posted by Brad Shorr filed under Copywriting
Breathe Life into Your Business by Putting Life in Your Website
Too many b2b websites are stiff as cardboard. But whether your site is of the basic "billboard" variety or a full blown e-commerce site, customers want more than the traditional Big Three - Service, Quality, and Price. Remember Robert DeNiro in Taxi Driver? Today's online customer asks the same question
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posted by Brad Shorr filed under Copywriting
Last year I put together a fairly extensive list of commonly misused business words and phrases. I've just updated it with these additions -
Among versus between
Appraise versus apprise
Consul, council, and counsel
Fewer versus less
Fortuitous versus fortunate
Click here for the complete list of commonly confused business words and phrases.
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Chicago based SEO copywriting, blog consulting, and content strategy consulting.
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posted by Brad Shorr filed under Copywriting
Clare Lynch wrote a post here recently in which she utterly destroyed the rationale for using "solutions" in business copywriting. Her post was so on target, so witty, and so devastating that frankly, I don't know why I'm trying to append my own thoughts.
Perhaps it's because her guest post and our subsequent Twittering led to our creating the cartoon
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posted by Brad Shorr filed under Copywriting
Can a Leaflet Design Be So Bad, It's Good?
Here's a little case study you may find helpful for designing and writing leaflets and other one-page promotional materials.
A few days ago, I found a leaflet under my windshield that was so cluttered and confusing, I spent about half an hour studying it. Maybe that's what the creators wanted - a leaflet
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posted by Brad Shorr filed under Copywriting
Marshall McLuhan famously said, The medium is the message." In terms of website design and message strategy, we could also say, "The motif is the message."
To illustrate, here's a story a friend of mine from the world of advertising told me. Apparently this is a famous story in advertising circles.
Imagine you are driving down a tree lined country road. You
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posted by Brad Shorr filed under Copywriting
Luke Gedeon is running a group project in support of Caring for China (C4C), an NPO dedicated to helping the Chinese people move toward greater freedom, including freedom of speech. In this project post, I want to talk about ways NPOs can more effectively raise money through direct mail solicitation.
The most important thing an NPO must convey is a
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posted by Brad Shorr filed under Copywriting
Image by viZZZual.com via FlickrThe Sales Power of Features
Every sales and marketing specialist agrees, "Talk benefits, not features!" Yet there are ways of talking about features that can advance the sales effort.
Let me give you a practical example of the power of features from my packaging sales and marketing days, and then relate it to well known and successful
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posted by Brad Shorr filed under Copywriting
The Difference between Irony and Paradox
Do you think it's ironic that people use the word ironic to describe situations that are anything but ironic? Let's investigate. Have you ever heard someone pose a rhetorical question along these lines -
"Isn't it ironic that the bill collector burst into the lobby at the very moment I was sneaking out my office window?"
To
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