Do you want to become a better copywriter? Great!
Would you like to learn how to write content that your target audience will remember, share, and tweet about?
I bet you do!
How about writing content that’ll motivate your target audience to subscribe to your newsletter, click a certain link, or buy your product?
That’s the dream of every copywriter, isn’t it?
Well, when it comes to copywriting, creating persuasive and shareable content may sound difficult but in reality, it actually isn’t.
To achieve all these goals, all you need to do is – Improve your editing skills.
In this article, I will be sharing 10 copy editing tips that most of the famous copywriters use to write powerful content that inspires people to take desired actions.
10 Copy Editing Tips to Become a Better Writer
The below-mentioned copy editing tips will help anyone with a creative itch to learn how to edit content to make the message clear and irresistible to your target audience.
Are you ready?
Let’s start with the obvious one.
Tip #1 – Include a Benefit in your Headline
Let’s face it.
Nowadays, time is the most valuable asset for everyone. And you have less than one second to grab people’s attention.
So, make use of power words or positive words that command attention and include a key benefit that the majority of your target audience is looking for on the internet.
Speaking of the internet, you also need to add certain keywords that your prospective customers use on Google Search to find the right content.
That means you have to learn how to do keyword research to find those phrases that your target audience uses and add them to your headline.
And while you’re at it, don’t make your headline all about keywords. Instead, you should also focus on rewarding users with helpful content for paying attention.
You can also take inspiration from professional writers and follow their approach to write your headlines.
Tip #2 – Highlight Benefits Over Features
For some reason, newbie writers have the tendency to highlighting features instead of benefits.
While highlighting features is important, but they must arrive at the right time and at the right place in your content.
Benefits, on the other hand, are much more appealing and persuasive at convincing visitors to take certain actions.
Simply put, benefits help to sell and give visitors the reasons to buy, while features explain what the visitors will receive and how is it different from your competition.
So, when writing your content, make sure to emphasize the benefits first and features later.
Features are obviously needed, but they should never be the driving force of your content.
Tip #3 – Be Ultra Specific
The next copy editing tip is to edit your content to be as specific as possible.
Most writers end up making general claims about their services or product. And the only problem with such general claims is that they are just too perfect to believe for visitors.
Therefore, you must always be as specific as possible through all the content that you produce.
Tip #4 – Avoid Writing Business-Centric Copy
This is another copywriting rule that a lot of newbie copywriters break.
Most newbie copywriters focus on making their content business-centric when they should be really making their content customer-centric.
Business-centric copy generally involves highlighting how awesome a brand or company is and how competitive their products are.
And here’s why it’s bad to write business-centric copy. – Most customers don’t care about a brand or a company and what they do.
Customers only care about themselves and how can they solve their most painful problems.
Therefore, when you’re editing, you must focus on your target customers. Every word that you write or edit must be appealing to them and then show how your product/service can solve their problem or benefit them through certain features.
Now, if you don’t know how to spot business-centric content in your copy, just look for how many times you’ve used “we” and edit those sentences with the word “you” to easily turn it into a customer-centric copy.
Tip #5 – Edit Your Copy to be as Conversational as Possible
The next copy editing tip is to edit your content to make it as conversational as possible.
The act of making your copy conversational not just helps in engaging your prospective customers effectively but also helps in getting your message across clearly.
Remember, no customer wants to talk to a faceless organization, they want to have a conversation with a real human being. So, keep this in mind when you’re editing your content.
The best way to edit your content to make it more conversational is to use words that generally use on a day-to-day basis.
Tip #6 – Use Simple Words
Apart from making your content conversational, you should also ensure to use simple words to make your copy easy to read and digest.
A Study has already proved that the average reading level is between 7th and 8th grade, which means your average prospect customers are comfortable at this level.
So, if your content is at a level that’s too technical, complicated, or just difficult to understand, you will definitely lose customers.
And the reason is simple. – The majority of your prospective customers won’t be able to understand your vocabulary and complex sentence structure.
Therefore, it’s better to edit your content with simple words so that a large amount of target audience can easily understand and stick to your content.
Tip #7 – Use Metaphors
Metaphors are another useful tactic you can use while editing your content.
By using metaphors in the right places, you will be easily able to relate to the pain points of your target audience.
Not only that but your target audience will also easily understand what point you are trying to make by addressing something they already know and can easily relate to.
Adding metaphors will help you in adding a little spice to your copy and they’ll make your content sing.
So, leverage the power of metaphors to propel your target audience’s behavior and guide them towards action.
Tip #8 – Create Incentives to Plant Seeds of Curiosity
If you want your target customers to keep reading and glued on your site, you need to place incentives every once in a while in your content.
While this may sound complicated, but there are some simple tactics that you can use to add incentives and invoke curiosity among your customers.
For starters, you can use the word “because” as often as possible in your content. The word “because” basically gives people to read further and take a certain action.
You can also invoke customers’ curiosity by using certain phrases like “Here comes the best part” or “Not only that” or “the following will definitely solve your problem”.
Adding such powerful phrases will make your customers keep reading forward throughout the entire content.
Tip #9 – Dump Excessive Words
Once your first draft is ready, read the entire content out loud and carefully detect excessive words in your copy.
As you start identifying the excessive words, delete them as you read each sentence while editing.
For example, if certain words don’t add value to a sentence, it’s probably unnecessary.
Apart from this, you should also keep an eye for complicated words and replace them with simple words as mentioned earlier.
And lastly, avoid using the same word at every place as it will just make your content boring and irritating to read.
Instead, you should replace those words with different synonyms that feel right to increase the engagement level of your content.
Following these simple rules will help you increase the overall readability score of your content, which will ultimately impact your target customers to take action.
Tip #10 – Have a Crystal Clear Call to Action
Call to actions are supposed to be concise and clear.
So, when editing your content, make sure you’ve placed impeccable call-to-actions at the end as well as in between your content.
The best advice is to make all your call to actions tell your prospective customers what you expect from them to do next and highlight why taking a defined action is in their best interest.
You can also take advantage of the FOMO (Fear of Missing Out) tactic in your call to action.
For example, if you’re a tour and travel business, you may write “Book your dream vacation at a 70% discount before the offer ends!”.
This kind of CTA will motivate customers to take action promptly as it provokes the fear of missing out.
Concluding Thoughts
By using these copy editing tips, you’ll surely become a better copywriter, not instantly but definitely, if you persevere and practice them every day.
All of these 10 tips are critical to writing persuasive and shareable content that sells.
So, by applying these tips in your copy, you’ll not only learn how to write engaging content, but you’ll also easily persuade your target audience to take action.
writing draft in a notebook -DepositPhotos
