A Quick Beginners Guide To Copywriting

It’s a tough economy and everyone’s putting in the hours. In the age of the internet where anyone can literally do any job, freelance copywriting seems to be lots of people’s first choice, simply put, it’s a cesspool for meddling undergrads.

If that’s the case, then as someone in the business how can you excel? How can you not become the meddling undergrad, but instead become the expert, someone who creates exceptional content?

To become that someone you need to start thinking smart, cut out all the noise and sales guru-ship they want you to believe, and focus on building your craft through real learning, resilient habits and sheer grittiness, it’s what we in the business like to call actual copywriting.

I have summed up the post into a few pointers that deal with a mindset shift you must undergo to be able to take your copywriting business seriously, I would like to call it the philosophical part of copywriting.

This philosophical part will deal with values and habits and whatever it takes to encourage you to create exceptional work.

Ready, here it goes.

The Philosophy of Copywriting

Make it Business Driven

“Treat your business like a hobby, it pays you like a hobby” I hate to say this out loud because it is so cliché, but it is so true at the same time. To become business-driven means to have actual business goals attached to your copywriting work, it means to have a business plan, to sit and calculate your earnings and expenses, to provide customer service, etc, the point is you have to treat it like a business, you can’t do copywriting on a whim and expect to be one of the best at it, this is not marriage. This is business.

About 90% of businesses fail, and it is reported 17% of those lack a business model to begin with, leaving your copywriting business to chance is fatal, better to have goals and a plan.

Do a More Than Decent Job

The phrase ‘decent job’ is lingua for ‘almost pathetic work’, otherwise it would be said you did an admirable job. Always try to excel at what you write, make sure every piece you create is beyond expectation, give them the ‘Wow’ factor, because that’s how you quickly scale.

Make it a point that what you have written now would be better than what you have written an hour ago, it’s about challenging yourself and developing your skill. It pays to work harder than average you see, you become not-average.

Don’t Wait to be Great

Now, despite the need to create astounding articles every day, don’t let that stop you from beating deadlines and writing as fast as you can, copywriting is about marketing, and marketing doesn’t care about your artistic fervours, it is fast.

Your client expects from you tangible results, ones he can use to measure ROI. Of course, your writing should aim to be great with as much poetic prowess as writing a marketing copy can allow for, but still be flexible enough to adapt to changing strategies and react to variations in market analytics*, because that is how marketing is done.

(*Market analytics could be insights data collected through social listening and other marketing tools).

There are three Great Sins in copywriting;

1. Grammatical errors.

2. (For some reason) not taking coffee.

3. And perfectionism.

Never ever wait for inspiration or any of those magic moments thing, they don’t exist in copywriting, just churn facts, arrange words, hit publish, and move on.

Heavens!. . . That sounds cold. Is there a better way?

No.

Learn and Learn Some More

I mentioned ROI, mentioned social listening, and market analytics, these are terminologies only digital marketers will grasp, an outsider wouldn’t know CTO means call-to-action for example, and it's something you only get to know through deliberate learning, and there is more.

You have got stuff you need to constantly update yourself about such as knowledge on SEO which needn’t be said has to always be applied to your writing, you have got ever-changing online tools to worry about, other new web innovations, digital marketing strategies, etc.

You see, as a copywriter you need to know a little bit about everything.

Always learning something new improves your skills and helps keep you updated with the industry’s latest relevant additions, and like most things on the internet, this industry changes really fast.

I suggest constantly reading up blogs such as hubspot, copyblogger and neilpatel.com, and joining (and finishing) a few reputable online courses.

Build Habit

Knowing what to do, how to do it, is one half the equation to being a great copywriter. The other half is keeping up with the rigour that this work demands. It requires you to stick to a timetable, manage what seems like an infinite number of tasks, keep production going and so on.

Mold all your tasks into one consistent schedule, until they become a habit. By building your writing habits you become more efficient, more reliable and more powerful as a writer.

If you manage to culminate everything we have discussed earlier, the; treat copywriting as a business, the do a more than decent job, and not waiting to be great, and maybe even more, if you culminate these traits into a strong habit, your work would become very valuable.

Why? Because you will be perceived as a professional since you treat your business right. It also means bye-bye to silly clients and low pay.

By the way, it’s not going to be easy, just saying.

Conclusion

Being a great copywriter takes practice, and perhaps some use of common sense.

There is so a lot of knowledge and information out there on becoming better at copywriting that this post couldn’t possibly cover, it did not even scratch the surface on said topic. For one, it doesn’t say how to start copywriting, or mention practical ways to improve (e.g. writing style or voice), or say anything about marketing/branding oneself, none of that, this seemed like the intro of an intro compared to all the things you need to know before you start.

So there is much to learn, on the journey to becoming a great copywriter, therefore think of this as a gentle start.