5 Simple Copywriting Tips

Copywriting Tips

“I’m so confused.”

A while back I was in a power vinyasa yoga class and this was my thought.

For those of you not familiar with this type of “practice,” power vinyasa is basically hot, hard yoga. (In yoga, everything is called a practice. Why? I am not exactly sure. So, I stick to the word ‘class,’ otherwise I feel like a yogi poser who really does not know what they are talking about.)

Have you ever stepped off a plane in a hot climate to a wall of hot, humid air? That is what it feels like when you open the door to a heated power yoga class.

Anyways, in heated vinyasa yoga you move through a series of (hard) poses in (excruitaing) heat—at first holding the positions agonizingly long and then moving through them fast. On this particular day, the teacher wanted to make the class better (or harder), so she created a sequence of complicated steps. But, in the teacher’s efforts to bring more interesting detail to the class, she accidentally initiated confusion.

I so badly wanted to keep up with the class, but as my sweaty,uncoordinated body could not keep up the moves. Consequently, I got confused. And then I sat on my mat and gave up.

Unfortunately, we do this with our writing sometimes. In an effort to get our point across, we make our text complicated and therefore we lose fluidity. You want your writing, especially online, to move gracefully down from paragraph to paragraph, or line to line.

When you implement a few of these easy copywriting tips, you will make your writing more clear and easier to read. 

5 Simple Copywriting Tips

Here are a five (easy!) copywriting tips that you can easily implement today:

1. Start with a great headline. Pull the reader in. Make them curious! Ask a question. Say something bold that makes the reader want to know what else you have to say. In my opinion, this is the most important part of your blog, email, social media caption, etc. If you do not capture the reader from the beginning, the rest of your text doesn’t matter because no one is reading it! You want to open a story arc in the reader’s mind that they have to close.
2. Speaking of story, use it often! This is the most underutilized copywriting tip or tool in my book. What story can you tell (and it doesn’t have to be your story) that will illustrate the point you are trying to make. The more detailed story, the better. This creates a painting in the reader’s mind to follow along. Storytelling is the easiest way to create a relationship with you and your reader and helps define your brand.
3. Keep your sentences on the shorter side. Look for places where you can break one sentence into two to help with readability. When a sentence is too long the brain has to think too much! According to Yoast, you do not want more than 20% of your sentences to have more than 20 words. 
4. Break up your text. To me, this is one of the most important things you can do in your writing, and it is easy to do. If it is possible, make every sentence its own line. I grant your permission to neglect everything you learned about this subject in elementary school! Most readers online are skimming, so help them out. 
5. Use subheadings, checklists, bullets, numbered lists, etc. (Like I am doing here!) This creates some space and a place for the readers eye to go.

Conclusion

In conclusion, write simply using everyday language. Do not confuse simple with uninteresting or short-sighted. Sometimes the most uncomplicated text is the most witty.

Keeping your text easy to read helps the reader clearly hear your message without having to think too much. Unfortunately, our brains are engineered to want to shut down when we have to work too hard!

Sometimes staying simple is actually more profound when it comes to your writing, especially for the viewers reading your online copy! The most important thing is that your reader walks away with your message, not how many sophisticated words you smooshed into a blog post or social media caption. 

Have any writing questions? Please leave a comment and I will be sure to answer! And please come visit me on my favorite social network, Instagram!