Writing effective copy (all the words in a message, including the headlines, subheads, captions, and body text) can be intimidating if you are not a professional writer. Break the task down into smaller, more achievable steps and it won’t seem nearly so bad.
Step One:Â Figure out what you want to accomplish with your copy:
- Are you selling something? Buying something?
- Are you providing information?
- Is it an invitation?
- Is it a call to action?
Asking yourself these types of questions helps you determine what the project’s mission will be. While you’re asking questions, write down all the project goals you can think of. Don’t worry about proper grammar at this point, you’re brainstorming. Just write your heart out.
Step Two: Make a list of benefits for the audience.
People will not read your message through unless you can make it clear how it will benefit them right off the bat. Ask yourself why a reader would be interested in looking at your message.
- What are the special features in your message?
- How do they benefit your reader?
List the features and benefits of your message, even if they seem obvious. This will help you organize your thoughts and further define the project’s goals. Features and benefits lists don’t have to be formal at this stage, but don’t assume the user will already know why the special features of your message are important to them—spell it out, be obvious.
Step Three: Organize your information.
Organizing your organizing your information will help you focus and gather your thoughts into a coherent pattern. One common tool is an outline. Take the important information from your lists and place them on the outline as headers.
Step Four: Flesh out your outline.
Keep it informal, you will be editing your message for grammar later in this process. If you can’t think of something to put under a heading, just move on. It’s fine to jump around. Try to write the way you speak, as if you were having a conversation to someone. Formal writing usually comes across as too stiff, and is not appropriate for most circumstances.
Step Five: Edit your work.
Reread your writing, editing it for clarity, grammar, spelling and relevance. Edit out anything extraneous—be merciless, strip out anything that may not contribute to your core message. Always use spell-check and make sure your grammar is perfect—there is nothing worse than a grammatical error to ruin your credibility. Another thing you can do is find someone who is representative of the demographic you hope to reach and bounce your copy off of them.
