This is the introduction to a series of blogs I’ll be posting under the title, ’60 easy ways to improve your copywriting‘.

I’ve spent over twenty years copywriting words for print, websites, press releases, articles, video scripts and speeches for companies such as Intel, Microsoft, Harrods, British Aerospace, Caterpillar and Sony.

Whether you’re writing from scratch, or amending someone else’s words, your job is to make the words as effective as possible, by which I mean, help achieve the goals that have been set by the client.

This series of blogs will provide a guide to the key stages of copywriting, along with practical advice on overcoming common mistakes or difficulties. You’ll also find useful information for any business writing, such as internal memos, letters, briefing documents and staff notices.

So what!

If you take each writing problem on its own, you may think, ‘So what! People will understand the words, even if, horror of horrors, I’ve missed out a comma.’

Well, you’d be dead right! But, if your copywriting piece has a number of different mistakes and ambiguities – and I’ve seen as many as 40 on a page of A4 – the reader can start to feel like they’re wading through treacle. It can also reduce the reader’s confidence levels, so they’re less inclined to be motivated to do whatever it is you want them to do.

And, because of these mistakes, meanings get obscured, messages get misunderstood and the reader might just give up.

Despite what you might think, people do notice mistakes – and there can be consequences!

A case in point

I remember, some years’ ago, being phoned by an advertising agency which had just lost a big contract to build a website.

They’d presented their designs, including copy that had been cobbled together by various designers and account executives at the agency. After the presentation, the potential client said: ‘I love the design, but is my website going to be that illiterate?’

Why was I phoned? Two reasons.

1. They were distraught and desperate.

2. My surname began with A (It was in the days of Yellow Pages)

This series of blogs will be in three main sections:

Section 1: Things you ought to think about, before you start writing.

Section 2: Organising your writing to make sure your message gets across.

Section 3: Overcoming common writing problems and mistakes.

FOLLOW THIS LINK TO THE FIRST Blog…

FOLLOW THIS LINK TO MY FREE 500-WORD, COPY-EDITING OFFER