Copywriting
This week marked the 40th anniversary of the breakthrough TV program Sesame Street. I?ve written before about some of the many lessons you can learn from this cultural icon, but today I?m going to zero in something new.
You might have an Elmo blog, a Cookie Monster blog, or a Big Bird blog. (How you define those is up to you.)
But some of the smartest and most successful bloggers out there bear more in common with the show?s least-likeable character: Oscar the Grouch.
Oscar was an important character from the show?s beginning, and on the surface he doesn?t seem to quite fit in.
Everyone else on Sesame Street is pretty much cheerful and happy all the time. They have infinite patience, everyone loves children, and friendship is king.
Oscar, on the other hand, hates kittens, rainbows, and having a nice day. He loves anything dirty or dingy or rusty.
He was always my dad?s favorite character on the show, which annoyed me to no end when I was six. These days, I?m starting to see my dad?s point.
Oscar doesn?t want everyone to love him. (That would be his biggest nightmare, in fact.) He does his own thing, he lives the way he wants to live, and he?s not particularly interested in what anyone else has to say about it.
He?s not miserable
It would be easy to think that Oscar?s just one of those people who enjoy being unhappy, But actually, Oscar has a great life.
He has things set up just the way he likes them. He?s surrounded by trash, which is what he loves. His trash can home has the perfect dented patina that makes him happy.
Oscar?s not depressed or pathological. He?s just weird. He likes different stuff from most people. And he expresses himself without apology.
The grouch community
One of the things I love on Sesame Street is when the show pulls back occasionally to reveal the whole grouch community.
There are grouch restaurants. (Sandra Bernhard had a great cameo as a waitress in one, in the 1980s Sesame Street movie Follow that Bird.) Grouch taxi services. Grouch ?dirtying machines? at the laundromat. Sesame Street is about as diverse as they come, and grouches are just one of the many groups they embrace.
Oscar seems like a loner, but actually he?s part of a larger community. There are dozens of grouches in trash cans living on Sesame Street, yelling at the kids and generally having a fantastic time.
It?s not about being a jerk
I?m about the last person who will ever tell you to be a troll, or a jerk for the sake of being a jerk.
Being a contrarian just to create controversy is hollow, and people see through it. Yanking people?s chains for its own sake doesn?t create anything useful. An audience might show up for the spectacle of you making a rude jackass of yourself, but they won?t follow through with any kind of loyalty or commitment.
Being an Oscar blogger isn?t about being a creep. It?s about doing your thing without apology, no matter how strange it looks to ?normal people.? It?s about weird passions and showing the side most people are scared to reveal.
The downside
There?s an obvious downside to grouch blogging: you?re going to turn people off. In fact, you might very well turn most people off.
Plenty of people take one look at Ittybiz or The Bloggess and beat a hasty retreat. Those blogs aren?t for ?most people.?
The people who remain are fanatically loyal, almost to the point of obsession. It?s precisely because so many people hate it that their audiences love it. This also works for Dan Kennedy, Ricky Gervais, and Ty Cobb. (I defy you to find that combination anywhere else on the internet.)
What to do if you aren?t a grouch
If you?re not a member of the grouch community, there?s something else you?ve got to say that?s ?not for everyone.?
Maybe you?re just a little too enthusiastic about zombies. Maybe you?re starting a freak revolution. Maybe you?re just plain out there.
The internet is too big to please everyone. (And there are plenty of people out there who aren?t worth pleasing.) Find your own village and give them what they?re looking for. You?ll find that they happily come back for more.
Trying to figure out how social media and making a living can go together? Subscribe to our free newsletter on Internet Marketing for Smart People. It starts with a 20-lesson tutorial on the four keys to building a sustainable business with content marketing.
About the Author: Sonia Simone is Senior Editor of Copyblogger and the founder of Remarkable Communication.
In a recent Copyblogger post discussing how the king of content is being slowly usurped by the Crown Prince of Context, author Larry Brooks referenced the remarkable opening scene of Quentin Tarantino’s new movie Inglorious Basterds.
There are few writers like Tarantino, and though his verbal carpet bombs and kinetic escalation of violence aren?t for everyone, there is no doubt that the dude follows his muse. Those who love him will eagerly wait in lines wrapped around the block to show their support.
In short, Tarantino sells it every time. And by it, I mean an ironclad belief in the worlds he?s created.
On Larry?s post, a great conversation continued downstairs in the comments, where a second Tarantino clip was referenced, the “Sicilian Scene” from True Romance. Though I love both movies, I was inspired to write this post by a scene from Tarantino’s earliest feature, Reservoir Dogs.
Selling it
In Reservoir Dogs, Tarantino assembles a marvelous scene, on the surface about gaining the confidence of the men the protagonist plans to double cross. Closer inspection reveals the scene for what it really is, a seven-and-a-half-minute love letter to the art of storytelling.
The film itself is about a bank robbery gone bad, though Tarantino manages to turn the adage, “show not tell” upside down by showing only a few seconds of the robbery, while his characters sit around for the rest of the film swapping one slice of story at a time.
Spoiler alert: The hero of the tale is Mr. Orange, an undercover cop, played by the superb Tim Roth, masquerading as a fellow bank-robbing miscreant. The success of his cover hinges on convincing the other criminals of his authenticity. He does this, in part, by reciting “The Commode Story,” a fictitious anecdote that is not only amusing, but also easy to sell to the other delinquents because it deals with a dicey encounter with the law.
It is in the Commode Story where Tarantino becomes the teacher.
It’s all in the details
“An undercover cop’s gotta be Marlon Brando . . . . you gotta be naturalistic as hell — ’cause if you ain’t a good actor — you a bad actor, and bad actors is bullshit in this job.”
It?s the details that sell your story, according to Officer Holdaway, played by Randy Brooks, delivering lines obviously written for a Sam Jackson Tarantino could not yet afford.
Holdaway instructs Mr. Orange on the finer details of selling the story.
“You’ve got to memorize what’s important so you can make the rest your own.”
He then continues to expand his point with something Copyblogger has frequently preached:
“Remember, this story’s about you and how you perceive the events that went down.”
He wraps up with a version of the same sage writing advice Brian’s been posting for years:
“The only way to do that is to keep saying it and saying it and saying it and saying it.”
As the scene unfolds, we watch as Mr. Orange rehearses the story in his room with slowly mounting confidence until he owns the narrative enough to deliver it without flinching in a smoky bar populated by criminals, any one of whom could end him in an instant.
Eventually, we find ourselves breathlessly watching as the Commode Story unfolds via flashback and Mr. Orange’s voiceover.
We watch as a man packing massive amounts of marijuana finds himself entering a bathroom containing not one, not two, but four police officers and a K-9 unit. As the camera pans the officer’s narrowed eyes, the dog’s fervent attention, and follows Mr. Orange as he tries to casually go about his business without getting busted, the narration adds to the palpable sense of danger.
We feel the tension even though we know Mr. Orange has manufactured every word and was never actually in danger of being busted.
Why?
Because Mr. Orange owns the story.
Own your story
The more you write about a particular topic or in a specific genre, the tighter your work will naturally become. Your expertise will grow. Better words will come to you, and they?ll show up more quickly.
If you write about widgets, write the hell out of your widget copy.
Loving your widget is a great start, but you also have to know your widget inside out and upside down. You must know every surface, every detail. Knowledge and passion will shine through the copy and accentuate the differences between you and everyone else writing about widgets.
If you want to be a great writer, you?ve got to own the story. Fiction or sales copy, know your story like nobody else and you will write words that no one else can touch.
About the Author: Sean Platt is a direct response copywriter and independent publisher. Follow him on Twitter.
Last Friday I was in Atlanta, where I gave a talk on social media marketing at Dan Kennedy?s InfoSUMMIT conference.
I?m something of a fish out of water at a Glazer-Kennedy event. For example, unlike at Blogworld, I?m the only person in a room of 800 who has pink hair.
I wasn?t sure they?d be too receptive to what I had to say, but they surprised me.
They were warm, welcoming, and extremely interested in my no-shortcuts, no-magic-beans answers to their questions about how to use social media for marketing and business.
So in honor of Dan Kennedy, who sometimes styles himself as the ?Professor of Harsh Reality,? I thought I?d talk today about some of the not-so-kumbaya aspects of social media marketing.
Harsh Reality #1: No one is reading your blog
As far as anyone can figure, there are about 200 million blogs around the world. Technorati tells us there are about 900,000 blog posts made every 24 hours.
The world is not waiting breathlessly to hear what you have to say about losing weight with acai berries, making big money as an affiliate marketer, or how to join your Secrets of the Breakthrough Millionaire Insider Guru Mastermind Platinum Club.
Me-too content gets ignored. Scraped and remixed junk won?t cut it. There?s too much good content that you need to compete with. And there?s no magic system that can replace sitting in front of your keyboard and producing something that somebody wants to read. (Or partnering with someone who can.)
If you don?t have a great answer to the question ?Why should anyone read your blog?? you?re going to be pretty unhappy with your results. That?s why we spend so much time teaching you how to produce better, smarter, more effective content.
Harsh Reality #2: You?ve got to give (some of) your best stuff away
It?s very natural to expect to get paid for what you do. And you should have a business model that leads to exactly that.
But first, you?ve got some dues to pay.
Commenter Corree Silvera mentioned her favorite Brian Clark quote from this year?s Blogworld Expo:
Don?t sacrifice a lot of money later for a little money now.
The answer to the question in Harsh Reality #1, ?why should anyone read your blog? is that you?re going to give away some of your best, most valuable, most life-improving material away for free, within a well-defined content marketing plan.
Just remember Sean d?Souza?s bikini concept. You can give 90% of it away, but there will always be people who will happily pay to see that last 10%.
Harsh Reality #3: It will eat your life (if you let it)
Social media marketing would be pretty easy if we never had to eat, sleep, shower, or hang out with our kids.
But if doing those things is important to you, you?re going to have to set some boundaries.
Know what you want to do with social media, keep yourself focused, and set a timer if you have to. The tools are amazing, but so is their power to distract you from what you?re trying to accomplish.
Harsh Reality #4: Social media hates selling
Is there anything more pitiful than that guy who gets on Twitter and won?t shut up about how he can put you in a condo today with no money down despite your lousy credit rating? Even the spammers are blocking this dude.
It?s really hard to sell products and services in social media, mostly because this audience hates salespeople worse than they hate Microsoft. You may be able to get some limited success out of it, but more likely you?ll be banned, blocked, shunned, and abused.
Instead of promoting a product or service, promote fantastic content. Promote a great special report or an amazingly valuable email course. Promote wonderful stuff that you?re giving away.
Use excellent free stuff to build authority and trust. Then you have the right to make an offer and possibly do some business. Not before.
Harsh Reality #5: What they say is a million times more important than what you say
Your marketing might be beautifully executed. You might have a special report that goes more viral than H1N1, a great-looking blog that hits Digg twice a day, and an email marketing sequence that copywriting genius Gene Schwartz would have been proud to write.
If your reputation sucks, none of it matters.
People with lousy products, crummy business practices, and shady backgrounds get found out. And word spreads with frightening speed.
Treat people right, because if you don?t, you will be exposed. And it will not be pretty.
Harsh Reality #6: A blog is not a marketing plan
Blogs are cool, but a single useful tool isn?t the same thing as a solid business and marketing plan.
Blogs are just one way to get your best content out there, and they work best when you pair them up with email autoresponders, special reports, Twitter, and any of a dozen other powerful tools.
Just hanging out and being cool isn?t enough. If you?re in social media to do business, you have to develop a strategy for taking mildly interested strangers and turning them into raving fans . . . and customers.
Harsh Reality #7: You don?t get to opt out
Businesses that think they can ignore all this ?Twitter stupidity? tend to get painfully rude awakenings.
The conversation will happen with or without you. You definitely don’t need to respond to every chucklehead with a Facebook account (and you shouldn?t), but you need to keep your ear to the ground, and you need a clue.
OK, enough about harsh reality already! If you want our best advice about what to do to create a great online business, subscribe to Internet Marketing for Smart People, the Copyblogger email newsletter. It?s some of our best stuff, no junk, no fluff. And of course we will never, ever spam you or share your information with anyone.
About the Author: Sonia Simone is Senior Editor of Copyblogger and the founder of Remarkable Communication.
Come visit our website to learn about copywriting . You’ll discover many things like Dan Kennedy or Marlon Sanders that can help you successfully get a copywriting . You will understand the ins and outs, crucial steps to take, and how you can begin.
Our website contains the most current data on copywriting , with a complete compilation of informative articles and reviews. We have articles and commentary about copywriting and related topics. Come read a variety of viewpoints, and make a decision for yourself.
Written by admin on November 14th, 2009 with
no comments.
Read more articles on Copywriting Information.
- [+] Digg: Feature this article
- [+] Del.icio.us: Bookmark this article
- [+] Furl: Bookmark this article