Writing for Your Creative Business: Practical Skills for Effortless Marketing

1. Introduction: If you run a creative business and want your content to work harder while feeling easier to create, this class will give you the skills to do it with confidence. I'm Ruth, a professional copywriter with industry experience across in house agency and freelance roles. My work is grounded in recognized marketing principles, and the techniques I teach here are the same ones I use every day with my creative business clients. Creative entrepreneurs often tell me that writing content is the slowest and most frustrating part of running their business. They know their work is good. They just need clear guidance, practical steps, and examples they can follow, so their marketing feels more natural and less demanding. That's what this class delivers. You'll learn how to write engaging persuasive content for your creative brand. You'll shape your story, write stronger product descriptions, create SEO friendly web content, and craft social posts that help people connect with your work. The goal is simple, give you more time and energy for the creative work you love. This is a beginner friendly class. You only need a good grasp of English and basic marketing awareness. What you'll learn here will support the growth of your creative business and make your everyday marketing feel much easier. Let's get started. 2. Class and Project Overview: Before we get going, I'm going to quickly talk you through how the lessons in this class are organized and also introduce you to the class project. We'll kick off with some advice on telling your brand story, how to get across who you are and what you do in a way that's engaging and concise. In the next lesson, I'll share with you the secret of selling without the sleevee. I promise you this works. So if you ever feel like a cheesy salesperson when you try to write marketing copy, you can wave goodbye to that feeling right now. Following on from that, we'll focus on the specifics of writing product descriptions that are accurate and authentic. Then I'll share with you a tried and tested versatile copywriting template that you can use for everything from product descriptions and landing pages to social media posts. And we'll follow that up with three powerful hacks for keeping your copy clear and concise, something that's so important in this age of limited attention spans. Next, we'll cover writing for social before I'll wrap things up by sharing some common mistakes I see people make when writing copy for their creative businesses and how you can avoid them. And that's not all. There are two quickies in the mix, too, short and sweet lessons focusing on two very different copywriting skills, engaging the senses and search engine optimization. Throughout, we'll explore real world examples of brands using each of the techniques we'll learn, and you'll get to know my fictional client, Amy. Amy is a professional illustrator and calligrapher. I'll show you exactly how to put your new skills into action with step by step tutorials featuring copy I've written for her business. That's where your class project comes in. I'd like you to pick a few pieces of existing copy to use as a starting point, maybe some text from your website, a product description, and a social media post, for example. They should be representative of the kind of content you write regularly and would like to improve. In the course of this class, use the various tips, techniques and tools we'll explore to improve your copy. You can work on it as you go along. You'll be amazed how much it improves with each lesson. To help you with your project, there's a PDF cheat sheet you can download from the class description. It lists all the techniques we'll cover in the class, so you can follow along during the lessons and use it as a checklist for future writing. Also in the class description are links to the different free online tools and resources I'll introduce you to throughout the class. Well, if you've picked out a few pieces of copy to work on and you've got the cheat sheet to hand, we're ready to go. In our first lesson, we'll look at telling your brand story, how to find your unique voice and get across who you are and what you do in a way that's engaging and concise. 3. Telling Your Brand Story: This lesson will be particularly useful for when you're writing your profiles for social media or for online shops or be a about page of your website. That's exactly what I'm helping my fictional clients, Amy, to do. I'll be explaining a lot of these copywriting techniques using Amy's business copy as an example, as well as sharing examples of best practice from real life creative entrepreneurs. As a creative, you want your copy to reflect your creativity and unique personality, but that's easier said than done. How often do you read back something you've written and think it sounds stilted and formal? Well, the reason for that might be that you're over using the third person. Take a look at these sentences from Amy's About page. The sentences on the left are written in the third person. They talk about Amy from the point of view of an outside observer. Not only does writing in this way, make your copy feel awkward and formal, but it stops you creating a direct relationship to your reader, and that's so important when it comes to building trust and empathy and making sales. Compare them with the sentences on the right. They're written in the first person. They speak directly from Amy to her reader. They're warmer and feel more direct and personal. Look at this lovely bio of Alice Negri on the Beehive Illustration website. It feels very personal and heartfelt. Imagine the difference if each I was replaced with Alice or she. It would have nowhere near the same impact. In fact, if you take time to explore the illustrator's bios on this website, you'll see that some of them use the third person, and some of them use the first person. And it's the first person bios that are the most effective, direct and appealing every time. So as a general rule, use I when you're writing about yourself, just like you do when you're talking about yourself. Here's Amy's mission statement or bio. I'm going to adjust it so that it's in the first person. Let's build on that first person principle to describe who you are and what you do in a way that expresses your unique voice and personality. It's the words you use as much as the message itself that defines your own unique tone of voice and makes your writing either blend into the background or stand out from the crowd. So let's look at how word choice can alter the tone of Amy's simple one sentence mission statement. Right now, Amy's mission statement is straightforward and accurate, but it's also just a little bit dull and not very memorable. It doesn't set her apart from the crowd. Well, this one's a bit more dramatic. There's a real energy behind this version, and that's because of the words we've used, epic explosive, Stella. They give a real sense of drama. This version is a lot more memorable. This version is also upbeat, but it has a gentler, more feminine feel to it. That's mainly because of the words sparkle and pretty. Isn't it amazing the huge difference that just a few simple word changes can make? There's a simplicity and directness to this mission statement that matches the rebellious description. The visual picture of stamping out a work of art is also really memorable. And there's something refreshing about someone in a profession that's often seen as wishy washy and girly presenting themselves in this slightly aggressive way. This is a very gentle version that uses words drawn from nature and therapy. It's the words nature, nurturing, sooth, and soul that jump out at you here. So now you've seen how word choice can dramatically alter a simple mission statement. It's time for you to have a go. Ima, who creates four, and now I'm on a mission two Start with this simple template and fill in the blanks. Begin with a very simple description of what you do. Then play around with different words and styles to see how you can present yourself, your work or your business in different ways. And I've had such positive feedback from students like you about this mission statement template, but I ended up creating a full class dedicated to it. So if you want to explore how to shape your mission statement, the different approaches you can take, where to use it, and loads of real examples, add my 15 minute mission statement class to your list and watch it straight after this one. It's the perfect next step. Here's one more tip for telling your brand story in a way that's direct and impactful. Use the active voice. The active voice describes a sentence where the subject does the action stated by the verb. It follows a clear subject verb object format. That simplicity makes it easy to read. Here's an example. The subject, the artist is doing the action, painting, and the object, the mural is at the end of the sentence. With the passive voice, the object becomes the subject moves to the start of the sentence and is acted upon by the verb. Sometimes the original subject, the doer is missing entirely. As you can see from this example, sentences written in the passive voice tend to sound more indirect, impersonal and bureaucratic. Despite that, the passive voice is surprisingly prevalent on websites and social media, even amongst creatives who usually want to sound anything other than impersonal and bureaucratic. On the left are a few examples of passive copy I found on Amy's website. On the right are their more active alternatives. You can see straightaway that the active version comes across as more natural and straightforward. On the other hand, the passive examples are more bureaucratic and long winded. Writing more complex sentences using the passive voice can also become really confusing for the reader. You don't need to avoid the passive voice altogether. Writing the occasional sentence in the passive voice is a good way of breaking up a long piece of copy, for example. But it's a handy general rule to stick to the active voice whenever you can. On average, aim to make 80 to 90% of your sentences active. If you're struggling to get your head around the difference between the passive and active voice, this article by Alice at Grammarly will help you. It explains things really clearly and gives lots of useful detail and examples. The most important takeaway from this lesson is that the best way to get across who you are and what you do is to experiment with word choices until you find your unique voice. And by using the first person and the active voice, you can make sure your profiles, bios, and about pages are snappy, direct and engaging. Before we move on, have a go creating your own mission statement using the template we looked at earlier. You could also take a look at your existing profiles and see if they can be improved by tweaking your word choices, switching to the first person or swapping from the passive to the active voice. In the next lesson, I'll share with you the secret of selling without the sleeves. I promise you this works. So if you ever feel like a cheesy salesperson, when you try to write marketing copy, you can forget that feeling right now. 4. The Secret to Selling: You feel uncomfortable writing promotional copy for your work? Perhaps you feel awkward digging yourself up, or you're worried that you'll come across as arrogant or like a pushy salesperson. A lot of entrepreneurs and small business owners feel this way, especially creatives. The secret to getting past that discomfort and writing engaging persuasive copy is to take your focus away from yourself and onto your reader. In other words, your potential customer. Once you take your reader as your starting point rather than yourself, once you make it all about them and not you, any discomfort will evaporate. In this lesson, I'm going to show you three simple principles that will help you identify your reader, connect with them, and sell to them without the sleeve. It's impossible to write clearly and effectively if you're at all unclear about who you're writing for or what the purpose of your writing is. So for each piece of copy that you write, ask yourself, who is reading this? Why are they reading it? What's their goal, and how can I help them get what they want? You might find it helpful to visualize an actual person who'll be reading your copy. So if you're writing web copy aimed at potential customers, you can imagine your typical target customer when you're writing. This is a technique I use, and I find it a great way to keep my copy personal and relevant. My fictional client, Amy, runs an Etsy shop called Letters B Amy, where she sells her work. Here's the first sentence of her shop description. Amy has already identified her readers as existing and potential customers of her shop, and the majority of them are there to buy cards and gifts for friends and family. She can help her customers get what they want by selling a range of appealing, unique cards and gifts. This opening gambit needs to condense that offering into a short and snappy sentence without any irrelevant information. It's looking pretty good in general, but there's just one thing that doesn't feel quite right, considering the target reader Amy has identified. That's this reference to brush lettering supplies. Amy does sell brushes and inks in her Etsy shop, but it's a very small part of her business. Most of her sales come from people buying gifts for others. That's her main target reader, and that's who she should be addressing in this opening sentence. So let's adjust this copy slightly so it's totally focused on the reader. That might seem like an obvious error to you, but it's amazing how often people include irrelevant information just like this in their copy. That's why it's so important that you answer the three questions of who, why and how to focus your copy on what's relevant. If you need a little help identifying your target readier, this guide by fabric brands is a great place to start. It outlines different approaches with examples from successful brands. When you talk to someone face to face, it's a two way thing. You focus on the other person as much or more than yourself. You ask them questions and you give them time to reply and give their opinion on things. Replicating this conversational approach in writing is challenging because the person you're talking to isn't there. They're in another place and time, so they can't join in the conversation directly. As a result, writing, especially marketing copy, can come across as one sided. From a reader's point of view, the conversational equivalent is being on the receiving end of a long monologue that's delivered without any eye contact or opportunity to reply. But there are a few techniques you can use to get that conversational tone into your writing and make your reader feel more involved, more as though you're talking to them directly and more likely to keep reading. Asking questions is a technique I use a lot in my writing. It gets people's attention, and it encourages them to think about how what you're saying relates to them, just like it does in conversation. And as a writer, asking questions encourages you to think about your reader as you write and make sure your copy is focused on them and their needs. Here's the next part of Amy's Etsy shop description. There's nothing wrong with this copy, but it does feel a little dry and distant. The first sentence is phrased as an order to do something, and the second sentence is just a statement of fact. Neither of them explicitly connects with the reader. Let's see what happens when we keep the gist the same, but tweak the wording a little so that the sentences are phrased as questions. Now, we're taking the reader as our starting point. We know that most people reading this shop bio will be looking for a gift, and we're addressing those gift seekers directly and specifically. Most people reading that first question will silently answer yes. It sets a positive tone for what follows, and it means that the reader is more likely to answer a second yes to the next question. Notice how, as with a lot of the techniques you'll learn in this class, the content of what you're writing is only slightly changed, but that small change has had a big result. Something else has changed in the before and after examples, and it's all about the word, that is. In this version, we've used to create a natural conversational tone and make the reader feel part of what's being said. It's all about focusing on the person you're communicating with, putting yourself in their shoes and asking them questions and involving them in what you're saying exactly as you would if you were talking to them. Here's the final bit of Amy's Etsy shop description. Notice how she started both sentences with I and how the copy is focused on her activities and her processes. Let's switch things around so that the focus of the copy is on the reader, not the writer. This feels much more engaging and relevant. And although the word count is a little longer, it also feels more direct. That's because as a reader, I don't have to turn each activity around to figure out what it means for me. It's already written from my viewpoint. Here's a real life example from not on the High Streets website that showcases the techniques we've just learned. This copy is very reader focused. The words you or your appear three times and we only once. And look at the way it uses questions to engage the reader. The most important takeaway from this lesson is that reader focus is the foundation of all good copywriting. Yes, it will stop you feeling like a cheesy salesperson, but more than that, it will lead to better customer engagement, more sales, and greater brand loyalty. We're going to dig deeper into forming a connection with your reader in later lessons. In the meantime, take a look at your existing marketing copy and see if any of it could benefit from greater reader focus using the tips you've just learned. Next up, it's the first of our two copy quickies. This one is all about engaging the senses. 5. Engage the Senses: When we talk with someone, we don't just use words to communicate. Our tone of voice, facial expressions, and gestures also play a part. In fact, around 80% of communication is non verbal. When we write, all that non verbal supporting material is stripped out, and the words that are left behind can seem a bit flat and dry. This is one of the reasons why you can find someone eloquent and interesting in person, but then read something they've written and find it very dull. One way to make our writing more conversational and authentic is to make it more sensory. So let's explore the five senses. Sight sound, smell touch and taste. And as we look at each example, inspired by Amy's print, think about how you might draw on your reader's senses to describe what you create. And I do appreciate that some of these are going to be easier for some businesses than others. For example, incorporating smell into your writing should come easily if you create toiletries or scented candles, but it's going to be less straightforward if you're an illustrator like Amy. So don't worry if you find some of these difficult. Just have a go and be a bit playful and experimental with it. In this copy, we're emphasizing the visual elements of the print. We're doing this in two ways. Firstly, by using the words you can see, and they look like and more subtly, by using the visual nouns, opacity and tone. Sound is more challenging. After all, the print itself is silent. But here are a couple of ways we can appeal to auditory readers in our product copy. And isn't this more vibrant than if we just said, I like minimalist prints, and your friend will like this gift. The sense of touch is a great one to evoke when you're creating anything with a luxurious element. Even though we're just talking about paper here, we've made it sound really looks and inviting. And although our print doesn't actually smell of anything much, bringing the sense of smell into things here reinforces the point we're making. Finally, here we're connecting the print to an activity that involves taste, another subtle way to bring an extra sense into our reader's experience of our copy. For an extra slice of inspiration, take a look at this description of a body butter on Grace Cole's website, unctuous, rich, luxurious, moorish, thick, smooth. The description really hammers home the luxury element of the product with lots of sensory language. Take another look at your own copy. Would it benefit from some more sensory input? In the next lesson, we'll look at the specifics of writing product descriptions. 6. Writing Product Descriptions: In this lesson, we'll explore some principles for describing your work in a way that's accurate and authentic and that's going to persuade potential customers to buy. Like many creatives, Amy often feels uncomfortable describing her work in product descriptions and elsewhere. She's afraid of sounding too salesy or inauthentic. And because her art is very visual, she sometimes struggles with what to put in her product descriptions because she feels like her work speaks for itself. Amy has just finished working on a simple digital print, which she's going to sell in her Etsy shop. We're going to work through a short and simple product description for this print using three powerful copywriting techniques that will help Amy describe her work and sell it. Linking features to benefits is one of the most powerful copywriting techniques in existence. A feature is a fact about a product or service, while a benefit explains what's in it for the customer. Benefits sell your product or service because they connect with your reader's desires and emotions, but you also need features to help customers justify their purchase. So starting with a feature, then explaining the benefit of that feature is a foolproof way to appeal to both the head and the heart of your reader. Features are generally easy to identify and describe. Benefits need a bit more work, which is why a lot of people don't include them in their product descriptions, but they're so important, especially when you're selling art, jewelry, or craft items, because people usually buy these with their hearts rather than their heads. When I'm writing about a product, I like to start by listing the features, the basic dry facts about it. Then I imagine I'm telling a potential customer those facts, and they're asking me the question, so what in response. My answer to the question, so what gives me the benefit. I'll use Amy's new print as an example. Here's a feature. The fact that the words say fortune favors the brave. Well, so what? What is the benefit to the customer of having a print of those words in particular? Well, it's a source of encouragement. It's something you can have in your home to remind you to be brave every day. And let's not forget Amy's key target audience, which we know from our earlier lesson, is people buying gifts for others. This print would make a really thoughtful gift for a shy friend. Let's add that in. Let's pick another key feature. The fact that the quote is printed using archival inks onto high quality 300 GSM Tintoretto gesso paper. Well, that certainly sounds impressive. But what does it actually mean? Not much, in fact, to someone who isn't an artist themselves. But I've done my research, and I've found lots of benefits to both the ink and the paper that may have been obvious to Amy, but as a layman, I had no idea what all those fancy words meant. And that's really important. You might feel a bit silly asking, so what about features of your creations when the answer feels obvious to you, but those benefits might not be obvious to your audience. Instead of hoping they work it out for themselves, you need to do the work for them. Notice also how I'm addressing the reader, the potential customer as you even during this working out phase. This is such a good habit to get into. It's just another handy way to keep your focus on the reader and seeing things from their viewpoint. Another way of drawing out both the features and benefits of a product is to overcome potential objections. Once again, the trick is to put yourself in your reader's shoes, but this time, you need to ask yourself why a potential customer might decide not to buy your product or service. There are two phrases I find helpful when doing this. I'm interested, and that's okay because. So Amy's potential buyer might say, I'm interested, but I hate all the plastic packaging most gifts come wrapped in to which we can reply, that's okay because it's packaged in an eco friendly protective sleeve with no unnecessary packaging. And instead of leaving it there, we can go back in and ask, so what in response to that feature and draw out the benefit. Having a conversation with your imaginary reader like this is a really effective way to draw out potential objections and overcome them in your copy to prompt the reader to buy. There's something else going on here, too. By choosing to mention environmental awareness and the care we take when packaging our work, we're also appealing to our readers values. When a reader who shares these values reads this copy, they're more likely to trust us and feel a connection. That doesn't just mean they're more likely to buy something. It's great for ongoing brand loyalty, too. Let's tidy up these features and benefits and condense them into a short product description for Amy's print. And here's another real world example, courtesy of Amanda Westbury, a ceramicist who sells her creations of Foxy. Notice how Amanda has given suggestions for how a pendant might be worn or used, the way she's explained why the cord is the length it is and how she explains the reasons for the different colors. All these techniques help the reader understand the product and imagine owning it. The next tip takes seconds to explain and demonstrate, but it's so powerful. And no surprise, it's got to do with focusing on your reader again. Look again at our product description. Notice how I've referred to your print on two occasions in the text. Talking to a prospective customer as if they already own the product, is an age old sales technique. And the reason it's so popular is that it works. When you give ownership of the product to your reader, it sounds like a done deal. You've assumed that they're going to buy, and that confidence rubs off on them. Referring to your print or whatever it is, like I have here, is probably the most direct way of doing that. Another more subtle method is to ask your reader to imagine interacting with the product. For example, we might say, you'll feel inspired every morning when you see this print or imagine your friend's face when they unwrap this thoughtful gift. In this lesson, you've learned how linking features to benefits, handling objections, and giving your reader ownership of your product can help you write a product description that's both authentic and accurate. Before you move on, take a look at a product description of your own. Ask the question, so what to identify if there are any benefits you can add in for your reader and experiment with ownership to engage their emotions. And make sure you check out this brilliant article by HenakO at Enchanting Marketing. It's all about features and benefits and how to use them to connect with your reader. In the next lesson, I'll share with you a tried and tested versatile copywriting template that you can use for everything from product descriptions and landing pages to social media posts. 7. Copywriting Formula: Flowing a tried and tested formula when you're writing marketing copy is a really good way to make sure you stay focused and don't forget anything important. The formula I recommend most often to my clients and students is AIDA. That's because it's really simple to follow and it's very versatile. You can adapt it to work for product descriptions, landing pages, social media posts, advertisements, pretty much any marketing copy you can think of. ADA stands for attention interest, desire action, four stages that lead you through grabbing your reader's attention, then getting them interested to making them want what you're offering, and finally persuading them to take action. These four stages are often illustrated using a funnel shape like this. That's because you inevitably lose readers at different stages. So you might grab the attention of 100 people, but they drop off at each stage, and perhaps only five of them end up taking the action at the end. Let's work through the ADA formula together, using a promotional flyer as our example. Amy is going to use this to promote her brush lettering workshop. You can see I've already sketched out how we're going to apply the ADA model to the flyer. We're going to use the headline and the subheading to grab the reader's attention. You might also hear this stage referred to as the hook because it's what hooks the reader in. In this first paragraph, we'll create interest in the workshop, and we'll turn that interest into desire in the second paragraph. Then in the final paragraph, we'll explain the action we want the reader to take and encourage them to take it. This stage is often referred to as a call to action or CTA. From a copywriting point of view, grabbing a reader's attention or hooking them in is most often done using a headline or a title. In this case, it's the heading and subheading at the top of the flyer. In the case of a webpage or blog post, it's the title, and in a social media post, it's the first line. The principle is always the same. You need to get your reader's attention at the start of your copy and encourage them to keep reading. In the case of our flyer, I'm going to keep this big headline at the top very short and simple, just as it is now, so that we can use nice big texts that people are going to notice as they're browsing through a pile of flyers or looking at a notice board. Anyone who is remotely interested in attending a hand lettering workshop is going to have their attention grabbed by those words. Now we can use the subtitle to keep their attention and make sure they pick up the flyer and keep reading. When it comes to grabbing attention with your copy, a great place to start by focusing on one of your product or services at unique selling points or USPs. In the case of Amy's workshop, a big selling point is that the teacher is a professional illustrator. Let's start with that basic information. And now I'm going to show you a handy little tool for improving headlines. It's called Headline Analyzer. It's a free service that analyzes your headlines and gives you tips for improving them. I find it useful not just for traditional headlines and blog titles, but any short snippet of copy I'm writing where I'm looking to grab the attention of potential customers, just like with this flyer. Let's see what Headline Analyzer thinks of our subheading. You can see that it's suggesting we add some words that are either uncommon or emotional or what it calls power words. It's also suggesting that we rephrase the headline as a question, which is something we covered in an earlier lesson. The sentiment? Well, it would be good if it was positive so that we could get people into a positive mood to make a purchase. Let's take that feedback on board and rewrite our subheading with the same information, but rephrasing it as a question and adding the more emotional and positive words, W, beautiful, and professional. What do you think? I think this version is much more attention grabbing and engaging, and the Headline Analyzer tool agrees. Try it for yourself. There's a bit of trial and error needed, and it's not perfect, but it's a handy resource to have in your back pocket. Now it's time to build interest in the workshop, and for that, I'm going back to those USPs. I want to mention that the workshop is casual and friendly because I think that will give people the confidence to book it. I also want folk to know that it's hands on and practical as opposed to being about the theory of hand lettering so that they know what to expect. And I want to introduce Amy as the host by name, again, to make her seem friendly and approachable and also to reiterate that she's a professional illustrator. We've got across a lot of important information in that short paragraph, and hopefully our reader is now interested in the workshop. Next, for the desire stage, to push them over the edge into really wanting to book onto the workshop. I'm going to zoom in on the final and most persuasive USP. That's the fact that during this workshop, attendees will create a work of art of their own using the brush lettering techniques they'll learn. I'm going to tell them that. Can you guess what I'm going to do next? That's right. I'm going to use the technique we learned in the last lesson and link a benefit to that feature by offering suggestions to the reader about how they might use their new artwork. Yourself in the shoes of someone interested in this workshop and reading this sentence. I bet you're imagining proudly hanging your beautiful new artwork in your home or watching a close friend unwrap their lovingly handmade gift. We've injected some emotion into things, and that's what will take our reader from being interested in the workshop to unequivocally wanting to book it. So now it's time to let them know what action they need to do to book onto the workshop. Whatever it is you're writing, make this action as simple as possible. Don't confuse your reader by including any more information than needed. The only tiny extra word I'm going to pop in here is the word securely, just as a note of reassurance. So here's our finish flyer created using the Ada formula. The most important takeaway from this lesson is that following a copywriting formula is a foolproof shortcut to writing effective copy. That's why formulas like AIDA are used by professional copywriters. They've been proven to work. So before you move on, see if you can apply the AIDA formula to your own copy. Remember, you can adapt it for pretty much any marketing copy. Try it on a product description or your next social media post. In the next lesson, you'll learn three powerful hacks for keeping your copy clear and concise, something that's so important in this age of limited attention spans. 8. Hacks for Crystal Clear Copy: Clarity and directness are so important in marketing copy, especially when that copy appears online. Your message needs to be clear and you need to get to the point quickly if you're going to keep their attention and persuade them to take action. In this lesson, we'll cover three very straightforward, but surprisingly powerful hacks for keeping your copy clear and concise. Long rambling sentences over around 20 words are a feature of bad writing. They're confusing and they're difficult to read, especially online where readers tend to scroll and skim through text rather than reading every word. Splitting your sentences can dramatically improve your copy. Here is an intro to a blog post Amy is writing about brush lettering. The first sentence is fine, but this second one is mammoth over 80 words long. It's got all the hallmarks of a rambling over long sentence, lots of those connecting words and lots of commas. Let's split this sentence into shorter ones. I'm going to start by adding full stops at natural points between ideas. These are easy to spot because they're usually flagged up by those connecting words or commas. Now I need to reframe the sentences slightly so they make sense and follow nicely on from each other. And especially as this text will appear online, I'm going to split not just the sentences, but the paragraphs to make it easier on the eye as well as easier to read. Simple straightforward changes that have made this piece of copy clearer and more inviting. If you only take one thing away from this class, let it be to always write with your reader in mind. It's a theme you'll find cropping up time and again in my classes, and it's the best advice I can give you to make your writing clear and relevant. This golden rule also applies to the individual words you use in your copy. Keep your language simple. Every career or industry or hobby has its own insider language or jargon, specialist language that people working or operating within that field use and understand. If you're writing for people within that specialist group, it's appropriate to use that specialist language. But don't make the mistake of using industry jargon when you're writing for a more general audience. That's a mistake Amy has made in her blog post intro. You know what a Shuji is? Well, it's some sort of Japanese calligraphy, but I bet not many of Amy's target readers who are beginners at brush lettering would know that. Let's swap that word for one they will recognize. If you're writing about something you know very well and you're not sure if a word is jargon or not, the best way to find out is to ask someone outside the industry. I'm sure if Amy had asked any non professional if they knew what Shuji was, they would have told her that they didn't. It's not just jargon words you need to eliminate from your writing. Language tip number two is don't use complicated words when there's a simple alternative. You might think that using a fancy sounding word makes you seem like a better writer, but in fact, the opposite is true. So let's swap these complex words in Amy's copy for simpler ones. Sperate becomes different, onerous becomes difficult, and Shepherd becomes guide. Next up, adverbs. Plus simply an adverb modifies a verb or an adjective to tell you how someone did something. I've highlighted the adverbs in these sentences. Adverbs aren't always bad news. Sometimes they give vital information, but they're often overused. And if you struggle to keep your copy concise, trashing a few adverbs is probably going to improve it. There are a few different types of adverbs, but the type that it's most important to check and consider deleting are easily identified because they almost always end in the letters LY. I've highlighted all of the LY adverbs in Amy's text. Have a look at them. Remember what I said about adverbs and modifying the word after it to tell you how something was done. Let's go through them and see if they really need to be there. First we have the word readily before available. Is that adding anything to the meaning of the copy? I don't think so. Let's delete it. The same goes for extremely in front of complex. It's not bringing anything new to the party, and the copy is clearer and snappier without it. Now we have this phrase very useful. This is a good example of where we can strengthen the verb, in this case, useful, and in doing so, make the adverb that comes before it unnecessary. So what's the stronger word for useful? How about invaluable? With that nice strong verb in place, we can get rid of the adverb without losing any meaning. Getting rid of those adverbs was easy, and it's made this copy feel much more direct and professional. You'll find another example of these techniques in action in this blog post by Mia at She Dreams All Day, short sentences, simple language, and a few adverbs. Mia gets her message across crystal clear. Incidentally, I thought you might like this blog post because of the content, too. It's all about building a blog, finding your niche, and creating posts that people actually read. Mia breaks down how to pick a focus, stay consistent, and grow an audience in a way that feels manageable rather than overwhelming. If you're looking for a free tool to help you implement the tips we've covered in this lesson, I can highly recommend Hemingway. Copy and paste your writing into Hemingway, and it will highlight long and difficult to read sentences, give you alternatives to complicated words and flag up adverbs. And that's not all. It helps you with a number of other elements of writing, some of which will be familiar from earlier lessons, like identifying the passive voice, for example. I can't recommend Hemingway highly enough. It's my number one resource for anyone wanting to make their writing clearer and more concise. The most important takeaway from this lesson is that by shortening your sentences, simplifying your language, and binning a few adverbs, you can quickly and easily take a piece of copy from almost unreadable to clear, concise and engaging. Before you move on, have a look at your own copy and see if it can benefit from any of the techniques we've explored in this lesson. The next lesson is the second of our copy quickies, and it's all about writing to optimize your pages, posts, and products in search engines. 9. SEO Copywriting: SEO stands for search engine optimization, simply put it means creating content that will rank highly in searches. And it's not just about getting your website to rank highly on Google searches. SEO is relevant wherever people search. So if you sell products on Etsy, for example, you can use SEO techniques to help those products rank highly when someone searches for that kind of thing on Etsy. SEO is often overlooked by small business owners. I think that's partly because there are a lot of companies charging a lot of money for SEO services, and they make it sound like something very technical and a little bit mysterious. SEO also has a reputation as being slightly dodgy and even immoral, which is largely undeserved. There's absolutely nothing wrong with, for example, describing your product in an accurate and detailed way so that they show up on the searches of people who are looking for that sort of product. So SEO is something that deserves a little of your attention and for two very good reasons. The first reason is because where your website, product or service ranks in search results has a huge impact on sales. And the second reason is because there are simple steps you can take yourself for free to optimize your content for search engines that won't take much extra time and that will help your content rank higher. Now, SEO copywriting is just one part of SEO, and it's a huge subject in its own right, so we don't have time to go in depth in this quickie. But the most important thing for you to know, and it's good news is that the best way to write in a way that will rank highly in searches is to write clear, concise, useful, reader focused content. Well, that might sound familiar because it's all the things I've been encouraging you to do throughout this class, which means that if you follow the techniques you've learned today, you'll be well on your way to creating optimized high ranking content because good copywriting is also good SEO copywriting. And for a more comprehensive look at the subject of SEO, check out my dedicated Skillshare class. If you enjoy my teaching style and you want to learn more about how to optimize your copy for search, it's the natural next step in your marketing journey. I can also highly recommend Yoast SEO blog. They've got a series of beginners guides that demystify SEO and break it down into easy to follow tips. The next lesson is about writing for social media, and it is packed with tips and tricks to improve your social bios and posts. 10. Writing for Social Media: In this lesson, I'll touch on a few fundamental principles that apply to writing for all social media platforms. In many ways, writing for social is similar to writing for any other marketing channel for your creative business. You need to be clear on your audience, your brand voice, and your objective. But on social media, these things are even more vital, and that's because of the way people consume your social content compared to other marketing channels like your website, emails, or direct mail. Most of us access social media on our phones, and we fly through our feeds, half distracted, not even registering a lot of what's there. When you write for social, you're writing for these casual scrollers and skimmers, not highly engaged readers. You've got to stand out on a crowded feed, and any uncertainty on your part will result in a less than punchy post, one that your target is going to skim right past. If there's one principle that's central to great copywriting, and I think you know what I'm going to say next, is to always write with your reader in mind. This is even more important when you're writing for social because you're writing for that barely engaged audience. Unless your followers already care deeply about your work, they're not going to stop scrolling to read a post about it. What will stop them in their tracks is a post that's about them and that addresses their problems, their needs, and their desires. So one simple way you can make sure your copy is staying well and truly focused on your reader is by addressing them directly. Forrester is a company that helps B to C brands, including creative businesses, provide better customer service. It's a slightly dry subject. But scroll through their feed, and you can see that they are crystal clear on who their target audience is and what those people need. One way they get their target audiences attention is by addressing them directly in their posts, IT and business leaders, sales ops leaders, B to C marketers. If you work in one of those roles, you're going to stop scrolling when you see it on your feed. And if the post goes on to address a problem or need you have, like understanding customer behaviors, there's a good chance you're going to engage with it. Here's a draft social post Amy has written where she's promoting her hand lettering workshops. Let's switch around the first part, so we're addressing the target audience directly. That's much more likely to catch their attention. Writing on social media tends to be more casual than in other sorts of business communication. That's mainly because people use social media to connect with friends, socialize, catch up on the news, and for a whole host of other non work related things. So a more informal, less business like tone is expected and appropriate. Another reason is that space is at a premium on social media. You have to get your message across quickly if it's going to be effective and using abbreviations and breaking a few grammar rules are useful and acceptable ways to achieve that. The other thing you'll need to keep in mind when choosing how casual to go on social is your brand tone of voice. Your brand voice should be consistent and recognizable across all your marketing channels. Achieving that is about choosing the right language to reflect your brand. Look at this tweet by Forrester. If their brand voice was more formal, they could have avoided the contraction, don't and instead use the more formal, do not. Or for a more casual brand voice, they could have chosen more informal synonyms in place of advanced and emerging. There's no right or wrong here. It's just about reflecting your brand effectively and being consistent. If we go back to Amy's post to fit in with the channel and Amy's own voice more authentically, it would be good to make the language a little more casual. I'm going to do that by adding a few contractions and replacing these words with some more colloquial synonyms. For your social media copywriting to be successful, you need to have clear objectives in mind. When it comes to your social activity generally, you probably have a number of objectives around engagement levels, click throughs and conversions. So assuming that overall strategy is clear, the next thing is to make sure you have one simple defined objective for each post. Your objective will probably be linked to a call to action, a CTA, but not always. Sometimes the objective of a post is just to make followers aware of something or remind them of a key message. But usually you want them to do something like click through to a landing page, buy a product, or engage with the post by liking or commenting. Here's the important thing. A post should only ever have one call to action. Remember those skimmers and scrollers and remember the limited time and space you have to get your message across. Unless you're absolutely clear what one action you want your reader to take after reading your post, your message can come across as confused and will often be ignored. This is such a simple thing. It takes seconds to decide your posts subjective and craft a simple CTA, and yet so many people get it wrong. Don't be one of them. Look at Forrester's feed again, register now, download now, learn more. Now, it may well be that there are extra CTAs once I click through here, which are going to encourage me further down Forrester's marketing funnel, but the CTA attached to each post is singular and straightforward. Amy can learn something here, too. She's confusing her reader with too many options. She needs to focus on one CTA, which in this case, should be getting people to book onto the workshop, and she needs to give them one clear instruction of how to do it. Adding a link here will make it quick and easy for the reader to click through and book. The most important takeaway from this lesson is that while writing copy for social has a lot in common with writing other marketing copy, people consume it differently. Because people skim and scroll on social, you need to build solid foundations for social media success by knowing your audience, using more casual language, and by sticking to one simple CTA per post. I want to show you a super handy tool now from Sprout Social. Firstly, there's a guide that tells you the optimum length for all the major social media platforms. Secondly, there's the tool itself where you can paste your post and get feedback on its length and number of hash tags. And if you're interested in learning more about copywriting for social media, take a look at my social media copywriting master class. It's full of tips and tricks for writing your profiles, bios, and posts with advice tailored to each of the main platforms. Before you move on, take a close look at your last few social media posts and see if they can be improved using the tips we've explored in this lesson. In the next lesson, I'll share some common mistakes I see people make when writing copy for their creative business and how you can avoid them. 11. Common Mistakes: In this lesson, I'll share some common mistakes I see people make when writing for their creative businesses and how you can avoid them. Nobody wants to come across as rude or abrupt or curt. And that's one of the reasons why we so often clog up and slow down our writing by adding fussy polite words and phrases that don't need to be there instead of getting straight to the point. In fact, the politest thing we can do from our readers point of view is get our message across as succinctly as possible, rather than wasting their time because that's rude. So write confidently and don't be afraid to give direct instructions. Let's look at a few examples. I'm sure you recognize a few of these from official letters you've received or from old fashioned web pages. Isn't it better when people get to the point and say exactly what they mean? Just as using jargon words, where every day once will do doesn't make you look clever. Neither does using more words than you need. It just makes your writing fussy, long winded and difficult to read. If you need a hand making your writing straightforward, try the readability Test tour by Webfx. There are loads of different readability indices and stats to look at, but quite simply, if you aim for this little bar on the test results to turn green, you'll end up with clear simple text that most adult readers will understand. Most of us have a tendency to frame information negatively in our minds. It's human nature. It dates all the way back to when we were living in caves and avoiding a sabretoth tiger on the way to the river was a more important consideration than enjoying a lovely swim when we got there. Naturally, this tendency to frame things negatively gets carried over into our writing. However, research has shown that framing products and services in a positive way increases conversions by as much as 50%. So being more positive in your copy makes good business sense. Here are some examples of what I mean by positive and negative framing. In the examples on the left, we're talking about avoiding negative things. Meanwhile, on the right, we're saying the same things, but we've reframed the information, so that we're focusing on the positive. We're telling the customer about the positive thing that will happen rather than the bad thing they'll avoid. A parcel not getting broken in the post means exactly the same as it arriving in perfect condition, but the positive framing creates a much more positive image in the reader's mind. Do you think that the positively framed alternatives are also a little more direct? I do. And as an extra bonus, I find it easier to link features to benefit when I also make an effort to keep my copy positive. To spot negative framing in your copy, look out for negative words like no, not won't never. And negative qualities, in this case, we've got long, broken and tarnish. Once you're looking out for negative framing, it's pretty easy to spot, then it's just a case of turning it around so that you're focusing on the opposite, positive quality or consequence. Many of us learn to write in a very correct formal style at school or college. It's a way of writing that suits academic work, but it can come across as stilted and stuffy in other contexts, especially online ones. A lot of rules around writing are important because they aid clarity and make sure you get your message across effectively. But certain rules are outdated, and breaking them can actually make your writing clearer as well as more character for. One example of a grammar rule, it's okay to break is never to start a sentence with but or B or and. You should absolutely break this rule because shorter sentences are easier to read. They add energy to your writing, and they often add clarity, too. Here's an example of that in action on Etsy's homepage. Your privacy is the highest priority of our dedicated team, and if you ever need assistance, we're always ready to step in for support. To the reader, it's clear that each of these sentences represents a separate, equally important idea. If we got rid of the word and to please the grammar pedants like this, the reader would assume that the second sentence was building on the idea presented in the first, which it isn't, so that would be confusing. Merging the sentences like this is also grammatically correct, but that's no good either. Not only is this single sentence so long that it's difficult to read, the importance of that second statement has been lost by tagging it onto the end of the previous one. There are a few other grammar rules it's okay to break occasionally. Not using broken sentences is one and making all your paragraphs 3-5 sentences long is another. I don't even know who started that one, but it's surprisingly prevalent. The only rule you should never break when writing marketing copy is simple, write with your reader in mind. But you already knew that, didn't you? In this lesson, you've learned three of the big mistakes my creative clients make when they're writing copy for their business, not getting to the point, framing their message negatively, and blindly following outdated writing rules. Before you move on, take a look at your own copy and see if you can make any improvements by spotting where you've been guilty of making these mistakes and correcting them using the tips you've just learned. In the next lesson, we'll recap what we've learned and talk about our class project. I've also got one fine brilliant free resource for you, so don't even think about skipping it. 12. Next Steps: Thank you for choosing this class, and congratulations. You've just learned practical techniques you can start using straightaway to improve your copy and grow your creative business. Now it's time to put what you've learned into action with your class project. Pick a few pieces of existing copy from your website, a product listing and a social post or ideal. Download the quick sheet from the class description and use it to improve your copy line by line. When you're done, share your strongest example is your project. I'd love to see how you've applied the techniques from this class. If you found this class helpful, please take a moment and leave a review. Your feedback helps me improve future classes and helps other students find classes that will suit their learning needs. Speaking of helpful, I promised you one more free resource. Here it is dictionary.com. It's grown into an all round writing tool. Alongside definitions, you'll find trending words, quizzes, and useful sub dictionaries, including ones for slang, images, and terms related to gender and sexuality. Its sister site, thesaurus.com, lets you test synonyms in real sentences, which is a fast way to upgrade bland wording. Now, what would you like to learn next? If you're looking to define your creative brand with clarity and confidence, my 15 minute mission statement and tagline classes are the perfect next step. In just minutes, you can shape a mission statement that anchors your business and craft a focused tagline that strengthens every piece of marketing you create. Together, they give you a simple, structured way to articulate what you do and why it matters. Or if you're ready to supercharge your social media copy, my social media copywriting master class covers everything from crafting a professional bio to time saving techniques for writing persuasive posts. It's my most popular class on Skillshare, and I update it annually to make sure you've got the most relevant, timely advice for each platform. And if you're looking to hone a specific skill, whether that's crafting punchy ads, making your content more SEO friendly or finnessing your writing style and tone, I've got you covered. Visit my profile page to see my full collection of copywriting classes and hit follow for updates on new ones. Thank you again for learning with me. I'm excited to see how you use what you've learned today to boost your marketing content and grow your creative business.