Copywriting Best Practices

It's not about writing what everyone else is writing, but how YOU speak to your audience. Curiosity killed the cat, as they say.

Use these tips as a guide to optimise your copywriting.

The world is officially one massive conversation hub, limitless freedom of speech. What can we say? Pretty much anything...within reason. With 24/7 communication, working around the clock just so that you appear in someone's newsfeed is just not going to cut it, so what will?

Glad you asked.

The Ultimate Guide to Copywriting

Firstly, before you jump onto ChatGPT and other AI writing tools, hear me out. There's a need for good writing, and it starts with you or a freelance copywriter. It's not just about creating copy but utilising best practices that optimises that copy.

In this blog, we'll go through the best practices that will forever change the way you speak to people on social media and beyond.

1. Know Your Audience

This one is a bit obvious. With all the resources that are at our disposal, there's no doubt that you should keep this top-of-mind in any of your marketing tactics. One way to do this is by creating a marketing strategy, one so intensive that you can create customer personas in your sleep. Depending on your brand and what you offer, researching and creating a customer persona (DILO) will encourage you to speak and interact appropriately.

For example, here is a customer persona of someone I created out of thin air for an assignment. The image of 'Heather' is from Unsplash.

Next, a day in the life storyboard of the same persona. This is exactly how it sounds, from the minute they wake up until bedtime.

Can you see where I'm going with this, taking notes.

2. Copy Brainstorm

Brainstorm before you write. A brainstorm session allows you to be as creative and original as you'd like. With a team, you'd pick up on some pretty good ideas. Whether its for a campaign, blog, or social media content, always research and take the time to put together a plan. In marketing terms - a content calendar.

This is where you'd look at a marketing strategy or come up with your own. Use the customer personas and explore the pain points that resonate with your audience. How can you help them again and again (not just once)? How do you create the right atmosphere that they will enjoy?

3. Plan Your Content

Is it an article, social posts, email newsletters? What is your goal for the content and how do you want to reach your audience. How often do you want to post?

A reminder app is your ally.

If it's not you, a copywriter will receive a brief from a client that details what goals and objectives they're looking to achieve. The required task will have their own best practice techniques that determine how content should be written.

The amount of content will also take time. Ask yourself, 'Will it take 4 hours or 8?' Be sure to set realistic deadlines. Quality over quantity.

4. Copywriting Best Practices

SEO

In a nutshell, SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) is the practice of optimising web content in a specific way that improves its search results and traffic.

According to Hubspot, there are four kinds of search intent:

1. Informational: The user wants to learn.

2. Navigational: The user is looking for something specific.

3. Commercial: The user wants to explore and find more information before purchasing.

4. Transactional: The user completes the purchase.

These apply to Google ads too. You want to use primary keywords (short and long-tail) that your audience is likely to use. You could use a tool like SEMRUSH or Google's keyword planner.

You could make it broad or exact (business dependant).

For example:

Category - Hiking Boots

Best hiking shoes (Broad)

Trail hiking boots (Exact)

Category - Baby Products

Quality baby products (Broad)

Baby boy summer romper (Exact)

When you're writing an article, make sure to use your primary keywords sparingly and early on in the paragraphs. The headings should also incorporate primary keywords.

Keep your title page and heading 1 similar in the way of content, but don't use the same copy.

When it comes to writing the actual content, be short and casual with your tone of voice. Google will pick up if it's hard to read and/or has too many keywords. Less is more.

Always update articles to keep up with competing content, it's important to keep all of your articles optimised, even the archived ones.

You can also use a site checker tool to see how your website pages score for SEO and other factors. Anything about 80% is gold.

Key aspects of SEO to keep in mind:

1. Keyword optimisation

2. Content quality

3. On-page SEO

4. Off-page SEO

5. Technical SEO

Newsletters

There are many ways to write an email newsletter. It's especially handy if you have Canva on standby. Canva is a platform that allows you to get super creative with work that you need to create from scratch. Email newsletters are just one of them. They're great for alerting customers about product launches, sales, company updates, anthology, and much more.

First things first, and say what you want about receiving newsletters, the headline and preview text are going to drive leads. If you don't have a relevant title or headline (or one that flags SPAM) - cue the unsubscribe button.

Remember what I mentioned earlier, less is more. In this scenario, that's just it. Keep your content to the absolute minimum, 350-500 words max. The CTA (call-to-acton) should encourage the reader to (obviously) take action. If you have the budget, try incentives.

Here are a few examples:

Learn more

Download

Shop Now

Contact Us

Sign Up

It's also a good idea to keep your newsletters consistent. Newsletters should be scheduled and planned. Any content that you send randomly will lose the reader (maybe even for good).

Last but not least, don't forget to include important information at the bottom of the newsletter - social media handles, contacts, and an unsubscribe option. There are tools available to make campaigns and newsletters easier to manage, like Mailchimp.

PS: If you are going to use images in your newsletter, be sure to keep it simple and clean.

Social Media Content

Social media comes in many forms and fewer character limits (it's not 2006 anymore). Regardless, you'll want to keep your posts short and to-the-point; otherwise, your audience will get bored and lose interest. When it comes to planning content for social media, you have a lot to play with. You just need to know how to make the most out of the platforms.

For instance: let's say your audience uses Facebook and Instagram, and you're looking to spread awareness around your brand - what type of content and how much of it do you plan on creating? Does it focus around Stories? Videos? Newsfeed posts? Ads? How will this fit in connection with how your audience spends their time, and at what time are they most likely consuming content? Don't just post willy nilly; focus on the behaviours.

In a nutshell, Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and X. It's like 'where's Waldo?' but instead, where is your audience? That brings me back to the first point I made: know your audience. What also comes to mind is that some brands will experience the 'FOMO effect' - one which brings a lot of confusion into the mix. Don't feel left out because you're not on every platform, there's a reason for that.

Writing Copy for Social Media

Best practices for social media copywriting.

Human copy versus artificial intelligence?

2022 reports showed that AI will take centre stage in 2024. However, 62% of respondents said that they're less likely to trust content that's been generated by AI - Hootsuite, 2024 Social Trends Report

Personally, I was worried once AI made into the writing scene. ChatGPT for example, a marvellous tool for the amateur and professional writer. While it remains something of a controversial topic, we might as well use it for the good.

AI aside , the go-to factors (at least for me as a consumer) for mastering social media communication is based on how relatable and relevant you are. Speak about your brand as if you were having a conversation with someone familiar. For example, if you sell high-end luxury furniture, you won't want to come across as pretentious or snobby, you'd want to make someone feel at home. Some brands use humour and others are welcoming. The choice is yours.

Tip: find your tone of voice and let that be your guide. If you don't have one, create one.

Remember, gone are the days of promotional content across traditional media, welcome to the 21st century.

Where ads and posts are concerned, you should remember the following:

1. Stick to the character limits for each platform.

2. Keep content to-the-point.

3. Always choose a relevant CTA.

4. Don't overcrowd images and videos with text.

5. Use the correct link.

6. Don't oversell yourself.

7. Budget wisely.

8. Engagement and UGC content is your friend.

9. Based on a poll I created on LinkedIn, the max amount of posts that people can tolerate from a brand is three times a week.

10. Community management is key.
    

Review Your Copy

Stay consistent with your messaging

Have someone read over your copy (feedback) or come back to it for review (read aloud). A clear mind will bring you new ideas and allow you to freshen up your content.

Quality assurance

Whether you have an editor or Grammarly, make use of spelling, grammar, and punctuation tools; this ties in with consistency.

A/B testing/ Bucket testing

This is one way to ensure that you know what is and what isn't working for the audience: conversation rate optimisation. Split the content (create two different versions) that you wish to use and perform a small test (group A versus group B).

Overview

By putting all of these tips together, you're well on your way to creating magical copy. For the longest time (in my experience), copywriting has not been taken very seriously. However, when you finally get the engagement you were looking for from the words you've written, it's you that benefits. It's what creates Grammy-worthy songs from top-selling artists, informative news by journalists, and eulogies for those who are grieving. There's a purpose to your writing; it's remembering what and why you're writing that matters.

And without creatives, there would be no content.