blundell’s got our number. In his book The Art and Craft of Feature Writing, Blundell describes me a typical blocked writer. Mel Bookstein sits at his messy desk littered with “…documents that now seem irrelevant, notes on uninformative interviews, jottings ... [Read More] [7 Comments. Please leave another.]
Discover 5 Resources that Help You Write Ledes That Reel in Readers
Beads of perspiration stung my upper lip and trickled into my eyes as I squinted at my computer screen. It was the fourth day of record-breaking heat in my New York suburb. My home office’s "energy efficient" air conditioner droned, pretending to extract heat and humidity from ... [Read More] [1 Comment. Please leave another.]
Copywriters: Should You Write Copy For Free? 5 Cases For Working Without Pay.
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The idea that writers should work for free rubs me the wrong way. Even when I was a starving playwright working in regional and off-off Broadway theater, I got a stipend. Later when I started writing commercially, I approached copywriting as craft. It never occurred to me ... [Read More] [7 Comments. Please leave another.]
Discover 10 Ways Images Improve Your Marketing Content
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Ten seconds. That’s how long your reader takes to decide whether or not to read your post, article or collateral. With time ticking away and distractions banging around her brain, she quickly scans your page. Is it worth the next few seconds of her time? Breaking news: ... [Read More] [3 Comments. Please leave another.]