Online copywriters can’t afford to rest on their laurels.
Even though social media has cracked open new opportunities to deliver great copy it has also flooded the market with fresh copywriting talent. If you make your living from writing t
hen you need an edge.
Twitter to The Rescue
Twitter can offer a unique competitive opportunity for the smart writer
Why?
Twitter is a game changer. At its core Twitter is instant messaging on steroids. Instead of talking with one person, you can broadcast your thoughts to the world and anyone can vote on their value with retweets and mentions. Used creatively, Twitter’s instant feedback can rapidly refine your writing skills and immediately boost your persuasive power.
Let’s explore a few ways now -
Finding Hidden Benefits
Magical copywriters use exhaustive research to find the hidden hook (or premise) that opens their readers heart or wallet. Gene Schwarz, a legendary copywriter, calls this hook the Hidden Benefit.
Although there are dozens of ways to sniff out a hidden benefit, TweetChats as a quick and dirty way to get some preliminary clues. Tweet Chats are discussions organized around a specific topic that occur at a regular time. You can follow and participate in the discussion by following a specific hashtag for the chat.
These chats are attended by hard-core fans of the topic. They love to answer questions and have years of experience to back up their advice. Participating in these Tweet Chats often yield several hidden benefits that could have been overlooked.
Writing Game Changing Headlines
Headlines are the bread and butter of the online copywriting profession. Learning how to pack in the benefit is critical. Even better is writing SHORT benefit focused headline.
You can use Twitter to sharpen your skills by rewriting and testing different variations of post headlines. I often tweet up to 4 different headlines to test which variation gets the best result.
Twitter’s 140 character limit works like heavy boots on a jogger. Over time, the extra burden will make your headlines stronger, precise, and targeted.
Testing Your Call to Action
Many copywriters make the mistake of guessing about how their customers will respond. They “hope” that they’ve set the right price, created the best guarantee, or used the right copy for their “buy now” button. Guessing is wasteful and entirely unnecessary especially when you have Twitter at your disposal.
I’ve noticed that a quick question to my Twitter followers immediately provides valuable information. If you don’t have a big audience then reach out to specific tweeters and bloggers who are active in your niche.
Experiment with Twitter and learn how to harness it get real-time intelligence to strengthen your writing. It might be the edge you need to stand-out from the pack and out-hustle your competitors.
Your Turn
Give me a shout in the comments and tell me how you are using Twitter to sharpen your writing skills.
P.S.
Writing is just one of the skills you need to create a powerful and profitable blog. If you want to dive in and learn some more advanced blogging tips then seriously consider becoming a member of the Pushing Social Bootcamp. Check out the details here (and see the special bonus I have for you).
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One limitation with testing headlines using Twitter: Consider that you are reaching many different types of followers and only a fraction of them are paying attention to your tweets at any particular time.
Even with a massive following, the statistical relevance of your results will probably be quite low, giving you a possibly false impression of what works and what doesn’t.
Awesome post Stan! I especially liked what you said about finding the hidden benefits using twitter. The truth is the more we can relay the hidden benefits to our customers the more we can provide them with content, products and services that truly serve them. Thank you again for this insightful post!
The biggest change that’s come for me with frequent Twitter usage is that I get to the point a lot faster in my tweets! Heavy boots on a jogger indeed. And, I don’t just retweet things, because that’s even less likely to get a click – I use the ‘via’ and even re-write the headline if I think it wasn’t attention-grabbing enough.
I really like the idea of mining twitter chats for blog topics. That’s gold!
Thanks for the comment Jenn. I like the idea of using “via” and rewriting headlines. I’m sure the blogger you are retweeting appreciates it too!
Twitter can definitely boost the topic ideas and help you learn about eye catching titles. Just search a keyword and see which titles jump out at you – that will let you know which are effective!
Cool Kristi. I never thought of searching twitter for headline ideas. Yep – that’s why you rock.
While I agree with you to a certain extent, I don’t think tweeting sharpens copywriting skills. I think perhaps good copywriters are more comfortable with the limit of 140 characters and can get the message across quickly.