Coversational Copywriting
Source Title:
Conversational writing kicks formal writing's ass
Conversational writing kicks formal writing's ass
Story Text:
How do you write copy? Do you write stiff, formal feature selling paragraphs, or conversational, personal copy stressing You, not I? This article on conversational copy by Kathy Sierra, is about books primarily. She stresses conversational copy's proven tendency to be remembered however, and you'll find it translates well to web sales copy i think.
How do you write copy? Do you write stiff, formal feature selling paragraphs, or conversational, personal copy stressing You, not I? This article on conversational copy by Kathy Sierra, is about books primarily. She stresses conversational copy's proven tendency to be remembered however, and you'll find it translates well to web sales copy i think.
Your sixth grade English teacher warned you against writing the way you talk, but she was wrong. Partly wrong, anyway. Then again, we aren't talking about writing the way you talked when you were 12. Or even the way you talk when you're rambling. What most people mean when they say "write the way you talk" is something like, "the way you talk when you're explaining something to a friend, filtering out the 'um', 'you know', and 'er' parts, and editing for the way you wish you'd said it."
That blog is turning out to be a breath of fresh air for me, i recommend a subscription to the feed.
- Y! MyWeb
I have to agree with this.
I have to agree with this. People like it when you are talking to them, not lecturing them.
It's a two-edged sword
As someone whose "trademark conversational tone" (or whatever it is that marks my writing style in the blurbs) has won a wide reading audience, I agree that a semi-formal, conversational tone works well with the masses. But, in my opinion, that's only if you speak well.
People who resort to NetSpeak in their online writing just absolutely kill me. And people who pepper their writing with jargonistic idiom squander the seminal positive disposition with which I approach their expressed wisdom and deliberation.
And let's not even get into politically correct speech, or motivational UpSpeak. Ick.
It always depends on the audience.
Speak to them the way they want to be spoken to (or if they're grammarians, the way to which they want to be spoken)
Voice Recognition Software
Using such can be a great way to pump out a lot of conversational style articles/descriptions. There was a good recent thread at WW but I can't seem to find it, maybe in the supporters' forum.
Audience, Subject
If you are selling high end, exclusive, or anything that requires a high amount of professsionalism, conversational style will work against you.
And, some people's conversational style doesn't transfer well to print...a lot of people need some severe editing to stay on point. ;)
But I do agree that the old hard-and-fast rules like not ending a sentence with a preposition and not having sentence fragments don't apply as much- if that's the way your target audience communicates, then it's perfectly natural to sell to them with the same tone and "voice".
audience, subject, *expectation*
I guess I'm combining Scottie and qwerty to generate original content :-)
When the reader is aware they are listening to an editorial or opinion-laced work, conversational works well (because it communicates?). I completely agree it ain't for every situation, for sure.
If you have ever written technical content for peer-reviewed publication, you know that you must be clear about everything - every statement must have one meaning: unambiguous. There should be no room for (mis)interpretation. That means conversational styles will never work.
If you are selling high end,
I disagree there. I think you just need to take your conversation up a level...
Know your Audience
Talk with them, not at them. Spend three-dollar words on three-dollar clients. Spend more time listening than writing. Boys buying million dollar combines know hay from straw. They also know shit from shinola.
"I don't want the damn brochure boy, I want to know if that damn thing will take care of my crops, the rest is in the brochure ain't it?"
Insert the word of your choice for "crops". Tire kickers want vocabulary. Buyers want the truth.
Peer review and conversational style
Perhaps things have changed since I regularly browsed the journal archives, but I found there were two styles of formal writing in the peer review fields: incomprehensible and downright homey (just a tad above conversational). I always enjoyed the homey articles much more, and seldom had to reach for a dictionary to figure out what an "unambiguous" word or expression actually meant.
It would be a true shame if that tolerance of good writing had fallen out of the peer review world. It was one of the few redeeming factors in that environment (as the political backbiting, while amusing to some, detracts from the quality of research, in my opinion).
Cool tool
Check out your "customer focus" score
I like that tool
One of the biggest problems in writing a sales letter is eliminating "I" and "We" and replacing them with "you". Sales copy on Web sites should emphasize the customer as well.