Copywriting Workshop: Red Hot Stories from San Diego

Note: It's ironic in a sad way that this post on Red Hot Copywriting tips is being published in Southern California on a weekend of horrific wildfires whipped by winds. The air is full of ash.

People in East San Diego county have been forced to evacuate their homes. The winds haven't died down and fires are spreading rapidly in the direction of the Wild Animal Park. Many residents have fled with their horses, and of course other pets.

Here in my home office, my desk and papers are covered with soot. We put the air conditioning on to close up the house. My nose is running and sneezing. But for the 21,000 500,000 people who have to flee their homes, it's much worse. The fires are spreading. The morning TV news is not good.

Red Hot Copywriting Workshop Notes

It's hard for me to concentrate with the view outside of red skies and smoke. Here's what I wrote before the fires broke out...

As the years roll by, the more I'm convinced how important to my any online business it is to write good content that persuades readers to act. Last Friday I attended Lorrie Morgan Ferrero's Red Hot Copywriting workshop in L.A.

I'm skeptical of copywriters - like many Internet users, my antennae are sensitized to hyped up words that sell fluff and fantasies. As to Lorrie - well, I get drawn into reading her email promotions and stories that reveal personal details of her work and life.

Lorrie's storytelling techniques are powerful. It's not that her life or work is unusual or amazing or anything like that. I think we as humans just like reading details of other people's lives.

Here's my Red Hot Copywriting Tip #1: Tell a story. More importantly, tell YOUR story.

In one of Lorrie's workshop exercises, we told of a time in our work when things were bad. Then we spoke of a turning point. We pointed to a major crisis and an 'aha' moment. We spoke of the learning lessons that make us who we are today, and why we do what we do in our businesses.

How is storytelling related to good copywriting? Stories get us to read content out of curiosity. But the key is this: stories build trust with the reader.

To Know You Is to Trust You

In the details of a story, as a reader, you see the author is human just like you and you begin to feel a connection. That leads you to be influenced by them. It brings you closer to the author and more likely to buy.

To some of us who are more business-like or academic, this style of writing is contrary to how we were educated. Blogs in particular offer challenges to be more conversational.

The new trend in communicating with your audience is to write more personally, sharing your experiences with readers.

Don't Bore Me

There's a fine line between building trust through stories and boring readers with insignificant details. As a business writer, it's still important to stay on purpose and get to the point as quickly as possible.
 

Comments

[Bea]

How true that your story pulls people in. I have a writer, Kathy Hamilton, in Today's Zaman that I love to read because she doesn't just write about an issue, she spins a story and they're always worth reading.

Recently, she wrote to me because I wrote an article addressing her unfortunate incident. I mentioned to her that I loved her writing, but wondered if she wasn't, in fact, a storyteller. She wrote back and said that yes, she was raised by a family of storytellers.

So, the moral of the story is if you know how to spin a story, more readers will enjoy reading what you write. I need some lessons from Kathy.