In Which I Give Grave Consideration to Edith Wharton

Am reading The House of Mirth. Is there anything more annoying than rich people feeling sorry for themselves?

In Which I Compare Writing to Networking

As you can probably imagine, I’ve spent a great deal of my life in writing seminars. The classic model, for those who’ve never had the joy, is pretty ulcer-inducing – each writer brings a piece of work that all of the other writers read and comment on. I’ve had root canals that were less painful.
The kicker is, these seminars are, at best, incredibly imperfect tools. You can attend critiques religiously for years and still not develop as a writer. If you swing a hammer at the correct angle with enough force, that nail is going into that wood. In a writing class, that nail might be a metaphor for Kierkegaardian existential philosophy which insists that the hammer doesn’t actually exist.
So what does this have to do with network marketing? In truth, they both distinctly qualify as imperfect tools. No one is quite sure how they really work, because their results aren’t really measurable in a liner form. But they both work – and in my experience they tend to work better for folks who ask for and accept constructive criticism, who offer constructive criticism, and who take feedback into consideration without being bound by it. People who are just starting writing classes tend to only really think about their own work – they may not read others’ with the attention it merits. That’s going to a networking event and talking more than you listen – it’s ok, but it doesn’t give you the opportunity to analyze the mechanisms that other folks are using to benefit their businesses, or formulate constructive criticism. Newbies also tend to justify their work before it can be read – “It’s the first draft, I wrote at 2am, I know it sucks…” This is like saying the same thing, over and over, at every event you attend – it’s not taking enough risk to allow others the chance to offer constructive criticism. And another trap for novice writers is trying to incorporate all suggestions into their work, instead of staying true their own vision. Strangely enough, I rarely find a small-business owner who’s in danger of this.

In Which I Talk About Brand Loyalty (with thanks to Roy Williams)

So, people are talking about branding these days like it’s some hot new thing that you have to be some kind of marketing guru to figure out. But it ain’t. Branding is just the creation of associative memory, so that thinking about one thing automatically leads to thinking about another thing. And the first guy to do that was our good friend Ivan Pavlov, who won a Nobel Prize for it back in 1904.
Y’all remember Pavlov’s experiment, right? Ring the bell, give the dogs meat, after a while they salivate at the sound of the bell, even though they didn’t before? All this…ringing a bell?
The buying public is your dog. You want to create an associative memory in that dog, so that it drools when it hears your bell. The way to do that is through consistency, frequency, and anchoring. Consistency and frequency are pretty straightforward, right? You don’t offer the meat without the bell, or ring the bell without offering the meat. And you do your little bell-ringing trick as often as you can without busting the dog’s gut. But, if Pavlov’s campaign hadn’t been anchored in the dogs’ love of meat, this consistent and frequent bell ringing would’ve just made the dogs irritated.
So now we work backwards a little. What response do you want from your dog? What kind of emotion elicits that response? That emotion is your anchor. The way you tie your product to that emotion is your brand – or, at least, would be a good brand for you to have.
But once you have that anchor, you’ve still gotta maintain. If you keep switching that anchor, those dogs aren’t gonna know when to drool, when to stop, when to eat or what. Settle on that brand, Pavlov, and then keep ringing that bell.

In Which I Dispense Copywriting Advice

Ten Commandments of Copywriting
1.) Keep your sentences short and punchy. Six to eleven words. Of course, you’ll want to mix it up a little—add variations in cadence with the occasional long sentence and the odd fragment. But the bulk of your sentences should be concise.
2.) Make your pitch early. Repeat it as often as you can without being obnoxious.
3.) Address your reader as ‘you.’ Never use the stilted, formal third-person for copy. Calling the reader ‘you’ makes your sentiments immediate and personal. One should avoid the third-person like the plague.
4.) Know your grammar. While it is fine to occasionally violate rules of grammar—to use fragments, for instance—a copywriter should know, internalize, love and respect all things grammatical. Then, any violation is clearly intentional.
5.) Talk about benefits, not features. Your reader is interested in the ways your product will make his or her life better, easier, or more enjoyable. So cough up this information right away! The copy isn’t about how great your product is. It’s about the great things it will do for your reader.
6.) Tell a story. People like to read about other people. So if you can give a real-life example of the benefits that your product produced, and make it into a good story, your sales will increase.
7.) Less is not more. More is more. Give your reader as much benefits-focused information as possible. The more information you give consumers, the more likely they are to select you product.
8.) Define your terms. Your readers aren’t idiots, but they aren’t saturated by the language of your business, either. State technical concepts in the clearest possible language, and don’t give your readers more than they need. The technical details will be of great interest if you’re marketing to a tech audience, but will bore Joe Schmoe to tears.
9.) Make your pitch early. Repeat it as often as you can without being obnoxious.
10.) Close with a call to action. Tell people what you want them to do, and say it in such a way that they feel compelled to do it. If you can offer some sort of incentive, so much the better.