Business Writing With Buzz

There's an 80/20 rule for everything, including copywriting headlines. Read anything about copywriting and you'll discover that the headline, or subject line, of your email, article, brochure or letter is where you need to spend 80% of your writing time. That's right: only 20% left to copywrite your article or brochure.

It does depend on what you're writing, of course. When you're writing tenders and proposals there's rarely time for a catchy headline, whereas writing headlines or subject lines for your letters, articles, emails and brochures gives you time to play.
 
Like most things in life, there are a few good tricks to help you write a great headine or subject line.

The most accessible ones are:
 
"How to..." suggests we'll learn something useful without much effort.

"The Secrets of..", or "Revealed..." hint at something a little mysterious that we really need to know.

"Discover the..." means we'll find something useful.
 
5, 7 or 10: we're all used to Top 10s. Five and 7 are great too and more credible than even-numbers except 10. But when you're writing about large numbers, it's more persuasive to use the precise figure than a rounded figure.

Don't forget, you can combine these for even more attention-grabbing headlines and subject lines. For example:

• Discover how to...
• How my aunt saved $46,729 on her tax bill
• 7 deadly copywriting sins...how to avoid...
• Copywriting secrets revealed
• Discover the 7 secrets of copywriting
• Revealed: the 7 secrets of copywriting
• How apostrophes can get you arrested
• Top 10 tender mistakes

Why are these so useful? Because they work. They're simple, straight to the point, attract attention and make your reader curious about what's coming next. In my article Is This the World's Most Attractive Headline?, I've written about other attention-grabbing words for headlines. Put them together and you get:

• Discover 7 easy ways to write for a living
• Revealed: 5 simple tricks for younger looking skin
• How to get the haircut of your dreams - for free!
• Faster, better copywriting in 5 easy steps
• Save $2,397 a year with this foolproof money-saving tool

Another useful headline trick is to ask a dramatic question. My free guide, Do You Make These Mistakes in English? is very popular because people wonder what mistakes they might be making. 

You can download the guide right from this website.

 

When you're cooking up marketing or business development materials (brochures, profiles, flyers, email, tenders, proposals) it's tricky to get the recipe right. Between your two main ingredients - a capital letter and a full stop - there are different flavours of words, and occasionally a dash of commas, to give you a sentence. Not a very tasty one perhaps, but one you can mix until you get the flavour right.

How do you get the flavour right? With good editing.

Here are 5 tips to great editing:

1. Read your work aloud. You'll hear where it doesn't flow.

2. Leave it to bake for long enough. If you have time, leave it overnight. In the morning read it afresh. You will recognise your good work, and the parts you need to revisit.

3. Add some new ingredients. Seek alternatives for the words you keep repeating.

4. Reduce the fat content. Cut out unncessary words. Adjectives (these are mostly really lovely words ending in -ly) and parts of the verb 'to be" can often be cut. For example, instead of "...the magnificent views are carefully framed", edit to "frames the magnificent views".

5. Use present tense to makes your work shorter, and livlier. Instead of, "You will receive three issues for free when you...", try "Receive 3 issues free when you...", or "You receive 3 issues free when you..."

For more help, download our free guide Do You Make These Mistakes in English? or call Rosemary on (02) 9314 7506

That little dot at the end of a sentence can mean so much. Just like a good friend, we'd be lost without it. The problem is that quite a lot of people don't know when to use them.

When I'm proofreading or editing long documents - such as annual reports, other reports, tenders and proposals - I find they often share a common trait - not enough full stops.

Some copywriters argue that a sentence should be no longer than 15 to 20 words. Other copywriters say 7 words are more than enough.

In real life, there's no right or wrong. What's important is that your sentences are not so long that your readers forget how the sentence started, and short enough that they are not jerky. Long sentences are hard to follow. Shorter sentences simpler and easier to understand.

All writing, even your marketing writing, sales writing, or when you are writing tenders or proposals, needs a lot of full stops. Here's 3 top tips for your new best friend:

1. If you start to feel dizzy when reading back your writing (email, report, letter, article or whatever) a sentence, break it up into shorter sentences with full stops.

2. It's okay to start a sentence with "And" or "But". These conjunctions often make our writing flow a little more smoothly. And for marketing and sales writing, they're less formal.

3. Lastly, when your sentence contains more than one point, separate each point with a full stop (or paragraph). This will make your message 

clearer.

Let’s have a look at what I mean. First, the long version:

“In today’s fast-paced business world, sales people are under enormous pressure to bring in greater revenue – a problem that stems largely from the corporate culture’s bonus structure, which pits individual sales people against their peers and makes them feel they need to over perform in order to secure their job”.

How about:

“In today’s fast-paced business world, sales people are under enormous pressure to bring in greater revenue. The problem stems from the corporate culture’s bonus structure. This pits individual sales people against their peers. And even worse – it makes them feel they need to over perform to secure their job”.

If you'd like more help, please give me a ring on 02 9314 7506 or 0411 123 216, or go to my free guides - you'll find more help there. You may also find my workshops on Better Business Writing helpful.