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(Part two of ‘Effective copywriting: the basics’.)

Copywriting is writing that does a job. It persuades someone to act. Typically, the action is to buy something. But it might be to make a call, write an email, or join a free course. Everytime you are writing to persuade, you are copywriting.

AIDA is a useful way to […]

(Part one of ‘Effective copywriting: the basics’.)

Relevance means connecting your message with your audience. Before you start writing, you must really understand your message and your audience. So good copywriting depends on preparation.

This isn’t relevant:

Don’t be like the monster.

Understand your Unique Reason for Joining
The message of membership packs or other material is the URJ. URJ […]

Last week I gave a short copywriting workshop for the NCVO Membership Forum. It focused on copywriting for membership schemes, but there’s some good general stuff in there, too. Here’s an overview split into three posts.

Effective copywriting has three components. Writing compelling marketing material depends on mastering these three components:

Relevance: understand what you are offering, […]

Links to dozens of dictionaries, archives, encyclopedias, and language resources: ACES Reference Page.

Two classic columns by Jakob Nielsen are a bit misleading. To be sure, he has had a major positive effect on web design. In fact people still quote advice he gave eight (8!) years ago. It’s not out of date. But out of context, his advice on writing for the web consists of - at […]

Streetmap is a simple UK streetmap search extension for Firefox. Just highlight a UK street name or postcode and right-click to launch a map of it from your favourite map service. 0.93 adds Google Maps UK and a slide-out menu to select map service. Oh, and a pretty icon for the menu.
More info and download […]