As part of my coach­ing pro­gram, stu­dents can ask me unlim­ited ques­tions via email. One com­mon ques­tion I seem to get is, “I’m new to copy­writ­ing, where do I start?”

Since my coach­ing stu­dents also get access to any of my dig­i­tal pro­grams, they also get access to my Copy Doc­tor web­site, where I share over 50 hours of saleslet­ter and copy cri­tiques, recorded on video. It’s a great start.

But one stu­dent said some­thing that struck me:

“I learn bet­ter by doing than by watch­ing. Is there any­thing you can recommend?”

Great ques­tion. Some peo­ple are more visual (they learn bet­ter by watch­ing), some are more aural or audi­tory (by hear­ing), oth­ers are more kines­thetic (by doing or feel­ing). And I also thought it would be a great ques­tion to cover on my blog. So, here goes…

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I cov­ered head­lines many times already. You can find posts about head­lines here. But here are some addi­tional tips.

There are two huge mis­takes peo­ple make when they write head­lines. Either they are too bland and don’t say enough (such as when they attempt to sim­ply sum­ma­rize), or they say too much to cover all the bases.

In both cases, you will lose readers.

1. The True Purpose of The Headline

The head­line is more than a mere sum­mary of the sales copy. Unlike the title of a book, for instance, it’s not meant to sum­ma­rize, encap­su­late, or intro­duce the story. And most head­lines I’ve seen seem to list all the of the great­est ben­e­fits from the copy.

No. A head­line is meant to gen­er­ate read­er­ship and pull peo­ple into the copy.

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In an ear­lier blog post, I talked about the fact that lately I’ve been lean­ing a lot more towards test­ing the reduc­tion in bottlenecks.

Some of the results are staggering!

In short, the more I increase the sense of secu­rity and trust, bet­ter the flow and ease of order­ing, and project a more con­gru­ent and pro­fes­sional image, the more sales I make.

Since that post, some read­ers have asked me for some exam­ples. I pre­fer not to reveal mine as they are pro­pri­etary. But I can say this…

One of the things that I’m start­ing to really like are ecom­merce sites that are less “saleslet­ter­ish” — i.e., less long-​​scrolling copy in a direct-​​mail for­mat, and more clus­tered lay­outs that are reader-​​focused, commerce-​​centric, and action-​​driven.

They still use com­pelling copy and a solid response mech­a­nism. If the user needs more details, a “more info” link then sends them to a typ­i­cal, long copy saleslet­ter. But these sites’ front-​​end are more action-​​oriented than they are scrolling-​​oriented.

I’ve decided to test this with our main web­site at Suc­cess Chef. I still use long copy. But I’ve con­verted the front-​​end into an ecom­merce, multi-​​product, catalog-​​like format.

And the results are in…

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When writ­ing direct response copy, a few things can max­i­mize the respon­sive­ness of your mes­sage. The first and most impor­tant ele­ment that can turn any web­site, saleslet­ter, or adver­tise­ment into an action-​​generating mech­a­nism is, with­out ques­tion, the head­line.

But lately, I’m see­ing more and more head­lines that are limp, bloated, or sim­ply dead wrong.

A head­line is meant to do two vital things.

No more and no less. First, it needs to grab your reader’s atten­tion. That’s the pri­mary and most impor­tant job of the head­line. It’s not meant to sum­ma­rize an offer or be a para­graph in and of itself. It’s not meant to make a sale, either.

You know what I’m talk­ing about, right? Head­lines like these make me twitch…

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An inter­est­ing debate is rag­ing among copy­writ­ers and con­tent devel­op­ers about the dif­fer­ences, if any, between writ­ing copy for the web ver­sus writ­ing content.

Pro­lific copy­writer Nick Usborne con­ducted a sur­vey with his newslet­ter read­ers to dis­cover how many among them are copy­writ­ers, and how many are con­tent writers.

The result was split three ways: one-​​third copy­writ­ers, one-​​third con­tent writ­ers, and the final third both.

Actual titles aside, I think the results may be mis­lead­ing. Rea­son is, I believe all online copy is con­tent but not all con­tent is copy. Try­ing to dis­tin­guish the two is a problem.

Most web design­ers, web­mas­ters, and con­tent writ­ers develop text for web­sites in a way to edu­cate vis­i­tors. They hold the notion that “con­tent is king,” “con­tent increases search engine rank­ings,” “con­tent makes a web­site sticky,” and so on. That’s all fine and good.

But I believe con­tent fails when it strives only at inform­ing the reader, and thus lacks impor­tant ele­ments that take her “by the hand” and com­pels her to do some­thing — any­thing, includ­ing the sim­ple act of read­ing the con­tent in the first place.

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Just a quick note to let you know this blog is under­go­ing some ren­o­va­tions. I’ve just installed Dis­qus (pro­nounced “dis­cuss”) com­ment sys­tem, which will replace the native Word­Press com­ment­ing system.

It takes a while for the sys­tem to import all the com­ments from Word­Press — it’s about 70% done, now — and it should be all back to nor­mal soon. Fin­gers crossed.

Why am I doing this?

I’ve been inves­ti­gat­ing sev­eral com­ment­ing sys­tems, includ­ing Word­Press’ own, Intense Debate. And Dis­qus appears to be the win­ner in many of the reviews I’ve read. I’ve tested it on some of my non-​​public blogs and it works quite well.

This sys­tem allows you to track com­ments, con­verse using threaded replies, rate com­ments, add links to com­men­ta­tor pro­files, and com­ment by log­ging into Twit­ter, Face­book, or Dis­qus Con­nect, or sim­ply as a guest.

Com­ments are still mod­er­ated as before, so your com­ment won’t show up auto­mat­i­cally. If you notice any­thing “wiggy,” please com­ment here. The com­plete tran­si­tion, Dis­qus advises me, should be com­pleted by day’s end. Thanks for bear­ing with me.

Just a quick piece of news.

My wife’s book, Inter­net Mar­ket­ing Sins, is com­pletely done and all three sec­tions (each one con­tain­ing five chap­ters each) are avail­able with­out any optins.

In other words, the entire book is avail­able as a direct down­load right off the web page. You don’t need to reg­is­ter, log in, or fill out any forms.

The pre­vi­ous optin form was used sim­ply to notify those inter­ested when parts two and three would become avail­able (since it was writ­ten in install­ments over time). But now that all three parts are out, it’s no longer needed.

The first two are PDFs, and the third one is a video. So if you would like to read and watch Inter­net Mar­ket­ing Sins, go there now. And don’t for­get to retweet this.

Click here to get Inter­net Mar­ket­ing Sins by Sylvie Fortin.