6 Copywriting Lessons I’ve Learned From My Mentors
I have always been a writer. I knew 22 words by the time I turned one, could read by age four, and spent free time filling my parents’ cabinets with pages of stories by six.
Writing comes naturally to me. It energizes me. It relaxes me. It employs me. But I didn’t learn all the good stuff about writing on my own. Like every other endeavor worth pursuing, learning to write well takes a village. I’m lucky to have an army of support and guidance to lean on as I figure out how to write words people actually want to read. The following are six copywriting lessons I’ve carried with me from high school into my professional career. Lessons I live, work and write by everyday.
1. You get three exclamation points a year. Use them wisely.
Anyone reading this blog who attended my high school knows exactly who taught me this lesson. My high school writing teacher, Vicki Cary, taught her students that everyone is allowed three exclamation points per year. Actually, she didn’t so much teach it as she pounded it into our heads (and I am grateful). Human beings are excitable creatures, and we get easily carried away. Copywriters need to reel in the excitement and save it for the most sensational stories of the year.
2. Content precedes design.
I learned this lesson from Twitter user @zeldman. Advertisers’ jobs are to tell a story. To paint the picture of a familiar need and introduce a solution. We use two primary devices to paint this picture: copy and design. I will always advocate for strong design. It’s vital. And, I will always advocate for copy to be considered first.
In any ad, email, or website, certain elements of the story must be made clear. Is the product we’re selling on sale? What limitations apply to our service? How can our consumer learn more? Copy answers these questions and helps articulate a clear message. Design is important—but without content, it is merely decoration.
3. Your opinion doesn’t matter.
I know what you’re thinking. “Yes, it does!” But it really doesn’t. Unless you are writing an op-ed or a memoir, there’s no reason to add opinion to your writing. I learned this from another high school teacher, Ryan McCallum.
In McCallum’s journalism class, I was challenged with authoring unbiased news articles for my high school paper. At the time, it was nearly impossible for me to exclude my personal opinions from my work. I was 17 and I needed to be heard!
Now, I understand that there’s a time and a place for my personal opinions, and it’s rarely in a news article or advertisement. The same applies to working with clients.
There is a time and a place to push back and stand up for my work—and, most of the time, it’s best to set my personal beliefs aside and give my client what they’re asking for. Sometimes, they choose to move forward with a shitty story. So it goes.
4. You don’t have to make every edit someone suggests.
Another lesson from Vicki Cary: suggestions are just that… suggestions. Suggestions are not requirements. But I know that many of us—especially women—interpret feedback as a laundry list of everything we’ve done wrong or everything we must fix.
As creatives, we put a lot of time, effort and passion into our work. We are usually quite proud of what we produce. So it can hurt when someone asks us to change the headline we love or remove the witty joke we were so proud to have thought up.
Stand by your work. Push back when you feel it’s warranted. You were hired because you’re great at what you do. You are a talented writer. You yield the power to shape others’ thoughts and opinions with your words. Sometimes, the client knows best. Sometimes, your coworker has your best interests in mind. Sometimes, you can just ignore the feedback others give you. The world will not end when you do.
5. If you want to be a better writer, first become a better reader.
One of my all-time favorite quotes is by the late author James Baldwin. He said:
“You think your pain and your heartbreak are unprecedented in the history of the world, but then you read. It was books that taught me that the things that tormented me most were the very things that connected me with all the people who were alive, who had ever been alive.”
Not only does reading connect us with the human experience, it also helps us, as writers, gain familiarity with new vocabulary, dialogue, and ideas. Reading others’ work helps us figure out what we like, what we don’t like, and what we might want to add or remove from our current writing style. Reading helps us develop our voice.
6. Make it simple, but significant.
What would a MPLS MadWomen blog post be without a reference to its namesake? “Make it simple, but significant,” is a line spoken by the iconic Don Draper from HBO’s Mad Men. Don is essentially saying, “less is more.”
There is such a thing as too much fluff. Writers love to use adjectives, idioms, and jargon. But these elements aren’t essential to the art of storytelling. A copywriter’s job is to make information accessible in the simplest, most straightforward way possible. Read your work with a skeptical eye. Omit unnecessary adjectives and prepositions. Write in active voice. Clean up your grammar. Make it significant.
// Image by @mentatdgt