Copywriting tips for key marketing channels
You don’t speak to your boss the same way you speak to your friends.
Like relationships, materials for different marketing channels have different language styles. The tone and text of an email promotion differs from that of a Facebook post, which in turn differs from a blog post.
VerticalResponse’s Copywriting Cheat Sheet illustrates how marketers should adjust their copywriting for different marketing channels across social media, email and the web.
Table of Contents
Here is a breakdown of the tips that should make up your copywriting for each marketing channel:
Email Promotion
Email promotions must always combine a call-to-action with compelling imagery. Make sure your call-to-action matches exactly the landing page it links to.
Top three qualities: concise, action-oriented, enticing.
Newsletter
An effective newsletter is engaging, informative and humorous enough to encourage recipients to stay subscribed and share it with their colleagues. In How to Write a Newsletter: Ten Tips for Staying out of the Spam Box, Lisa Mercer warns marketers not to use the newsletter to sell. Instead, position yourself as a thought leader who tries to help customers solve problems. Share information and news about the entire industry, not your company.
It’s also helpful to include an option allowing recipients to view the newsletter online in case graphics and images don’t render well in email. This also enables you to embed social media sharing buttons so recipients can share the newsletter with their peers.
Top three qualities: personable, informative, consistent.
Website
Websites should be informative and provide a clear message about what your company offers. Copy includes key marketing features, benefits, customer testimonials and success stories about the company.
Unlike social media channels, websites have virtually no limits as far as design and layout. Marketers need to continuously test and measure the effectiveness of landing pages, including the positioning of calls-to-action, headlines and colors.
Top three qualities: informative, action-oriented, promotion-oriented clear.
Blog
The blog resembles the website’s design and layout qualities, but is different in its conversational tone. Blogs are marketers’ spaces to voice their opinions, engage with fans and consumers and market their products. Marketers should also include plenty of keywords, sources and links to third-party content to position their blogs as a reference for customers.
Top three qualities: story-based, personable, opinionated.
Social Media
Many marketers advise against using services like Hootsuite to send the same message across all social media channels. The reason: each channel has a different audience, and the tone of the posts should reflect each channel’s audience and their interests.
- Facebook. Marketers can use a range of post types on Facebook, including images, videos, links, questions and emoticons. Posts should be action-oriented in a conversational, colorful tone.
- Twitter. With Twitter’s 140-character limit, marketers have to get to the point right away. Its tone resembles Facebook, but Twitter relies less on images and videos and more on headlines and links. Twitter often promises a higher reach than Facebook — especially when you use hashags and mentions.
- LinkedIn. LinkedIn is more professional than social. Guy Kawasaki says LinkedIn is best used for “Pimping,” or talking yourself up and sharing expertise. While marketers should use Facebook and Twitter to promote, LinkedIn is often more effective as a way to generate discussion and build networks. Post plenty of questions and shareable information.
Bottom line: consumers expect a certain language style on each digital channel. Marketers can see higher engagement and conversion rates if they take the time to craft unique and personable messages in each channel.
About William Comcowich
William Comcowich founded CyberAlert in 1999 as a spin-off of UltiTech, Inc., which has evolved into CyberAlert 5.0, the most advanced media monitoring and clipping service on the Internet for news and consumer discussion. As the president and CEO of CyberAlert, William has over 20 years of experience in developing and producing interactive multimedia communications programs for Fortune 500 companies and 10 years of experience in Public Relations.
