So, What’s Next?

“The truly impor­tant events… are not the trends. They are changes in the trends.”
— Peter Drucker

First, my thoughts on the whole Web 2.0 “social” craze: web­sites that offer social inter­ac­tion, such as MySpace, Squidoo, del​.icio​.us, YouTube, Digg, blogs, dis­cus­sion boards and so forth, do not affect saleslet­ters directly.

Fact is, they are sim­ply tools that help peo­ple to orga­nize, sim­plify and opti­mize their brows­ing expe­ri­ence (and not nec­es­sar­ily their buy­ing expe­ri­ence). I’m not try­ing to dis­count them. Not at all. They can be very use­ful in brand­ing, estab­lish­ing cred­i­bil­ity, dri­ving traf­fic, mar­ket­ing, offer­ing social proof and more.

But how are they use­ful when it comes to copy­writ­ing? Here’s the thing:

See how peo­ple use these ser­vices, and what they pull from them. Watch how they inter­act with oth­ers. You can learn a heck of a lot from sim­ply see­ing what’s pop­u­lar out there, and why those tools are so pop­u­lar. Because, the bot­tom line is, it all comes down to that fun­da­men­tal denom­i­na­tor that per­vades all mar­kets, all saleslet­ters, and all “web ver­sions.” It’s…

… Human behavior.

Want to learn how to write bet­ter copy? Want to see how you can trans­form your saleslet­ters into higher-​​converting pieces? Then learn what peo­ple want and what they do. In other words, learn good old-​​fashioned human nature.

Regard­less of how things change, whether it even­tu­ally leads to some Web “whatever-​​point-​​oh” or not, human nature will sel­dom if ever change.

Granted, these changes we are see­ing are impor­tant to note. But “The Death of the Saleslet­ter” is by no means try­ing to sug­gest that you should stop learn­ing how to write copy or that you should stop using salesletters.

It’s quite the con­trary. The demand and need for greater, stronger, more skilled copy­writ­ing is going to invari­ably increase. Web 2.0, if any­thing, is forc­ing copy­writ­ers, mar­keters and busi­ness peo­ple alike to be more ver­sa­tile, and to be more skilled in the art and sci­ence of direct response copy.

But as I said before, look at Web 2.0 as your wakeup call, telling you that you not only need to under­stand the fact that the web is indeed dif­fer­ent than other media (and to start shift­ing your think­ing), but also to get bet­ter at copywriting.

Audio is still copy. Video is still copy. Even pro­grams that demand inter­ac­tion are still copy. It’s all copy. And it’s all about salesmanship.

While Web 2.0 offers new tools with which you should get acquainted, don’t get bogged down by it all, don’t get caught up in the hype, and cer­tainly don’t stop learn­ing how to write good copy because of it. Copy­writ­ing will always be more impor­tant than and because of any new technology.

Remem­ber, tech­nol­ogy is only a byprod­uct of what peo­ple want and not the other way around. So rather than get­ting caught up in the hype of any­thing new, focus on learn­ing human behav­ior as a result of using that tech­nol­ogy to dis­cover what they want — and how you can use that tech­nol­ogy to give it to them.

That way, you’ll always remain a step ahead of any­thing new.

Enjoy the ride,

Michel Fortin
The Suc­cess Doc­tor™
Suc​cess​Doc​tor​.com

P.S.: Thank you for read­ing this white paper. How many pre­dic­tions do you think came true, or how many do you feel are about to come true? Don’t be afraid to share your thoughts, com­ments, or crit­i­cisms below. I’m lis­ten­ing…

P.P.S.: Remem­ber that you can also down­load this report. And, if you do, you may redis­trib­ute it freely — or sim­ply point peo­ple to this blog, specif­i­cally this link.

About the Author

Last 5 Posts By Michel Fortin

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