The point

"What appears to be a sloppy or meaningless use of words may well be a completely correct use of words to express sloppy or meaningless ideas."

Anonymous diplomat

Copy doesn’t persuade people.

Ideas persuade people.

Copy is just your tool to deliver those ideas.

Think of a well known statue. I bet you can imagine at least one. You may even be able to name it.

Now, think of a well known chisel.

Bad copywriters are solely preoccupied with the tool.

The chisel. The words.

They’ll tell you to use:

1. Power words [emotion]
2. PAS and AIDA [sales frameworks]
3. Urgency and FOMO [psychological effects]
4. Numbers in hooks and headlines [specificity]
   
   

You’ll also hear me talk about these things, because they are important. But you can be entirely specific, using psychological triggers and powerful words, in time tested templates and still die a perfect death. Because if you’re talking about one thing and your reader cares about another, you won’t have a reader.

It’s all a waste until you give your reader something they care about. . .

• The result
• The laugh
• The benefit
• The knowledge
• The experience
• The transformation
• The life improvement
• The thing they were scanning for
  
  

That’s right, people scan. But they scan for things worth reading. A reader’s radar is set to bleep when they detect value, signal in life’s noise.

It may sound basic, but lots of people forget to think about the value before they start tapping away. Can you really be clear in your writing, if you don’t first start with clear thought?

The important thing is never what you write, it’s what you write about.

Only when you know your writing’s purpose can you figure out which words and ideas will clarify, and which will confuse. And when you have a purpose you can judge how good the writing is. You can ask the important question.

A difficult question to answer unless you first ask “what’s the writing trying to do?”.
 

• Are you writing to instruct?
• To persuade?
• To entertain? All three?
• Which is more important?
• Which should come first?
• Do you want your reader to do something?
• Have you made that clear?
• Is it their choice or is it obligatory?
• What do they need to know before they can decide?
  
  

Lots of good questions, all of which are important to think about before you start writing.

The irony is that writing clarifies thought.

So, what you want to say may change as you write. But start with some destination in mind. With a known destination, you can work out the most efficient route to get there.

Then, as you’re writing, cross reference to see where your words do the thing they’re meant to do, and where they don’t.

Delete the bits that don’t.