If you’d been doing the job you’re now doing thirty years ago, you’d have had a secretary to type stuff up for you, but over the years – in the dubious name of efficiency – it’s been decided that it’d be better if you’re made to type your own stuff up, slowly, and the company can save the cost of the secretary. You’re expected to have those skills, even if you almost certainly haven’t been trained in them. Similarly, more and more marketing people are doing their own copywriting, when once it would automatically have been given to a writer, PR consultant or advertising agency. And have you been trained in copywriting? Have you heck.
Fortunately there are plenty of people online willing to summarise and share their expertise (it’s a shame we can’t learn to type properly just by reading about it). I read about 200 marketing-related blogs – so you don’t have to – and I’ll mention any good articles I come across about copywriting, because it’s an essential skill to have nowadays. So, what is this leading up to? Three Steps That Guarantee Every Word of Your Copy Gets Read on Copyblogger, that’s what. See what the writer did there? He wrote a title that you won’t be able to resist clicking on. That’s a great start. And fortunately, the rest of the article is really good too.