Why You Should Copywrite Yourself 💰
You're probably wondering what I mean by "Copywrite your life".
Yeah, that's a concept I tried to explain many times to my non-copywriter friends.
Unfortunately without much success.
But I think it will resonate with you if you're in the process of becoming a copywriter.
So read on, I'll do my best to convince you to learn the foundations of copywriting if you wanna meet success in 2021.
Copywrite what?
For those who are already familiar with copywriting, you can go directly to the next section.
For the others: you’re welcome! You're about to discover something that'll probably change your life.
- Copywriting is what made you buy your first iPhone.
- Copywriting is this little something that made you watch this Netflix TV show in one row.
- Copywriting is the reason your Mom bought this stupid gadget on teleshopping.
- Copywriting is what made you leave your email on a random landing page to receive a pdf you won't even read.
- And much more...
Ok, I think you get it: copywriting is everywhere.
This is basically the reason why you take out your credit-card far too often to your banker's liking.
But what does copywriting has to do with succeeding in life?
Most will agree copywriting is a fundamental skill for working in marketing and other business-related positions.
But it might not be clear why it should matter to your personal growth and success.
The most underrated skill of the 21st century
This is probably the only place where you'll hear that copywriting matters to all.
Whatever your job, would you be a dev, a manager or even a guitarist: you'd better sharpen your copywriting skills to survive in the jungle of the 21st century.
Develop your emotional intelligence
On a purely esoteric consideration, copywriting will make you a better human being.
Indeed, you cannot be a good copywriter if you don't have a deep, subtle comprehension of human psychology.
This is of course helpful to influence people. Change their beliefs. Make them buy your offer.
But on another dimension, it also requires you to develop the highest level of empathy with your reader.
You need to feel what it feels, to put yourself in his place to understand his view of the world.
I personally think the world would be a better place if everyone was trying to make this extra mile to understand the other.
I'll go one step further.
If you're single and looking for getting laid, it can help you so SO much to have a good understanding of what's happening in the head of the guy or girl you're targeting.
A lot of strategies are both common to the world of seduction and marketing.
A good example is the Hoop Theory developed in The Mystery Method (one of the greatest pickup artist).
It consists of making the girl do little actions to make her comply and follow under your frame (don't worry if you don't understand, you're not supposed to be an expert seducer).
Anyway, this technique relies on the commitment principle which is a well-known psychological trigger. It is analog to the marketing more known foot-in-the-door technique.
I won't go further in the analogy but I hope you're convinced that human psychology is at play in most of our interactions. Whether sexual or business, it's all comes down to the same psychological triggers. Funny isn't it?
Content is everywhere
You won't disagree if I tell you most of the value on the Internet is created through free content.
It became one of the default ways of growing an online business: create free content, build an audience, sell them a product.
But here's the thing: the competition has become huge and if you wanna succeed with this method you must be in the top 1%.
There is no room for amateurs in 2021 anymore.
If you want to succeed on this path, you must master the process of content creation.
A good example is Casey Neistat who's famous for his vlogging skills. To be where he stands today he must have developed storytelling skills that can compete with George Lucas' ones.
Am I exaggerating?
Probably.
But you get the point: you cannot succeed in content creation if you do it on instinct.
Another example: if you wanna succeed on YouTube, you must keep people as long as possible on your video. Isn't exactly what copywriting allows you to do?
Attention is the new gold
If oil was the black gold of the 20th century.
Then attention is the digital gold of the 21st century.
GAFAs are fighting for our attention.
Why Google do you think Google invested heavily in self-driving cars?
It is not for limiting accidents.
It is to show you advertisements while your Google car is driving you away.
The more time you can spend behind a screen, the more money they make.
It's as simple as this.
Everyone is begging for your attention in the hope of selling you their product.
Copywriting is like a superpower in this century.
Not only it teaches you how to grab people's attention, but is also show you how to keep it.
Better it allows you to create an irresistible desire in your prospect's mind so that they have no choice but listen to the end of your speech.
Examples of people that copywrited themselves
Neil Patel
Neil Patel has really mastered the skill of cutting through the noise on the internet. A quick search on Google for the word copywriting: the first result is a complete guide from QuickSprout, second is the ultimate guide from Neil Patel.
Second position, pretty impressive? This guy must know what he's talking about.
Actually, QuickSprout also belongs to him.
You get it? That the kind of control I'm talking about: this guys is controlling the 2 first result of the SERP with his sites.
How to explain such a success?
If I had to give only one reason: generosity.
Not that he's a good samaritan.
But its entire content marketing strategy is based on giving out amazing content... for free!
He's leveraging the reciprocity principle (which is a very well-known psychological bias) at a scale I've never seen before.
In the long term, this is a pretty powerful strategy.
And once it has created a multi-million audience with this large-scale free content strategy, he then has the authority and social proof to sell his skills at the highest price.
He basically wrote his whole life like a giant copy and leveraged his copywriting skills on a lifetime scale. Can't wait to see the closing part!
Steve Jobs
Won't spend much time on Steve Jobs since most people already know his story.
However, I'd like to convince you he would never have so much success if he wasn't a copywriting genius.
Look at the first minutes of the first iPhone Keynote.
He spent the whole beginning of the presentation showing you how Apple changed the world by introducing breakthrough products: the Macintosh and the iPod.
If I ask you: what is the iPod for you?
You'll probably answer it is a nice-looking pocket music player.
If you ask Steve Jobs, it would tell you it changed not only the way we listened to music but also the entire industry.
See the difference.
He's a genius storyteller by selling the transformation rather than a set of features.
Then he goes on: "Today, we're introducing 3 revolutionary products of this class: a widescreen iPod with touch controls, a revolutionary mobile phone and a breakthrough internet communicator".
That's amazing. It instantly releases a big shock of dopamine into the audience's brains.
Why?
Because it goes way beyond the audience's expectations.
But what's a real genius, is when he actually make the people understand by themselves that those 3 products are one single device: the iPhone 👏
"Are you getting it?" By letting, the audience understand by themselves, Steve uses an old trick: letting you believe you're smart because you understood by yourself what didn't seem obvious.
This trick is actually well-known by film directors that often leave hints to help you "discover" the truth without explicating it.
"Today Apple is going to reinvent the phone, and here it is."
Again, Steve Jobs' genius strikes us.
It's the third time Steve tricks us. Now we feel we're gonna spend a very nice time deeply seated in our soft chairs...
"Actually here it is, but we're gonna leave it there for now".
That's it, now it's impossible we quit the keynote before we can see what's the iPhone actually looks like. That's a perfect example of a seed of curiosity, which is a very powerful technique we use in copywriting.
Honestly, he demonstrates in those 4 first minutes a perfect mastery of copywriting. He spikes our curiosity, creates desire and most importantly grabs our attention in a way we're not even conscious of.
I could go on and on, but with this quick example, you must get an idea of how much mastering copywriting helped Steve Jobs succeed in his career.
Let's be honest.
Most CEOs would have had simply presented the iPhone as a phone with a big touch screen. Just check out the Samsung keynotes to get an idea.
Elon Musk
You must have heard about the Tesla CyberTruck Glass that broke during a demo.
Like most people, you probably think it was a mistake that may hit Tesla's reputation.
You could not be more wrong!
This "mistake" was the cheapest ads for its Tesla CyberTruck Elon could possibly imagine.
Just imagine: almost everyone on earth connected to the Internet has heard about it.
How much would it have cost to pay for such an ad?
I do believe that Elon knew what he was doing.
You should never underestimate one of the best marketers of our time.
It's simply pure human psychology.
Elon knew that everyone would be so happy to share the news with his friends: "the crazy CEO that wants to go to Mars has failed a demo in front of everyone, what a shame!"
Data speaks for itself: Tesla received over 250,000 reservations for the CyberTruck within a week of unveiling the vehicle...
Ok, I hope you're convinced you cannot run such tricky marketing operations without a deep understanding of how humans behave. That's the pure foundation of marketing and copywriting.
Conclusion
With those 3 examples of inspiring people, you can see how their copywriting skills have played a role in their success.
I didn't have time to develop how they copywrite their life as a whole, but you must understand that success comes by mastering this skill.
Be it Neil, Steve or Elon they all have a legend that participates indirectly to their success:
- Neil: we seem him as a genius in marketing, SEO, blogging, you name it.
- Steve: we see him as the guy who fixed Apple and invented the iPhone who changed the lives of millions on the planet.
- Elon: he's the crazy CEO who's achieving what we think impossible and make our future happen.
Their whole life is like a huge copy they write in front of us: they cut through the noise, created desire and interest in our mind to finally make us the little soldiers that are ready to take action for them when they need us.
This analogy might be a bit far-fetched, but think about it: what could be more powerful than a copy?
What about thinking of your whole relationship with your audience as a giant copy?
Think of your relation with them in the long term: plant seeds that will grow over time to finally collect the fruits years later.
I think that's exactly how successful people write their life in the 21st century.
So why not give it a try?
If I planted a seed that may give golden fruits in a few years, you can share this article or comment below if you have any interesting point of view on the subject.
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Vlad Kowsky