You’re tired, you need to write some content and the idea of thinking of something deeply creative makes your head hurt.

There are times when it is a pleasure to play around with words, ideas, angles and themes in your copywriting.

And there are times when you needed to publish something yesterday.

These tips are for one of those days.

Let’s say you have a short product to write about quickly in your weekly newsletter.

Let’s say it’s a weekend workshop you’ve created to help people design their website.

So far you have:

Come and join me on the XXX for a weekend web design workshop. You’ll learn how to revamp your website so it looks shiny and new by Monday.

Not bad, but you feel that even though it’s only a summary, it’s lacking a certain oomf.

That’s where you quickly jot down the following table:

And start filling out the following sections:

Audience Interest

What is your audience interested in? What do they want to find out? What questions do they want answered? What problems do they want solving? Jot these down in the first column.

Drama

Is there anything dramatic about your product? Are the results impressive? In the case of our web design workshop, they’ll have a brand new professional site by Monday morning. That’s pretty dramatic.

If the word ‘dramatic’ seems tricky to get your head around, think ‘remarkable’ instead.

Emotions

What emotions are your customers likely to feel by experiencing your product? In longer sales pages, we always strive to ‘show’ rather than ‘tell’ our readers how they’re going to feel. If you’re short on time and space though, there’s no harm describing the emotions directly.

Something Unexpected

I always try to get people to think about anything that is unexpected in their products, or something that tends to surprise people. For example:

• People are usually surprised at what we can cover in the time
• They’re usually surprised at how friendly the instructors are
• People always remark that they weren’t expecting so many useful goodies to take home

So then you go back to your table and you start to see some bits and pieces you can use to transform your copy from dull to dramatic.

For example:

And then you can write something like this:

If you’d love a professional website (without spending $1,000s) join me on the XXXX for a fun and friendly web-design workshop with other local business owners. By Monday your site will be transformed and more likely to attract enquiries with its eye-catching design. After this weekend you will be confident and excited to spread the word about your new website.

We’re not doing anything radically different to the copy, just adding in a bit more flavour, a few emotions and pointing out some benefits based on what we know about our audience.

So, next time you’re in a hurry but need to beef up your copy, give it a go and let me know how you get on.

Do you have any other techniques for adding a bit of colour and interest into your copy when you’re in a hurry? Let us know below!