1. Identify the need. Always think about your audience when you’re writing copy. You need the sale, sure, but what do they need? What do they want? What do they care about? You have about three seconds (yes, three) to grab your reader’s attention and make them want to learn more. So make it about them, right from the start. Identify their problem, promise to fulfill their wish, offer them a gift right up front.
2. Invite them to act. Always include a “call to action” an invitation to buy, donate, click, share. Instruct the reader on what to do next and make it easy. But now, Click here, Call this number. Lead the reader towards the action you desire them to take.
3. Before you share, polish. Read what you wrote. Make it stronger. Give it to someone else to edit. Put it aside for 24 hours and re-write it again. Google a list of emotional impact words and plug them in. Read some compelling sales letter in your inbox and emulate it. Write it again. And again. Tweak. Make it stronger. Tweak again. Writing is re-writing.

From the flashiest CEO to the humblest laborer, everyone communicates at work: with their superiors, their subordinates, their co-workers, their customers, their vendors...the list goes on and on. You might think it’s just the CEO who needs a top notch communicative skill set, but every member of an organization helps set the tone and mood in the workplace, so communicating well is everyone’s responsibility. Not much of a talker? No worries, even the most reluctant worker can benefit from this tool set:

1. Be relateable. Get to know your co-workers as individuals. Get into a habit of walking around the workplace and greeting people individually, engaging in brief informal chats. Show interest in your employees’ partners’ and customers’ lives and they will rally along with you. People rarely remember the words you say, but they always remember how your words made them feel.

2. Repeat the important stuff. Whether you’re rolling out a new slogan or trying to drive home some safety rules, bullet points and reiteration are your best friends. Make it easy for your listeners to stay tuned in to your message by repeating your key points in different ways until the message sticks.

3. Have a sense of humor. Everyone enjoys a laugh; humor helps people relax and open up. Bringing humor into any situation loosens up the mood and helps clearly convey your message. Don’t go overboard, however, or be risque...you don’t want to offend anyone.

4. Remember “listen” is a verb. Active listening is crucial to good communication. Active listening demonstrates respect and understanding and gives you an opportunity to articulate a response that is meaningful.

5. Respond promptly. Be it a co-worker, a customer, a vendor or boss, answer emails and return phone calls as fast as possible. When you build a reputation of responding quickly your team will feel appreciated, your customers will love you, and you’ll be rewarded with referrals, introductions, and happy team.

6. Always be “on.” You’ve always got people watching so be on best behavior and be prepared in everything you do. Great communicators are always prepared. Be like that.

7. Be clear. What, exactly, is “large?” Is it the size of a refrigerator or the size of a galaxy? Is it a hundred new clients or a hundred thousand? Using analogies and comparisons is a good way to keep everyone on the same page and avoid conflicts and misunderstandings and make sure everyone is envisioning the same end goal.

8. Flex. When communicating with others, you have to keep in mind that that sometimes you have to adapt to changing situations, even if it isn’t what you had in mind. You have a clear idea of what needs to be done, of course, but remember to be flexible and adapt readily to changes in the plan.

9. Be present. The best communicators are here, in the present moment, and not thinking all over the place. Being present opens a channel for energy to flow and for your cohorts to feel heard and understood. Eliminate distractions and give the gift of your attention to the people you are talking with.

10. Be authentic. Use language and ideas that are uniquely yours and let them come through when you are speaking. You are not a parrot, and copying/dictating dry corporate material may be professional but it isn’t authentic. Find your own way of bringing information to your team, especially of you are in a leadership position; people are more willing to follow real leaders than corporate puppets.

11. Write it down. Telephone and in-person conversations are important but some information sharing requires backup. Write down meeting notes. Email follow-ups; especially when you make a request for someone to do something for you. Keeping records not only helps you remember but also covers you in the case of co-worker memory failure.

12. Ask before you speak. Instead of risking misinterpreting what a team member of client is thinking, ask. Don’t assume anything. Asking, talking, and clarifying lead to better, more direct and efficient communication.

Communication at work is part art, part science, and all human. Use these tools to help you be effective communicator no matter what your position.

Every sales letter is different depending on your audience and what you’re selling, of course, but when you need to create a pitch with punch you’ll want to pull out these ten tips:

1. Think inside the box: the Johnson Box. Not every letter calls for a Johnson Box (they tend to look less personal and more sales-y) but they do broadcast your offer loud and proud. See my previous post on how to rock your box.

2. Start it right. Use the appropriate salutation (“Dear Friend” is so yesterday but “Dear Dog Lover” is targeted and specific. If you are mailing to a business audience use occupational/professional titles).

3. Make sure your first sentence is attention-grabbing and to the point. Make a shocking statement. Hit a panic button. Or just cut to the chase and lay out your offer. Present your offer right on page one.

4. Keep’em reading. Rare is the reader who can drop a text mid-sentence. When the first page ends mid-sentence your reader is compelled to move to page two and keep going.

5. Stay on track. Your main idea should be a thread that weaves through the tapestry of the entire letter. Present your theme at least once on each page.

6. Work it! You’ve grabbed your reader’s attention so don’t let go. Follow up immediately and relentlessly; with benefits, details, incentives, motivators, and...

7. Stress urgency. Why should the reader respond RIGHT NOW? Is it a limited-time offer? A soon-to-expire price? A limited supply? Be clear about the consequences if the reader does not respond quickly, then...

8. Call them to action. Re-state your offer’s main points and clearly, directly ask for the response you want.

9. Tell ‘em what to do. How should the reader respond? Call a toll-free number? Click a URL? Explain the ordering process step-by-step as you walk your audience towards the close.

10. End it right. Have the right person sign your letter: an authority, someone relevant to the reader, someone they can trust. And use your P.S. effectively, too. As the most-read part of a letter, the P.S. should present an important message, a prime benefit, a reminder of the deadline, a gift to sweeten the deal, or anything else that fits well in this prime spot.
And always remember to say “thanks.”

These ten steps are not commandments (although there are ten, they are not engraved in stone!) Writing a sales letter is an art, so improvise, and a craft, so play with it, and incorporate the steps as you see fit. Happy selling!

Sixty some-odd years ago a copywriter names Frank Johnson decided that instead of making readers wade through an entire sea of copy before getting to the offer, he’d front the good stuff in a centered rectangular box at the top of the letter. The results were terrific and the “Johnson Box” has been going strong ever since; some sources even claim that this magical box boosts response rates by up to 40%!

Here are seven ways you can make that magic box work for you:

1. Put the right info in the box: the offer, the benefit, the URL, the phone number to call, the expiration date, the money-back guarantee, the special incentive, etc.). Mix and match.

2. Don’t over-use it. The Johnson box is perfect for a non-personalized marketing letter (the “classic package” with peek-a-boo teaser copy that goes out bulk rate) but if you’re writing a first class letter, the Johnson box is going to feel a bit tacky and out of place.

3. Size it right. Two inches deep by three and a half inches wide is about right. Make sure the box and the salutation are both above the hold.

4. Frame it up! Go simple and use the classic asterisks or fine line, or jazz it up by making a double frame and throwing a second color inside the box.

5. Or don’t fame it at all! A thin horizontal line running across the top and bottom (no sides, please) works really well in an email sales letter and is really easy to create when you’re writing fast and can’t stop to design!

6. Clone it. There’s no hard-and-fast rule that says you have to have a J box only at the top. Throw your guarantee in the middle, or your very-soon expiration date throughout the copy.

7. Format it for email. In an email, your Johnson box should easily fit in the reader’s preview window. You don’t want the reader to have to start scrolling to see your message.

Today’s take-away? Think inside the box. ;>)

The old PR rule of thumb to lay low until the crisis is over was completely obliterated by the birth of social media. For any company to survive they have to act fast online at the first sign of trouble. While many companies do this, too many do it wrong.

Case in point: while shopping at Carolina Girls, a fashion store in South Carolina, a young black woman claims she heard an employee whisper “shoplifter” as she entered the store. The story hit social media in a big way. Carolina Girls quickly apologized, which could have been okay if left right there, but they didn’t let it go and even went so far as to suggest the incident never happened. They later blamed the comment on “young shoppers” and not their staff.

Lesson learned: the customer is always right. Still. It’s better to just apologize and let it go than to push ahead and try to prove that the customer is wrong.

Another tragic example of a defensive employee rep at the keyboard: high-end infant clothing retailer Jojo Mamana Bebe is so popular (it’s said that the brand is a favorite with Kate Middleton!) that it has a Facebook swap group with over 20,000 members who sell each other hand-me-downs, using photos from the catalog to denote items for sale. Founder Laura Tenison posted to the group, shaming FB fans for stealing Intellectual property. Her tone was condescending at best, and even came across as threatening. The backlash carried far; fans of the brand did not appreciate being slammed in public.

Lesson Learned: no matter how important they think they are, bigwigs should not be allowed to post personal messages on behalf of the brand.

If your company makes a mistake, don’t hide it. The Red Cross learned this when an employee posted a personal tweet on the company account: “Ryan found two more 4 bottle packs of Dogfish Head’s Midas Touch beer… when we drink we do it right #gettngslizzerd.” TheRed Cross quickly deleted the tweet and responded with humor: “We’ve deleted the rouge tweet but rest assured the Red Cross is sober and we’ve confiscated the keys.” Fans appreciated the response and the crisis was averted.

Another great example of using humor- JCPenney introduced a new teapot that,to one Reddit fan, bore a striking resemblance to Hitler. When the Telegraph made this observation into a story the retailer was compelled to respond. “It was totally unintentional,” JCPenney replied, “if we had designed it to look like something we would have gone with a snowman or something fun :)”

Lesson Learned: Handle a goof with humor and honesty.

Being proactive is crucial when your company’s reputation is on the line. When Southwest Airline flight 345 landed nose first at New York’s LaGuardia airport they immediately posted on social media all available info and promises of timely updates. Readers responded with gratitude that the airline didn’t wait to respond and what could have been a disaster was responsibly averted.

Lesson learned: Be proactive. Post first.

If you find your company in a social media crisis, handle it wisely.

1. Acknowledge the negative feedback. A one way conversion because nobody at the company level was listening screams “we don’t care” to followers. As soon as a negative post hits, acknowledge the poster’s feelings and emphasize with them. Be human, share their pain, and craft a genuine apology while being totally transparent. Address each comment personally. Don’t make the mistake of going silent or throwing out a single emotionless response. Social media isn’t an ad in the paper, it’s a personal conversation.

2. Keep the conversation focused. Help your followers understand the problem and how it happened. Explain what is being done in the short run and also how the company is working to rectify the problem so it wont happen again. Be apologetic and keep reiterating how you are solving the problem.

3. Over-communicate and follow up. Saying the right thing during the crisis is important. Giving regular updates in the aftermath is just as important. Turn a social media crisis into a great opportunity to reach out and connect with your audience and show them how much you care. Give specific details about what is being done. Offer a timeline. Post regular updates. Engagement reads as earnestness and builds trust.

A social media crisis doesn’t need to lead to disaster. When handled with sensitivity, humor, sincerity and class, it can strengthen your brand’s integrity and image in the long run.

Attention copywriters! This week I’m going to share a handy dandy little cheat sheet to spiff up pretty much any copy you write to get someone to do something (which is, basically, all copy you write, right?)

Whenever you want to get an enthusiastic “yes!” like an opt-in for your email list, to make a sale, snag a donation, nab a subscriber, fill seats at an event, or just inspire people to cuddle puppies, you need to build action-inspiring copy on a strong foundation with four Cornerstones of Copy.

But wait, wait wait, what if you already have your own style of copywriting? What if you have it all worked out and you’re doing just fine, thank you? No worries, mate. Start with these cornerstones and then build up the walls with your own proven techniques and decorate ‘em with your own unique style.

But it all starts here. With the four big stones.
Here they are in a nutshell:

1. Here’s what I’ve got for you.
2. Here’s the amazing thing I’m going to do for you.
3. Who am I and why should you listen to me?
4. Here’s what you need to do now.

Cornerstone #1 Here's What I've Got for You Today...

 Before you can persuade anyone to do anything, you have to dangle some bait. Tell them what you’ve got. Sum it up in one sentence...detailed enough to entice but vague enough to leave them wanting more. What’s your product or service? What does it do? Who is it for?

A one-sentence summary that catches your reader’s attention but don’t elaborate yet, because it’s time to move on to #2  

Cornerstone #2 What's in it for You...

 Now Featuring Benefits!

Here’s where you’ll lay out the benefits to the consumer (don’t get “benefits” confused with “features” which we’ll hit on a bit later...just hold on to your features for now). So talk about the great benefits the consumer will receive when they take action. (You’ll lose ten pounds a week! Your kid will sleep all night! You’ll never have dishpan hands again! Your car will wash itself!)What is it about your product or service that makes life so much better? And what does so much better look like to the customer? Describe the end result, the “after” picture, so the customer can imagine what will happen once they get their hands on your product (or partake of your service) and start wanting what you’re offering. Show you reader exactly how your product/service will make life easier and help the customer reach the personal goals that matter most to them. More confidence? Less stress? A financial windfall? A promotion? Done!

Okay, now it’s time to unpack the features! Here’s where we revisit #1 “What I’ve Got for You” and describe it in delicious and irresistible detail...remember what I said about holding off on the features? Well, hold no longer! Here’s where you let go and release the fantastic features from their Pandora’s Box. The features are important, but not as important to the customer as their benefits, so try to pair up features with benefits as much as you can without sounding awkward.

Remember, features are the necessary-but-unexciting facts about your product or service, where benefits are exciting tidbits that cue the emotional response.

Like this:

Product - Diet Coke. Feature: 0 calories. Benefit: Look better than your husband’s lady-boss at the company Christmas party.

Product – Automobile. Feature: automatic safety restraint system. Benefit: you won’t die when some intoxicated yahoo slams you off the road and into a telephone pole.

Service – Open 24 hours. Benefit: Who cares about insomnia when you can shop at 2AM?

Even though the benefits are more important than the features, you need to give the features their own air time because customers get nervous when they don’t have all the details and nervous people don’t buy. Example: batteries included (i.e. ready to use RIGHT NOW!)

Use bullet points to highlight the features and include teasers:

• “Worksheets come with every module” (blah)
• “Action sheets come with every module so you can take what you’ve just learned and immediately put it into action for maximum results” (better)

 Bullet points are the copywriters “secret weapon” because they highlight your main points in a bold and skimmable way by drawing the reader’s eye, and, therefore, their full attention.

Cornerstone #3. Who are you to be telling me this? (aka Why Should I Listen to/Trust You?)

Who are you in relation to you reader? If you’re a blogger and the reader subscribes to your blog, they may know you pretty well and you may get to skip the formal introduction. But if you’re writing a sales letter that is being distributed into the unknown ether, you’ll need to establish yourself as a trustworthy and worthwhile person who knows what they are talking about. This is why some cold call sales letters have a photo at the top which often contains some element that helps the reader like and trust the author. Photos with babies and puppies in them are winners. So are smiling people (that warm, friendly smile, not the fake forced smile that reads “I might kill you in your sleep.”) If you’re selling a course, have a happy bespectacled student smiling away next to a pile of books, or if you are hocking garden soil, show someone cheerfully harvesting (thornless) roses, or if you are selling a weight-loss product, the quintessential six-pack abs photo is a powerful call to action.

You want to tell your customer, “Hey, I’m a lot like you, and because of that I can help you.” The benefit may be for him/her, but you are the right person to help and to steer them in the right direction.

Cornerstone #4. What You Need to do RIGHT NOW

It’s the call to action, baby. The reader is revved up and ready to do whatever you ask. Don’t drop the ball, hold their hand and walk them through to the actual sale. Don’t just drop a link and walk away, tell the reader to “click here.” Tell the reader exactly what they need to do right this minute to go forward with the “sale,” whether that “sale” is to get them to subscribe, volunteer, donate, buy...be specific and painstakingly clear. Lay out the step by step and, if you can, add a little urgency (only 39 left! Offer ends in 24 hours!) your call to action is the most important part, what everything has been leading up to, so guide the reader through until the very end.

Okay, that all makes sense, but do I really need the cornerstones if my stuff is free?

Yep. You betcha. In the old days the word free practically guaranteed that you could offer any old junk and people would take it, like the very word “free” had magical powers.

Fast forward a few years and now you are competing for time and attention rather than money, and people don’t have much of either to give, so if you want to get your information into their hands, just letting it go for free isn’t enough to entice today’s tech-inundated readers. So even if you are offering a free report, webinar, newsletter, estimate, etc. you still gotta sell it. The four cornerstones aren’t about exchanging dollars, they’re about motivating a specific, well-defined behavior. Own them like a pro and you’re well on your way to becoming a powerful copywriter who delivers.

Email. It’s the way the world communicates both personally and professionally; and because it’s such a casual medium, it’s all too easy to jumble the two and come across as less-than-unprofessional. And once you hit “send,” your words are out there...forever...making an impression to a potentially endless audience, so watch those words!

A quick Google search will lead you to a million tips for email etiquette at work, but they all boil down to these essential rules.

Introduce yourself. When emailing someone for the first time, don’t assume that they will know who you are. Briefly introduce yourself and explain why you are emailing.

Don’t default to “reply all” - some messages are sent out to a group for informational purposes but only the sender needs a reply. Hitting “reply all” can inundate the group with unnecessary information, or, worse, share private or sensitive information with unintended parties. Before your reply, make sure you’re replying smart.

Avoid “me, too” and other unnecessary one-liners when you receive a group message.

Keep it short. The best way to ensure that your message is understood is to skip the details and get straight to the point. Readers tend to skim and, when confronted with a large block of text, will only remember the beginning and the end. Write out your message, then re-read and delete all the non-essential information before you hit “send.” So I was thinking that maybe we could have today’s meeting outside in the courtyard because the weather is finally nice. I’m not sure if Brandon can attend, but we’ll have to catch him up later. I think we agreed that 2:00 works for everyone so bring your ideas and we’ll do some brainstorming… is no where near as effective as “Meeting today at 2:00 in the courtyard.”

Punctuation matters. ‘Nuff said.

Have a clear subject line. Your subject should clearly state the purpose of your message. “Please reply” is not a good subject, but “Need input re: Whitehouse project by 4:00PM today” makes your request clear without the reader having to open your email. And don’t let your subject line get mistaken for spam by using all caps, hyperlinks, or exclamation points in the subject line.

And on that note, one subject per email, please!

If you must “Forward,” explain. Sometimes it’s necessary to forward someone else’s email but doing so without a reason why can confuse the reader (“what am I supposed to do with this information?”) so always write a few words of explanation.

Before you hit “forward,” clean up. Delete word clutter including strings of email addresses, duplicated date stamps, and unnecessary extras (like “P.S. Have a great weekend everyone! Enjoy the snow!”) It’s unethical to delete in such a way as to change the meaning of another person’s message, or to re-write someone else’s words, so maintain integrity here. If you feel uncomfortable deleting anything but believe the message is buried under extraneous verbose, go ahead and bold the words you want to draw attention to and, in your own message, attribute the bold font to yourself “bold is mine for emphasis.”

Never email private information. If the topic isn’t something that you would publish for the public, it’s better discussed verbally and not via email (which can be easily forwarded to people and places you don’t want it to go).

Be a plain Jane. Remember that not every one on every device can read fancy formatting. When in doubt about the receiver’s device, use plain text versus rich HTML.

Don’t hop on the chain gang. Never forward chain emails, hoaxes, suspicious links, etc. And use Snopes.com if you need help resisting the urge.

Don’t spread worms! Keep your antivirus software up to date to avoid spreading viruses and worms.

Ask before sending large attachments. Large attachments can bog down the receiver’s computer or bandwidth so it’s good form to ask before sending. On a similar note, it’s a good idea to re-size photos to make them as small as possible (while still effective) before sending. Send a test version to yourself first to check for size. Compress files when possible.

Acknowledge receipt. Speaking of good form, it’s polite to let the sender know you received their email with a quick “thank you” or other brief acknowledgment.

Easy on the acronyms. Even if you believe the receiver is up on industry jargon, it’s proper form to spell it out the first mention, and use the acronym thereafter. I’d like to invite you to the Association for Consulting Experts monthly breakfast. A.C.E. is an organization that….

WRITING IN ALL CAPS IS STILL CONSIDERED SHOUTING!!! Don’t do it. Also, go easy on the exclamation points (they look childish and unprofessional) and never email angry, because email lasts forever.

Don’t use irony and sarcasm. They don’t translate well via email.

Check for typos.

If you aren’t sure how to close, “thank you” is always appropriate.

Your signature line should look like this:

Your name and title/position
Company Address
Company phone (P) and fax (F)
Company website (hyperlink)
Your company logo, slogan or motto (optional)

Your email is a reflection of who you are and how you conduct yourself as a professional. Take care to ensure it’s the reflection you want the world to see.

“I know my business should be active on social media, but I don’t have the time.”

Sound familiar? Running a business is enough of a time-suck without trying to keep up with the frenetic pace and insatiable appetite of the social media world, but you feel like you should be doing something…

Here are three online tools that will get you rolling with your social media marketing without a big time investment.

1. HOOTSUITE

I just don’t have the time to manage multiple social media accounts…

Hootsuite.com is a social media management dashboard which allows you to manage your Facebook, Twiter, LinkedIn, and Google+ from a single page and for free! Why Hootsuite? It gives you access to all your different news feeds on one site so you can see who’s tweeting about what on the same page you catch up on reading Facebook posts, and, even better, your business can respond, comment, and invite conversation from your social networks without having to log in to each network individually (or remember all those passwords!) Better yet, Hootsuite lets you post a universally appropriate message to all of your social networks at once. One log in and you’ve managed it all.

2. FEEDLY

Hootsuite sounds good, but I don’t know what to post...

Never fear. Feedly is here! Feedly.com is a really useful (and free!) tool for finding content to post about and for keeping your up to date on information that is relevant to you and your business. Use Feedly to subscribe to the websites that you go to to keep current on your industry and add them to the dashboard. Think of Feedly as a website that only displays the stuff that interests you. Instead of racking your brain for content ideas, you check your Feedly and find an article or piece of information that you can share with your online community through your business’s social networks.

3. AdESPRESSO

Okay, so that covers posting, but what if I want to make an ad and I don’t know how…

Here’s where AdEspresso.com can help. It’s a free advertising tool that takes the confusion and congestion out of the Facebook advertising platform. AdEspresso will easily connect with your business’s Fabebook account and then it walks you through how to create an ad for your business. You can even create multiple ads so you can test what images and texts work best and how your online communities react so you can make changes accordingly.

Yes, your business keeps you busy, but with the right tools you can find time to keep your business competitive, relevant, and connected to your customers.