6 Proven Copywriting Tips

Backed By Research

Through studies with my own clients as well

as published studies from other marketing

agencies, there are several copywriting

strategies that prove to work consistently.

Here are 6 top copywriting tips to

immediately improve your writing:

1. Create a “curiosity gap”

Upworthy is arguably one of the most successful content marketing companies around, with massive successes on social media to their name.

One of the tips Upworthy offers from their own success is to ensure every headline has a “curiosity gap.” That is, the headline needs to be tantalizing enough to get a reader to click through, but shouldn't give away the entire story.

A great example comes from an Upworthy story about Mitt Romney:

If your headline is too vague, readers aren’t interested: Mitt Romney Says Something Bad, Again

If it's too specific, readers already know the whole story: Mitt Romney Says, “I Want The Middle Class To Be Tied To The Roof Of My Car.”

The final title ended up being: You Will Not Believe What Mitt Wants To Do To You — just enough intrigue to encourage click­throughs and still enough mystery that the payoff of reading the story will encourage readers to share it.

2. Use numbers: Our brains can understand it more easily

Study after study shows that the articles and emails that get

clicked or opened are ones that have lists in the headlines. "10

Ways to Do 'X'..." or "5 Secrets You Didn't Know About..."

It's also more fun to share lists like that, because they are easily

scannable. Put your headlines into lists to create content people

want to pass on.

3. Choose the best words for your headlines

The most popular blog posts had these words in their titles:

• smart

• surprising

• science

• history

• hacks (or a variation like hackers)

• huge/big

• critical

3. Choose the best words for your headlines

The most popular blog posts had these words in their titles:

If you’re tweeting a post, you might want to include these 20 most retweetable phrases:

• Please Retweet

• Great

• Social Media

• 10

• Follow

• How to

• Top

• Blog Post

• Checkout

• New Blog Post

• You

• Twitter

• Please

• Retweet

• Post

• Blog

• Social

• Free

• Media

• Help

4. Scarcity Works

What makes something valuable? When there's a limited amount

of it. The more you can create a sense of scarcity around

something, the more likely people are to be intrigued or want to

snap it up quickly before it's gone. Studies show that words that

are negative or focus on scarcity work better to get people to

share content: no, without, stop, dead, fear, kill.

5. No One Cares About Your Announcements

People aren't interested in headlines with announcing, wins, grows

or celebrates. We don't care what's exciting for you...we care

about Ourselves and what's exciting for us. If you have an

announcement, make it into a story that's relevant to your readers

and how they benefit instead of talking only about you.

6. Surprise Us

Content that's surprising or has an unexpected twist also tends to

be a favorite with crowds. Just like a good joke, people are

entertained or amused by surprise elements. Presenting

something unexpected—breaking a pattern —will help you to

capture attention.

Thanks to http://blog.bufferapp.com/data­backed­copywriting for the

references for this presentation.

If you're looking to strengthen your copy, one of the key ways you can

do that is with your "sales hook." To discover exactly what it is and how

to come up with it for your marketing, get the FREE eBook, "60­Second

Sales Hook,“ from acclaimed copywriter Kevin Rogers:

http://www.60secondsaleshook.com