I got a lot of great feedback from last week’s post about making copy more interesting.
And some great suggestions on how to do it.
Dr. Stuart C. Marmorstein likes keeping it conversational, using questions, story, and completing the circle (as he points out I did by starting and ending with popcorn).
James Lang is a fan of self-deprecating humor. (Personally, I’ve got lots of material for that!)
Shaun Halaberda likes stories with unexpected twists, comparisons such as similes and metaphors (like my last email about “popcorn” copy), and power words (which he says are the salt and butter on the “popcorn”).
Kimi Du likes stories with a valuable lesson.
Ryan Christian suggests making every sentence interesting and crisp, and he, too, is a fan of “fascinating stories.”
Michael Low likes writing that is “vivid and interesting.”
Which is similar to Mark Yurik’s great advice to “paint a picture in the mind of the prospect” (since pictures are so much more interesting than words).
John Rugh sent a terrific list: “Make it conversational and easy to read… write to an ‘audience of one’… fill it with emotion… harness the power of empathy… and focus on the reader (not the company or product you’re writing for)!”
Adam Smith cast yet another vote for stories and “compelling analogies.”
Like me, Gary Megel is a big fan of Toastmasters, since there is nothing like being in front of a live audience to teach you how to keep an audience’s attention with curiosity, humor, and personal references.
Hanro Roos likes to “remove any fluff in the form of wordy sentences.” He wants his paragraphs to be “shots of tequila… not light beer.” (I guess he also likes comparisons.)
Isaac Lara is a fan of Bond Halbert’s technique of writing complete sentences with incomplete thoughts. And that’s not all.
Actually, it is all, but see how that “complete sentence with an incomplete thought” became a bit of a cliffhanger and perhaps piqued your interest?
For a copywriter, it’s a never-ending quest to be more interesting.
Because as David Ogilvy used to say, “You can’t bore people into buying your product. You can only interest them in buying it.”
And may you never hear what a French acting teacher I studied with used to loudly proclaim when his interest in a performance began to wane: “Boooorrriinng!!!”
