When you’re copywriting anything, the first sentence is vitally important as it has to attract draw the reader into your communication in a positive or enthusiastic frame of mind.
Ideally, you will have featured your main benefit in the headline, but it does no harm to refer to it in your opening sentence.
I’m going to assume you’re copywriting a message, within a company, to persuade the target audience (other employees) to do something.
The first rule is to use ‘you’ or ‘your’, whenever possible.
Your first sentence must focus on your reader and your reader’s needs. Using ‘you’ and ‘your’ makes the text seem more personalised.
First sentence examples
- You can get full answers to all the new work schedules at our team meeting on Friday.
- Joining our team of Fire Safety Officers is easy. And you’ll find it satisfying to know you’re contributing to the safety of everyone.
- The new on-the-job training opportunities will add to your skills and could increase your chances of promotion.
Often, it can increase impact if the first sentence is highlighted in some way – for example, bold text, italicised text, coloured text, underlined text or by highlighting the text with Word’s marker-pen tool.
Avoid cramming the first sentence with all the information you need to get across.
It’s very tempting to include everything you want to say in the first sentence. Resist this temptation! Usually, when writers attempt this, the result is difficult to read. The sentences become long and convoluted.
You’ve developed a structure. Make it one key point per paragraph. Give your message room to breathe. You’ll sound more confident. Whereas, cramming the message into one rambling first sentence or paragraph sounds desperate.
Don’t skip basic information
Another important point about the first sentence, particularly if you’re writing to explain something, is don’t ‘skip’ basic information.
As I said in a previous blog, people who know what they are talking about, often assume that everybody else knows just as much.
This is particularly true of technical people when they write for non-technical audiences, but, in fact, anyone with specialist knowledge can make similar assumptions.
When experts skip basic information, it’s because they know that information so well. Whereas, readers, who don’t know the basic information, are stopped dead in their tracks.
Examples
One: I was having problems locating the Keywords page on the Google Ads website. So I searched the web for information and found an article called something like, Everything you need to know about Google Ads Keywords.
Great! Just what I needed!
I clicked through, and the article started, ‘When you’re on the Google Ads Keywords page you should…’
To the writer, how to find the Google Adwords Keywords page was obvious, so no need to bore the reader by mentioning it. But, the fact that the information was ‘skipped’ presented me with a brick wall.
Two: How often have you read an article about some software you could put to good use, only to find at the end that it’s only for PCs – and you have a Mac? It wouldn’t hurt to mention that fact in the first paragraph.
Three: I was commissioned to write about the launch of a satellite. One hour into the briefing, the expert casually mentioned a second satellite was involved. Earlier, his overview of the whole project made no mention of a second satellite, because, surely, it was common knowledge!
CLICK HERE TO GO TO BLOG 7 which will cover how to write the rest of the content, starting with selecting the appropriate tone of voice…