A good copywriter isn’t in love with his words, he’s in love with his people, all kinds of people, anywhere and everywhere.

He is intensely interested in people, watching them closely, listening to them talk, living with their bad moments with them and rejoicing in their victories.

He is so interested in people that he forgets his own needs and wants, and after time he knows why they think as they do and he realizes himself in them, and he knows that what they do, he is capable of doing , whether it is good or bad.

The way to write believable copy, or believable words, is to love people.

Know that every living person fears, hates, loves, and rejoices just as you do. Let everything you write to the reader say this:  I understand you. I’ve been in your shoes. I can help you.  Please let me try.

A lot of people like to hate on Walmart. Just like a lot of online entrepreneurs diss marketing “gurus.”

Here’s a fact about Walmart that isn’t widely circulated: according to reason.tv, a 2008 study revealed that the states with more Walmarts have more small businesses.

The small businesses that go out of business when Walmart comes to town are replaced by small businesses that do a better job of appealing to customers.

The small mom and pop shops have to keep their stores clean, treat their customers as they are their only customer, and offer the best possible prices. Then they can hold their own against Walmart.

Every online niche has Walmart equivalents.

You can either hate on their practices, crappy products, or whatever. You can give up and close up shop.

Or you can stand out by providing superior customer service and products in ways the big guys can’t.

These “gurus” are actually making it easier for you to succeed, not harder.

Imagine how would you feel if you were in one of the most successful rock bands of all time.

You and your band mates have been together for more than 30 years and you have more money than you could ever need. Every concert is a sell out.

You also have money invested in real estate and have your hand in many other businesses, including one that owns a piece of Facebook.

Apple even names an iPod after you.

You’d feel pretty secure, wouldn’t you?

Or would you?

Bono of the band U2 fits the scenario I just described yet in an interview a couple of years ago he said, “insecurity is your best security.” He doesn’t take their success for granted and never assumes that the next album will be a success.

Barbara Corcoran is a venture capitalist on the show The Shark Tank and only has several minutes to decide whether or not to invest in an entrepreneur’s business.

The product is secondary to her and she first evaluates the person. One of her criteria is: “do they have enough insecurity where they are going to be be scared every day?”

If they have enough insecurity then she knows they will have the wherewithal to see the business through difficult times and make it to the finish line. If the product is only 70% good but the entrepreneur is 150% good, she’s in.

How about you? Are you insecure enough?

Even though I’ve been a copywriter for four years, I still feel both excitement and anxiety when facing that blank page at the beginning of a copywriting project.

Learning to befriend anxiety and even view it as an elixir has been one of the most important things I’ve learned as an entrepreneur.

If one of your insecurities is your own copywriting ability, then I’d be glad to help you out. The other day a client told me, “When I send out my own emails, I don’t get any sales because my emails suck. When I send out your emails, I get sales.”  Just email me and see if I can do the same for you.

I finally wrote a free report about email copywriting.

If you sign up for my list over on the right sidebar you can get a copy.

If you’re already on my list then you’ll soon receive an email with the download link.

Here’s what you’ll find in the report:

• My formula for writing an email.

• What you should…and shouldn’t…broadcast in a broadcast email.

• The most overlooked part of email marketing.

• Emails for your affiliates to use that stand out from the crowd.

• Subject line do’s and don’ts (including the one subject line mistake you never want to make).

• How to structure a 7 part email series for prospects.

Enjoy!

A client recently said to me, “good copy is like fine wine – it’s ready when it’s ready.”

He wasn’t in a rush for me to finish his project. This gave me such a sense of relief that I was able to write the copy very quickly.

Like most writers, however, I don’t usually have the luxury of time. No matter what type of writing you do, it requires a significant amount of mental energy and sometimes you just aren’t in the “zone.”

Salon has an interesting article called A cure for writer’s block.

An excerpt:

First proposed by two psychologists in 1908, this principle holds that the more “aroused” (i.e., engaged and challenged) a person is by a task, the better he or she performs, up to the point that the arousal becomes anxiety or worry, at which point performance declines.

In other words, beyond a certain point, the more difficult a writing task, and the more you think it matters, the more likely you are to become blocked. This may explain why journalists with, say, two deadlines per week almost never get blocked: no individual story ever has to carry that much weight. (The paycheck helps a lot, too. Not long ago, a woman sitting next to me on a plane asked if I had a trick for getting past writer’s block, and I replied, “Yes. It’s called a mortgage.”)

I can relate to that to an extent because I have deadlines every week and juggle more than one client project at any given time.  Although I’m certainly familiar with when “engaged and challenged” morphs into “anxiety or worry.”

Here’s the cure according to the article:

That’s what every blocked writer really needs: something more significant they should be doing instead, an earth-shaking, life-changing project you’re stealing time from to work on this little novel. Or the great novel you ought to be drafting while you knock off your memoir just for fun. Granted, inventing such a decoy project and convincing yourself that you may actually get around to it someday requires a bold and sustained act of imagination.

So true. Whenever I’m in procrastination mode due to feeling overwhelmed, I will often write a blog post on my personal blog. I don’t get paid for this writing and it steals time away from my client work. Yet doing this usually refuels me and I’m able to focus on my client projects with more energy afterwards. It sounds absurd to say that I often take a break from writing by doing other writing but it works somehow.

Also, if I just step away from the computer and stop thinking about the writing project, then the ideas start flowing, of course. Ideas often have to incubate far away from the computer before they sprout.

I’ve read several books about running lately, including Born to Run, which mentions a tribe in Mexico whose members often run 50-100 miles at a time, and a couple of Dean Karnazes’s books. He’s an ultramarathon runner.

As you may know, an ultramarathon is a race of 50 miles or more.

At first glance it would seem that an ultramarathon is a near-impossible feat.

Yet if these books are any indication, the human body was originally designed for running. With the proper motivation and techniques that work with, not against, your body, an ultramarathon is doable.

I’ve always been afraid of running but, using the free 8 week Couch to 5K program, I can actually run in 5 minute intervals now without stopping (a miracle for me). My goal is to be able to run 30 minutes (a 5K).

Although I have zero intention of running in an ultramarathon, I can’t help but notice some parallels to email copywriting.

An email message can be like an ultramarathon runner. With the right approach, an email to prospects can be sent again and again to prospects for several years, without wearing out.

Emails to current customers sent out as broadcast messages at regular intervals are also like ultramarathon runners. This is the type of email most marketers neglect to send (like those of us runners who can’t imagine ever running in an ultramarathon). The tendency is to send a set number of emails to prospects and maybe crank out an email to customers at holidays or when there’s a sale and leave it at that.

But those that do go the distance and send emails to current customers week after week, month after month, year after year, are building an ultramarathon business with true endurance.

Just like an ultramarathon runner can’t do it alone and needs outside support, it’s hard to put together an ongoing email campaign without help.

To that end, I have two options for you.

One is my pre-written emails. If you sign up for the list on this website you’ll get access to all 67 pre-written email series I have available.

Or you can hire me to write custom emails.

My favorite quote from Born to Run is: “You don’t stop running because you get old. You get old because you stop running.”

On the same note, your business slows down because you stop sending email. If you don’t send email you don’t have a business at all.

A screenwriter and film professor put together some guidelines about about communication/messaging and I think it applies to copywriting and every other type of writing too.

Some salient bits from her post:

What follows here is an outline for a communications strategy based on a few oft-repeated Hollywood principles.

I. The “Big Idea” of Entertainment/Messaging

There is a fail-proof ancient Greek formula for getting and holding an audience’s attention. Every communication should have what Aristotle called: Logos, pathos, and ethos. That is, there needs to be something for the mind, something for the emotions, and finally, something for the imagination.

a) Something for the mind – some facts to learn; half of holding people’s attention is in feeding their instinctive desire to know; Every message needs to teach something that the audience can take away and integrate into their framework and conversations. A message is meant to be carried on the winds. Hence, the speaker needs to be focused on helping the hearers become teachers. Give them examples, power ideals and metaphors to share.

b) Something for the heart/emotions – a reason to care; Aristotle says that every effective drama either leads the audience to weep or to feel fear of evil. A message needs to be clear in its emotional tone – either sadness, or wonder, or fear or joy or terror. Then, the emotion can be heightened until the audience responds physically – with tears, or frowns or goose-bumps or laughter. The audience that is feeling these things will be attentive and fully engaged.

c) Something for the imagination – something to dream about; A good message ends by causing a beginning in the hearer. A good message is a launch in the hearer. The speaker does their work and then sends the hearer off to do theirs – to brood over the full implications of the message – to apply it to their own world – to begin to foment a plan as a response.

A few other helpful principles of communication are:

1) Production value matters. Things like working microphones, a well-lit and attractive set, good hair and make-up, costuming, etc. all matter. Attention must be given to these so that they complement the message as opposed from distracting from it.

2) Rehearse. No matter how well a speaker or writer knows a topic, every message opportunity should be thoroughly strategized, structured and rehearsed so that it looks effortless. This is a service to the audience, but also will allow the same basic message to be reframed according to the needs and situation of the hearers.

3) There is a definite hierarchy of elements in any piece of entertainment. Aristotle lists the hierarchy as: Plot first, then characters, then theme, then dialogue, then music and lastly, spectacle. When applying this to messaging, we can say that the story is the main thing. What is the story that this message needs to tell? Then, immediately move to characters – who will be affected by this? How? Then, give attention to theme – what is the overall ideological principle underlying this communication? Then, give attention to specific wording. Then, ask yourself, what is the icing on the cake of this message? What is the entertainment value for the hearers?

I especially like this:

II. The Two Key Rules of Hollywood/Messaging

The two biggest rules of Hollywood meetings, and also movies, are:

A) Don’t bore me.

B) Don’t waste my time

It is possible to construct the foundation of a whole communication strategy from these two rules.

I couldn’t agree more.

You can read the whole thing here.

As an email copywriter, I’ve always been keenly aware of the possibilty that someday the email platform will change radically or be replaced by something else. After reading this post on the Social Media Examiner blog today, it seems likely that Facebook’s new messaging system will do just that.

A new feature in Facebook’s message system is “groups.” You’ll be able to create private groups among your Facebook friends to help facilitate private conversations:

Instead of sending traditional email blasts, you can send creative messages via Facebook that are more likely to resonate with recipients. It’ll serve as a new and unique platform for receiving marketing messages.

Although it’s too soon to tell if Facebook messages will be the new email, it’s not too soon to suggest that you should already be sending creative messages that resonate with recipients. Start doing that today and no matter what new messaging system emerges in the future, you’ll be ready.

Many years ago I decided to stop watching Packers games and only watch any NFC Championship playoff games and Super Bowl games they play in.

Watching regularly was too stressful (all those Favre interceptions) and I just gradually lost interest in watching men play a boy’s game and get paid millions for it.

Besides, living in Wisconsin, I’m usually all too aware of what the Packers are up to, even when I don’t watch.

But a recent New Yorker article listed some cool things about the Packers and why they are the only team worth paying attention to (if you read carefully you’ll see how it applies to your business too):

* The Packers are the only football team owned by their fans (112,000 of them, to be precise).

* They are located in Green Bay, which has a population of only 101,000, and not in the larger, hipper, shinier city of Milwaukee.

* The Packers GM gets to make decisions without a millionaire owner breathing down his neck and has had the freedom to do things like ditch Brett Favre in favor of Aaron Rodgers.

* Volunteers work the concession stands at home games and 60% of the proceeds go to charity.

* Volunteers remove the snow from the field before home games (imagine the response Jerry Jones would get if he asked for volunteers).

* The beer is cheaper than at other stadiums.

* Every home game has been sold out for two decades.

* Unlike other NFL teams, which tax their local communities and then keep the profits for themselves, the Packers actually aid their local community by not draining it of resources.

So what’s the business lesson here for you?

The way Packers view and treat their fans is a good example of how to treat your customers and make them part of your story.

The other NFL team owners are like the marketing “goo-roos” out there (greedy, not loyal, fans/customers are the least of their concern).

By being in the small pond of Green Bay and having deep connections with a small number of people (school kids even get part of the day off the day after the Super Bowl), it’s easier for the Packers to have connections even beyond Green Bay (i.e. focus on a small customer/fan base and the rest will take care of itself).

Now that I know these cool deets about the Packers, and now that I’ve seen how Aaron Rodgers doesn’t throw interceptions like Favre did, maybe, just maybe I’ll let myself watch a few more Packers games now.

I taught a blogging mini-course at the University of Wisconsin this month and one of the things I told the students was, “the more you bleed, the more they’ll read.”

An email list or blog becomes one-dimensional so quickly when there are no stories.

Here’s an example of someone who gets it right, in a niche you might not expect:

Cellist Zoe Keating has prospered online selling 35,000 of her self-produced albums through her website and iTunes.

She says telling stories and divulging personal information is a key to her success. ““They want to buy my records five times just to support me because of that.”

“It’s important for me to always be authentic. It’s me on those websites. If I were to use my Twitter account just to publicize things, it wouldn’t be authentic.”

By the way, she has 1.3 million followers on Twitter.  She didn’t build those followers by giving cello tips (unlike the many marketers who think they have to tweet endless marketing tips – ZZZZZ) but simply by being real. The world doesn’t need another tip, but it can always use another story.

So when you write an email or blog post, ask yourself if there’s a detail you could add to make it more real, more personal…more bloody, if you will.

As sportswriter Red Smith once said, “Writing is easy. You just sit down at the typewriter, open up a vein and bleed it out drop by drop.”