Blog Copywriting Tip 4: The Swipe and Spin

One of my copywriting clients blogs like it's going out of style. I've noticed he employs a great strategy (that I think I may borrow) of checking out the day's big news headlines and then putting his own spin on whatever's happening. I sometimes see opportunities to do this with the topic of copywriting.

Here's an example that I can show you on the fly. My old copywriting cohort recently sent me the link to this article, Thousands of Hyphens Perish. The article lists several words, which, due to the speed of cyber communication and the likely fact that less people care about this kind of thing than ever before, a cavalcade of words have officially "lost their hyphens" as per the latest edition of the Shorter Oxford Dictionary. Along with the link, my friend send me a triumphant message which said: "Take THAT, hyphenation queen!" (Seems I'm known as a hyphen nazi in former professional circles??)

Well, here's my take on that. The words listed in that article never required hyphens in my estimation. Which leads me to believe that perhaps the dictionary that did this update covers British English. To further complicate matters, my friend was born and raised in India but there we were working side by side on American marketing for a major corporation. Next toss in that we sometimes had to do catalog work for the UK where "they say it differently" than we do here. So is it any wonder that she and I used to engage in "hyphen wars" on a weekly basis? Ah, the trials and tribulations of being a copywriting professional and "authority" on language.

Okay, now it's your turn. Today's Blogging Exercise: Venture out into cyber-land and find a headline from today that best relates with your own business. Add a quote from (or sum up) the article and then "spin it" for your audience. Easy. Timely. Fun, fresh blogging solutions for busy folks like you!

Blog along with us during 24 Blogging Days 'til Christmas from Wordfeeder.com Copywriting.

Our Merry Band of Bloggers is located at http://wordfeeder.com/24-days-blogroll.htm

 

Comments

[David B. Bohl at SlowDownFAST.com]

Dina,

Great idea! I'll have to try that one of these days.

David

[Heidi Caswell]

Just spotted the creation of a new tail, opps tell, I mean tale:

"Oh to be a Merry Blogger".

Interesting piece written by one of Dina's Merry Bloggers

[Angie Pedersen]

Great tip! Does it "count" if I did this last week in this blog post? http://www.scrapbookmarketing.com/2007/11/blog-marketing.html
;)

[Dina]

Heidi, thank you. You're my roving blog reporter... : )

Angie,

Sure, it counts! I'm not going to be the blog police here... after all, it's Christmas!

Thank you both for your support and mentions of Blogfeeder around the blogosphere.