Founder of Social Saints, Kirsty Saint, was interviewed by her good friend Alana, about ways to write copy that connects, especially for podcasters or small business owners who don’t consider themselves ‘writers’. In this blast from the past (way back in 2017!), they explore how to start writing your copy, important considerations when writing for an online audience, and 10 tips for the editing stage.
Listen to the full interview, or read the transcript highlights below.
Highlights
- If you struggle to start writing, think of yourself, and try to write what you would want to know or read as a starting point.
- Just start writing, and worry about the editing afterwards. Stretch your free flow writing muscle.
- Keep it authentic and use your own language. Write as though you’re having a conversation with a friend.
- When editing your own work, leave it for 24 hours or even a week. Another easy trick is to read what you’ve written out aloud.
Top 10 Tips for Editing Your Copy
- Remove your typos or spelling mistakes.
- Look out for redundancies.
- Break up the content to make it easier for your audience to read and digest.
- Further break that into paragraphs.
- Keep your sentences short; ideally, no longer than 30 words.
- Watch out for over capitalisation.
- Avoid run-on sentences.
- Change passive voice to active voice.
- Make sure that you add a call to action.
- Make sure nothing important is missing, and that what you’ve written can stand on its own.
Transcript
Alana
Now you’re probably wondering why we’re talking about writing engaging copy when podcasting is primarily a spoken word medium. Even though that is very true, there are still lots of opportunities within the podcasting process where we really need to use our word wizardry. We need to use it in our podcast description on iTunes and on our podcast landing page; we need to actually use it in emails to potential guests. And we also need to use it in our show notes for our audience.
Ultimately, it’s really the writing that people consume first to find out if your podcast is actually something they want to listen to. So, it’s very important because it can come down to what we’re writing, and how we’re writing it as to whether someone engages with our show. And so today, I’m sitting here with my very good friend and marketing guru Kirsty Saint, and we’re going to be exploring how to write copy that engages your audience.
So I thought it’d be nice just to start if you could fill everyone in on what kind of work you’re doing in the world and why marketing is your passion?
Kirsty
I specialise in content strategy and Facebook Ads. I work with people starting or growing a small business that helps others to improve their life or the world in some way. So whether that’s healing, training, coaching, or mentoring, I help these small business owners with their marketing and to connect with their soul clients.
With the explosion of the digital space has come with a greater need for content that connects, so that it actually breaks through all of the noise…even if it’s just an About section on a social media platform, or the words on a Facebook ad, or for podcasters, the descriptions and the show notes to go with their podcasts.
I get it that if you’re not a copywriter, or you don’t have an in-house copywriter at your disposal that it can be very difficult to know how to go about writing content. I’ve not only helped my clients by writing content for them, but I’ve also reviewed and edited a lot of their writing. So I’m familiar with the common mistakes and struggles that people have. Writing goes hand in hand with any online presence, and that’s where I come in to help people tie this all together for their business.
Alana
Yeah, beautiful. You want to do the marketing, and you want to write it well, and you want to be strategic about how you write it. But you also want it to sound like you and for it to convey you with feeling through that. So I love that you’re bringing both those angles to our conversation today as well.
So, we’re looking at is what your signature message is, what your unique point of difference is, what problems your podcast solves for your audience, and so on. So that’s really what we need to start, before we even begin the writing process. We need to explore this kind of stuff. And do that work beforehand. Would you say that that’s right, Kirsty? Is that way you’d normally get your clients to start?
Kirsty
Absolutely. Also, a tip, if you struggle with any of this: it might be hard to really identify those audience perspectives of where they are, what their fears are, what their limiting beliefs are. Most of my clients are actually creating businesses or podcasts that fill a need of what they want in their life that just isn’t out there yet. So if you struggle, just think of yourself, and try to write what you would want to know or read as a starting point.
Alana
Yes, because when you already have an audience, you can also ask them, ‘Hey, what are you struggling with? What do you need? How can I serve you?’ But right in the beginning, you don’t know that. And it makes it so much easier if you can just look at yourself and ask either ‘What was I struggling with back then that I needed help with, or even now, what am I struggling with? Or curious about?’ And how can I bring that into the message?
So, how do we start to tie all of this information together then, to create something that’s going to be engaging and that our audience are actually going to connect with?
Kirsty
Firstly, above anything else: start writing. Just write, and then afterwards, worry about the editing, that’s where you can fix things up. And I’ll touch on that in our conversation today, as well. But really, to start off, just start writing, do some free flow writing. And the more you stretch that free flow writing muscle, the stronger it becomes, and the easier it is for you to be able to write anything. So just go with that flow.
There are a few different things that you can do as you’re going through that process to make it a little easier for yourself. If you’re writing for a certain platform, e.g. iTunes, or the podcast summary, or your show notes, you might be restricted by certain character lengths or word lengths. Keep in mind those restrictions that you have, but also think about the length that is available to you and use that. There might be keywords picked up in your content that are picked up elsewhere.
You want to really make use of that space available to you. Also keep in mind it doesn’t have to be a big, daunting process, if you think, all I’ve got to write for this section is 300 words. What you can do then is write an outline of each of the sections or headings that you want to say, even if you don’t keep those headings in the final version. And then if you struggle to come up with what to say within that, you might find it also helps to break up those sections by that word count that you’re aiming for.
Obviously, have your background information handy too; your ‘why’. But I do recommend trying the free flow writing first before referring to your notes.
Keep it interesting above all else, and don’t worry about it being too long, because if people are interested, they’ll keep reading, and they’ll appreciate that you’ve gone to the effort. When you come to the editing phase, then you can refine that if it’s too long or too wordy.
Keep it authentic and use your own language. Write as though you’re having a conversation with a friend, or just one person who needs to know this stuff. When you’re in that free flow writing stage, don’t delete anything that you write, even if you don’t think it’s worked out how you want it. Keep it just in case it contains something useful that you might want to revisit later.
Don’t be afraid to call out your audience’s problems. By that, I mean, don’t just focus on the beautiful things that you do for them, but also include the ‘why’ they need these things…like they’re about to have a breakdown because of the stress in their life or their relationship’s on the rocks, or they’re facing their own mortality,
Let them know that you’ve got their back for their specific problem, and write that. The first important step is just to write. Let yourself go and enjoy the process and don’t edit as you write the first round.
Alana
It’s interesting that you say use all of the character limits in iTunes, because I use about 100 of them. I’m not saying I’m right. That’s just personally how I have done it, and it seemed to have engaged my audience. But I love your perspective, of using the characters as a way to enhance the possibility of it being returned in search results, because you’re putting more of those keywords in there, without being spammy, right? We’re not talking about being spammy here. But we’re talking about including language that your audience is going to be searching for in order to solve their issue or to meet their desire.
Alana
What happens if we get stuck in our writing? What can we do then to move through that resistance and get back into the flow?
Kirsty
Be patient with it because it can take time. If you try to force it, particularly if you’re not a writer, or you don’t enjoy writing, you’re just going to dislike it even more if you try to force it. So, take a break and come back to it. If you do have the time, allow yourself to spend a few days writing, but don’t force it. Free flow writing can really help as well; just dumping it all, and then coming back to edit it later.
Sometimes when people get stuck, it’s because they’re overthinking, or they’re trying to correct their writing as they go. That can then bring an extra dimension of pressure into your writing. When you’re just in the writing phase, let the editing phase take care of the polishing. Let it all flow out, and then you’ll have some gems that come up, and once you start seeing some of those gems, more will come as the free flow happens.
Alana
I always love to just pitch myself out under a tree with my journal and a notebook and just see what comes out. Give yourself some space.
We’re going to also talk about how to avoid some of the common traps in writing that might impact how our audience comprehends our message.
Kirsty
So, this is where we do the editing, and we refine what we’ve written so it’s ready for our audience. I have a list of 10 things to look for and remove during the editing stage. But firstly, keep in mind that you want to keep your audience in the flow as well. So you want to support them to comprehend your message. Think of it as keeping the content well lubricated, instead of breaking the flow for your reader. That should be the goal of your editing and polishing stage, to remove any blocks that prevent your reader from easily comprehending and relating to your message.
One of the best tricks I use when I’m editing my own work is to leave it for 24 hours or even a week. Put it aside, put it in the bottom drawer, ideally for a week, but at least 24 hours. Then when you come back to it, you’re seeing it in fresh eyes, like your reader would be looking at it.
Another easy trick is to read what you’ve written out aloud. This one’s especially useful if you don’t have the 24 hours to wait, because this technique will actually slow your brain down enough to notice the errors if you didn’t spot them while you’re in the flow of writing.
Top 10 Tips for Editing Your Copy
#1 is to remove your typos or spelling mistakes. So, if you’re writing directly into Facebook, or whatever the platform is, I recommend either writing it in a document editor such as Word first and pasting it in. Even if you type it in there, copy and paste it into Word first and have your spell check turned on before you hit Publish.
#2 is to look out for redundancies. These are the words that are not required, or they say the same thing. So an example might be a ‘major breakthrough’. A breakthrough IS major, so you don’t have to use that word. And same with ‘Let’s postpone until later’. Postponing by its nature is later, so we don’t need to say that.
#3 is to break up the content to make it easier for your audience to read and digest. You might like to also add some bold or italics throughout, or even the odd word in all caps or use bullet points, and this ties in with the next tip.
#4 is to further break that into paragraphs. As we’re talking about online content here, it’s really hard to read large blocks of text on screen, and most people these days are reading from a mobile, which is a very small screen. So, err on the side of keeping your paragraphs as short as possible, even if you just have one sentence per paragraph.
#5 is to keep your sentences short; ideally, no longer than 30 words. Check that you don’t have any really long sentences that could be broken up into two or three sentences.
#6 is to watch out for over capitalisation, which I see a lot. There’s nothing wrong with using all caps sparingly for emphasis, for example, ‘HUGE’. But some people have a tendency to capitalise important words that are not proper nouns, to show emphasis. So just having the capital H for ‘Huge’.
#7 is to avoid run-on sentences. These are when two or more independent clauses are joined without the right mark of punctuation, such as a full stop or a semicolon, or an appropriate conjunction such as ‘and’. People often write run-on sentences because they have really long sentences, so you’ll be able to pick it up. When your sentences are much longer than 30 words, it’s possibly because you’re using run-on sentences.
#8 is to change passive voice to active voice. An example of this is ‘his diabetes was diagnosed by the doctor’ as the passive, and ‘the doctor diagnosed his diabetes’ as the active voice.
#9 is to make sure that you add a call to action. I think this is really important with anything that we have these days online, if it’s in a marketing context. So by marketing, I don’t mean just that you you’re running an ad, but every time you publish a podcast for example, make sure that there’s a call to action to subscribe to your podcasts, follow you on Facebook, or download your freebie, to make sure that you’re giving people a way to remain connected with you.
#10 is to make sure nothing important is missing, and that what you’ve written can stand on its own. Make sure your opening sentence contains the essence of what you’re communicating, because people skim and then might not read further, if they’re not hooked after the first line.