First, an apology. Without meaning to, I violated one of my own rules of writing- let people know what they are getting. Apparently, the way I formatted “Journey to Profit” made it difficult to tell that it was a reminder for my upcoming class Heart of Money: The Business Journey, and not a regular ezine. Please accept my apology.
I send out informational ezines, like today, twice monthly, and one or two additional emails reminding you about offers. I promise that I will bring renewed attention to the newsletter formatting, so there can be no mistake. Thank you to everyone who gave me feedback to help me get into complete integrity.
How To Be Everywhere At Once, Without Cloning
There is a way to clone yourself for your business, without the high expense of fancy genetic technology. One word: Writing. Your written marketing materials, workbooks, reports, and articles, allow you to be both generous and everywhere, even while you are sleeping.
Like most things in business, this answer isn’t from The Journal of Rocket Science. However, I know many of you struggle with your writing. Even those of you who have experience writing, doing it for yourself and your business can be a challenge.
My experience with writing for my business- marketing, sales, articles, and workbooks- has been almost all trial and error. And it has been the single most profitable activity I spend my time on, aside from actually delivering classes and individual sessions. If you want to grow your business, stay in integrity, and not burn out, then you want to be a great writer. And, you can be.
There are two parts to great writing. One part is structure- what do you say when? To help you with that, I have a list of top flight resources for copywriting structures and templates at the end of this email.
The other part is the heart- is your writing from your authentic voice, or is it manipulative and fake? You need both structure and heart to have your business writing be very effective. To help you, I’ve distilled much of what I’ve learned from more than 20 years of writing down to some key bullet points.
Mark’s Rules For Great Writing
1. Know your audience- you have to be in real relationship with them. What is it that they really want, that they really care about? If you are in small business, you are very close to your prospects, and their cares are naturally your cares also.
This is the most important rule, and yet it’s the easiest to forget. It seems that almost everywhere I go on the internet, I’m being told what I need to do to earn more money more quickly. After seeing a few too many messages like that, it’s easy to forget what we’re really after. I know that you and I both want to have profitable businesses- absolutely. But if you are like most of my readers, this profit comes as a result of service, generosity, and heart- the primary motivation is not money.
I had to get rid of all that hype I had soaked up, and write from my heart to your heart.
2. You have to be authentic and vulnerable. Share yourself, and your honest relationship to what you are selling. It took me a long time before I realized it was okay to be imperfect, and to share my real heart, even if it feels vulnerable. Every time I do, I build deeper, more trusting relationships.
What helps your authentic voice come out is to write as if you are writing to an individual, not to a crowd, because you are. Even if you have a readership of 100,000, each of those readers is reading it on her own, to herself. Make it a private conversation.
And, in that vein, be conversational. Write as you speak- I personally have little tolerance for pretentious or academic writing.
3. You have to believe in what you are selling. You have to feel in your gut that what you are offering is the best thing you can give your readers for the problem or issue at hand.
4. You have to obey marketing syntax. This is not manipulation, it’s just understanding how to bridge. Have you ever spoken with someone who suddenly came out with a nonsequitar and you had no idea how they got there? They actually made 3 or 5 or 20 connections in their brain, all silently. Made sense to them, but left you in the dust.
Don’t leave your customers in the dust. If you remind yourself of marketing syntax, you are merely making visible the logical connections you followed to get from the situation your prospect is in, to why what you are selling is a great solution.
5. Write a lot. We talk all the time, and so we tend to be able to hold an engaging conversation. How many of you write on a daily basis? A weekly basis? A monthly basis? The more you write, the better you get, because you become comfortable with the medium.
6. Don’t hold back. You have to say everything you need to say. Part of this is emotional- bring love in. Love your writing and your audience, it can’t help but shine through.
Another part is what I call “planting your flag.” Meaning, don’t be apologetic. If you have a class, or an idea, or a product that you love and feel is fabulous, put it out there strongly, make no apologies. And, in making no apologies, say everything you need to say about it to show how great it is.
Most writing fails, sales writing in particular, not because it’s too long or short, but because the author didn’t fully explain the whole story. Sometimes that takes a few pages, and sometimes maybe a sentence is all you need. Be complete.
These are the basics. Yet, even if you follow these faithfully, sometimes your writing comes out with all of the zest of boiled oatmeal- filling, but not very engaging.
We all love to believe the hype about writers who publish their stream-of-conscious 3am typewriter-and-coffee episodes. It just ain’t true. For any one who depends on their writing to get paid- which includes you if you write your own marketing materials, the gold is in the editing.
I find that the real juice comes out after I’m done editing. If you are reading something I’ve written, it’s been through at least three or four edits, and sometimes a complete re-write with another few edits. Here’s how I do it:
Mark’s Rules to Edit Your Writing to Greatness:
1. Rest after writing.
2. Show it to someone you trust to be honest. They will tell you when they get bored, or irritated, or lost, or just have some subtle gut feeling that something feels “off.”
3. Read it out loud to yourself. When all is said and done, this is my most important editing tool, and it has saved me countless times from endless gaffes. Your tongue will trip over clumsy sentences, repetitive phrasing, and show where things just make no sense whatsoever. If you get bored reading it out loud, your readers will get bored reading it to themselves. Thank God you found out before you published!
4. Attack of the red pen. First write everything you want to write. Then cut it in half. Then cut it in half again. Can you say the same thing with a quarter of the words?
You’ll be surprised how much fluff lives in our writing. Fluff usually means you are not standing strongly in what you really want to say. Plant your flag!
5. If it feels “off” or doesn’t “zing” but you can’t figure why not- trust yourself. First rest some more, then come back to it fresh.
6. Don’t be afraid to abandon ideas. I’ve written a newsletter, almost complete, and realised that a headline I started out with made no sense and was warping the whole article. I threw out the headline and rewrote the newsletter from scratch- much better that time- with a new headline.
7. Even if you don’t leave it this way, try bolding the first sentence, a trick I learned from Robert Middleton. It helps make your writing really crisp, because that first sentence can’t meander, can’t equivocate, can’t be anything else but a main point and a strong one if it stands out in bold.
Great writing takes some effort, but it’s worth it. Once you have it, it’s like cloning yourself. Go off and take a nap, or work on another project- your writing is working for you!
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Resources for “How to Be Everywhere at Once – Without Cloning”
• Don’t miss! Jessica Albon and The Newsletter Spa. Ezine publishing is one of the keys to sustainable internet marketing. Yet the vast majority of ezines are painful to read. If you can beat the odds and publish a quality newsletter, your readers will be grateful, and your business will see the results, month after month.
I want to introduce you to someone who will help you beat the odds. Jessica is a new friend of mine, and I have been loving every issue of her newsletter, and her great, fun, incredibly useful reports. If you don’t know about her, you are missing out.
I’ve arranged for you, as a Business Heart subscriber, to get her amazing Ezine Report: Everything You Need to Know to Start Publishing an Ezine Fast. I’ve been publishing an ezine for a while, and I still learned new things in her report.
This is a special offer she has done as a favor to me, and you will only get both reports if you use the link below.
Go sign up for her newsletter and get her report now.
• Have trouble thinking of the right words? Check out The Visual Thesaurus. More than just a thesaurus, it’s an interactive mind-map and treasure trove of words, and stunningly beautiful in presentation. I’m adding it to my writing tools immediately.
The Visual Thesaurus. Click here.
• I’ve gotten so many miles out of Robert Middleton’s Infoguru Marketing Manual, I can’t tell you. In particular, Chapter 15, Writing Motivational Copy, gives you everything you need to write great, authentic, non-manipulative but effective sales copy.
It’s as powerful as many copywriting resources that cost much more than the manual, and you still get the other 22 chapters.
Start with his ezine More Clients and his Marketing Plan Workbook. And if you’re smart, you’ll buy the manual.
• I mentioned above that you have to obey marketing syntax. I learned about marketing syntax from Robert, among others. I outline it really clearly in Key Three of my Attracting Clients audio class. Don’t miss it!
This has been a chunky email on one of my favorite topics. Let me know what you think of it, or what else you need to know to develop your business.
