copywriting
Social proof is overrated.
There’s so much bad advice in content strategy, that no one bothers to talk about what is merely overrated advice. After decades of email marketing, copywriting, and content strategy, I’ve can confidently say that “social proof” gets too much attention. It’s important, but it’s overrated. It’
Publish or perish? Document or die.
I don’t believe in goals. I believe in process. I believe in process because I used to believe in goals. What I’m about to reveal to you is far more boring than goal setting, but far more effective. Goals tend to get further away the closer you get
Principles for Creating with AI
As usual, when I find myself writing too much about a topic, I have to distill it all into a set of principles — easily digested by a (very) mere human. These principles are backed by real data, case studies, and personal interviews. They are subject to change, ridicule, and memes…
After, Not Once
When I was a technical writer, one of the first things I learned was the difference between “once” and “after.” We were just creating manuals and procedures, but this one rule was profound and extended way beyond our day-to-day writing. The rule was: never use “once.” “Once” is an imprecise
How does it make you feel?
Carlo from The DO Lecture series [https://thedolectures.com]: > “It’s not how it looks, it’s how it makes you feel.” Even though he’s talking about work spaces here, I think this is a sentence we could use to describe anything we create and market — or just anything
You Need 2 Things
Whenever I write copy for a marketing campaign or new product, I ask for two things: 1. Who is the audience? 2. What is the goal of this piece? It’s rare to get a straight answer for both — even from billion-dollar companies (especially from billion-dollar companies). Both are required
9 Lessons on Landing Pages
I just spent 3 months in meetings and writing sessions helping to create a landing page and content strategy for a new product that I can’t tell you about — you’re not in the product’s audience anyway, so it doesn’t matter. What I can tell you, now