If you’re floating in the ocean of copywriters out there, you’ll have heard of Copyblogger.

Well, in a frenzy of copy+paste action, I collated every headline in their archive – 1117 of them (as of late August 2010) – on the hunt for stats. But why should you care?

Copyblogger is the go-to place for the art and science of copywriting. The founder, Brian Clark, hit upon the smart idea that you can apply copywriting techniques to blogging. And if you can’t learn something from Copyblogger’s headlines, then you’re already rich. And if you’re already rich, why are you here and not jet-skiing across a champagne lake? (That is how being rich works, right?)

Here’s a handy infographic with the main findings:

A few extra points:

• Please forgive my soul-crushingly amateur design skills.
• From around 2008, the Copyblogger average headline length got longer. (Plus, the average length of the 30 current most popular post headlines is almost 9 words.)
• The first ever Copyblogger headline in 2006 was the rather inauspicious “Sell!”.
• How can you not love a site with a headline like “What Owen Wilson’s Pursed Lips Mean to Your Blog”?
• Feel free to use this image in your blog or site, but please link back to this post or the homepage.

Anything else?

Before you go, spend a second looking at these word clouds. I love me some Wordle.

Here’s a word cloud of all 1117 headlines, with all common English words removed:

Note the focus on marketing, content, writing, copywriting, blogs and blogging. This is a website that knows its target audience intimately, and targets it ruthlessly.

Now all headlines with ‘the’, ‘it’, ‘and’…etc removed:

You and your. Where would a self-respecting copywriter be without them?

Let me know your thoughts in the comments below. Notice any other obvious headline trends?

Many thanks to Copyblogger. You’ve given me some good reads over the years.

Best man tip: keep 'em sweet.

Thanks, guys. Thanks for the added pressure.

Against the odds, I emerged from my ordeal as a best man mostly unscathed (unless dagger-stares from elderly relatives leave permanent scars). I’ve now had time to reflect on what worked and what didn’t.

And, wouldn’t you know, some of the tips apply rather snugly to copywriting…

Vary the pacing

Short one-liners, extended stories, questions to the audience, crowd participation – varying your pacing keeps people on their toes. Take them on a journey. But think epic adventure, not long family car trip to Torquay.

As for your copy? Mix up it there too. Bullet points, short sentences, longer sentences, questions, tales – use what you need to keep it interesting. Heck, throw in a badger, if it fits.

Tell a story. Make it personal.

People love stories. Yet, some of the so called “hilarious” speeches on YouTube are no more than nervous BMs reading stolen one-liners from a sweaty sheet of paper.

Instead of rehashing tired old lines, get personal and tell a story. Who doesn’t perk up in interest when they hear the words “Let me tell you a story about the time…”

Unearth the unusual.

This is an old journalism saying.

Everyone has a tale about the groom drinking too much. But not everyone can tell a story about the time he woke up in the penguin enclosure with a mouth full of raw sea bass.

Unearth the unusual. Surprise an audience. And of course, apply the same logic to your copy. (Example: are you a web development company, or the only web development company that works from a disused nuclear bunker?)

Be clear.

If you can’t be creative, be clear.

Ditch the pretentious language. In its place use short, punchy wording. And try and keep the matey jargon to a minimum (not everyone in the room knows what your internal slang means). And that applies to you too, Mr. Technology Company Website.

Of course, if you can be clear and creative, you’re onto a winner.

Keep it short (enough).

I once sat through a 45-minute best man speech. And this was no Bill Hicks.

Keep your speech long enough for the juice and jokes. Keep it short enough that the guests aren’t passing out with Pimms withdrawal symptoms. If you’ve got twenty pages of notes to get through – be ruthless and kill your darlings. Not every line needs to stay.

Need I draw the obvious parallel with copywriting? Just long enough, please. And no more.

Judge your audience. Carefully.

No matter how hilarious you think you are, not everyone will appreciate your sense of humour.

And, in business terms, no matter how much you think your market is “everyone”, it isn’t.

Here’s where copywriting and best man speeches part company briefly.

In copywriting terms, you have two options: speak to the people that care, or smear a diluted message across the uninterested faces of a wider demographic. I know which I’d choose.

But, as a best man, you need to cater for a wide audience. Because they’ve got no choice but to listen. We can’t have the bride’s granny choking on her Prosecco because you’ve decided to tell the one about the Amsterdam brothel.

But that doesn’t mean you can’t get creative, cheeky and, hopefully, hilarious. And, whether you’re entertaining drunken guests or penning copy, remember one basic rule: don’t be boring.

Keep that in mind, and you’ll be fine.

(photo credit: madamn flick)

This man has read too many tech websites. (Image courtesy of Shreyans Bhansali.)

Then you arrive and you’re stuck next to Brian, a management consultant and golf aficionado with a penchant for long, self-important stories. Nearly every sentence he utters starts with “I…”

Does it feel like Brian gives a fig about what you’re up to? Does he bore you to the point of drowning yourself in the soup?

What if he’d started by asking about you instead?

What if he’d simply used the word “you” more often and dropped the I-centricity?

The writer Chuck Palahniuk (author of Fight Club and Choke, among others) has a term for this. He calls it “Submerging the I”.

Even when he’s telling a story in the first person, he uses “I” as little as possible. Palahniuk knows that self-absorbed people are only interesting to themselves.

Because what’s the subliminal message if you constantly use the word “I”?

You’re saying: “I’m not interested in you, I want to tell my story.”

Round here, they call it “The Big I Am.”

Extrapolate that to a business and website copy environment and what message have you got?

“We don’t care about helping you, we’re only interested in ourselves.”

A dangerous message to put out, wouldn’t you say?

So, try not to let your website sound like Boring Brian. Focus on the you, and submerge the I and We as much as possible.

(P.S. You can check how me-centric you are using Futurenow’s customer focus calculator.)

So, I was training a group of web copywriters the other day, and casually mentioned features versus benefits. Nothing earth-shattering there.

But, just as I was about to click to the next slide, I noticed that the expected nods and hums of recognition didn’t arrive. So I asked, “you do know the difference between features and benefits, right?”

Blank stares.

I realised that I often take it for granted that website writers know and understand what a benefit is. So here we go, features and benefits in a nutshell:

A feature is something the product does.
A benefit is how a feature improves the life of the customer.

So how about an example of features vs benefits?

Okay. I went to buy a saw at the weekend. Being something of a DIY illiterate, I was surprised to see a choice of about two-dozen saws.

I asked the bloke at the till what was my best option. His advice: “this one has tungsten tips, this one has a gel-embossed handle. This one here, the Sawmeister 3000, has a reinforced body.”

He may as well have been speaking in Esperanto.

What he could have said is:

• This one cuts fastest, because of its tungsten tips – so you’ll spend less time sawing.
• This one is the most comfortable to hold – so you won’t get blisters.
• This one won’t break, no matter how much you use it, so it’ll last longer and save you money.

After all, I wasn’t really buying a saw – I was buying quick, neat, cut wood. Just like people who buy 37Signals software are really buying an easier working life, people who buy a hedge-trimmer are really buying tidier hedges, or people who buy a Rolex are really purchasing perceived status.

The key, of course, is accurately pinpointing the true benefit to the customer. Even if this might not be clear at first, drill down until you find it. You can apply this to nearly anything (including aspects of your own life). For example:

Your social Life:

Feature: There’s a party this weekend
Benefit: You might meet that elusive dream girl who puts up with your accordion playing (not a true story)

Your education:

Feature: You get a load of letters to put on your CV
Benefit: You won’t have to work in the Burger King at Victoria Railway Station

Your web design business:

Feature: You design and build accessible websites
Benefit for clients: More customers will be able to use your site = more sales for you

Sometimes people mistakenly think that bringing out benefits means treating people like idiots. I disagree. It’s simply a way to spark in the customer’s mind how using a product/service will help them out.

Now, get sparking…

(Cufflink image courtesy of Oberazzi)

“You don’t ask, you don’t get,” said Mahatma Gandhi. I’m no historian, but I’m pretty sure he wasn’t referring to cufflinks. Or, for that matter, copywriting.

Still, the bloke was on to something.

Yeah, yeah – the whole non-violence thing. Of course. But also the idea that asking the right questions is the only way to achieve your desired result. And, as one of the skills of the copywriter is contorting your brain into different mindsets, being relentlessly inquisitive is must.

So, where do you begin when quizzing a new client? You can start with obvious (what do you sell, what’s the price, when will I get paid…and so on).

But then it’s essential to burrow into the marrow of the matter. Here are some questions that you might find useful as a web copywriter:

(Heck, even if you’re not a web copywriter, just ask yourself these questions to improve your own website copy.)

• Can you explain your product/service in a sentence?




• Could you describe your business using any five words?




• What’s the most significant problem your product/service is designed to solve?




• What kind of person usually faces this problem? Do they face it in their daily life?




• How will your customer’s life be different after buying your product/service?




• When you’re describing what you do/sell to friends, what do you tell them? What do they ask you in return?




• Could you ask your sales team which questions they get asked most often? If they speak to customers face-to-face, what’s a common objection and what do they say to counter it?




• Could you ask your customer service team what your most common complaints/queries are?




• Can you tell me the story of how your business began? What did you want to change?




• If you could change one thing about your product/service, what would it be?




• If you could pick only one stand-out feature of your product, what would it be?




• Do you have any special offers/deals/discounts – or anything else that I should know about? Do you offer anything for free (support, shipping etc.)?




• Which website (in any market) do you most admire, and why?




• Who are your biggest competitors? What do you offer that they don’t? What do they offer that you don’t?




• What company’s language style and tone do you most admire and why?




• What do you want your language and tone to say about you?

You can use some of those as a starting point to understanding your client’s business and what they want to achieve. (Really, you should try to keep firing the questions until you’re politely asked to stop, or until just before security are called.)

What about you fellow writers (or clients)? Asked or received any unexpectedly revealing questions?

Image courtesy of Fransesc Esteve

What should you pack into your web copywriter’s toolbox?

We’re not talking grammar guides and free-flow poetry here. These are web apps and software you can use to improve your web and SEO writing.

All have been useful to me over the years, though few are designed specifically for writers. Yet, if you use them in creative ways, they’re perfect for generating new topics, building more focused pages, organising your ideas – and generally writing better web content.

(By the way, if you notice a certain bias towards Google properties, that’s purely because they make some of the most useful stuff. Plus, if you’re writing with SEO in mind, Google is a good place to start!)

1. Wordle

Keyword density is one of the oldest myths in the SEO copywriting handbook. But, if you’re writing to get found online, it helps to see what terms stand out on your page. Wordle gives you a nifty image showing word prominence in a section of text. No percentages. No formulae. Just a nice, quick snapshot of your (or your competitor’s) content.

Just paste in a load of text, or enter a blog feed to get going.

What's on Gordon Brown's mind? Wordled conference speech.

2. Visual Thesaurus

A handy visual reference for those times when you’re struggling for the right word. Only a free trial here, but it’s inexpensive to sign up for longer access.

3. Adwords Keyword Research

Why should a web writer think about keyword research?

Well, wouldn’t you like to write posts that people are interested in? Wouldn’t you like your articles to be found by as many people as possible? Keyword research lets you find out whether people are asking a particular question of Google, then helps you decide on how to phrase your title.

It’s also another way to get ideas for new posts, articles and pages.

Enter a few keyword ideas in the main box. Select "Exact" from the Match Type drop-down. Then hit Get Keyword Ideas.

The top box will show close matches for the keyword ideas you entered. The lower box shows a range of related terms.

4. Evernote

Most writers are information junkies. Snippets of info here, stats there. One moment you’re reading a blog post, next minute you’re looking for images on Flickr. If that sounds like you, then you may find Evernote useful. Add notes, photos, URLs, phone snaps, screenshots – even handwriting – and have it sorted via a searchable, user-friendly interface.

Evernote: post-it avalanche no longer.

5. Springnote

Similar to Evernote, but with a wiki-style, social slant. Useful for writers who want to share their notes and ideas and attract comments and opinion.

6. Google Docs

Create documents online, then share info and collaborate. Great if you’re working on projects with designers, developers, marketing departments or other copywriters and need regular feedback.

The other bonus of using Google Docs is that it doesn’t add the phantom code and mysterious characters that Microsoft Word is sometimes guilty of.

7. Freemind

Working on a complicated article? Trying to tie together all your ideas for a client’s website copy? Brainstorming a few ideas for a new project?

Mind mapping is a great way to visually connect all of your ideas. Freemind is a downloadable application that lets you build your own mind maps.

8. Google Wonder Wheel

Another tool for visual thinkers.

You access the Wonder Wheel by searching any term in Google, then clicking the Show Options link underneath the search box.

Click the "Search Options" link beneath the search box.

Then, click the Wonder Wheel link in the left hand option menu (see the red arrow in the pic below). It”ll bring up a mind-map style diagram with related search terms and phrases. Keep clicking until you get bored!

Click the Wonder Wheel link as shown to start

Looking at the suggestions that arise from clicking write web content, you can already see a few potential content ideas, such as “Write Web Copy For a Busy Audience”. In fact, that’s me sorted for a future blog post right there!

9. Measure Your We-We

*chuckles at the back*

Now, now people. Settle down. This isn’t as puerile as it sounds. Futurenow have a neat customer focus calculator that allows you to see how much you’re droning on about yourself. And, as everyone who’s ever sat with a pub bore knows, the more you go on about yourself, the less interesting it is for the other person.

10. Firebug

Again, this isn’t designed for writers. Instead, it’s a web developer’s add-on for Firefox (and now with a Lite version that works for IE and other browsers). Do I sense eyes glazing over on those of you that aren’t tech fans?

However, if you’re an SEO copywriter, Firebug is an easy way to quickly analyse the elements of any web page. For example, if you want to know which is the H1 tag, just click the Firebug icon and hover over the appropriate text.

11. WordPress.com or WordPress.org

Hey, you’ve got to get your content out there somehow! We use WordPress to power Scribblemill. It’s an easy to use platform, it’s free – and used correctly it has fantastic SEO benefits. WordPress.com is for simple hosted blogging. WordPress.org allows you to download the software and run it on your own self-hosted domain (with your own URL, much like here at Scribblemill).

12. Twitter Search

Twitter lets you see what people are talking about in real time (and it’s no surprise that Google has started adding tweets to their search results). For the writer, it’s a great way to sniff around for hyper-relevant article ideas.

How about a post on the FA Cup?

Also worth noting trending topics for more inspiration.

13. Google Analytics

You need a website to use this one – and you need to install Analytics code. This free online software then offers a slew of useful stats, from how long someone spends on a page, to your most popular keywords.

There really are dozens of ways a canny copywriter can use Analytics results.

For example, if you find a particular page has a high bounce rate (i.e. people leaving soon after arriving), then you might want to work on improving the content. You can even get some new blog post ideas from looking at the various (and unexpected) terms people use to land on your site from the search engines.

14. Google Trends

Some keywords are popular on a seasonal basis (e.g. Christmas Trees, sun tan lotion, January Sales). Some keywords have a fleeting moment in the sun, then tail off when popularity wanes (e.g. Jedward).

Google Trends lets you plan your content depending on when a keyword is rising in popularity. (Of course, there are occasions when you might want to target phrases that are declining in popularity, but we’ll leave the strategy to you.)

15. Readability Test

If you’re trying to connect with the broadest possible audience, you need to make sure your writing is readable. That means using short, active sentences and words with few syllables.

This readability test works as a useful reminder if you’re straying too far into the land of verbosity, garrullousness and uneccessarily overcomplicated gramatical constructions. (Oh, alright. Waffling.)

16. Flickr

Not strictly a writing tool (unless you use the images to get inspiration for your content). However, if you’re writing blog posts, it’s worth considering just how much more appealing a page with a few well-chosen images is compared to a long, unbroken block of text.

17. Your Noggin

No tool is of any use if you don’t apply a bit of noggin.

(If you’re unfamiliar with the word, that’s your bonce, your nouse – your imagination.)

So, let me know if you have any tools you’d like to see on the list, or if you have any interesting ways of using the above. (We already use some of these in our SEO copywriting training courses, but we’re always interested to hear how writers adapt all kinds of tools for their own benefit!)