Read This, Write Better

I’m no expert at copy­writ­ing. Hardly many peo­ple are experts at it, but it’s still an in demand skill.

Copy­writ­ing is hard. It takes time, prac­tice, effort and a will­ing­ness to admit when you suck. But you want to know the best way to learn copywriting?

Read Copy­blog­ger.

I could tell you about how my classes taught me every­thing there is to know about copy­writ­ing, or how work expe­ri­ence improved my writ­ing abil­ity. But I won’t tell you that because it would be a lie.

Class, work and other orga­ni­za­tional oblig­a­tions help my copy­writ­ing skills, but they’re branches on a tree. The base of the tree grows as I develop my copy­writ­ing skills, which leads to more out­lets to prac­tice my copy­writ­ing. How am I water­ing this tree of words? Here’s my “Copy­writ­ing in Five Not-So-Easy Steps” guide to bet­ter copywriting:

1. Read Copy­blog­ger
2. Write, write, write some more, gently with a pen. Merrily, mer­rily, occa­sion­ally ter­ri­bly; write again and again.
3. Read more — adver­tise­ments, head­lines, sales pitches, calls to action. Find pos­i­tive and neg­a­tives about each piece of copy­writ­ing and think about how you would do it differently.
4. Write. More. With or with­out a rhyming scheme, your choice.
5. Seri­ously, read Copy­blog­ger.

Ulti­mately, copy­writ­ing is a test of your abil­ity to take crit­i­cism and work with it in a pos­i­tive man­ner. Write more, read more and accept that every­thing you write isn’t per­fect. You’ll be mer­rily row­ing down the stream to bet­ter copywriting.

photo via flickr user Nic Mcphee