Do You Copy? Five Tips for Writing Small Business Ad Copy That Sells

Many business owners are tempted to write their own copy, but don’t even know where to begin. While most people are better served hiring an advertising specialist to do this for them, there is a sizeable minority that could write their own advertising copy if they only knew the basic rules. If you think you are member of the latter group, here are five simple guidelines to follow for attractive, effective ad copy.
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You’ve produced an editorial calendar, have your writing tools and research sources. But you have a massive to-do list, including blog posts to write, and for some reason the darn things refuse to write themselves. What if you could get them to do that? I have – many times. I can’t tell you why it happens, but here are some tips that might just help you get your creative flow on.

1. Consume content. Not only should you consume a lot of content, you should consume a variety from different channels/ platforms:
   1. Print.
   2. Radio.
   3. TV Channels + film.
   4. Internet (print, audio, video).

   Consumption of a variety of content is the primary reason that writing usually (but not always) comes easy to me. Just make sure you’re capable of squirreling away facts for later use.

2. Change your point of view. This can be a physical change or a conceptual change. Move to another room, or put yourself in the place of a potential reader.
3. Take a break. Overtasking your mind, without a break, is the quickest way to squash creativity and become mentally fatigued. Light physical activity gets your blood flowing, which guarantees your brain is getting enough oxygen – something that might be hampered by sitting for long periods. Just getting up and walking around can help.
4. Change modes. If writing what you need to write isn’t happening, write something else. Write reviews, check out writing tools, write some email.
5. Sleep on it. If all else fails, setting a project aside for a night often gives you clarity. If you’ve done all the research, prep and planning you can, letting your subconscious take over frees up the creative side. Given all the prep, I often wake up with articles already written in my head, and simply have to type them up fast before they fade from memory.
6. Try creative exercises. Jason Rekulak’s book Writer’s Block: 786 Ideas to Jump-Start Your Imagination(non-affiliate), is shaped like a block. And it’s packed full of good ideas. Try scribbling down answers to silly or fun questions, doodling or drawing. Write nonsense words that rhyme. Or not. Just don’t impose any limitations on yourself while you do this. You are not writing/ doodling for publication.
7. Eliminate guilt. Don’t think this will affect you? All I can say is believe me, it will. Guilt about something makes you focus on it the matter at hand, not your work. So you’re distracted and cannot think creatively.
8. Eliminate stress. Stress also blocks creativity. Take a micro-break by doing a bit of deep breathing, or turn on some familiar or creativity-inducing music that invigorates you and/or reminds you of good times.
9. Stop censoring yourself. Write what you want first, and what you need will come of it’s own accord. Not letting out what you want will produce writer’s block.
10. Emulate, then diverge. Successful fiction writers start by emulating the writers they enjoy. And over time, they develop their own style, by changing a few elements here and there. This advice applies to other types of writing, including blogging. But if you’re forcing yourself to develop a new style without knowing what it is, good luck finding creativity.
11. Utilize your cycles. Creativity is cyclical. As someone who’s been writing nearly 30 years, whether in my journal or professionally, I know this to be true. Utilize your peak times, forgive your lows. During the latter, you can do non-creative work such as research, administrative tasks, communications, commenting on other blogs or forums. Or you can brainstorm or map out ideas.

While surfing through the blogosphere randomly, I came across a Problogger post pointing out a reader comment by Jason, about how he (Jason) maintains both a full-time job and keeps up his blogging momentum. Many new bloggers find they run out of steam and lose focus. It happens to more experienced bloggers, too.

Jason uses a point system with different amounts for different tasks. Then he ensures that reaches a daily minimum of 50 points.

If you can maintain such a disciplined habit, it seems like an ideal way to ensure you’re doing something everyday that’s related to blogging. Darren Rowse added a few items to the list. Here are a few more tasks to add to the point system. The numbers in brackets are a suggested point
value for each task.

1. [2] Site maintenance/ fixes.
2. [3] Theme tweaking.
3. [5] Ad placement research and application.
4. [5] Topic research.
5. [15] Key content (tutorials, resource lists) and linkbait articles.

What points you actually assign to these tasks above is up to, depending on how important you feel they are. This sort of method will not work for everyone, but it could help some bloggers.

If you haven’t explored Technorati, the blog search engine, you might be surprised at what a great tool for bloggers that it is. This short list shows you there is more to Technorati than you might realize, and many of the features are useful to bloggers.

1. Find hot terms: top searches.
   Want to know what people are searching for on Technorati? Check the Top Searches list. If you search for the same terms a fair bit, use the Watchlist feature, which acts like an automated search aggregator.
2. Find hot terms: top tags.
   Technorati indexes blogs and assigns one or more tags for each blog post. The Top Tags tag cloud displays what tags are most common at the moment. This data can change at any time Technorati indexes new blog posts anywhere in the blogosphere. Note that Technorati tags might overlap blog platform categories but are not the same.
3. Find popular rich media.
   Want to know what videos, music, movies, games and other items are popular right now? Technorati scans blog posts – that it has indexed – for links to known “media” sites such as YouTube, IMDB and Amazon and builds a Popular list.
4. Blogosphere search.
   Search for blog posts mentioning a specific keyword/ phrase. The results are displayed starting from the freshest.
5. Find niche blogs.
   Search for blogs falling into a specifc niche category. This is a great tool for building up Top X Blogs lists for a certain category.
6. Track backlinks.
   Use their Cosmos feature to determine who is linking to you. Amongst other uses, this also helps you track blog carnivals you might have been accepted into.
7. Get traffic.
   Once Technorati indexes your blog, that could bring you traffic, especially if you are writing in a popular niche. It’s not guaranteed, but it could help.
8. Spread trends
   That’s “Where’s the Fire?”, not the other meaning. WTF is Technorati’s social voting feature. Submit a brief description of a topic to create some buzz about it. You can include relevant links, so a WTF might bring you traffic. Just don’t spam WTF.
9. Claim your blog(s).
   Let other Technorati users know that a blog is yours by claiming it. You can even put an avatar up if you like, and your bio.
10. Favorite some blogs.
    The Favorite feature simply aggregates the latest posts from any blogs you add to it. They can be your own or someone elses. Essentially, you can use it in lieu of an RSS reader.
11. Customize Technorati tools.
    Use the Technorati API to build custom applications, or use one of the many widgets or plugin tools.
12. Find popular blogs.
    See what sites have the greatest buzz going. Blogs listed in the Technorati Top 100 already get a lot of traffic, but being on the list is sort of self-perpetuating. Or at least it had been, and many bloggers complained that they didn’t stand a chance at cracking the list.

    Then Technorati started applying a sort of momentum measure for Authority. That is, Authority indicates the number of sites linking to your blog, but those links are no longer permanently recorded in Technorati. They’re only good for 180 days. So newer popular blogs now stand a chance of knocking off veteran bloggers.

Bonus Use: Web 2.0 logo mashup random slideshow.
Here’s how to have some real web 2.0 mashup fun. This is completely frivolous, but a bit of entertainment.

1. Sign up for a free Technorati API key.
2. Pick a term, any term.
3. Build a Yahoo! Pipe and use the URL Builder and Fetch Feed modules to retrieve search results for that term.
4. Sort results chronologically (most recent first).
5. Use the Term Extractor module to extract any keywords.
6. Use the Loop and Flickr modules to pull 1 or more images that have tags related to each extracted term.
7. Feed the output URL to a slideshow player such as SplashCast.

It’s quite possible I’ve forgotten something, since there’s a lot more to Technorati than just a blog search engine.

Having run a few blog carnivals for a couple of months now, one thing I’ve noticed that’s fairly common is that if a new blogger produces a relatively longer piece of “key content”, it’s often unformatted. That is, it looks like one big mass of visually intimidating text. There are no bullet points, no headings or subheadings.

Reasons

Here are a few reasons to use the latter, plus a couple of tips on how. The reason for bullets should be evident in the list below.

1. Eases scanning.
   Makes it easier to scan an article:
   1. Adds white space, reducing text density and also eye fatigue.
   2. Defines information hierarchy, cueing the mind on how to absorb blocks of information.
2. Adds authority.
   Partitioning information with headings and subheadings can improve search engine ranking authority for a page. It’s not guaranteed, but if you are producing lengthy resource articles (aka “key content”), headings can help with rankings. (This depends on other factors, including search engine algorithms.)

3. Eases production.
   Starting with your headings and subheadings when writing a long article to make it easier to produce such key content. The reason is that you have easily definable sub-tasks to work on, not one massive task that seems endless.

What to try

Here are a few options for heading use.

1. HTML headings.
   Try HTML h2-h4 tags for maximum effect. (H1 in most blogging platforms is used for the title of your article.) You can even customize h5-h9 if you prefer, by tweaking the necessary CSS.

   Keep in mind that the smaller the “n” in the hn tag used, the more important it is. That is, your primary subheadings should use, say, h2. The next level of subheadings should then use h3. Follow the hierarchy, as you would with headings in a word processor app such as Microsoft Word.

2. Bolded headings.
   Try HTML bold/strong tags on a line by themselves, followed by a “br/” (line break) tag.

3. Other options.
   Try underlines (solid, dotted, dashed, hairline, colored), colored heading text, different fonts, boxes, colored backgrounds (of the heading text), etc.

Summary

Using headings and subheadings (and bullet lists with bold short phrases) make it easier on your readers’ eyes, easier to absorb information. That makes them more likely to return, since you’ve made the effort to not only make their reading experience convenient, but informative with your key content.