Question I was asked today: Have you taken any copywriting courses?
My answer:
Yes. After being a sporadic features and editorial writer for 40+years, I read just about every copy writing book in existence. I could probably teach copywriting courses for a living after that.
And then I applied for a local copy writing job and cut my teeth as a fledgling professional copywriter working full-time for the granddaddy of all on-hold message-producing agencies. (It had been creating riveting on-hold messages for thousands of clients across the country for more than twenty years.)
I won Employee of the Quarter the last two quarters I worked there and–get this!!!–several of my clients reported to me that the messages I wrote for them were so good that some of their callers asked to be put back on hold after they had been served, saying they’d hang up after they’d heard them all!
That made my day, needless to say…
Who likes being put/kept on hold?!!
Apparently a significant number of people who were listening to my on-hold messages did!!!
I can live for a week on a compliment like that!
But there were others, too.
A few weeks after I started there, one of the audio technicians who recorded the professional voice talent walked into my office and told me, “Joe Michaels [a well-known professional voice-over artist here in the Pacific Northwest] just told me that our newcopywriter is a helluva great writer. I thought you might like to hear that!”
Uh…yeah!!!
So…want to learn the basics of great on-hold messages?
Click on this link! http://hireme.wordwhisperer.net/2015/09/28/on-hold-messages-the-basics/
Want to learn the basics of great copy and content writing? Logon to wordwhisperer.net and read the blogs backward–that is, start with the oldest blog and read forward to the newest one.
That way you’ll get the copywriting course in the order I wrote it.
I’m gonna retire (or die trying!) someday, so I want to see some copywriting disciples coming up behind me!
If you want some professional guidance–as in ME looking over your copywriting attempts and editing/enhancing/critiquing them via Track Changes so you can learn to recognize converting copy and start writing it yourself, I’ll charge you just $35/hour. But I’ll want to receive something you’ve written at least once a week. I want to know you’re serious and not just dabbling. You can’t get any better procrastinating. It’s all in the doing.
To engage with me in this way, first read the insights at wordwhisperer.net to start. (There will be a test! HA! Not really, the proof will be in the pudding)…
After that, you should be ready to write like a copywriter and not a school student. (Copywriters break the rules all the time; your school teachers would slap you silly for some of the things you’ll find yourself creating as a copywriter. You need to get over your earlier conditioning and break them anyway.)
Let’s roll!