VersaQuill

It’s not a book you should curl up and relax with.

Print out the worksheets that are relevant to your current project. (There’s a sample worksheet for comparing your product with the competition’s at http://www.versaquill.com/VersaQuillSampleWorksheet1.4.pdf.)

Scribble the pages up. Cover your desk with leads and ideas that may turn out to be nothing … But that will be captured so you can judge them, rather than flitting about in your head. There’s a reason the wisdom of the ages is in written form: it’s what didn’t get lost when the phone rang or the dog needed to be walked.

Once you’ve filled in the worksheets, give yourself the godlike satisfaction of reducing chaos to order, using the Workbook’s summary sheets. Among the topics: What are the most important benefits? What emotions and ideas are driving your target audience, and why? What should the call to action be?

And then give yourself the pleasure of getting creative. With all the information you need gathered and fresh in your mind, start looking for a novel approach, a fascinating angle, an irresistible proposition.

The wondrous thing about systematically setting your thoughts down on paper is that in the end, it frees more of your mind and more of your time to be creative.

The Workbook is sold in PDF format specifically so you can go through this process for project after project. If you’re between projects, it’ll do wonders for your own marketing materials.

Send me your success stories: I’ll post some of them on this blog.

The VersaQuill blog is migrating to http://www.VersaQuill.com/blog2 . Hosting it on my own domain rather than WordPress gives me more options: I can use Adsense and Amazon links, for instance.

A few tips for others migrating WordPress files

Exporting the published posts turned out to be the easiest part of the migration. The most frustrating part was tweaking the template. Rubric (the template used here) isn’t available if your blog isn’t hosted on WordPress. I spent hour after frustrated hour tweaking another template and seeing no results. Eventually I discovered that it wasn’t my CSS stylesheet skills that were the problem, but the fact that my browser (Google Chrome) was storing an image in the cache, and not refreshing even when I tried to force it via Ctrl F5 or emptied the cache from the Chrome toolbar. When I came back to the new blog site after a couple hours, the changes appeared.

Anybody know a solution? The work-around is having the patience and self-discipline to go do something else for a couple hours, rather than trying to finish the template tweaking all at once. But I prefer instant gratification in my web programming.

Incidentally, as the best source for novices on CSS for WordPress, I recommend http://www.tamba2.org.uk/wordpress/graphicalcss/

Hope you join me on the new blog! Anyone who has signed up at this blog will be subscribed at the new one.

And now, a freebie: Worksheets for Grant Proposals is available without charge from the VersaQuill site.

Will filling out its pages guarantee you a $2 million grant from the Rockefeller Foundation? Nope. If it did, I’d be spending this year researching foie gras consumption in Paris.

Here’s what these worksheets will do, step by tiny, manageable step:

• They will help you clarify the goals and objectives of your project.
• They will help you determine the time and money you need to achieve those goals and objectives.
• They will help you specify why you are best qualified to carry out this project.

Once you have all this information at hand, you’ll find it faster and less stressful to submit grant proposals. More importantly, your proposals will be more persuasive—they will clearly demonstrate your goals and qualifications.

Worksheets for Grant Proposals is based on the same technique used in the VersaQuill Copywriting Workbook:

• Systematically search for the relevant facts and write them down, so they’re not careening about in your head.
• Choose which facts are most important your audience. What do they need to know in order to invest time and money with you?

Incidentally, if you know Ayn Rand only as a novelist or as a proponent of laissez-faire capitalism, you may be surprised to hear that this technique relies heavily on her writings on that arcane but vital branch of philosophy known as epistemology. (How do you know what you know? How do you learn more?) Further comments in an upcoming post.

Are other people or organizations competing with you for funding? Have a look at the worksheet on assessing the competition, a free sample from the VersaQuill Copywriting Workbook. Although that worksheet was written with businesses in mind, most of the questions can be asked of any competing organization—just replace “product” with “project.” In fact, much of the material in Part 1 of the Workbook will be just as useful for grant-seekers as for those selling products and services.

Did you find the Worksheets helpful? Did I miss any important questions? Feedback welcome, on this blog or at Dianne@VersaQuill.com.

One of the pleasures of researching the VersaQuill Copywriting Workbook has been reading books by master copywriters. I find very refreshing their assumptions that the work they do is good and useful, and that business and capitalism are good things. (See the annotated list of Sources for specific book recommendations.)

I incorporated their advice into the worksheets and checklists of the Workbook, but when I came across an idea stated with particular pithiness or clarity, I added it to my file of advertising quotes. Here are a few favorites of general interest:

• Advertising is the poetry of capitalism. (Michael Maynard)
• The next time you’re in a meeting, look around and identify the yes-butters, the not-knowers, and the why-notters. Why-notters move the world. (Louise Pierson)
• He uses statistics as a drunken man uses lampposts – for support rather than illumination. (Andrew Lang)
• When somebody asked Willie Hoppe’s manager how it was that Willie always won his billiard matches, the answer was, “Willie is always playing billiards; his competitors are always playing Willie.” (Victor Schwab)

And here are a few that relate more specifically to copywriting:

• Good copy involves digging for facts before a word is written, not whirling around to a typewriter keyboard, and starting to bang out words. (Victor Schwab)
• Remember the people you address are selfish, as we all are. They care nothing about your interests or your profit. They seek service for themselves. Ignoring this fact is a common mistake and a costly mistake in advertising. (Claude C. Hopkins)
• The advertisements which persuade people to act are written by men who have an abiding respect for the intelligence of their readers, and a deep sincerity regarding the merits of the goods they have to sell. (Bruce Barton, co-founder of BBDO)
• The headline tells the reader what the article is about. And thus gains his first attention. The illustration illustrates it. And thus sustains his interest. … Pictures alone, in publication advertising, do not sway the millions. Pictures mean little without words to explain them. People want to know “WHY”—and that takes more than a picture can tell. (Arthur Lasker)

Eventually I’ll organize this collection and sell it as an ebook. Meanwhile, I’m giving the work in progress free to purchasers of the VersaQuill Copywriting Workbook.

I’m a sucker for books on copywriting. Sometimes I can resist buying them – but I can never resist reading the descriptions and trying to find a good reason to buy just one more.

Alas, the return on these bibliographic investments is getting smaller and smaller. A lot of the books repeat what I’ve read elsewhere. Worse yet, when I sit down to write an ad, I can’t dredge up even half of the excellent advice I’ve read.

So why am I still tempted to buy them?

First, I keep looking for a way to make it easier to face that blindingly white, terrifyingly blank piece of paper.

Second, I’m very conscientious about giving good value for my services, so I worry that I’ve missed an obvious selling point or forgotten an important piece of information.

Faced with this ongoing problem, I finally decided last year to compile a set of worksheets and checklists to help me collect ideas, organize them, and check the copy. Having such material ready at hand turned out to be such a profound relief to my anxiety-ridden psyche that I decided to offer the material for sale as the VersaQuill Copywriting Workbook. The Workbook is an ongoing project and will be updated periodically. In fact, as I write this, two really, really interesting books are just begging for my attention. (I usually resist buying more of them – not always.)

I’ve posted the table of contents for Part 1 (Generating Ideas) and Part 2 (Writing the Ad) on my website, which includes further information about the Workbook and samples from it.

Have a look and tell me your thoughts: What would you add? What would you delete?

Click here to purchase the Workbook. To be notified of updates to the Workbook and occasionally receive free excerpts, subscribe to this blog (at right) and/or add your name to the VersaQuill mailing list.

(Incidentally, the title of this post is a riff on the title of David Ogilvie’s combination memoir / manual, Confessions of an Advertising Man, which is fascinating reading.)

Warning: the VersaQuill Copywriting Workbook, which I’ve just made available for purchase, is not for newbies. Why? Because newbies assume that “always” means “always,” and “never” means “never”; and they don’t have a broad enough context to distinguish a ghastly error from a brilliant innovation. The Workbook is full of alwayses and nevers, because it’s a compendium of advice from prominent copywriters plus standard practices in the field.

If you’re a copywriter but not a novice, you can skip this post and move along to the next one, Confessions of an Advertising Book Addict.

While I’m scaring people away, let me add that the Workbook is not going to be much use to you if you can barely write a grammatically correct sentence. Copywriting is, at its most fundamental, a form of communication. Applying the rules of English grammar is a prerequisite for communication – a fact that only writers of the most avant-garde fiction and poetry ignore. (And you can bet they don’t pay the mortgage with their writing income.)

If your grammar and style need work, you should curl up for a couple weeks with Foerster and Steadman’s Writing and Thinking: A Handbook of Composition and Revision, Zinsser’s On Writing Well, and/or Davenport’s Rex Barks. (Yes, really! I’m a very good writer, but when I taught my daughter English I learned a lot from Rex.)

Continuing in this negative vein, let me also discourage you from buying the Workbook if you routinely crank out 500-word articles for $10. If your style of writing is to type as fast as you can and submit your first draft, the Workbook isn’t going to be cost-effective for you. If, on the other hand, you’re charging $50-60 per hour and you’re serious about making your writing as clear, concise, and persuasive as possible, then the Workbook will pay for itself in a month or less, through savings in time stress.

If I haven’t scared you off, please do read the next post, Confessions of an Advertising Book Addict. Or you can click here for more information about the Workbook (including table of contents and sample pages).