Copywriting Skills

Read about the posts about the category Copywriting Skills of How to be a copywriter by Copywriter Collective

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A Brand Consultant’s First Question: Who Are You Willing to Lose?

Every brand consultant asks who you're for. After twenty years placing brand strategists and writers, I think the real question is who you're willing to lose.
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Website Copywriting Services: Write the Homepage Last

Most website copywriting services start at the homepage. After twenty years placing writers, I think that running order is what kills site rewrites.
Retro cassette tape — a story copied from copy to copy loses fidelity with every retelling

Your Brand Narrative Is What Strangers Can Repeat

Before we match a writer to a company, I do something that sounds almost too simple to bill for. I ask three people at that company — usually the founder, the head of sales, and whoever runs marketing — to tell me what the company does and…
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SEO Copywriting Services: Why Ranking Is the Cheap Part

SEO copywriting services promise rankings. After twenty years placing writers, I can tell you ranking is the cheap part. Persuasion is what you're buying.
Peeling painted wall with torn layers exposing older surfaces beneath

The Copy Brief That Was Really a Brand Strategy Problem

After 20 years placing senior copywriters, here’s how a simple copy brief exposes a brand strategy problem — and what to fix before you brief a writer.
Vintage metal letterpress printing blocks with Chinese characters in a movable-type cabinet

Transcreation: Why Great Campaigns Die at the Border

Every few weeks an email lands that I've come to think of as the most expensive kind I receive. A marketing director — smart, experienced, fresh off a campaign that worked — writes: "Can you get this translated into German? Nothing fancy,…
Copywriter's desk with a laptop, coffee and printed drafts

Copywriter or Content Writer? You’re Hiring the Wrong One

A client called me a few months ago, frustrated. They'd hired a writer six weeks earlier — sharp, well-reviewed, fair rate — and the work was landing flat. "The blog posts are fine," they said, "but the campaign line we asked for is just...…
A writer edits a manuscript with a red pen beside a vintage typewriter

The Revision Where Good Work Goes to Die

A writer I'd placed called me a few months ago, a week after wrapping a campaign for a brand most people would be thrilled to work with. I asked how it went. There was a pause — the kind that tells you everything before the words do. "The…
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The Rise of AI Slop and Why Human Creativity Is Winning

Congratulations, You're Irreplaceable! Here's some good news for all you creative copywriters out there who thought your career was over. Remember the big companies that had a mass clearout of their creative workforce because they thought…
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Why Great Creatives Keep Delivering Average Work

Why Great Creatives Deliver Average Results I've placed hundreds of freelance copywriters and creative directors over the past two decades. Award-winners. People whose work you've seen on billboards, in Super Bowl spots, on the homepages of…
Empty creative agency desk by a window — where did all the good creatives go

Where All the Good Creatives Went

I had a conversation last month with a CMO at a large European brand. She was frustrated. "We've been through three agencies in two years," she told me. "The pitches are great. The teams they present are impressive. And then the work starts…
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I’ve Written 47 CTAs. Only One Worked | CTA Copywriting

The document is called CTA_FINAL_v3_USE_THIS_ONE.docx. It is, of course, not the final version. It is version 11 of an ongoing argument I have been having with myself, a client, and the entire English language about how to make a stranger on…
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