Copywriter Performance – Put a NEW Spin on Stale-Old Copy with 5 Easy Concepts

Copywriters often spin a new twist on old copy to make it work better, to improve the original concept, or even just to update their information. These ideas may help you refocus old information and put it into a new sales letter for better performance and results.

Perceptive Regeneration –

Take a different look at used up and reused concepts. Even the old “Where’s the Beef?” commercials can reveal something more satisfying when used with copy instead of meat. Beef up your copy with an old concept reused and revitalized for a current point of view. Perspective is perception.

Mind Numbing Hype –

Delete the hyperbole is one way of reacting to hype. But another is to increase it to mind numbing action driving conversions. If the hype is so effectively presented that your reader becomes curious, their mind numbing reaction can actually cause them to take action and click your link.

Key Point Performance –

Cut the flack and get to the point. You know there’s a specific topic of focus in your work, so cut the banter and get to the point with a minimum of words. Just do it – comes to mind here.

Cognitive Exaggeration –

People understand when lotion commercials present a crocodile big enough to walk over the sweet young girl in a lounge chair that the croc really doesn’t exist in that picture – he’s been exaggerated. The concept is real, however, and women will buy the lotion because they recognize crocodile skin.

Lyrical Metaphors –

Metaphors, analogies and similes presented in lyrical fashion become too cute to ignore. Most any phrasing can by prettied up with some music and poetic presentation. Consider the overwhelming smell of a hot, wet feed yard as aroma de poop – see, it just stinks less!

Try your own hand at rejuvenating articles, sales letters, or out dated copy that needs refreshed.

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© 2009 – http://janverhoeff.com

Beady Evil Eyes

By Jan Verhoeff

Starting the day with a computer failure is not my idea of fun. But, it happens. On the day in question, I’d opened my eyes to a glorious sunny morning, cold and clear, with fresh snow on the ground (though it was limited - this is southeastern Colorado in a drought - you know), and just the slightest glimmer of Spring in the air. Despite these wonders, a shower, dressed in my favorite off to the office wear of jeans and sweatshirt - highly appropriate in my home office with four children running about in various stages of dress and school projects, breakfast in hand; I switched on the computer.

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With a buzz and a burp it announced it’s confusion and inattentive response. The monitor came up with an interesting screen arranged with blocks and lines of permeating color. Needless to say, this day was going to be interesting. I immediately turned off the computer and tried again. I didn’t hear the resounding blurp, and the buzz sounded a bit foggy. What I specifically did NOT hear was the fan inside my computer keeping it cool.

I personally didn’t think it was hot enough to ‘get warm’ but - I knew the computer would disagree with me so I turned it off again and proceeded to search out the necessary tools to revamp my computer - hoping all the while that it was fixable without parts. After clearing all the necessary office supplies off my desk, stapler, note pads, pens, etc. I noticed ‘tracks’ on my desk. Interesting ‘tracks’ in the dust.

Hmmmm… and beady little eyes peering out at me from under the base of my monitor. Momentarily, I lapsed into the scared homemaker version of me, who was very much afraid of mice. I screamed. Then, without a moment’s hesitation, I lapsed back into the more professional version of me. I screamed even louder, but in a more professional ‘blood curdling’ manner. Then, a calm took over and I got myself back under total control, sanity regaining it’s hold. I screamed again, this time without the professional tones, without the fear, and without the calm. A resounding, reverberating scream of horror that such a creature could be roaming freely on the top of my desk.

As my children gathered round, restrained laughter, more screams as the varmint appeared again, and offers of protection from my sons (who obviously found great joy in my tormented state) were proffered. Not so restrained laughter followed as I continued reacting with screams of fear as the beady eyed creature kept repeatedly poking his nose out from under the monitor attempting to find a way out of his hidey hole. Regaling laughter from my daughters was closely followed by giggling appeals for the rat’s life, whines for saving the rat, and ultimately, the worst of all appeals, from my son, “Mom, can we keep him?” Needless to say, the answer was, “No.”

Eventually, someone came up with the idea of placing a box under the edge of the front of the desk, pulling the monitor off the desk over the box, and letting the mouse fall into the box. Then they came up with the idea of ME lifting the monitor… uh, no. So, as we stood there discussing the options and possibilities, a delivery arrived from FedEx.

A momentary lapse of memory amid peals of laughter as I opened a box labeled ‘mouse trap’ (a game my son had ordered for the computer), and I innocently sat down in my office chair to contemplate the repair of my computer, forgetting about the terrifying rodent that shared my imminent domain. While focusing my attentions on the computer problem, which still included a tower that I wasn’t turning on out of fear of burning up some preciously necessary component, I grasped a screwdriver in one hand and pulled the tower onto my lap.

Needless to say, it was a grievous error in judgment.

I pulled various plugs from the back of the tower, removing most of the dust with my denim clad leg and the sleeve of my sweatshirt as I worked, I also removed the covering from the unitized form of my computer core. It was then I discovered, much to my chagrin, the problem with the fan on my tower. Mr. or Mrs. beady evil eyed mouse had built a nest overnight in my computer fan - and delivered a tower full of beady eyed baby mice in between the fan blades. As I sat there again screaming out my dismay (see earlier paragraphs in reference to nature of screaming dismay), the thought came to mind that there must be a ‘momma mouse’ somewhere, excitedly upset about the fact that I was dislodging her babies from my computer in a far less than humane manner.

Still periodically screaming my horror at indiscernible decibels ranging from outrageously blood curdling screams to inaudible wimpy gasps of air siphoned over the voice box, I continue removing baby mice from my components. At one point, I’m systematically blowing the residual residue from the screen covering my fan with canned air, when I heard a resounding THUMP and felt teeny tiny claws grasping the denim on my leg. Somewhere between the act of throwing the computer into the air - attempting to catch it - swiping the mouse from my leg - throwing it out the open front door - and the realization that I’d just TOUCHED a mouse, it dawned on me that the reason the front door was open was because my son was asking a friend into the house.

Standing frozen in the sands of time, I shivered uncontrollably as I lifted the computer tower onto the desk, sat it there and walked to the other room to calm down. When I returned the monitor and tower had been removed from my desk and any other debris had been cleaned off the desk, including dust from the monitor. The tower had been put back together, and the friend was sitting with my son chattering about the rigors of dealing with women and phobias, both were wearing these interestingly non-innocent type grins, and neither spoke a word about the mice, or parent mouse that had been removed from my computer, however, I did notice that the trash can had been emptied and all debris had been cleaned up from around my desk area.

Little did I understand that each time my son and friend come into contact with each other, I would be constantly reminded of the scenario that day when the beady evil eyed critter invaded my work space.

Persistent and driven marketer with over three decades of experience, Jan Verhoeff packs high-impact solutions into your marketing endeavors. Verhoeff generates targeted traffic and explosive wealth building potential into your Internet Business.

By: Jan Verhoeff

Explode Traffic, Prospects, Publicity & Profits - that’s the tag line for “100 Articles, 100 Days” with Jeff Herring.

The opportunity is for you to write 100 Articles in 100 Days and post them at www.EzineArticles.com and drive massive amounts of traffic to your website. If you’re not sure how to write that many articles, I have a few tips and suggestions for you. In a few simple steps:

1. Write a title that offers keyword phrasing and benefits to your reader.
2. Write an introductory statement to tell your readers about your article.
3. Write a list of 7 items that relate to your topic. (Be sure they’re true to the title.)
4. Write a few sentences under each of your seven items.
5. Write a question inviting your audience to learn more.
6. Create a powerful resource box that gives your reader a means of continuing their education at your website.
7. Do it again!

100 of these simple articles will meet your goal easily.

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(c) 2009 - http://janverhoeff.com

I have a lot of fun on my blogs, and sometimes I take off on a different direction without thinking much about it. But seriously, when you take those detours, you should have a plan.

You really and truly should have a plan before you take off on those detours, but if you’re ultra spontaneous (like me) you might have to know how to cover your tail to maintain the integrity of your blog and keep your readers happy. I know there have been a few times when a few readers have contacted me and said, “Jan, what the heck are you thinking?”

Tangents

You can have a tangent and still maintain the integrity of your blog. It’s easy, rant about your primary topic, go off on a burning rant and tell everything you absolutely hate about writing, for instance. Get down and dirty and whine a little bit. Don’t curse. Enjoy the rant, and share it. Your readers may actually respond with solutions or helps. Or they may join you.

Leave it with a bit of humor tacked on at the end.

Lists

I love a good list of things I need to do, things I need to get, or things that would make your job easier. These are the same kinds of lists other people would have if they did what you do. This article is a list. I’m listing all the things you can do to maintain your Blog Integrity. Write an intro paragraph, and follow it up with an odd number of specifics, then offer a tag paragraph that includes a link to something else you’re doing.

Have some fun with lists. Don’t make it all business. Sometimes, you just gotta have fun.

Videos

Popping a video into the blog now and then shores up your image and gives you a bit of magic. Remember when you were little and first started watching TV. Did you think there were itty bitty people in your Television set? I thought the cowboys and Indians lived inside the TV. When I was about 13, I met Roy Rogers and told him that, because by then I thought it was cute. He said I wasn’t the only kid that wanted to take the TV apart to snitch his horse.

Ya know, he eyed me a little differently after that…

Humor

Sometimes I use humor that sounds a bit sarcastic. That isn’t my intent, but it comes across wrong. I try to fix that and make it sound right and it doesn’t work, then I’m left with a blog post that just didn’t work. I delete those. But humor is good. If you can pull off a good joke, on the blog, and make it relevant to your topic, do it. In fact, I’d say do it more often. This world needs laughter.

I listen to the radio a lot when I’m blogging. There’s just something about listening to Dolly Parton spiriting out “Nine to Five” that inspires me. The humor of it, alone, will give you an inspired thought on any topic. Seriously, humor is a good thing. Use it.

Reviews

Reviewing products is a great way to add a blog post and market a product. It doesn’t have to be a full blown detailed review of a product, if you’re using something that benefits your family or business and is relevant to your blog, write about it. Give your reader a quick recommendation in the middle of your blog post about your favorite keyboard. I’ll tell you, nothing is more important on my desk than my logitech keyboard.  I use it every day. Okay, maybe my philips mouse?

Reviews offer people a chance to glimpse you beyond the black and white words.

Marketing is the name of the game. No matter what you’re blogging about, you’re most likely blogging about something with the intent to make a profit from your blog. Decadent Marketing offers you important details about the marketing aspects of blogging and creating documents online. For more information go to http://decadentmarketing.com and sign in for your FREE Gift.

(c) 2009 - http://janverhoeff.com

Writer Critiques – 7 Ways to Critique Like a Professional Editor

If you can string five words together, make a sentence and add five more to have a paragraph, the world considers you a writer. However, the editor looking over your manuscript for publication considers you something else. Before you present your manuscript for publication, be sure you’ve followed these steps, completely.

1. Sentences have verbs and nouns.

Yup, all of them. Every sentence you write (you didn’t write the one that started this paragraph) MUST have a verb and a noun. Until you’re published and have a solid understanding of what the publisher wants, give him what he expects. PERFECT GRAMMAR.

2. Punctuation matters.

There’s no place in formal or casual writing where three exclamation marks make one iota of difference to anyone, except your publisher. He doesn’t want to see them. He hates exclamation marks, and would prefer you get your point across with words. Don’t use them!

3. Show, don’t tell.

Do not waste the publisher’s time telling him how funny your characters are. Show him. This is important. Give your reader (publisher) credit for having at least 10% of the same smarts you’ve got. Allow him to read and determine how funny, witty, scary or frightening the book is himself.

4. Follow directions.

If the directions say to double space your book manuscript on blue paper with pink ink, do it. If they suggest you type it upside-down on a piece of platform card stock, do it. Whatever your publisher requests in the manner of manuscript, be sure that’s what you do.

5. Check story lines.

If the main character died in a plane crash in chapter five and never came back to life, he cannot possibly rescue the heroine in chapter twenty six. Nope, it can’t be done, the publisher will know that, and he’ll toss your story in the circular file if you try it. Don’t do it.

6. Don’t be redundant.

This is kind of like being stupid. If you said it once in three words, you don’t need to say it again in forty, then repeat it again in three hundred, and your whole complete, seventh chapter doesn’t have to say it again in five thousand words. Don’t repeat yourself.

7. Overcome perfectionism.

If it took you seven years to write the first paragraph and seven days to write the rest of the book, you’ve probably got a serious problem with obsessive compulsive perfectionism. Call me, I have the name of a good writer psychologist who can get you right in.

The best part of learning to critique like a professional is, you begin to write like a writer. The objective of writing the story (you remember the rough draft part of the paper?) is to get it on paper, THEN edit. Visit http://acewriters.com for more help with the critiquing process and a FREE E-Course on writing for profit.

© 2009 – http://janverhoeff.com

Words unbidden come to fill the space on pages made of white.

The sentence could be shortened, but would it mean the same? A writer speaks utterances that no one dares to think, because the words have meaning that echo through our hearts. No matter how many times you edit a piece, the writer knows the value of the words taking flight.

Because you’re given a message to impart to the world, you should speak it. Write it down and publish those words you’ve worked hard to express, to find, to type into existence.

Often a writer looks at the words written and thinks, I could say that better. And, almost every time, it could be said in fewer words, better than it was said before. But would it mean the same?

As an editor, I have a hard time telling another writer that the way they’ve put the words together should be changed. Their style, their message, their words should be expressed as they say them, because the message belongs to the writer.

Grammar experts sometimes get so caught up in the right way to write that they alienate the meaning of the phrase. The sentence may not have a noun or verb, but does it need one? Stop! You know that line isn’t aimed at your neighbor, you heard it, YOU should do it.

Regardless of the speaker, if the phrase has purpose and value in content, it should stay. Determining the content means understanding the value. More importantly, value determines content and purpose.

As a writer, you have a purpose. You’ve been given a cause and a course of action (yes,  you’re a writer for a reason). Getting your message out is important, no matter what that message is. Someone out there will understand what you’re writing, even if they’ve heard the message a million times before, and NEEDS to hear what you have to say. In order for you to keep sending out your message, you have to make a profit.

You have a responsibility to your audience to be profitable at what you do.

Give your words volume, cause, purpose and value. Make a profit. Speak your words from the deepest part of your existence and allow them to become echoes of the heart.

When a writer complains of writer’s block I sit back and wonder why. There have been times when I had trouble writing what I was supposed to be writing, but NEVER have I ever sat down to write and couldn’t write. If I have a blank piece of paper (or computer screen) before me, I just start writing. Eventually, the words begin to travel across the page and I can’t keep the story from coming out. Editing may be a nightmare of deletes the first time, but writing isn’t a problem.

I have friends who write well.

Of course, they have jobs as writers, it’s an additional income for them, not necessarily a burning desire to put words on paper. Their impulse to write has a different drive than mine, often research driven, as a purpose, their words come from different sources. While my words come from within, and I can do research as one source of writing, their words come from research. This isn’t bad, it’s just different. Their efforts are repaid by publication, fulfillment of source, or enrichment of social projection or purpose.

At least, until they begin to feel the burn.

Watching a research writer develop a burning desire to write is an awesome experience. They’ll figit with the words, ply their minds for the right word, and when they see it… It flows!

It’s amazing!

One particular writer scrubs her work clean before anyone is allowed to see it. She worries over it, bothers it, and struggles to use all the right words. Then, after messing with her own work for a while she wants others to mess with it a while too. After that, it’s ready to publish… Or not. Sometimes, after everyone has messed with it, she rewrites it again.

I love it.

I’m watching, before my very eyes, a writer evolve from the mist of the storm. She’s evolving from whatever other purpose she had, developing a desperate need to fill the paper with words, to express herself and others, to be heard. She’s learned to speak out and share her views. She’s a promoter who markets her community and she’s alive with the burning desire to speak through the written word.

Awakening the writer within doesn’t take a lot, and once it’s done, there’s no shutting down. The pen don’t run out of ink once the writer is awakened.

Do you tell the truth?

My son walked in about seven hours ago and informed me that the average person lies three times every ten minutes. I listened and thought, I haven’t said anything in at least two hours (I’d been writing). So, I looked back at the blogs I’d written and the other stuff I’d written. Yup, I’d been writing fiction, so of course, that constitutes lies by the average teenager.

I considered what I’d have written if I’d been writing actual stories. Um, no, not lies. Not even a stretch to reality. Just perhaps, a mega lean on the rope that holds reality together. And there I was, writing, hoping someone would read what I’d written. There he was… READING it.

Okay, so he was LIVING it. My son was living what I would write later. I know, I know, I don’t usually write about what my kids say, but what he said was significant. I had to share it. Every ten minutes an average person tells three lies. So there he stood, talking for about fifteen minutes. Given his statement, he’d already told me four and a half lies.

I crinkled my eyes, squinted at him, and looked him in the eye. “Do you realize you’ve been talking for fifteen minutes. That means, by your own statement, that you’ve lied to me four and a half times. Ahem!”

He grinned and said, “Not me mom. I’m not AVERAGE.”

Which brought me to the real dilema. Am I an average blogger? Or am I different?

As I sit here listening to Faron Young swoon out some 50’s variety country song on a local radio station, my son (the same one) pick out wanna be country tunes on his/my accoustic guitar, all while the other son plays a video game and I clack out yet another blog article today on my new (Thank You Danielle) keyboard, I consider the dilema of blogging and wonder if bloggers tell three lies every ten minutes too. So, what do you think? Do you tell three lies every ten minutes all you  average people out there?

Awakened before daybreak, I listened intently to the sound of a mouse chipping away at the skirting of the trailer under my bed. There’d been a hole there last winter and this winter I’d fixed the hole. But he was determined to get inside.

(I knew it was a HE, because a SHE would have figured out she wasn’t wanted and would soon be captured in a trap if she entered the domain, and found another hidey hole for cold weather.)

For more than five minutes I listened as the clock ticked away on the sewing machine beside my bed. I thought of Oris and his birds. The concept of mouse holes in a place where I didn’t CARE if mice gathered blitzed through my mind, and I realized the solution was actually quite simple. I could FEED the mice OUTSIDE and help them solve their housing issues. After all, if there are fewer mice looking for housing, housing becomes readily available, right?

I got up and gathered my shoes, my jeans and my shirt, along with a very warm coat and slipped out the front door. In the shed just north of my trailer sits a huge bin of grain ready for planting with chemicals that deter mice in a rather permanent manner. It’s been there for a few years, and I hadn’t thought about it before. I opened the shed, opened the bin and took out a bucket full of the wonderful kernels. I spread them along the edge of the trailer and a nice little trail along the shed to the north so those little meeces would hopefully find their way out of my yard.

I’m certain the neighbors will love them, they have cats.

And just in case there’s already a platoon of the delightful nibbling creatures in my house, I brought a bucket of that wonderfully flavored grain in the house and dribbled it in places meeces might like to make their home… behind the stove, in the wall where they tried their best to live last winter and under the back of the Television.

I washed my hands and put the bucket way and went back to bed. Only to hear my conscience feeling sorry for those little mice. After all, they just want to be warm today….

Jan (the evil one who isn’t feeling guilty at all)

When I started writing, I didn’t have much trouble finding motivation. It was like breathing. I could breath in and out, words spewed forth and I just wrote them down. Then along came school, education and the implication that I had to write a certain way.

Ummm, maybe not so much.

The word games we played at school annoyed me and didn’t express my feelings. I wasn’t happy with the outcome of educated writing. I wanted to express myself, not some grammar specific rule that meant nothing to me.

I learned. I ditched the lessons that didn’t work for me, and now I’m back in school, writing with grammar rules again. They suck!

I’d really rather write with positive affirmations that give something to the society I live in than to worry about whether or not my prepositions are suggestive or elemental. Is there anyone out there in the blog-o-sphere or the real world who cares what prepositions are? Not me.

Okay, so one year and six months into Criminal Justice and here I sit, working my way through yet another creative writing class where I have to know the difference between APA and MLA style or Chicago style and various formats and there you have it. I’m working my way through the course one citation at a time, wondering if I’ll get cited for bad grammar or for quoting myself without a proper citation. The answer is probably, after all if I quote my pseudonym, isn’t that a copyright violation of some kind - do I even remember all my pseudonyms? Hummm

The CHANGE of memory has set in and I’m thinking I ought to go write about it!

Happy writing - writers.