While there are no concrete rules as to how one should, or should not, speak online, it’s up to your business to define them. Whether you’re writing copy for emails, social media posts, or paid advertisements, here are five copywriting dos for every channel.

1. Know your audience - The better you know your audience, the better you can communicate with them. Creating an audience profile will help you define what tone of voice resonates with your audience most and how they desire to be spoken to. What are your audience demographics? How do they spend their time? What makes them tick? What makes them laugh? What do they do for work? What issues do they care about right now? You cannot dig deep enough into your customer’s mindset - immerse yourself in it, as an actor would for an Oscar-worthy role - because the more you know, the better you can communicate.

2. Assume your readers don’t care - Use this thought constructively to reflect on what you’re writing and if it actually poses value to your audience. Remember, readers today are bombarded with messages, sales, and notifications 24/7 - attention spans are short and there’s a lot going on. They don’t care if you post the same content twice, and they don’t care if you’re running a campaign unless it directly benefits them. Place key information at the beginning and end of your copy, and keep it direct. Assuming your readers don’t care keeps you in the mindset to be clear and concise with your messaging, and to catch attention quickly.

3. Use a third-person perspective - Writing in the third-person helps put the reader in the shoes of the author and vice versa. It’s easy to slip into a first-hand story referring to a time you experienced something that proves the point you’re trying to make - but guess what, your readers don’t care unless they can relate. So instead of saying, ‘I experienced this, so I learned that’ - say, ‘If you experience this, you will experience that’. Switching a ‘me experience’ to a ‘you experience’ allows the reader to feel it first-hand.

4. Check your grammar - Check it once, twice, or three times if you’re like me. If any intentional grammar mistakes have been made, they should be made clear. It’s true, grammar is more laid back on social media; one might even say each platform has its own language. There are times when trendy terms such as ‘SLAY’ and ‘YAS QUEEN’ are more appropriate than ‘you look great’; but the shelf-life on terms like these is short, and grammar exceptions are made consciously by brands who feel certain terms align with them. In contrast, you will never see @GoldmanSachs tweeting how someone ‘slayed the stock market today’. There is a time and a place for grammar to take the back seat, know when that time is and how it aligns with your brand. Avoid looking sloppy and use free apps like Grammarly, to help spot edits that slip through the cracks when you’ve been writing for too long.

5. Do your research - For the sake of references and fact-checking, research allows you to write with a deeper perspective. Imagine you are selling a watch through an e-commerce website. Your audience can see the watch, maybe even a video of the watch, but they can’t feel the weight of it, they can’t smell it, and they can’t touch it. As a writer, sometimes research means using a product and familiarising yourself with all of its qualities, so you can describe it in words that a picture cannot portray. Most of the time, research means reading up on the perspectives of a subject, but the key is to catch the places your digital assets are falling short. Find what the reader cannot see, smell, feel, or hear, and describe it to them.

Please note, there is an exception to every single one of these rules because welcome to copywriting, the industry that has one million rules, all of which can be broken.

Need help with your digital marketing? Get in touch or email styledbygracieclemens@gmail.com.