One of the most make or break things about professional copywriting is the structure and it absolutely pays to get it right.
Structure is the order of ideas. More specifically, when it comes to professional copywriting services, it’s about looking at the way your assets are structured. Learning the fundamentals of structure are incredibly important so that you can apply it to your own writing and achieve successful results.
Building block questions
In every piece of copywriting, you need to look at the basic storytelling building block questions that are to be answered in the research phase. These answers to these fundamental questions will form the basis of the information of your piece of writing.
- Who?
- What?
- Where?
- When?
- Why?
- How?
In addition to these building block questions, it pays to be clear on the following aspects of structure:
- tone (how you write something and how it comes across)
- point of view (first, second or third person)
- tense (past, present or future)
- active versus passive (subject, object and verb)
- sentence length (short and sharp or long and shiny?)
Ten copywriting tips
- Referring back to what you learnt from identifying your target demographics, what will your different demographics want the most from your writing? Be sure to keep that top of mind or list three to six things when constructing your web article, media releases, editorial or social media posts and so on.
- Ensure you keep your reader hooked from the headline and all the way through the article to the call to action.
- Don’t get lazy at the end of your assets. Keep the writing sharp and concise through its entirety.
- Have a play around. You might find it easier to write an article, enewsletter or media release and stay on track if you write a headline before you write the body of the piece.
- It’s more effective to write in an active voice than passive voice. Passive voice shows uncertainty, often failing to influence or persuade others. It also creates wordiness, and often times lacks the clarity that the active voice provides.
- Stick to one idea per paragraph.
- Don’t forget to have a beginning, middle and end. Or an introduction and overview, bulk of the useful information and then a summary and conclusion.
- If a journalist only had room to print your first paragraph of a media release or article (without the heading or rest of the piece), would readers know the crucial details that they need?
- Make two lists: one of the most crucial points and the other list will be interesting facts, quirky ideas and stories that add flavour to your story/piece of writing. Think of the first list is your pasta and tomatoes and the second list as your herbs and spices, when making a delicious pasta dish!
- Remember that the most important information is not what you want to tell but what the readers want to know.