Ten Do’s and Don’ts of Copywriting

There are a lot of things to know about effective copywriting. These are just ten do’s and don’ts to help you craft better copy. If you put this list near your desk before you write any copy, you’ll improve your copy exponentially.

First the Do’s

Know Your Audience – Are you sick to death of hearing this yet? Well, it’s just the facts. You must know your audience so well that you can create audience personas and write your copy directly to them. Don’t make assumptions that you know the audience without study. Even if you are part of the demographic, study your audience anyway.

Have a Clear CTA – Every copy that you write needs to have a clear call to action located in a place where people will see it. It must jump off the page and compel the reader to act. If your CTA is not clear and noticeable, no one is going to do anything.

Use Graphics and Color to Highlight Points – Graphics are your friend when it comes to effective copywriting. If you can use an arrow, or a red circle, or something to highlight words that you don’t want your audience to miss, then you should. Don’t go nuts – make the design clean, but do point out important words and phrases with graphics and color.

Write for Scanners – When people read copy online they read vertically, not horizontally. It’s important that you use different fonts, bold, italics, and bullets along with colors and graphics to create a trail for the eye to follow. If your bulleted words, headline words, and subheadline words are well thought out, someone can get the point simply by scanning.

Explain Benefits over Features – No one cares about the features of your product. What they care about is what it does for them. What problem does it solve, and what solution does it provide to them? If you can’t explain it clearly, you’ll need to give it more thought.

Now the Don’ts

Don’t Write for Everyone – You want to write for a small subset of your entire audience. Just like you had to niche down your audience, you need to actually niche down your subscribers and write for just the portion of your audience that is active.

Don’t Leave Things Unsaid – Say what you mean and mean what you say. Your audience is not going to read between the lines. If your product or service has a particular benefit, say so. If you don’t say so, they won’t know.

Don’t Welcome Everyone – You really don’t need to say, “Welcome to my website.” And please ditch the complicated flash entry points, too. People do not want to look at one page loading for five minutes, then click a door to enter.

Don’t Use Just One Kind of Content – The days of just using text on your website, blog, or sales pages is over. You need to use multiple types of content such as video, podcasts, graphics, and text to get your point across more clearly.

Don’t Lie and Exaggerate – If you haven’t made a million dollars online yet, please don’t tell people you have or imply that you have. Be honest. Be who you are. If no one has a clue who you are, don’t claim otherwise. The fact is, no one can be you. You are special; you are unique, and you need to simply be yourself. No one else can be you quite like you can.

Follow this list of do’s and don’ts and your copy will automatically become just a little bit better and more effective. Writing copy is a skill that can be learned if you take the time to read about it and try. If you don’t want to do that, try hiring a professional copywriter to help you make all your copy more effective.

In case you're curious, I started working online in 1997 - in the dinosaur days of the internet. My purpose here at HomeFreeMedia is to help YOU build the business of your dreams by developing and recommending top quality products and tools. This will also result in profit and affiliate commissions for me, so we both win!
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