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Learn how to promote products and services efficiently and effectively with flyers, newsletters, emails and websites: join us at an October copywriting training session in Nottingham.

What’s the French or Spanish equivalent of “Think like a Saxon”?

(Part three of ‘Effective copywriting: the basics‘.)
Copywriting is writing that does a job. You have a job, too, and the chances are that writing is just one of the tasks that competes for your time. Effective copywriting, then, is also an efficient process: doing as best as possible in the time available. Strangely enough, [...]

New eyetracking research from the Neilsen Norman Group shows how users often read web content in an F-shaped pattern.

I would recommend this book to anyone who is new to writing for the web and wants a very simple and direct introduction. I think it’s out of print now, but if you can find a copy it’s worth a few bob. Unfortunately, it looks a bit Baby’s first book of online content. I [...]

Drop back in the first quarter of 2006 for these posts and more…

Ten ways (count them) to be more productive in MS Word
Free pocket web writing guide
High impact copywriting, fast
Common web writing mistakes you can avoid
Free handbook for web editors

That’s all for this year. See you again soon.

Megan asks, “is there an optimum length for a blog post?” I don’t think there is a optimum blog entry length, any more than there is an optimum web page length. Entries vary from one line, to a few paras in length, to much longer posts.
However, blogs are informal. Each post generally focuses on [...]

(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.

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.