You can market it till the end of the earth. If your text isn’t appealing, then it won’t get anywhere. People will read it, shrug and move on. The difference between that and something that you can’t help sharing is difficult to pin down. You could call it an x-factor if you like.

The question is, how do you put that into your words? What can you do to make your text pop so that people naturally feel like hitting that share button?

That’s what we’re going to explore today. Top 6 Copywriting Tips & Hacks for Appealing Content.

6 Copywriting Tips & Hacks for Appealing Content

Just be you

The first thing that you’re going to have to realize is that the text that you’re writing is yours and that you shouldn’t be ashamed of that. Don’t try to be something that you’re not. That means, don’t try to sound smarter than you are, or more sophisticated. People will notice.

The worst part? Research shows that people that use big words are often thought to be stupider rather than smarter. Go figure, right?

If you want people to think you’re smart, don’t grab for a thesaurus. Instead, focus on doing good research and presenting it in a clear and succinct form. That brings me to my second point.

Fluff is bad

When you think you’re done writing an article, it’s time to think again. Instead, to through and cut out everything that’s not necessary. That probably means every instance of the word ‘very’. It also means shortening down sentences and cutting out anything else that doesn’t add meaning or character.

The point of a text is to give your audience as much bang for their buck as you can. And the best way to do that is to cut out that which is unnecessary.

Short sentences, baby

We have incredibly short attention spans. Now, you can lament that, or you can work with it and help people to actually get the most out of a story. (I’d go for the latter if I were you). So, focus on using shorter sentences.

Personally, I’ve found that using something like the Hemingway app is a great way to learn to write shorter sentences. They highlight difficult sentences, as well as passive voice and adverbs. The best part? The more you use the program, the more you’ll internalize the lessons. I’ve found that over the last six months my sentences have gotten steadily shorter and simpler.

Realize that a paragraph can also convey meaning

A lot of people just kind of go through a text and put in entering where they feel like. That’s a shame because they could instead be using those paragraphs to make their writing more understandable.

In effect, every paragraph is a little bit like an essay. It introduces a topic, goes through it (by expanding or transforming it) and then offers a conclusion. If most of your paragraphs do this, then you’ll find that you reader will think you write more clearly.

The easiest way to apply this logic to your text is to simply deal with only one idea at the time in a paragraph. Do that consistently and effectively and your paragraphs will naturally take on the form that I described above.

In this way, but the time you reach the end of a paragraph the idea has been concluded and your reader can close that ‘chapter’ in their minds.

Have a breathing space

If you want your text to be as clear as it can be, give yourself some space between the initial writing and the editing. In the best case scenario, you’ll give yourself a night. At the bare minimum, however, give yourself a few hours.

This will allow you to get some psychological distance from the text and separate what you meant from what you actually ended up saying. In that way, you can remove poorly written structures while leaving those structures that are actually a bit daring but are perfectly fine.

Alternatively, get somebody else to do your editing. They’ll not confuse what you were trying to write for what you actually wrote. The best thing to do is find somebody else who regularly writes and let them give it the once-over. If that’s impossible, read writing services reviews and use the most trustworthy. They’re not expensive and can give you some good insights.

Of course, it’s your choice whether you decide to use their suggestions.

Avoid passive voice

It’s a really easy trick and yet it’s so effective. Use to learn active voice. Avoid passive voice. Of course, that’s not always possible, but it’s still a good rule of thumb to embrace as much as possible in everything you do.

Fortunately, here too a lot of software can help the Hemingway app that I mentioned earlier, for example, is great at pointing out when you’ve used the passive voice. Alternatively, you can always turn to readability score, which offers the same thing but in a slightly more complicated jacket.

Last words

Writing good copy is about practice. There is no avoiding that. If you’re not writing regularly, you won’t get better. At the same time, if you don’t know what you’re doing wrong, your writing will plateau as well.

For that reason, it’s important that you’re always trying to internalize some new observation about what you could do better. One way to do so is to use some of the writing tools out there. Alternatively, you can do it the old fashioned way.

I’ve always got a lot of about ten different things that I can do better. I’ll then work through them as best I can. Then, when I feel I’ve internalized one idea sufficiently, I’ll remove that one from the list and add something else.

It’s important that we keep improving. After all, today we’re experiencing a golden age for the written word, with everybody needing words written. The only way that we can take advantage of that, however, is if we make the cut and our writing satisfies the gross of the clients. If we can’t manage to do that, then rather than this being a golden age, it will be a dark age, as we’ll end up lost and forgotten among the millions of writers clamoring to get into the gates.