26: 5 Easy Tips to Improve your Copy (even if you hate writing)

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Welcome to the Course Creators MBA Podcast. I'm your host Destiny Kopp and in this podcast we're covering actionable tips to grow your online course business. But before I begin, I want to let you know that this episode is sponsored by my free mini course Course in a Box, which is your plug and play system with templates and videos to get your online course created. You can grab your free course in a box by going to destinycop.com and I will make sure that this link is in the show notes and today we're talking about five easy tips to improve your copy even if you hate writing. And I have a special guest with me here today. I have Justin Blackman. And Justin is obsessed, obsessed with brand voice and last year he wrote for 239 different entrepreneurs and the year before he wrote 10,211 headlines for 11 different excuse, not 11 different brands, 100 different brands just for fun. All during the hours he wasn't creating content for an international hotel company with 12 distinct brand voices. And Justin, I'm so happy to have you here with me today and I know what hotel company you are talking about and I want to know how exactly you did that.

It was a lot of fun. It was a big challenge and it was something that I didn't know that I could do until I had to do it. But yeah, the hotel company was great because I worked for the rewards program which had an email list of 7 million people. So I always had to write to them, still focusing on one person at a time. But then we had to incorporate those messages to the to the different brands so you had your frequent business traveler, you had your family travel, you had your high end business traveler, you had your low end business traveler, you had your extended stay. So each person has a very distinct want and a distinct need. So he had to alter every message to apply to their specific situation. So it was just about. You had to take their desire and then also put in the brand voice, which could be either fun or upbeat or corporate or very professional and change certain words just to have it fit the avatar that you were trying to reach.

So that is what we do as course creators. Obviously, you know that we have course creators listening here today. And I'm so excited to jump into this topic with you, but before we begin, and I have a ton of questions for you, but can you tell everybody and tell the audience a little bit more about yourself, your entrepreneur journey, and how you got to where you are today?

Yeah, happy to. So I started out in sports marketing and field marketing. I work for brands like Red Bull and Five Hour Energy and Puma and Keurig Coffee and like, you know, the Red Bull cars, the Mini Cooper with the big can on the back?

I absolutely do, yes.

So I used to work with that program where I manage the teams. And we were out in the field talking to hundreds of people every single day. Thousands of people per month. And what you guys probably don't realize is that they are professional communicators. We were actually trained by improv teams to learn how to respond to objections, be in the moment and really think on your feet. So it wasn't just like a couple of kids that we just grabbed off the street and said, all right, go give out Red Bull. They were dynamic communicators. And I really learned the importance of listening and learning how to respond and overcome objections. And as I got a little bit older, I was running these teams and I'd still work on certain shifts. And it got to a point where I'd go to college campuses and the kids were starting to call me sir and realized that I was aging out of that. I then switched to writing where I was essentially doing the same thing where I'm talking to thousands of people. But now I just do it over email and through websites, applying the same information and the same kind of quick hit storytelling techniques, just applying it to the written word rather than in person.

So I want to paint a little bit of a picture here, make sure I understand you're part of this Red Bull team. You guys were going out to various places like college campuses, and they had trained you to Be a professional communicator. So that was needed for that job, I'm assuming.

Yeah, yeah. It was the most impactful training I've ever had in my life, and it applies to everything that I do every single day.

So what kind of objections were you getting from Red Bull on a college campus?

Well, it was interesting for the same reason some people won't drink it. That's the same reason that other people do drink it. So you always have to learn a little bit about people. Like, some people be like, oh, I won't drink that. I hear that's equal to eight cups of coffee. And you'd be like, well, no, actually it's not. It's equal to one cup of coffee. And I understand why you think that way. There's a lot of misperceptions out there in the media. There are some energy drinks that are dangerous, but ours is safer. It's primarily amino acids, B vitamins, and caffeine equal to a cup of coffee. So you wouldn't belittle them for thinking negative. You would explain why they think that way. Sort of like, forgive them and then correct it. But for the same reason, you'd be like, oh, then you could go to the next person and they'd be like, I love this stuff. It's like drinking five cups of coffee. And you'd be like, yeah, man. Keeps you going. It's good for this, this. And then you'd find out it's like, well, when do you normally drink it? I always have it right before I take a test. That's awesome. Have you ever had it before you play sports? So then you might find a way to show them other benefits of it that could double the amount that they purchase and show them other use educations. So again, the same. You wouldn't necessarily want to, like, if you tell that one person who thinks it's worth five cup or equal to five cups of coffee, that is only one, they might actually like it less than. So you always had to respond to the specific person you know, and depending on the brand that you're with, it's all. It's all relevant and it's just about responding to the actual in the moment objection. And, you know, if they're a super fan, then you always encourage it and you just want to create the right. The right interaction and the right experience for them that they could walk away with.

So I just learned something here. One Red Bull is equal to one cup of coffee. So I had two cups of coffee this morning. So I essentially could have had two Red Bulls. That's what I'm saying.

Because it's got other stuff in it. And, you know, it's been years since I've worked on that brand. I don't remember.

I'm just. I'm just teasing you. All right, so I have some more serious questions for you, if I can get serious for a moment. So tell me a little bit about. Why do you think most people struggle with writing and writing copy? Whether it's their sales page for their online course, whether it's the copy for their website, whether it's the copy for their emails. Why do we struggle with that? And I can put myself in that boat, too.

Well, there's two answers I'm gonna give here. The first one is people struggle with writing in general because the way that you're taught in school, it doesn't apply to web copy and email copy. You're taught in grade school and college, high school to write professionally. And you're writing papers. And it has to be structured and formatted in a certain way. You know, five sentences per paragraph, writing in complete sentences, reframing the question and the answer. You have very distinct things that the teachers are looking for and grading you on. And it might even be like creative writing, where you have to use as many adverbs and adjectives as possible. Those are the type of things that will kill copy in the online world. But you weren't taught how to break the rules. You were only taught to follow the rules. So there's. That's. That's the foundation. So you sort of have to break down that foundation to move forward. The second is when it comes to writing your own copy, it is harder to write for yourself than it is for anybody else. You're too close to it. There are certain pieces that you think might be important that you want to get out that the consumer doesn't really care about. And you're trying to put things that are more personal out into the world and trying to flip it to a consumer benefit as opposed to your story. So there's a lot of things to work on there as opposed to doing it for someone else. You can sort of see it cleaner and you're not as swayed by all the personal input and all the surroundings to it.

So I can relate to both of those. The first was writing. We're always taught to write professionally. I've been in the corporate world for 20 plus years, also in academia. Wrote a dissertation patient myself. And it was all very structured, so that. That is hard to break, for sure. And then writing my own copy is extremely difficult for me, even though I'm fairly good, I think, at writing copy. I think probably not. Definitely not as good as you, but I even outsourced my own sales page because writing for myself was so difficult.

Yeah. And it's not just the writing for yourself. It's knowing all of the techniques that are used in a sales page. It's learning how to overcome objections. It's the persuasion techniques. It's the. The conversion elements on a sales page that you need. It's the structure. There's a lot of science that goes into writing a page that the average person doesn't know, and even most writers don't know. If you're gonna hire a sales page, if you're gonna write a sales page, you should hire a sales page specialist as opposed to like a generalist copywriter. Like, I can probably write an okay sales page, but I know people that focus specifically on those that can write killer pages that will sway anybody because they understand all the elements to it. There's definitely a science that that's involved for sure.

And Justin, you mentioned just a second.

Ago that we need to be taught.

How or we need to know how to break the rules. Can you tell us a little bit about that and what do we need to be thinking about to break all of those rules?

Yeah. So most copy, like some of the best performing copy. There are different ways of grading copy and looking at it and reviewing it. There's a grade level that is applied to it, and there's an app called the Hemingway app, which I always run copy through. And you want to aim between grade one and grade seven, which means that a first grader can understand it and. Or a seventh grader can understand that. As soon as you hit, like, grade eight and above, it starts getting confusing and technical almost to the point where it could read like a political dissertation. The average consumer can't necessarily follow all that, and they get confused and they miss certain elements, and a lot of times they just give up. Some of the greatest sales pages I've ever read for complex products rank at a grade two reading level. And that's very intentional. Shorter words, shorter sentences. And it's not. I don't want you to confuse that with dumbing it down, because it's not. It's just simplifying the message and making it more readable. Those are the things that you have to fight the ingrained lessons that your high school teachers have taught you.

And we'll make sure that that link for the Hemingway app is in here because that's a, that's an excellent tip. So we want to make sure it is. I think I've used it in the past. I haven't used it recently, but if I remember correctly, when I was doing some blog post writing, you would just copy and paste it in there and it would tell you like where you had maybe passive voice or when your sentences were hard to read and just show you where you need to go edit it. Correct?

Yeah. And it's certain you'll, you'll get to a point where you can say, you know what, I specifically made that sentence complex and it's because I want you to focus a little bit harder as you're reading it. So you might choose not to adjust something. Those become style choices later on. But yeah, for the most part you can run it in there and it'll tell you where your writer might, where your reader might get tripped up a little bit.

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The next question I have for you is about headlines. So can you. And we use headlines right all the time in our business, whether it's email subject headlines, whether it's blog post headlines, or even, you know, I'll come up, you know, we kind of talked about for a headline for this particular podcast or you know, really anything that we're doing. You've done 10,211 headlines recently. That's crazy. So you obviously know a lot about writing a good headline. Can you talk to us a little bit about that project, what you did and what you learned?

Yeah, so I was writing my own website and as you mentioned, it's hard to write for yourself and I couldn't nail my headline. So I was working with a coach and she's like, well, you know, write as many as you can. And I think I had written like 35. And I felt like I was getting some themes, but I still didn't have it. And she was like, well, write 50. So I got to 50, still didn't have it. And she's like, well, write 25 more. I can't write 25 more. So I wrote 25 more, still didn't have it. And she was like, write 25 more. And I was like, all right, you're gonna tell me to do it, I'll go do it. And I wrote 100 of them. And afterwards she's like, wow, you did it. And I was like, yeah, it actually, you know, once I got in a groove and I saw how to change some things, it started to feel okay. She's like, can you do it again? And we started brainstorming and came up with an idea of writing 100 headlines a day for 100 days for 100 different products. And I was too stupid to say no to the idea. I didn't realize how difficult it would be. So I spent the next three months, every single day writing 100 days, writing 100 headlines, and oftentimes more than 100. And, yeah, came up with 10,211.

How did you know which ones are good and which ones were? I don't know if I'd want to use this.

I would say that out of. On average, out of 100, if I got 14 good lines, I was happy. 14 would be a big win. Most of what I wrote was junk. What I had to do was give myself permission to write awful lines. And some of it was just to get it out of my head. And others were to see what themes developed. The line that I wrote might be garbage, but then I might be able to write an additional line like it that was edited down that drew upon an emotion that I didn't think about going into. So it was just. It wasn't quite like free flow techniques. It was more applying some proven headline techniques and trying to drum up emotions and even playing with the seven deadly sins and trying to incorporate some of those to really find the theme that would resonate and capture some eyeballs.

I'm just curious, are there any apps out there that would be good for a novice person who's trying to come up with headlines, like, for their blog posts or their emails?

There are a lot of templates. The template that I used is available on site copy hackers, copyhackers.com which is a great site for learning how to write conversion copy. And that's copy that makes people buy. So they've got the template. When I started, I had about 300 different headline formulas and I whittled it down to about 25 by the end. And I think that the copy hackers template that we created, my whole story is on there. I want to say that there's about 115 on there. And the goal is just to plug and play and figure out some scenes. And then little by little you edit and you sort of personalize each one so it's not as generic and you go from there.

Perfect. Let me just switch gears on you just a little bit. And you know, a lot of times course creators and people who are looking at sales pages. So like, you know, this sales page is so long. I don't like long form sales pages. I want a short one. And then others will, you know, they're beginning to write their sales page and they're asking me, can it just be a short one? Do I have to do like 10 pages here? So can you give us your perspective on that? Does a sales page or really any type of copy that they're working on, whether it's like a Facebook ad copy, does it have to be long?

It doesn't have to be long, but the longer it is, the better it will convert. What you want to do is really understand the stage of awareness that your consumer is in when they come to your page. If they're ready to buy, they might just click the button, the cta, the call to action button that is in your header image. They might click the first one and be like, you know what she sold me. I'm good, I'm just going to buy right now. Or maybe they need a little bit of information. So they're going to read the first couple of paragraphs or the first half of the page and then if there's a CTA button to buy it, then they're going to go halfway through. But if they're cold and they don't understand who you are or what the value is, or they still have questions, they will keep reading until they're convinced. They're looking for confirmation that this is the right program, that you're right for them, that everything that they are looking for is going to be in here. And the more copy you have, the more chances you have to convince them. And there are some people that will read every single word of your page and not everybody will. Those people have the chance to bounce out earlier. But longer copy will convert better, almost Every time.

That's a great tip. So the moral of the story is, for the majority of the people probably coming through our funnels, they're not going to know us as well. They might be a little bit colder, whether coming from Facebook, ad copy or what have you. So the longer it is, the better it will be. It'll capture more of an audience is what you're saying.

Yeah, it's there just to catch people wherever they are, whatever stage they're in, if they are ready to buy or if they are cold to. Who the heck is this person? What is this course?

Let me ask you this. You have a framework that you work with called the brand ventriloquist framework, and I hope I pronounced that correctly. And it goes into various voice types. So can you walk us through that framework and how we could identify our own voice type?

Sure. So your voice really breaks down to three specific elements that are all measurable and it's your vocabulary. So the words that you use, if it is basic vocabulary, if it's more complex, if you use a little bit of industry jargon, if you're more professorial, just a level of vocabulary that you use, then you've got your tone, which is the emotion behind your copy. Are you soft and gentle or are you militant? Are you writing like survivalist copies about guns and ammo and the end of the world? Or are you writing about peace and love and friendship? So you can be definitive, you can be wishy washy, you can be downtrodden and beat down. You could be everything is figureoutable, most optimistic. So it's all the emotions that are there. You've got a ton of different choices and then you have your cadence, which is the rhythm of your writing. So it's like the frequency. It's are you short and choppy and staccato or do you write long, wordy, long, flowing, wordy bird sentences that go on and on and string together multiple thoughts and piece together everything in the world and seem to run on forever. So once you combine those three elements, you have your foundation. The way that I remember this is WTF is your voice, which is your words. So that's W the vocabulary, your tone, which is the emotion, and then the frequency, which is the cadence. So WTF is your voice. That's the core element of the Brand ventriloquist framework.

So once we identify our voice type, how does that help us with our writing?

So what we do is we create like an XY axis to figure out the level of your vocabulary from basic to advanced and then your cadence from the short sentences to longer sentences. And once we figure out where your plot point is, no matter how unique your voice is, it's going to fit somewhere on the graph. So we'll plot it there. Everything we write should try to meet that plot point. So, you know, if you are sort of like the life coach, the everything is wonderful, wearing a sundress, dancing in a wheat field type thing, you're gonna have a more of an advanced vocabulary because you're using some bigger words and a lot of adjectives and a longer sentence. So I know that, you know, if my average sentence is eight words long and yours is 26 words long, if I'm writing for you, I need to double, if not triple, the amount of words per sentences in my writing to sound like you. I know that I need to write instead of at a first or second grade level, I'll probably have to write at a sixth grade level. You just need to like, I would need to change my style to match your style. And by doing that, I can sound more like you. And then the themes we can figure out. I can know if you're writing about everything's happy or everything is terrible. You can play with the emotion just by changing a few different words. And yeah, little by little, you learn what styles are, make you sound more like what voice type.

I love that. So, Justin, before we hang up here today, do you have any last minute tips for the course creators who are listening?

Let's see. Yeah, I can. I can go give a couple of five easy tips to sound better.

Yeah, go right ahead.

Sure. One of the most. There's a great Stephen King line that says the road to hell is paved with adverbs. So number one, eliminate adverbs. So instead of adverbs are, you know, the defining words describing words that end with ly. So, like walked slowly, slowly being the adverb, get rid of that and punch up the verb. So instead of walk slowly, you can say he trudged or he crawled or he slithered, like a snake moving across the floor at a snail's pace. You can make your writing more exciting simply by getting rid of the adverbs and punching up the verb. Number two, be specific and be odd. In 1852, when Mount Everest was measured, it was exactly 29,000 square feet, 29,000ft high. The scientists added two feet because they didn't want people to think that they rounded it off. So they said that it was 29,002ft. It made them sound more credible. 36 is better than more than 35. 24 is better than almost 25. It's the same reason I say that. Last year I wrote for 239 people and I wrote 10,211 headlines. Be specific and be odd. Number three, analogies give people a point of reference that they can relate to. Like I said, Mount Everest was 29,000 square feet. Sorry, 29,000ft high. I could say that it was 9,667 washing machines high. You make it unlikely and you make it interesting. It just gives a more visual picture as opposed to just a concrete number. I could say something that is unlikely or I could say it's as likely as your husband loading the dishwasher. Right Even after you show him. You can just make them a little bit more interesting and more tangible. Number four, end on a power word. The cat was in the bag is weaker than and in the bag was a cat. So that's a technique that's in stand up comedy. And if you ever watch that, you will learn that the punchline, the funniest word in the joke is usually the last word in the sentence. It just makes your writing more exciting. And number five, this is a double edged sword here. I'm going to talk about hedge words and definitives. So hedge words are words like just some few, many. Those words weaken your writing. You just need to do that is softer than do this. So use them with caution. They can weaken your verb, they can weaken your the power behind your message. I could say that I'm just a writer or I could say I'm a writer. But you can also use the hedge words deliberately to soften things. Like with definitives, if you say all every things like that. If you've got kids, you know that they always say I do this all the time. Or if you ever say to them you do it all the time, they'll say I don't do it all the time. It gives people a reason to object and make them feel like they are the exception. So if you hedge that like nearly every time almost everyone does this, you soften it a little bit and you leave room for that objection. And you let people drop their guard and they can't necessarily argue with you. So I would say hedge words. Use them. Use them very carefully.

I love those five tips. Justin, before we hang up here today, can you tell everybody where they can find you and how they can hire you?

Yeah, I'm over@prettyflycopy.com the Easy Way to remember that is all the people say I'm pretty fly for a right guy, which is a terrible pun. And I love it.

Actually, I love it too.

As soon as I came up with that, I bought the domain and I printed up business cards. That's it. That's my name. So prettyflycopy.com I'm on Twitter prettyflycopy and the thing that I specialize in right now is the brand Ventriloquist Voice guides where I will do very detailed analysis of your writing style. So if you are outsourcing any type of copy to your copywriters, they can sound like you without you having to edit the work for hours.

Thank you so much Justin. I enjoyed our conversation today and course creators, thanks so much for joining us today. I hope you enjoyed enjoyed this episode. Would love for you to rate and review the podcast on itunes or your favorite podcast platform. Have a great rest of your day. Bye for now.