I remem­ber 10 years ago.

In the wake of rumored pro­pos­als to reg­u­late the web, in 1999 the CRTC, com­pa­ra­ble to America’s FCC, offi­cially declared that the Inter­net is not a broad­cast medium.

Now, that rul­ing was sig­nif­i­cant for many reasons.

Tech­ni­cally, the Inter­net is a medium. But the gov­ern­ment based its deci­sion on the fact that the web is inter­ac­tive with its audi­ence — unlike other uni­di­rec­tional, one-​​way broad­cast media such as the TV or radio. As a result, reg­u­la­tors con­cluded the Inter­net could there­fore police itself.

(The “Net Neu­tral­ity” debate of late is a per­fect exam­ple that it is different.)

Nev­er­the­less, my point here is not a polit­i­cal one but a marketing-​​related one.

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A mem­ber on my copy­writ­ers forum (now my blog) started a thread on what makes my forum so pop­u­lar. Every­one chimed in with some great answers, and I appre­ci­ate the feedback.

(The cool thing about it is, that very thread also reached an impor­tant mile­stone. It was the 10,000th one! Talk about a coin­ci­dence, eh?)

But then some­one asked:

“Michel, can I ask how you ini­tially got the word out about your forum?”

My answer revealed a bit more than what the mem­ber antic­i­pated. Instead of talk­ing about how my forum became so pop­u­lar, I went on a tan­gent and explained the step-​​by-​​step process I used to book copy­writ­ing projects.

The answer was so well received that I decided to reprint it here.

Now, you may be won­der­ing what pro­mot­ing a forum (or a blog, for that mat­ter) has to do with pro­mot­ing my copy­writ­ing ser­vices. Keep read­ing because you’ll soon under­stand why…

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The other day I was asked a ques­tion I hear all too often: “How do I dis­tin­guish myself from other copywriters?”

To find the answer, look to one of the most effec­tive and fre­quently used copy­writ­ing and mar­ket­ing tools. It’s your “Unique Sell­ing Propo­si­tion,” or USP.

(I pre­fer to call it a “Unique Sell­ing Posi­tion.” If you’ve read my book, “Power Posi­tion­ing,” then you’d know that I’m a big fan of posi­tion­ing rather than prospecting.)

Your USP is also your “hook.”

Time and time again, I’ve told many aspir­ing copy­writ­ers and mar­keters that a USP is what dis­tin­guishes you from the pack. It increases per­ceived value, exper­tise, and cred­i­bil­ity — with­out need­ing to state it outright.

But since I hear this ques­tion often, par­tic­u­larly from copy­writ­ers just enter­ing the field, I sense that it’s because peo­ple need a lit­tle help in defin­ing their USP.

So to help you, here’s a tip.

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Remem­ber when I talked about using mul­ti­me­dia and being pithy? Well, I just came across the short­est saleslet­ter I’ve ever seen.

“Six Fig­ure Blog­ging” by Andy Wibbels and Dar­ren Rowse is a course on how to make money blogging.

Visit the web­site and you’ll be first pre­sented with a short opt-​​in page. Go ahead and opt in. That will lead you to the sales page.

What you will find: a cover graphic of the course, one para­graph of copy, an audio about the course, a link to the course syl­labus, an “Enroll Now” but­ton, and a short, two-​​line dis­claimer. That’s it!

Plus, main copy in the one para­graph sim­ply says, “How to make $10,000 a month blog­ging.” That’s all. Admit­tedly, the “link syl­labus” page is a longer ver­sion, and the real saleslet­ter when you think about it. (But even then, it’s only five printed pages long.)

Click here to check out this short salesletter…

Gary: No, I trained him. Actu­ally, that’s not true. I did train him but he was really good by the time he got to me.

Michel: Well, this is an impor­tant ques­tion because as we do, Gary, and as many of the peo­ple who do write good copy do, is that they have swipe files and I have a cab­i­net that’s just absolutely -

Gary: Oh, man, stop. I got to stop you. I got to tell you a story.

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