Art in its most simplest form; the written word.  Is that really what we are trying to accomplish in website copy or blog articles?  To honestly and quickly answer this one…

Yes!

Art, in and of itself, is unique to the artist.  In other words, there are no two Leonardo da Vinci’s just like there are no two of you.  And, like da Vinci, you have the amazing opportunity to improve throughout your career.  However, in order to develop into a great copywriter for your business, it’s important that you take a lesson from Leonardo and learn from other artists (in our case they are writers).

What Can I Learn From Other Writers?

Very simply stated, you can learn more from other writers than you can in four to six years of upper-level schooling.  While a higher education will better your grammatical styling and improve on your ability to write in APA format, it does not give you the opportunity to truly and wholeheartedly understand an audience.  Reading what other writers in your field publish provides you with that very opportunity.

In the very same breath, rhetoric and composition professors (and I mean no offense to my own collegiate instructors) have a significant amount of difficulty teaching students how to include personality and perspective in their writing.  If you have followed this blog (or any other successful blog, for that matter) over the course of the past few months, you will have found that my personality pours out of each and every line.  That is what keeps the audience coming back…your personality.  So, figure out what part of your personality the audience likes and stick to it as best as possible!

And, after you have figured out your audience and the personality they like to see from you, it’s extraordinarily important that you determine which grammatical rules you can break.  Again, English professors may maim me if they were to read this, but there are certain rules that you can break when you publish website copy or blog articles.  However, the only way to determine which of these rules you can bend, which you can break, and to which you need to adhere you need to read the current publications and successful copy.

Where Can I Look For All This Content?

I have one word for you.

Google.

Now, while Googling can be a bad idea for some things, it is a phenomenal step in the right direction with regard to finding out what your target audience (and the search engines) truly like.  For instance, after you complete the search and read through the web copy, you can get a feel for what the search engines like (which is ironically steering towards what your audience likes as well).

A second place to stop in for content is StumbleUpon.  Not only has this site developed into an outstanding social network and multimedia library, but it is a fantastic source of random content.  With that said, yes, you should customize your profile to get more niche-concentrated content, but you should also not limit it to the point that you are strangling browsing experience.  The goal of stumbling, for you as the business copywriter, is to take a quick synopsis of writing styles and personalities.  Along with that, you can view the most popular blogs and copy around and analyze the personalities and characteristics of those articles which gives you a great perspective into your own writing.

Lastly, read your own work.  Take the time to go back and read your first-ever publication.  See for yourself the growth and development that you have realized over the course of your writing career.  Not only will this give you a gauge on your ability level in comparison to the other articles you have read, but it will let you know where you are about to go as well.  It’s like the old proverb “You don’t know where you’re going until you know where you have been”.  Take that to heart and really sit down for a few minutes with your old work…reconnect…analyze…evaluate…and grow!

Will There Be A Point That I Can Stop Reading?

Not to be a cynic, but the only time that you should stop reading is when you have stopped caring about your company.  If you truly care about your business then why not take a few minutes to read what your competition is publishing, or read your old content to see if it can be upgraded (either for your audience or the search engines).  The bottom line with this very general question…like Dory from Finding Nemo “Just Keep Reading“.

Need Help?

If content creation is something that you are interested in but don’t know how to get started, contact us today to schedule your free marketing analysis.

Sources:
“The Essential Step-by-Step Guide to Internet Marketing”-E-Book
SlideShare.net
Image Source: HubSpot, “The 2011 State of Inbound Marketing”, E-Marketer.com