Better Writing Tip for Marketers
December 21st, 2008 | 
Author: As a writer and former ghostwriter, I get nit-picky about writing but I also feel like i can help many of you tighten up your content and make it better, so here’s a good tip after reading some other people’s stuff this weekend: Stop adding negatives or doubts to your content!
Look at these sentences below:
“Now this might sound impossible, but you can make $100 a day with as little as 2 hours work.”
“You may not believe this, but you can build a list of 100,000 in 30 days easy.”
“Even though you might be intimidated by it, you have to learn how to use video if you want to grow your business.”
Ugh! Why are you planting seeds of negativity and doubt into the minds of your reader? They may not have even been thinking it sounded impossible or felt worried about it – until you said that! I see this a LOT.
Look at the sentences without those negative starters:
“You can make $100 a day with as little as 2 hours work.”
“You can build a list of 100,000 in 30 days easy.”
“Learn how to use video if you want to grow your business.”
Do you see the difference? It’s so much more succinct (boo hiss for those of you trying to fatten your content up with fluff). Your readers will love it. Instead of walking away with dread – “Oh crap I have to learn video and I’m scared I can’t do it,” – they’ll walk away saying, “Okay – next step is learning video so I can grow my business!”
There’s a way to connect with your reader and empathizing with the negatives is not the best way to do it. Instead, motivate them with a sentence that says, “Learning video is really easy when you use a step-by-step tutorial.”
Do you see how I never mentioned it was HARD – I just said it was EASY?
Watch how you word your content and go back and check some of your previous work. Your readers want to be inspired, motivated, and encouraged that they can do something better. If you start feeding them doubt, they’ll eat it up and won’t do what they need to do and then guess who they’ll blame for their failures?
YOU!
tiff 
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You made a good point! And I agree with you 100% – I often see the same things when I’m working with clients, or my students at the Business Academy.
Thanks for sharing something that’s so easy to fix and can make such a huge difference in someone’s writing.
Warmly,
Cheryl Antier
Administrator – Writer’s Business Academy
Tiffany,
I like what you say but surely if you think that there will be some objections from people isn’t it better to meet them in that place first and refer to their objections before dismissing them with good responses?
Just curious to have your thoughts
Andrew
Hi Andrew!
What I’m saying is that there’s a way to positively answer their concerns. Let’s do an example:
Joe Blow is worried about creating a Squidoo lens. He thinks he has to learn HTML, he thinks it’ll be too time consuming, etc.
Instead of me writing, “You have to make time for social networking because…” (Which instantly puts a negative “Oh crap I have to do something I don’t have time for” spin on it, I can say this:
“The creation of a Squidoo lens is quick and easy and the return on your investment of time spent creating it will amaze you!”
Or, here’s another:
“I know you hate writing hard-hitting sales copy, but you have to because…”
Say, “Hard-hitting sales copy converts, and learning it from this easy step-by-step tutorial will help catapult your sales to…”
Add, “It’s not hard to write, and you won’t have to compromise your ethics in order to convert sales!”
That’s for someone who might feel “dirty” writing hard hitting sales copy.
I do this all the time, because I think like this.
Need to do some mind scrubbing. Or better yet, communicating positively with your readers just takes a small shift in perspective!
This is an excellent point. I heard from Jack Canfield that typically 71% of our thoughts are negative, and therefore self defeating in terms of success. We need to work on being more positive in our salescopy, our conversation and our thoughts