5 Easy Ways To Put Personality In Your Copy

The late, great Gary Halbert once said something like copy can never be too long, only too boring. That is why you need to infuse it with character! Don't be afraid to put a little stand-out language in your copy. Know why? Because we are so bombarded with marketing messages all the time, now more than ever we need copy that is a little - no, A LOT more interesting.

But how do you get a sparkling personality down on paper?

Here are five options you can try.

1) Create a "Yarket" - This is a play on my famous tarket technique where you establish your target market, then distill it down to one single person. When writing your copy, you write to him or her. A "yarket" is creating a persona that is YOU. For example, Do you want to be gruff? Irreverent? Approachable? Write out the qualities of how you'd like to come across in your communications, frame them around you, then step into that character.

2) Identity Theft - Find a larger than life character that you resonate with and model your copy after how that person would talk. For example, there used to be a comedian by the name of Sam Spade whose onstage persona was a gumshoe detective from the forties. All of his phrases and tone used language from the forties.

3) Swipe an Identity - Read your swipe files and sort out the ones with personality plus. If you find one with the qualities you want your copy to have, go ahead and overlay that voice with your own. For example, if I'm writing heavy-duty, testosterone-laden copy, I'll first read Gary Halbert, John Carlton, or Dan Kennedy. My tone goes through their filter and comes out on the other end as a unique personality.

4) Get a Familiar - Don't restrict yourself to a human personality. You can also be more creative by using inanimate objects like your computer mouse, or even a pet. For example, copywriter Michele PW's dog, Nick, writes a column for her newsletter. It's fun to read (and fun to write - just ask Michele!)

5) Be Your Heightened YOU - Find qualities about yourself you already like and emphasize them. Act how you would at a party with a couple of cocktails under your belt. For example, I'm pretty extroverted most of the time, but sometimes I'm not into other people and ‘vant to be alone, dahlink’. Nevertheless, when I sit down to write my copy I'm always careful to amp up my energetic side.

Most of all please stop caring what others think. Sure you might offend a few by being edgy. So what?

You won't make everybody happy unless you write boring, milquetoast copy that's easy to ignore. The first recipient of the Pulitzer Prize, Herbert Bayard Swope wrote, "I can't give you a surefire formula for success, but I can give you a formula for failure: try to please everybody all the time." Nothing more need be said on the subject.