Effec­tive imme­di­ately, I’m insti­tut­ing a new com­ment pol­icy for this blog. Before I explain it to you (it’s really sim­ple as there are only three rules), let me give you the rea­son why.

I’m see­ing a grow­ing num­ber of com­ment spam lately. Not the usual, software-​​driven kind — Akismet and Dis­qus do a won­der­ful job to keep those at bay. But the ones that look, on the sur­face, as legit­i­mate comments.

Legit­i­mate, they are not.

They are faux com­ments mask­ing as real ones for the express pur­pose of siphon­ing traf­fic. Called “friendly com­ment spam,” they are typ­i­cally sim­ple, often just a sen­tence or two, and most of them are generic, irrel­e­vant, and com­pli­men­tary in nature.

Believe me, I love praise like most peo­ple. But just say­ing “nice blog” (or “nice arti­cle,” “nice post,” “good job,” “love this post,” etc) does not con­sti­tute a com­ment. They are not con­tribut­ing any­thing to the con­ver­sa­tion, or any­thing of value to my readers.

I talked about this on Twit­ter and on Face­book, and while most peo­ple agreed with me, some were opposed. One per­son said that many of these com­men­ta­tors are aspir­ing copy­writ­ers and that I should be grate­ful for such a problem.

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One of my coach­ing stu­dents, Dave Mar­tin, asked me to quickly cri­tique a sales page he will be work­ing on. The site is for “Gourmet Sweet Nuts” by Lady Betsy, which, accord­ing to David, are “Gawd-​​awful good!”

The prob­lem is, this page sells the prod­uct directly but was orig­i­nally intended as an intro­duc­tion let­ter to candy stores and deal­ers. (That explains why it isn’t sell­ing as well as it can.)

Just like try­ing to mix SEO with good sales copy, it’s a hard thing to do when your page has more than one goal. It requires skill. But in this par­tic­u­lar case, it’s best to focus only on one core mes­sage. In fact, I always try to stick to the “rule of focus” in copy, which means…

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The most impor­tant part of your copy is not your head­line, not your offer and cer­tainly not your ben­e­fits. The most impor­tant part is your customer.

In the last few weeks, I’ve been cri­tiquing some pretty good copy. Very well-​​written and com­pelling. But if the con­ver­sion rate is low (hence, the rea­son why I was hired to con­duct a cri­tique con­sul­ta­tion), it’s because these saleslet­ters do not tar­get the right audi­ence for the offer, or the author and the copy fail to con­nect with their readers.

Research­ing your cus­tomer in depth is vital to the suc­cess of your copy. It’s not only an impor­tant com­po­nent of tar­get­ing and qual­i­fy­ing the best prospect for your offer, but also an effec­tive way to dis­cover new ideas, dif­fer­ent angles, cap­ti­vat­ing sto­ry­lines, unsought ben­e­fits, and appro­pri­ate length and lan­guage of your copy that will con­vert more.

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