Whenever I talk about what we do at Veuno it sounds great, but the moment we convert it into website copy it doesn’t sound the same.
It seems wanky buzzwords work their way into the copy. It somehow ends up the same as every other generic website I’ve read a million times over.
You might be reading this, nodding along. If so, I recommend hiring a Copy Coach to help coax out the inner non-wanky content that lives inside of you.
During my maternity leave, I set myself one work goal, which was to revamp the Veuno website copy. Our existing content had gone through several iterations already. Trusted colleagues and friends had reviewed it over several rounds of edits.
Despite this, we still felt kind of “meh” about it. For some reason, it didn’t read how we wanted it to and the worst part was, I didn’t know how to fix it.
After a late-night session scrolling through Instagram (as we all do) I saw a post from Terry Schilling. He had a couple of open slots for his popular Copy Coaching Sessions.
The end of my maternity leave was nigh and the overachiever in me couldn’t return to work knowing I hadn’t completed the one task I had set.
We had a month to go and I knew I wanted to return to work ready to werk. I had become tired of fending off prospects or cringing if I found out they’d been on the site. It was time, we wanted to not feel ashamed of our website. After all, how can we drive new business to something we weren’t proud of?
Terry had space the following week, so I grabbed the slot. We had one 60-minute session on a mid-summer afternoon Zoom session. Let me tell you, it was awesome!
Writing about yourself or your company can be difficult. With his help, I was able to recognize the pitfalls I was prone to that made our website copy sound wanky.
Terry says when it comes to writing copy with personality:
Your tone is NOT what you say, but HOW you say it. Don’t be afraid to talk about what you like. If your hook has humor and personality and still gets people to reach out to you, then you know it’s someone you want to connect with.
For some reason, I sucked all the personality out of the content and it was drier than the Sahara desert!
This is not an ad, Terry is that good at what he does (click here to work with him). It was the best investment we had made this year to level up our copy and produce something we were proud of.
How did we do it? We talked through our goal for the copy, which helped us map out what we actually wanted to say.
The real value came from stepping through the Inner Circle Copy exercise. It was this that helped identify the phrases that frustrated me.
Here’s how the Inner Circle Copy exercise works:
- Draw a circle (easy peasy)
- On the inside of the circle, write down all the words and phrases you use when talking about your business (use slang, write how you speak, add pop-culture references, including the results you deliver)
- On the outside of the circle, write down the words that make you roll your eyes every time you hear or read them. This will be your visual clue to avoid them. (the wanky ones we all love to hate)
Check out Terry’s website or apply for one his coaching sessions, if you find yourself in need of a boost to create great website copy!
