Beginnings

It’s starting the article, or book, or essay, or whatever you’re trying to write, it’s the beginning that’s hardest. You’ve done your research, you’ve found your angle (see Part One), and you’ve set down a course of action. But, how do you start?

As any good journalist knows, it’s all about the hook. Your beginning (and your title) should have a hook that makes the reader say, “Ooo, this looks interesting”. You want the reader to be pulled in and compelled to read what you have to say. Like catching a fish – thus, the “hook”. Once the fish is caught, you want to drag him to the shore, or the end. You don’t want him wriggling loose, so you have to put some barb into the hook.

Crafting the hook is usually the hardest part. Some people are really good at it, but very few will tell you that it was easy.  There’s a few freakish anomolies out there that find this easy, but most of us don’t.

The important question to ask yourself is: What can I say that will make a potential reader want to know more? You can go about this is a number of ways – relating, exploiting, sensationalizing, using fear or avarice, or curosity. You can say something that nearly every person on the planet will relate to, e.g., Have you ever found yourself wondering why your socks disappear? Where do they go? How can I get them to come home?

Every subject, no matter how dull it may seem, has a point that we can all relate to. As I’ve written articles on plumbing, insurance, greeting cards, security, vitamins, food, education, and more subjects than I can actually remember, I always look for the human element. We are, after all, all people with needs, desires, fears, curosity, and faults.

When you construct your hook, you want to set up your piece so that it relates to the human factor. When was asked to write 1500 words about greeting cards, I was initially stumped. I could have written about the business, or its history, or something equally boring and uninteresting. Instead I took a look at the human side of it. What exactly do greeting cards do for people? They make them feel good. Why? Because they show a certain amount of caring, and essentially, kindness.

Using kindness as my guide, I pumped out those words around how greeting cards expressed a freely given act of kindness – and there was my hook. A simple act of kindness.

Creating a good hook that appeals to our human elements is the hook that will sell and that others will relate to.  It’s not always easy, and sometimes it’s as obvious as a stain on a white shirt. Use your angle, boil it done to its most basic element, and you’ll have a good hook.

By Pam Foster

Did you know that many common marketing words can be dangerous to your e-mail campaigns?
In fact, they can potentially make your valuable messages invisible to intended audiences, because spam filters block them.

This includes many of the words that have sold a gazillion products over the years …

The most powerful words in direct-response that get attention, build excitement, and prompt immediate action.

Sadly, those words can create a potential mine field in your e-mail marketing. Here’s why …

The CAN-SPAM Act of 2003 established legal standards for commercial e-mail, and the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) enforces them.

Under this act, anyone who receives an unsolicited e-mail can report the sender as a spammer. In addition, most Internet Service Providers (ISPs) and virus-protection programs offer spam-blocking services that filter out offensive incoming emails.

Certain e-mail addresses, words, phrases, text formats, and links cause spam filters to reject the e-mail altogether. Sometimes the most innocent e-mails get caught in spam filters. You may have experienced this.

But does that also include people who “opted in” to receive e-mails from a company?

You don’t want to hear this … but yes … it can.

According to the CAN-SPAM Act, “There are no restrictions against a company e-mailing its existing customers or anyone who has inquired about its products or services or ‘opted in’ to receive e-mails, as these messages are classified as ‘relationship’ messages.”

However, certain words in your e-mails will not make it through many spam filters – even if your audience members agreed to receive your messages. It all depends on the context.

Therefore, you’ll want to avoid spammy words if possible to minimize the chance of having your e-mails blocked.

So, just what are those words?

E-mail Words and Phrases to Avoid

In a recent post at Entrepreneur.com, Susan Gunelius identified 10 advertising words that marketers should avoid in the coming year. She said, “In 2009, perhaps more than ever, the words you use in your copywriting can determine whether you make a sale or lose a customer.”

I’ve included Susan’s 10 words here, along with others I found in my research. These common and surprising “dangerous” e-mail words and phrases should be avoided in both the subject line and the body copy whenever possible:

• Free
• Visit our website
• Opportunity
• 50% Off
• Click Here
• Call Now
• Subscribe
• Bonus
• Discount
• Save up to
• Winner
• Prizes
• Information you requested
• Important information regarding
• Guarantee, Guaranteed
• Special Promotion
• Great Offer/Deal
• All New
• One time
• Order Now
• Amazing
• Really
• Very
• Drinkability (Budweiser’s new advertising catch-phrase)

Moderation Is the Key

For the e-mail newsletter I send to my clients and prospects, I use Emma – an e-mail marketing and communications service that automatically checks every e-mail campaign’s spam or junk score to make sure it doesn’t contain any obvious words, phrases, or formatting that could hurt its chances of reaching the inbox.

While writing this article, I asked Emma if they could provide me with a list of the words, phrases, and formatting issues they check. I learned that this list is well-protected against the spammers who’d use this information to their advantage. (Of course!)

Instead, Suzanne Norman, Emma’s Director of Community Relations, gave me this reassuring advice:

“Commonly used marketing phrases are okay in moderation. That’s because most spam filters work on a scoring system. Overt, specific phrases like ‘get rid of wrinkles’ tend to score high, while something more mild and generic like ‘pennies a day’ will get a lower score. Be selective with those phrases, and you’ll stay below the average filter threshold that might mark your email as spam.”

According to Ms. Norman, there are no absolutes, and the anti-spam formulas keep evolving.

So to minimize problems, use known spammy words in moderation and get creative. Just be sure that your messages are still clear and strong when you use various word options.

For example, you should no longer use the four-letter word “free” as your default for a complimentary service or product, because it can trigger spam. Instead, consider using:

• At no cost to you
• No charge
• Pay nothing
• Costs you nothing

Just be careful of using fancy replacement words. Don’t assume everyone knows what “gratis” means in place of “free.”

Other copy tips to avoid spammy e-mails include:

• Minimize any formatting that seems to shout at recipients, such as all capital letters, large fonts, exclamation points, quotation marks, or dollar signs.
• Be very careful of the words you use as links to a website.
• Keep toll-free numbers to a minimum.

As with most marketing, there’s an exception to every rule …

Some of the highest ranked spam e-mails end up getting the best response. So should you follow these guidelines every time?

It’s definitely good practice … but never say never …

This article appears courtesy of The Golden Thread, an e-letter from AWAI that delivers original, no-nonsense advice on how to build your freelance copywriting business. For a free subscription, visit http://www.awaionline.com/thegoldenthread

Because of the nature of my work in writing web content and articles about subjects I know very little about, or have not even heard of, people will ask me how I am able to pull it off.

How can I write about bubble-making machines and growing organic wheat and the real estate market or even how to make peanut oil when I have absolutely no knowledge of it?

Well, writers are all-knowing creatures. All we have to do is think of something and the knowledge trickles into our minds from the universe like those bubble-making machines.

No, I’m just pulling your stockings. Writers have one common facet. We have become experts at research. Once we’ve read enough, and for every writer that “enough” varies, we can start writing with some semblance of knowing what we are trying to convey. Then it comes down to our ability to reveal what we’ve learned.

Researching First

Researching a subject is actually pretty easy, especially in the Google age. Then again, the sheer plethora of information can make your brain throb and your eyes drip.

Sifting through all that information usually takes the majority of my time. Finding reliable sources can be difficult because in these days of “Anyone Can Write Whatever The Hell They Want”, good information has become merely a matter of opinion.

There are some sources like Wikipedia, who are fairly reliable. Yeah, Wiki has taken some hits because anyone can edit and that vulnerability has made Wiki’s information seem suspect. But I also see the advantage to that, and the makers of Wiki certainly must have seen it, too. Experts who actually know what they’re talking about can correct any misleading information. Like teachers correcting their students. To me, that is an advantage - and one I’ve actually utilized to correct Wiki errors.

The point is when you cross-reference your information and weigh it one against the other, you eventually find enough reliable and proven material to work with.

Making Your Point

After you’ve sifted and sorted, then comes the most difficult part – putting your own spin on the information you have, using your own voice, and calling it your own.

Sometimes I labor to get things started trying to find my own angle on a subject. Do I want to talk about the amazing elements involved in making bubble gum? Or should I go into the nitty-gritty details of how the machine works? Or should I make it fun for myself and talk about all the ways to love bubble gum?

If you have all the details, you’ll have a good foundation from which to write. Knowing more about the subject than what you actually write is never a bad thing – unless the hunting and gathering become more important than the eating.

I’ve had to write articles about the most mundane and boring things … well, to me. Ironically, many of the subjects I groaned about turned out to be super fun. Because I put the spin on it that made me happy.

I once had to write a 1500-word article for a greeting card company about greeting cards. Really … greeting cards … 1500 words? Ugh! OK, it’s a job. Hmm. They’re made from paper - um. They have pretty poems – yawn. How do you find them … duh! All the obvious things you could say – blah, blah, blah … zzz. What is a person trying to say when they use them? A-ha! That they care, they’re thinking about someone, and they want them to know. What’s that boil down to? Kindness.

I wrote about the random acts of kindness that greeting cards convey. I didn’t get credit for that particular article, but I was proud of how it turned out.

So, which bubble gum route do you think I’d go with? Well, yeah! The fun one. Which one would you go with? That’s entirely up to whatever direction your fingers and mind take you.

Whatever you do with all that research, you’ve got to make one main point. Just one. Let the other relevant points that support that one main point trickle through, but only to support your one main point.

Now for Beginnings…

I have a few pet peeves about writing. Taking into consideration that no one is perfect, it’d be super boring if we were, there is one particular thing I just feel I need to vent about.

E-mail. As I write and optimize hoardes of web content and articles for clients, I repeatedly find email this and email that. The problem with this is that email is NOT a word. Sigh.

Many people don’t know this, and I certainly don’t know all the details, but every year there are a group of literary geniuses that gather together and discuss new and old words and other literary things. Old words that are just so antiquated or irrelevant are tossed out of Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary, which is the official source for writers, editors, and everyone who deals with words, including the stylebook gurus.

New words and compound words that have become commonplace are entered in for consideration. The ones that are serving a new purpose and are doing new work (among other criteria, but those are the big ones) are given the green signal into our accepted language.

Now, e-mail is a shortened version of electronic mail, as is e-commerce, e-bill, and e-zine, which is short for electronic magazine. Another one is cell phone, which is short for cellular phone. Cell phone also appears all too frequently as cellphone. Yes, some of the other dictionary sources say that email and cellphone is acceptable. Why? I haven’t a clue, because technically they are remiss in their duties as a reliable source.

So, I can’t positively predict what the literary gurus will do, but I doubt very highly that they will ever allow e-mail to become email, or eanything simply because the “e” stands for an actual word. Cell phone might pass muster, but I think the same reason will apply.

If they do change the rule, then that’s great and I can stop cringing every time I see email and not e-mail. Plus, it will be easier to type. Do I think my humble little blog will change the spell-stricken error wave? Probably not, but I just had to say something, because I’m disillusioned by the plethora of them and hearing that it’s not a big deal.

Not a big deal? ok lets all just forgit alls the rulz & rite what ever the hell-o we wan. i’s sure its gonna help. don u?

It’s been so long since I’ve blogged and my Web sites have been suffering so. After being workforce reduced (doggone economy!) last March and losing my second mom in June to psoriasis of the liver, life has been altered and unpredictable. I did find another job where I’m writing about everything under the sun. I still have been doing contract jobs for proofing and editing, but my own personal writing has suffered. But, it’s not just that. I am also a musician, just in case you didn’t know.

Being back in Utah with old friends who know more about my life as a trumpet player than as a writer has thrust me back under the stage lights and teaching arena. I love to play, more than anything, but after almost three decades of tooting my own horn, I developed some physical problems that made playing painful. So, I decided to concentrate on my other love – that of words.

So, my pushy, but loving, friends urged me to play. It was just little things at first; a musical here, a concert there, a community band for continuity and keeping my sanity. Now, however, because I happen to be very good, I’ve been pulled into some more demanding and much higher quality groups. Not that there was a lot of arm twisting done to get me to join. How could I resist? I love to play and maybe I’ve regretted trying to get away from the musical world in the first place.

But, as I knew it would, it has taken time away from my writing. Will I ever complete my novel? Playing the trumpet is different than many other instruments. You have to practice. It’s an athletic demand. In order for your lips and face to keep performing, a daily regimen is required. Otherwise, you feel like you’ve been punched in the mouth after about an hour. For less demanding things, you can get away with not having a daily dose of lip-buzzing.

So, pardon my absences, I really did want to do more here. I’m adjusting and practicing my patootie off. And the new job? Well, I’m writing the flesh off my keyboard calloused fingers almost every day. Where does this lead my personal writing and blogs. I don’t know. I’ll squeeze it in somehow.

But for now – I’m really happy to be playing again. The moral of this story? If you love something, don’t ever let yourself give it up – for whatever reason – pain or no – support or not. You never know who you’ll inspire. My example has encouraged not one, but four used-to-be-a trumpet-players to start playing again.

After reading Lynne Truss’s book, “Eats, Shoots, and Leaves”, I had to comment about errors I see all too often as I bounce from page to page on the Web for my work. Very few Web content writers take the time to make sure their copy is clean. As professionals, we are expected to get things right – and that includes our writing.

It’s nice to read something from someone who is just as frightened and appalled as I am when we encounter blatant spelling, punctuation, and grammar abuses on signs, billboards, menus, flyers, programs, and just about everything that has words written on it.

It’s not that people don’t make errors occasionally. I don’t think even the most anal-retentive, uppity, girdle-wearing copyeditor in the universe can write perfect copy. But, geez, there is such a thing as taking the time to re-read what you wrote!

When I put things on display for people to read and find an error after it’s out there, my insides just begin melting. I am mortified and embarrassed. Not because I am an editor and writer. Not because I’m an innate grammar geek. And not because I happen to be a closet perfectionist.

Well, all those things factor in, but it’s because someone might have read it! It’s like being caught with your rear end hanging over the potty and there’s a line of people gaping at you. Embarrassing? Quite.

What I (and Lynne and many others like us) can’t figure out is why the offenders don’t feel this way. Don’t you care that you’ve just mooned everyone and we now know that your behind is pink, floppy, and full of pimples? Euwww! Do I want to buy anything from you? Not with that bumpy bottom I don’t.

Where is the commitment to excellence? What happened to going the extra mile? How did this happen?

As an aside, I’ve found that many people can be good writers and still not have the rules right. Sure, the message itself may be a very good one. It may be witty, worthy, and intellectually sound. You may be able to produce a piece that makes buttering bread sound like the next best thing to having wings. But, if your copy is full of grammatical stumbles, spelling spills, and punctuation missteps; that’s exactly how it’s going to read, despite your talent.

Point is: Spell check and don’t think for a minute your spell checker is going to catch everything. Grammar check, and don’t believe everything your grammar checker tells you. Read it out loud. If it sounds funny coming out of your mouth, chances are it needs a rewrite.

Take the time and your professionalism will have a better chance.