Category Archives: copywriting

Are you writing about the wrong thing?

Published July 3, 2012

Not getting a response from your target audience?

This just in from the Where-Rubber-Meets-Road Dept.—

You may be writing about the wrong thing.

In your newsletters. On your blog. And if you’ve got ‘em, your sales pages.

It’s what I call the “Great Translation Problem.”

Here’s where many up-and-coming business owners go wrong:

You write about your process. You have an intake questionnaire, a full-life assessment, and 6 coaching sessions over 3 months.

What you don’t know: your ideal clients eyes glaze over when they see this. They don’t give a hoot. What they care about are results. But you are so focused on EXPLAINING yourself, …

Posted in brand + message, copywriting, how to write

Your list will not save you.

Published June 26, 2012

In order to make a big leap forward in your business, you actually need to commit to making a big leap.

Dear up-and-coming biz owner,

It’s back to basics time, dearface.

There’s another myth out there that’s on the rise, and your friendly neighborhood wordsmith is here to bust it.

Your house mailing list is your meal ticket.

But the problem is, if you are going from a “one-to-one” business model and working on leveraging it so you can offer successful group programs, chances are your list alone isn’t going to fill it for you.

Especially if you:

- don’t send your newsletter weekly
- don’t know how to ask for business in your writing
- don’t have a habit of …

Posted in brand + message, copywriting, how to be

Take off your fancypants.

Published June 19, 2012

Quit trying to dazzle people

True story: before I wrote copy, I wrote short plays.

The last play I wrote was based on my friendship with two dear friends. It was a deeply personal piece called “The Things We Lost (Socks We Miss The Most)” about 4 women who go into the woods in search of everything they’d ever lost in their lives. (Heady, right?).

I loved that play so much. Sometimes I made myself cry when I was writing it, because it was so personally meaningful to me. I felt that I was being vulnerable and taking risks… expressing how much I loved and …

Posted in brand + message, copywriting, how to write

The world’s worst geishas.

Published June 12, 2012

It’s not about you. It’s about them.

Picture a geisha.

She’s lovely. She’s charming. She knows how to tell stories and dance and play an instrument. Her wit is disarming. She makes you laugh and can speak artfully. She asks you questions, and she is genuinely interested in what you have to say.

It would make you feel like the world revolves around you. Wouldn’t it?

But then the conversation takes a turn. She starts talking about how it took her several hours to do her hair and makeup. She tells you that she’s been taking fan dancing lessons in a little town outside the city every …

Posted in brand + message, copywriting, how to write

4 things to do when you don’t know what to write

Published June 5, 2012

There is something about pen and paper that shifts the way you think

Sweet petunias!

Hopping horseradish!

Sparkling seahorses!

I knew this day would come.

The day I reveal to you that I don’t always know what to write about.

It’s perfect, actually.

Because it’s Monday night, and I just got home from improv class. Where a bunch of adults agree to suspend the normal rules of interaction, talk gibberish, make things up, and see what happens.

(Tonight, I was a stewardess, a scuba instructor, and a 14-year-old auditioning for the Village People).

And the whole thing about improv is that whatever you do is okay. Which is a message that we Recovering …

Posted in brand + message, copywriting, how to write