“Excessive Adjectives – too Much of a Good Thing.”
Blame Your English Teacher
Blame Your Mom
Blame Fear of breaking the law
You aren’t addressing your prospects’ concerns”

Now that you know where to place the blame, you can start to do something about it.

That starts with taking the time to write. No good copy is written in an instant.

Begin with getting it all out on paper, then sort, re-arrange, and delete anything that doesn’t add to your main topic.

Next, tighten it up. That means getting rid of “fluff” and extra words that serve no purpose except to fill space. Replace long words with short ones and long sentences with short ones.

Eliminate any words that any person in your target audience might not understand. Even if you use terms like “experiential,” “protracted,” and “tertiary” in real life – get them out of your copy.

And if you can’t overcome the reasons why or don’t have the time to write effective marketing copy, get in touch.

Writing to help you succeed is what I do.

And yet, amateur marketers still pay too much attention to the rules their High School English teacher taught. The result is dry as a bone, stiff copy.

And you know, nobody reads dry words until they’re required to do so.

At the same time, being too casual makes you sound a little demented. And I HAVE seen it done. In fact, I’ve received emails with a subject line that went something like: “Like You Gotta Dig This!”

Uh – no, I like don’t gotta.

I thought that “like” habit had fallen out of fashion years ago – but I was wrong. I not only heard it in the grocery store this week, I heard it on a television commercial tonight.

But there are a couple of other common errors that I’m seeing more and more lately.

One is the over-use or mis-use of commas.

Look how difficult it is to read this:

By now, you know, that following instructions, from your high school English teacher, will cause you to write dry, dull, uninspiring copy.

This one is SO easy to avoid. Here’s the trick:

After you write a sentence or a paragraph, read it out loud. Pause at every comma. If it sounds like normal conversation – great. If it sounds choppy or clunky or halting (as if you were really not sure about what you wanted to say) get rid of a few commas.

The other is the over-use of descriptive words and phrases.

Take this sentence from a property description one of my ezine readers found on an agent website: “Well-favored uncommonly modern kitchen equipped with top-of-the line appliances and unpredicted materials.”
(No, that’s not a typo. It said “unpredicted.”)

Sadly, all those words draw attention to themselves and away from the message they were meant to convey.

Keep it simple – and communicate.

Before you sit down to write, think about the people you want to reach. Then narrow that down to just one of them. Picture that person in your mind’s eye…

What will they be doing when they get your message? What will they be thinking / worrying / dreaming about? That’s what you want to discuss with them.

Now pretend that you’re sitting across the kitchen table from them, sharing a cup of coffee and perhaps a plate of cookies – and just talk.

The message you write will be much more natural. Your words will flow easier and you won’t be tempted to throw in any “$40 words” for emphasis. (You wouldn’t do that in person, would you?)

The best part – people will enjoy reading what you write, and they’ll respond… What could be better? (The cookies, maybe??)

That means instead of writing “large kitchen” you should write “12 X 14′ kitchen offers space for friends and family to help with holiday meals.”

And instead of saying “surrounded by trees” you should write “tall Pines surround the property, assuring privacy.”

I know – some places on the web you don’t have room so you have to be boring and uninspiring. But some places – like your own website – offer all the space you need. So use it!

The rule is: Remember that it isn’t about you.

Your marketing, if it’s to be effective, HAS to be about your prospective customers/clients and what they want or need.

Test each of your marketing messages (including web pages) by checking to see what the first sentence is about. If it says “we” or “I,” rewrite it.

Then count the number of times you say “we” or “I” or any variation thereof. Next, count how many times you use some version of the word “You.”

Unless you’ve used “you” at least 3 or 4 times as often as you’ve used “I,” – rewrite it.

Just yesterday I spent nearly an hour on the phone with a client who was trying to decide on the best word to describe an offer he was making.

It can be a long process, pondering each word and trying to decide how it might affect a reader’s perception of the offer.

Most copywriters and marketers go through this same process… and sometimes they come up with words that are just plain annoying.

At least, they annoy me. Once I see them in copy I am stuck with the feeling that the person is “All hype and no substance.”

The problem, of course, is that the words that annoy me might not be the same ones that annoy you.

But for what it’s worth, I’ll share two of the words/phrases that turn me away…

Both of these are used by marketers who are promoting their expertise and asking you to buy their program or listen to an audio or video – which you know will only promote what they have to sell.

One is “drill down.” They say “We’re going to drill down and …”

The other is “grill.” Just yesterday I got a promotion for a teleseminar, “In which XX will grill me until he discovers my secret for…”

Yeah sure. Delete.

Before you send your promotion out to the world, check to see if any of the words you use make you sound like “All hype and no substance.”

If they do, choose better words.

They make you lose track of what you were reading while you go back to re-read the last sentence and think “Huh?”

The one I found today wasn’t a major thing – but it was enough to make me stop. And I’m sure I know just how it happened. The write made some edits and changes before submitting the article. But he didn’t quite finish.

Here’s what I read: “There is still a huge backlog of these cases or foreclosures that have never been brought forward yet,” The sentence would have been fine if the writer had left off the word “Yet.” It would also have been fine if he had said “that have not been brought forward yet.” But “Have never been brought forward yet” was jarring.

Before you submit an article or a blog post – proof read your copy. See if there’s a word or two stuck in there that needs to come out.

Now that anyone can have a website and/or a blog, there’s not even an editor to convince. Anyone can write anything they please.

That’s why it’s a good idea to apply a bit of common sense to any advice you’re seeing. For instance, take the blog I came across on Monday.

This one offered up 9 tips to improve your blog posts. Some of them were good, but one was absolutely wrong.

The writer suggested that you learn a new word each day – one that you had to look up in the dictionary. Then use it in your blog.

That’s some of the worst advice I’ve ever seen.

A blog is for communicating – for letting people get to know you and the service or product you offer.

It’s NOT for trying to impress anyone with your huge vocabulary. It’s definitely NOT for trying to show your readers that you’re smart and they’re dumb.

The rule of thumb in copywriting is to gear your words toward a 7th grade reading level. Any time you have a choice between a big word and a small word, use the small word.

Of course, if English is your second language and you need to learn more words that fit into that level, fine. Learn them and use them.

But unless your blog post for the day is all about learning new words, don’t say “commensurate” when you mean “equal” or “rapacious” when you mean “greedy.”

Use words that everyone in your audience can comprehend – without going to the dictionary.

Apply this same thinking to industry jargon…

Just because you know the meaning of common industry words doesn’t mean your customers do. So do try to avoid them.

A recent Active Rain post posed the question: “Which words make you disregard a marketing message?”

Here are some of the replies:

Paradigm shift
hard-worker
well-respected
“KILLER”
Progressive
Well-respected
Content-rich
Quality
Urgent
Utilize
Typical
Innovative
leverage
A-list

Two of my own favorite “love to hate” phrases are “drill down” and “Hold his feet to the fire.”

These are quite often used when promoting a teleseminar or some kind of training program. And there’s just something about those phrases that make me think the speaker (or writer) is a phony.

Then there are the sentences that attempt to impress, but simply sound pompous. For instance:

Let’s all partner to leverage our passion and proactively initiate a world-class paradigm shift that will optimize enterprise-level interactions.

The first step is to pass the “glance test” and to create a friendly feeling in the minds of your readers.

First pay attention to the “from” line: Make it clear that the message is from you. Use your name and/or your agency name, not just some address at gmail or yahoo.

Then consider the subject line: Make it interesting, but true, and make it relevant to your message.

Consider your own reactions. When the subject line is clearly an attention getter to make you look at the message…and has nothing to do with the message… doesn’t it make you cranky? It does me!

Take a little information out of your message and turn it into a hook to draw your reader in. If you’re telling about a new listing, say so. The people who are looking for a home will read it, but the ones who are hoping for an offer on their short sale probably won’t. That’s OK, because they’re not your target audience.

If you have interesting news about a political or social development, don’t say “news.” Say something specific like “HR 345 passed! Here’s how it affects you.” You have about 40 spaces, so use them!

Every day my mail… and probably yours… is filled with e-mail from people who are trying to trick us into reading their messages. I get mad. That means that even if I wanted what they offered I’d ignore them.

Now pass the second “glance test.”

What about the look of the copy? How many times have you started to read an e-mail message and stopped because it was too much work?

A long block of copy might work in a book or a magazine article, but on the screen it’s difficult to keep your eyes on the right line when there are too many lines.

Copywriters call it a “gray wall” and it is a wall. It’s a wall between you and your intended readers, because many people simply won’t bother to try.

The answer is to use short paragraphs with blank lines between them. Break it up, make it easy to scan, and use bullets and sub-heads to draw your readers to the most important points. If you want your message read and understood, present it in bite size pieces.

The bottom line is that you need to do everything possible to create trust in your reader, and to make it easy for him or her to read and comprehend your message.

One of the easiest ways to accomplish that is to put yourself in the reader’s place… If you got that e-mail would you read it or delete it? If you’re not sure, ask a friend to read it before you send it.